This is a huge topic as there are tons of moves that disable and in general the rules are particular for each move. MK2KB has a better memory for the fine details but here are a few things.

Damage protection basically cuts the damage of any single attack in half.

Damage protection usually kicks in after the first hit of an autocombo I believe. You will notice in our combo vids that we often start out with an anti air jump kick (aa jk) because there is no damage protection activation with juggles such as these. We get the big damage in those combos because we stay away from the damage protection.

We also will tend towards aa HPs to start a juggle into a corner because we can get a couple of HPs, jump kick, jump kick, ground hit or two or something along those lines without the risk of damage protection turning on.

There is also double damage protection where your hits do 1/4 of their full damage.

Aside from the autocombos, some moves start damage protection as well. For instance, Kitana's fan lift and the human ninja's teleport punches cause some massive damage protection. That's one of the things that kills Scorpion, he doesn't have good popups so his best chance at juggles usually involved teleports, and if they connect you will get practically no damage afterwards. However, the teleport is still good for transportation.

EDIT: The following paragraph is pretty much completely wrong.

I believe Unmasked Sub Zero's punch and kick autocombo is one of the ones that gets double damage protection but I don't actually remember. I am working off the fact that leaving out the LP lets the combo do more damage, because after the first hit, damage protection kicks in and then after the 3rd hit double damage protection kicks in, so leaving out the LP means the third hit is the LK which does a lot more damage, and it gets to do it before it gets cut down to 25% of its power so the total damage for the combo ends up being more.
Unmasked Sub's combo is completely screwy. I just looked over it again and there is no rhyme or reason to it. hp, hp, lp = hp, hp, lk. Punch starter, hp, hp, lp > punch starter, hp, hp, lk. It's ridiculous.


As far as moves disabling, there are a lot of fun rules for that stuff.

You mentioned Human Smoke, you can get 4 hits before his spear. I believe the same goes for Scorpion. So with smoke you can get lk, lp, jump kick, teleport punch, spear, but if you get the jumping starter first, you can't get the spear. Tradeoff. And good balancing.

Ermac is similar with his telekenetic slam (tks) because you can get up to 4 hits before it. However, there is also a rule about how many hits you can get between it. For instance if you snag someone with a tks without comboing anything first, you can get 2 hits (maybe 3, again don't remember) and then slam again, but you can't simply slam and slam again afterwards. Similarly, Kung Lao's spin is practically unlimited in UMK3 for the arcade because the only rule is you have to get a hit between spins. This leads to the ridiculously easy inf in the corner. For MKT for PSX they tightened it a little by not allowing more then 1 spin in a combo I believe.

Other characters are far more limited then this, for instance you can only get 1 hit before Sub Zero's freeze. However, you can glitch that by getting 2 hits, but cancel the second hit right on the first frame of it connecting and you can actually get 2 hits before the freeze, but that is crazy to try.

Sindel has some interesting move disabling. I think you can only get 2 hits before her scream. But, when you hit someone out of a scream (if they are caught in midair for instance) it doesn't count as a hit. So you can get aa hp, scream, hp, hp, scream, hp, scream, hp, scream. The first HP counts because its a normal hit, then the HP that knocks her out of the scream does not count, then the second HP there does count, then they get caught by the scream, and the following HP does not count, neither does the next. However, you can only repeat this a few times because they drop with each scream and once they touch the ground its autocombo land.

This is an interesting example because it brings up moves that don't add to the combo meter. These are nice because they allow extra hits before other moves disable. For instance, in MK3, Cyrax's throws did not add to the combo meter and this, combined with his net, lead to some devastating combos. Then in UMK3 his throws do add to the combo meter (his air throw is one of the only ones that does and I assume thats because you can get more stuff with his throws then with anyone else's).

Sindel's flight never disables, thus allowing the flight cancel infinite, a minor break because its near impossible in actual gameplay.

Shang's ground eruption never disables, thus his juggling inf with it.

You can get 3 hits before a force ball with reptile.

I think you can get 3 or 4 hits before protectile protection with Jade (Otherwise you could keep juggling them in the corner and end the juggle with an HP and cancel the pushback with pp).

I believe Kabal's dash is disabled after 1 hit. but his purple ball is pretty much limitless which makes the 3x jk, fireball in the corner so deadly.

And, so you know, most of the rules from UMK3 arcade are represented perfectly in the greatest hits version of MKT for PSX. Changes like Kung Lao's spin disabling are simple tweaks to balance the gameplay, which is a step in the right direction. But then they break the game with Noob Saibot and Rain. The fools.

Really, almost every move that disables has unique rules for disabling so its a matter of figuring out what the rules are for a move so you can tell how to best take advantage of that.

