How much damage does a demon need to take to infight?

[nxGangrel]

One of my main tactics of fighting through a horde of monsters is to circle strafe between the horde to get the demons to infight. One thing I've notice though, is that sometimes they tend not to, even after taking a load of damage.

In particular, I've noticed demons, imps, and hell knights, for example, take several bullets, several fireballs from imps or mancubi, or a revenant blast or two, before it retaliates, if it does at all. Where on the other hand, I've seen chaingunners and mancubi get hit once by a single imp fireball, or by one or two bullets and retaliate immediately. (These monsters have not taken any player damage mind you)

Is there a certain percentage of damage that must be taken before a monster infights? Or is it completely random?

[Arctangent]

A monster will refuse to change targets until shortly after acquiring its current target - the only exception is the archvile, which is coded specifically to not have this target "stickiness," and therefore will target the last thing to damage it regardless of how long it's had its current target.

[nxGangrel]

Hmm, okay. So how come I've seen instances where a monster is still chasing after me, yet is being (has been) hit from behind, and I have not attacked it?

[Arctangent]

"acquiring its current target" includes being woken up by sound or sight.

[nxGangrel]

Ah okay. Nvm

[Edward850]

nxGangrel said:

Hmm, okay. So how come I've seen instances where a monster is still chasing after me, yet is being (has been) hit from behind, and I have not attacked it?

Because you actually likely did at some point. The exact rules for infighting are this:

• When a monster is asleep, its threshold is 0. Any possible target that wakes up a monster will thus engage aggression to that target, however the threshold will remain 0.
  
• Each A_Chase call checks threshold. If it's non-zero, and its target is alive, it decrements threshold. If the target is dead or NULL, the threshold is reset to 0.
  
• In netgames, during A_Chase, when a monsters threshold is 0 and its target is out of sight it will acquire a new one automatically.
  
• If a monster is damaged, its threshold is 0 or it's an archvile, and it wasn't damaged by an archvile, the damage source becomes the new target. The threshold is then reset to 100.

There's pretty much every rule. The short is after damaging an enemy, it won't target after anything else for up to 100 calls of A_Chase.

[Maes]

Edward850 said:

In netgames, during A_Chase, when a monsters threshold is 0 and its target is dead it will acquire a new one automatically.

Huh. I didn't know of that specific rule. That explains why in online ZDaemon games, for instance, it can be much harder to get monsters off your back by making them infight when you need them to the most: they immediately acquire one of the players as a target, and what's more, they also exhibit a chase timer threshold. It may not be long, but it sure does feel like an eternity when YOU are being cornered by a Cyberdemon, even if its ass is being bombarded by revs and mancs, and you can only pray "PLEASE turn the other way, PLEASE turn the other way..."