Overpenetration a little weird

[BenShinobi]

I get the idea of overpentration, but should an autogun be capable of shooting through 3 blocks of crates (presumably filled) and nearly killing someone who is in full cover from that angle? The dudes really hard to hit from my side (with a boltgun, no less) but can effectively waste my dudes from total safety? You'd expect a big damage reduction at least. Does the game sometimes just not calculate the cover?

[mayrc]

Cover and overpenetration are 2 different things

[Daliena]

Overpenetration does reduce damage, I believe.

And yeah, there's a chance to hit cover, but if you do hit cover, then it rolls to see if you overpenetrate and possibly hit someone behind it anyway. Autoguns have a 50% bonus to their overpenetration rolls, since they fire solid slugs. Bolters meanwhile shoot explosive rounds - they don't overpenetrate as much since, you know. The round goes BOOM inside the first target, usually.

[BenShinobi]

Not sure you're understanding if you think I'm suggesting they're the same? The issue is bullets penetrating through cover, the overpenetration mechanic. If I've used a slightly incorrect term, bite me, you can still understand.

My character is in full cover. That cover is 3 blocks long of containers/crates. The enemy is standing on the opposite side of that cover. He shoots at my character directly through the cover, which I've observed bullets can penetrate through, and can take damage (hence I'm using the term overpenetration). It should create a damage reduction (or perhaps not be possible for an autogun to shoot through that much cover), but my character just got hit by every round in the burst and is almost dead.

Seems screwy is what I'm saying, and is why I asked if maybe the game failed to register the cover between us. I've tried shooting back and my success rate is much lower.

[mayrc]

Over penetration means a shot goes THROUGH an enemy and can hit then one behind. Or in extreme values even penetrate the second also

So 1 shot firedn and 2 guys damaged

It happens when your penetrations is way higher than enemy total armor.

[BenShinobi]

Originally posted by Daliena:

Overpenetration does reduce damage, I believe.

And yeah, there's a chance to hit cover, but if you do hit cover, then it rolls to see if you overpenetrate and possibly hit someone behind it anyway. Autoguns have a 50% bonus to their overpenetration rolls, since they fire solid slugs. Bolters meanwhile shoot explosive rounds - they don't overpenetrate as much since, you know. The round goes BOOM inside the first target, usually.

Thanks for the answer, I wasn't thinking about the whole 'explosive bolt' thing. Still seems like too much for 3 blocks of solid full cover to be shot through and it seemed like it did full damage, so possibly a bug in the hit calculation etc.

[BenShinobi]

Originally posted by mayrc:

Over penetration means a shot goes THROUGH an enemy and can hit then one behind. Or in extreme values even penetrate the second also

So 1 shot firedn and 2 guys damaged

over penetration refers both to penetrating through enemies OR objects. It's the same mechanic.

[Daliena]

Originally posted by BenShinobi:

Originally posted by Daliena:

Overpenetration does reduce damage, I believe.

And yeah, there's a chance to hit cover, but if you do hit cover, then it rolls to see if you overpenetrate and possibly hit someone behind it anyway. Autoguns have a 50% bonus to their overpenetration rolls, since they fire solid slugs. Bolters meanwhile shoot explosive rounds - they don't overpenetrate as much since, you know. The round goes BOOM inside the first target, usually.

Thanks for the answer, I wasn't thinking about the whole 'explosive bolt' thing. Still seems like too much for 3 blocks of solid full cover to be shot through and it seemed like it did full damage, so possibly a bug in the hit calculation etc.

I would guess that the shot didn't hit the first block or two - it seems unlikely, maybe possible, but unlikely, that it'd succeed on all three overpenetration rolls even with the autogun bonus. Though I haven't used autos myself much so I haven't looked at how high the chance becomes in the end.

Cover after all isn't guaranteed, it's possible that a shot will hit someone behind it outright. Better cover (and more of it between you and them) means lower chances, but still.

[BenShinobi]

After looking again at the piece of cover, I think I get it. it's a 1x3 block, but there's no difference in shooting through 3 squares lengthways or shooting through 1 square from the side. As it's just one entity it would be the same calculation from any angle.

A shame, because intuitively you look at it and think that's a really solid bit of cover, but I actually screwed myself over. Feel like they've missed a detail, not taking into account the size of the object being shot through.