viewtopic.php?f=16&t=51886&p=305872#p305672
BlakeMW wrote:Damaged things like turrets actually get put in their own "damaged items stack" so you have stacks of healthy items and stacks of damaged items. Within a damaged items stack the damage is averaged out (i.e. add a 25% hp item to a 75% hp item and you get two 50% hp items), you'll never get less items by combining stacks of damaged items. It is items with durability (rather than hitpoints) which have the merging behavior.bobingabout wrote: Yup, I'm not sure if it was in 0.11 or 0.12 where they changed it so that mining 2 damaged entities would merge the two into a single healthier item.
AFAIK, Tools, Armor and Ammo have always used this behaviour.