In build 20, what makes an actor harder to tear apart? I'm having troubles with my ex-super actor being torn to tiny little pieces and being spread like butter (in about six pieces) across the battlefield. So, how do I keep the limbs from tearing off with every sneeze?

Do weight, joint strength/stiffness, impulse gib limit, wound gib limit (correct me if I'm wrong) have effects in this area, and if so, what? Or is it necessary just to armor over the moving parts to keep them from coming off?

IIRC, GibImpulseLimit is how much force needed to gib something, GibWoundLimit is the number of wounds an object can sustain before gibbing.

Not too sure on JointStrength and JointStiffness, but I think JointStrength is how much force it takes to rip an object off and that JointStiffness is how brittle a joint is.

And weight does play into the equation, it's easier to apply lots of force to a light object, etc.

So if I increase the weight of each part, it'll be a lot harder to blow its limbs off? Seems to work, though I have to do more testing. (I announce: Helium Robot!) Yep, it works. The only problem for Helium Robot is being hit very hard, or flying too much. Spriting shall begin.

Worst come to worst, I'll just make rocket mods. I've got some ideas. Plus, they ain't too hard to sprite for.

And now for the complete, detailed answer:

For ALL attachments, including limbs and heads, JointStrength and JointStiffness work together to determine how much force is necessary to knock that attachment off. Higher JointStrength and lower JointStiffness will make it harder to knock an attachment off.

Now, this says nothing about gibbing. GibImpulseLimit determines how much force is necessary to gib something. For singular objects and bodies/torsos, this is the sole number that stands between it and gory, fractured death. For attachments, this comes into play only AFTER the JointStrength/Stiffness has been overcome and the attachment has been removed

This leads into weird possibilities. For instance, you can set an attachment to have low JointStrength, but very high GibImpulseLimit. If enough force is applied, the attachment will fly off in one piece, without gibbing. In the reverse, an attachment with very low GibImpulseLimit but very high JointStrength probably won't ever actually gib at all, if nothing can apply enough force to detach it.

So, really, JointStrength/Stiffness is way more important for attachments, wheras GibImpulseLimit is the most important thing for singular objects, as well as the torsos or central bodies of actors.

Just to throw it in there: ImpulseDamageThreshold just determines how much force an actor can take before raw damage is taken from solid impacts, usually with the ground. It has nothing to do with gibbing. Something that dies from impulse damage might not gib if its GibImpulseLimit is very hight.

Thank you, that's exactly what I needed.

Me too, this might be actually the solution for the problem I'm still having with novastar and a few other mods I worked on before.

Giant thanks Darlos!