MK2KB will add much more I am sure, and I will edit more up on here if I think of anything else, but for the most part the rest would be examples of things disabling.
Are there any ithings in particular that you had questions about?

EDIT: My god there are two threads discussing in depth gameplay characteristics. This is unheardof.

It is indeed crazy that there are two threads about UMK3 gameplay lol

After some tinkering, I realized there's no hit limit between lifts with Ermac, and spears with Scorpion and Human Smoke, there's only a time limit, but stretching out the moves to satisfy that duration can be difficult so you always have to be thinking.

With Ermac it is impractical to try and get three lifts in a combo, however it is still possible and I've done it in the corner, to the frame. Pretty much with Ermac it's just safer to put three to four moves between lifts depending on how you start a combo. Remember the lift itself doesn't count as a hit in the combo, nor does it add damage, it acts like an air throw. The limit is 4 hits, this also goes for the teleport punch, but like all moves that get disabled by a number of previous hits, you can just frames cancel but it's not always worth it, so from now on, all references in this post will strictly be about the real game intended limits, and no glitches.

Examples of maximizing the usage of the Lift:

lift, HP, HP, JK, teleport punch, lift
lift, HP, HP, teleport punch (miss) HP, HP, lift
aaHP, lift, HP, HP, JK, lift

There are way more possibilities than that, but it shows how to get 2 lifts per combo in different situations.

Scorpion's lack of pop ups makes him useless compared to Smoke.

With Smoke, it's the same deal as Ermac, you can get up to 2 harpoons in one combo due to the time and hit limit. There is only two times when you should do two harpoons in one combo in effort to maximize damage:

If someone jumps away and you teleport punch them, or if they jump in and kick and you aaHP them. After that you should spear them before they hit the ground, this has you in the following situation:

2 hits, 1 harpoon used, 2 hits remaining before the harpoon is disabled.

After that, wait until the last drop of blood splatters on the ground, and then do HK, LP, wait until they hit the highest point of the pop up, then hold block and tap back, back LP very preceisely, this will put you in the perfect timing range to get the second harpoon. After that, you can finish off the combo how you choose, depending on who the other character is. In most cases, I will do HK, D+LP, D+HP, hold forward for like half a second, run step, aaHP (cancel with run to give myself the most time available to jump after the punch) then JK, air throw.

Specifically with Sindel's scream, all single hits between screams do not count as a hit, but any two hits in succession count as two hits, any single hit after two successive hits does not count as a hit. The scream is crazy and should have had a time limit at the very least but she can double scream backfire so oh well.

With Jade, there is no limit to how many hits you can get before a boomerang or how many you can but there isn't really a practical way to use that no limit. There are a limited number of hits before a dash kick which is is 1, it is possible to get two dash kicks in a row comboed. Two see the no limit on the Boomerang, try throwing one from a little over half screen with P2 next to you mid screen, have P2 duck it, then jump straight up, the returnerang will come back, hit them, then you can run in, HP, HP, boomerang. Complicated and not worth it gameplay, but try it out anyway.

For Jax, there is no limit of hits before for any of his moves disable, the dash fist has no limits whatsoever like Sindel's flight. In N64 and the broken version of MKT for PSX, Jax can practically juggle with the dash punch alone in the corner, it's really dumb. His missiles have recharge time limits on them much like Kitana's fan. In MK3 his single missile had no limit, it was annoying.

Sonya's leg grab has an interesting damage protection of it's on the move itself. If you do HP, HP leg grab, it's 3 hits 34%. If you do HP, HP, JK, leg grab, it's 4 hits 33%. The leg grab normally does 21%, but in the 3 hit combo, it does 1/4 damage, which is double damage protection. This was done because Sonya has an already heavy damage pop up combo, so they decided since the minimum hits on a pop up with her is 3, to make that the damage protection limit. I makes sense since in MK3 that specific damage protection didn't exst, and HP, HP, JK, leg grab was like 48%. However, even though it has it's own damage protection, it is also effect by autocombo and grounded jump kick damage protection, so if you link it to her 3 hit pop up combo, or a three hit combo that starts with a grounded jump kick (nearly impossible to come across this but it still happens) , it only does 3%, which is about 12% of the original damage.

Special moves that activate normal damage protection are themselves effected by damage protection if it already activated, but, they do not double the damage protection. For the teleport punch:

HK, LP, JK, teleport punch, the teleport punch does half it's normal, but the rest of the combo still does half it's normal damage since they are already damage protected because of the autocombo.

Example: HK, LP, JK, teleport punch, harpoon, HP, HP, HK, B+HK 9 hits 40%. Same combo without the teleport punch is 8 hits 36%. Teleport punch does 8% normal, activates damage protection, 4% if previously damage protected, remaining hits still do normal damage protection.

OK that was a lot, done for now.

Matt