The title may be a bit misleading here, as im not wanting to know why. Regarding harvests report. Prop damage under a certain amount is almost never logged. However something crossed my mind while reading it. Any time you damage someone, with anything, no matter the amount, you get a hitmarker. Even if its not logged in damagelogs. If you are recording, as the one holding the prop, and you do NOT get a hitmarker on your screen, is submitting a good quality video for evidence of not getting a hitmarker enough to change the outcome of a report? I would like Admins+ only to comment on this question please, and before doing so please discuss this internally. I dont want one admin saying its okay but then another saying its not. I am happy to wait for a correct answer.
This is not logged as a hitmarker, it only shows a hitmarker when you actualy log the damage to the damagelogs. What IS recorded is fall damage on the time when the prop hits the player and this can be looked into, but then again killing somebody for 1-3 damage is a bit toxic.
I'm not an admin, but I was mod for a bit. Anyways, you don't always get a hitmarker with props, so no, it isn't enough evidence. You can damage someone with a prop without getting the hitmarkers. "World" did the damage, not you, so it isn't logged either. No hitmarkers and no logging. So yeah, it's still not enough evidence. You'd need the victim's POV.
Prop and fall damage record on the same line in the damage logs like so: "Player1 has damage Player2 with falling or prop damage". At the core, it follows the same kind of damage recording threshold with the primary difference of the fall damage being a 1 for 1 type of damage when prop damage is scaled. That's for straight single-person falls, though; I'm pretty sure goomba stomps are like props because of GMod ragdoll physics. Killing someone for damaging you for 5 damage with a prop is kind of toxic, but even more toxic is blocking people or messing around with props. PTFO and you shouldn't have any problems.
Not sure if you'll take an Ex-Admin opinion here so here ya go: With the damage logs and how the current physics engine works and interactions... - Prop damage is not always logged, even if you had physical interaction with it. We've had cases where someone actually flung a prop with a magneto stick into someone and it still outputted it as "world" and it never got logged in the dmg logs. - If it were logged, sometimes the interaction can be delayed. Ex: Pick up a prop and place it down. 5 seconds later, someone just walks into it and you get credited damage even if you didn't even fling it as the physics engine made them "fall" into it. - "Fall" damage from props, again isn't always logged due to the damage logs being finicky with prop interactions. Even if you did submit evidence to show there was a hit marker or not, due to how inconsistent it is... It may not have the desired outcome. Unless it was 100% consistent with prop interactions then sure. It's even harder when the damage is 1-3, so even deathscenes won't show it due to the color of the name changing since it usually changes at around 15-20 damage (minimum). Anyways, I'm not an admin so whether or not you'll like my explanation is up to you.
It's rare but yeah, sometimes a prop damage is missing from logs or more often miscredited to another player. And so in the once-in-a-blue-moon cases where a report depends on it, Death scenes, video evidence and context are the most useful tools. Hitmarkers are as reliable as the props and so aren't guaranteed proof of causing damage and there are cases where you can cause damage without any chance of a hitmarker.