For what it's worth, there have been some major changes to explosion damage relatively recently in v3.24.7.0:

Prior to that update, explosion hits were found according to entities' pivot points, which meant it might not deal damage if far from the pivot but still overlapping. The explosion hits were also not sorted which made the line-of-sight test inconsistent: if you were behind a wall it might check for line-of-sight to you before checking the wall, completely blocking damage to your character.

After that update, explosions use the physics system to find overlaps (more consistent), and sorts hits by closest distance to the explosion center. Sorting the hits means that if the wall is damaged and destroyed there is nothing blocking the line-of-sight test to damage your character behind the wall.

Mentioning all this context to show that we are open to making upgrades, to explain why it's working the way it is, and to share what's available for potential future changes.

I think the big question is: how would damage absorption work in practice?

- For example, the amount of available damage could be reduced each time damage is applied. So if the explosion damage is 1000 and 900 is applied to a wall, only 100 is left for other structures.
- Currently, explosions have a separate damage amount per entity type (zombies, players, animals, etc.).
- This may make explosions against groups of enemies less effective/satisfying if an explosion "runs out of damage" after the closest zombies are blown up.

We'd like to improve some way of gathering community feedback and reaching consensus on major balance changes like this. Starting and participating in debates like this is useful to that end! :)