let me just say, ive watched tutorials. none of them have mentioned this.

let me tell you the scenario. i knocked down piston honda 2 with 3 stars, and i threw my last star punch before he can star dodging as soon as phase 2 started. then i manipulate his guard throw a star punch and it deals lots of damage, i do another guard manipulated star punch and he gets knocked down. i mess up round 3 by missing my star punch

20 minutes later the same scenario happens, 3 stars in my inv going into phase 2. his refill is the exact same, i throw my star punch and do a guard manipulated star punch, it deals lots of damage. i throw the second one and this time his health isnt fully depleted. maybe a 16th of it is left.

in both examples, he doesnt start fluttering his eyebrows at all as my timing is very consistent where as i knock him down a second time within the same second interval, his first knockdown is a late 29 seconds, he gets knocked down at late 39/ early 40.

im just curious why my guard manipulated star punches deal different damages, is it that theres only a few frames where the star punch land and even fewer that do the best amount of damage? if so which frames?

You got about a 2 frame window window within the guard manip window to do Max Damage. If you miss the Max Damage window, you can still hit Honda 2 without him dodging but it will do less damage. The tutorials on our wiki page actually does explain this. Sounds like to me you are missing the 2 frame window.

wow thats tight, would that be late into the already small window that you can land the star or early? i know it talks about the max damage star punch in the wiki i just couldnt find anything on when exactly to land the punch

Landing it early means that the star will deal 15hp or be dodged (depending on if Honda 2 has his dodgeability activated) and doing it late will deal 14hp (doing it late enough will also result in 15hp/dodge). This is for the reversed max damage, the regular max damaged star has a basically infinite window but is around half a second slower (and the window for the up press is also stricter, but only by 1 frame).