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::::::::::::::::::::::W E A P O N S  D A M A G E  F A Q:::::::::::::::::::::::

I have donned my lab coat and performed experiments to determine the exact
damage the various Doom2 weapons can inflict.  You may have noticed that while 
fighting the Auto-Player in the difficult mode it is possible to kill him with 
a single BFG shot.  This is also theoretically possible in the Doom God mode.  
However, certain conditions must be met, you must hit the player directly with
the BFG ball and have him kiss the end of your gun with the same shot.  This 
is not easy to do since the BFG ball blasts him a good distance.  

So how much damage can the BFG do?  First we must understand that damage is 
measured in the removal of hit points (hp.)  For example if you have 100% 
health then you have 100 hp., and like wise 200% health equals 200 hp.  A BFG 
can remove over 3,300 hpts., the maximum I have measured was 3,366 hpts.  This 
much damage is highly unlikely to occur in any game, nor is there much 
relevance since 3,300 hp damage far exceeds the maximum amount of health one 
can have while playing.  

Understanding why the BFG's maximum damage is unlikely to occur during game 
play will give you and idea how the statistics for this faq were derived and 
also some of the nuances that play a part in weapon damage.  The reason has 
to do with mass.  Players and monsters have mass, you can think of mass as 
weight, though weight is technically mass X gravity.  A players mass is 100 in 
Doom, that is why a BFG blast can blow a players carcass straight up a long 
staircase (I love when that happens), so if your mass was 1000 clearly you 
would not move as much. 

While measuring the affect of the BFG I put the Auto-Players mass up high so
it would not move from the force of the blast.  This is important because the
closer you are to the rays emanating from the BFG the more damage there is.
Even when I put the mass to 10,000 the blast knocked the player away from the
BFG.  Next I tried a mass of 100,000 and still the Auto-Player moved!!  This
small amount of movement was enough to significantly reduce the damage caused
by the BFG.  It was only at a mass of 500,000 that the player remained
immobile.  Therefore it is unlikely that you could even cause over 3,300 hp.
of damage in a game.  Though, if your victim was in a corner against a wall
and therefore essentially immobile, and received the ball and rays at point
blank range, the damage would come close to 3,300 hp.  A summary of 
weapons damage follows.

BFG:  Theoretically can remove over 3,300 hp. The ball alone without
any contribution from the rays: 512.8 hp. damage.

Plasma:  Each ball 20.7 hp. damage. The gun fires 11.5 balls/sec. In 1
second you can cause 238 hp. damage, in 0.5 seconds 119 hpts damage!!!

Rockets:  Each rocket: 190.3 hp. damage.

Super shotgun:  One blast closest distance possible: 194.3 hp. damage.

Chaingun: Each bullet: 11.4 hp. damage.  The chaingun fires 8.7
bullets/sec.  In 1 sec. 99.2 hp. damage.

Handgun: The same as chaingun, each bullet: 11.4 hpts. damage.

Punch: Each punch: 11.4 hpts. damage.

Chainsaw:  93.8 hp./sec. damage. Its pretty hard to keep a chainsaw on
someone for a full second. 

Damage actually varies from shot to shot, these stats were averaged over a
large number of trials (about 500 trials averaged for each weapon). The large
sample means better accuracy in the stats. The fact that the stats for the
handgun and the punch are identical (which I have been told is a doom fact) to
1/10th % health are an indication of their reliability. I did not attempt to
determine stats with armor, it would be extremely tedious to get a large
enough sample to have good accuracy in the numbers. Shotgun was calculated at
point blank range, to use any other distances would be meaningless, though
its not common to shoot someone point blank you can get a sense of this
weapons power.