The code snippet, for those curious:
//===================================================================== // STRIDER MINIGUN DAMAGE - Pull up a chair and I'll tell you a tale. // // When we shipped Half-Life 2 in 2004, we were unaware of a bug in // CAmmoDef::NPCDamage() which was returning the MaxCarry field of // an ammotype as the amount of damage that should be done to a NPC // by that type of ammo. Thankfully, the bug only affected Ammo Types // that DO NOT use ConVars to specify their parameters. As you can see, // all of the important ammotypes use ConVars, so the effect of the bug // was limited. The Strider Minigun was affected, though. // // According to my perforce Archeology, we intended to ship the Strider // Minigun ammo type to do 15 points of damage per shot, and we did. // To achieve this we, unaware of the bug, set the Strider Minigun ammo // type to have a maxcarry of 15, since our observation was that the // number that was there before (8) was indeed the amount of damage being // done to NPC's at the time. So we changed the field that was incorrectly // being used as the NPC Damage field. // // The bug was fixed during Episode 1's development. The result of the // bug fix was that the Strider was reduced to doing 5 points of damage // to NPC's, since 5 is the value that was being assigned as NPC damage // even though the code was returning 15 up to that point. // // Now as we go to ship Orange Box, we discover that the Striders in // Half-Life 2 are hugely ineffective against citizens, causing big // problems in maps 12 and 13. // // In order to restore balance to HL2 without upsetting the delicate // balance of ep2_outland_12, I have chosen to build Episodic binaries // with 5 as the Strider->NPC damage, since that's the value that has // been in place for all of Episode 2's development. Half-Life 2 will // build with 15 as the Strider->NPC damage, which is how HL2 shipped // originally, only this time the 15 is located in the correct field // now that the AmmoDef code is behaving correctly. // //=====================================================================