Help please! Question about ranged damage.

[Gabriel Van Hellsing]

Hello there!
Im usually managing hard crpg-s but one thing is not clear enough for me in this really great game. For melee the strength and buffs are increasing the damage its okay.

What increase really the ranged damage and pls somebody explain to me the interaction between a shot an enemy armo % dodge% and cover, what negates them and what makes them more powerful? Poor batle sister not reaaly got the target and not exactly good damage. Pls Help Fellow Rouge Traders!

[Hanz]

Since you mentioned Argenta specifically, her biggest boost in damage comes from Concentrated Fire which increases damage and dodge reduction, and later on that boost becomes bonker if you pick Arch Militant after level 16 because Versitility just makes her Ballistic Skill scale to basicly infinite therefore making Concentrated Fire scale to dumb levels, quite broken to be honest and i hope they tone it down a little, hope that helps with your question

[tempest.of.emptiness]

For ranged attacks, Ballistic Skill (which is a characteristic, not a skill, even though "skill" is in the name) increases chance to hit.

The maximum chance for a shot to hit is capped at 95%, but any extra chance to hit is not lost; instead it adds to chance to crit. The base is 10% chance to crit, and crits do +50% damage (which can be increased by bonuses to crit damage).

So, you want your Ballistics Skill to be as high as possible, so that your chance of hitting is as large as possible, and ideally so that your chance to crit will be increased too - because that effectively increases your average damage.

Enemies behind cover have a certain amount of protection from your ranged attacks because there is a chance that those attacks will hit cover instead of the target. Some factors (abilities, talents, buffs, or weapon features) may reduce enemy "cover efficiency", which means that they reduce the chance that a hit will strike cover instead of your intended target. It is also possible to "overpenetrate", which in this context means that the shot hits cover but penetrates it and continues on to hit the target behind cover. Relatively speaking there aren't a lot of increases to cover efficiency reduction or overpenetration out there, but there are some, and you should know what they do.

If an attack hits and avoids cover then the target gets a chance to dodge. Their dodge chance is based on their Agility and modified by their armor type (medium and power armor reduce dodge chance by 25%, heavy armor reduces it by 50%). Their dodge chance is reduced by your Dodge Reduction (which is based primarily on Perception, for ranged attacks). If the attack is dodged it does no damage. You want to avoid that, so raising your Perception or lowering the enemy Agility, or other ways of reducing enemy dodge chance or raising your dodge reduction, are helpful.

Finally, after the attack passes all of those tests and actually hits the target, damage is calculated. Your damage range is calculated based on your weapon's damage range, lowered by the enemy's Deflection (which generally comes from the armor they are wearing), and adjusted by various other factors (too many to list here, but including certain buffs, debuffs, abilities, talents, and weapon features). A roll is made to determine the actual damage from that calculated range. Then that amount of damage is reduced by the enemy's Armor (which is a percentage, so 40% armor removes 40% of your calculated damage). There are exceptions to this, such as direct damage that avoids armor, but most ranged weapon damage works this way.

(Edit: I forgot to mention Armor Penetration. That is based on your weapon's Armor Penetration stat and affected by various factors. Your Armor Penetration lowers your enemy's Armor for the purposes of the damage calculation. So 40% Armor hit with 30% Armor Penetration will result in 10% reduction of the damage that gets past Deflection. Don't confuse Armor Penetration with effects that reduce enemy Armor directly; Armor Penetration applies to it's own attack, whereas effects that reduce Armor affect all attacks that hit while the Armor-reducing effect lasts.)

There are debuffs that can reduce enemy Deflection and Armor, and those can be important for dealing damage to enemies with high values for those statistics (because it is possible for Deflection and/or Armor to reduce the damage your attack does to zero, if they are high enough).

Edit: This description applies primarily to single-target ranged attacks, like single shot or deadeye shot. The mechanical details of ranged area attacks and (ranged) burst attacks are different, and more complicated, but the principles are the same and knowing how single-shot ranged attacks work should help you to understand other types of ranged attacks for the most part.

[Dregster]

First of: No stat directly effects ranged damage. There are many abilities, talents and items to modify your damage and stacking these is how you make Argenta stupid strong. She can go in several directions, even sprinkling in some melee if you are feeling cheeky. Rapid Fire and Concentrated Fire are both very powerful. Also note that soldier has a lot of talents that give them substantial damage increases depending on situation. Look to these when considering your build.

(this is from memory so please correct me if I am wrong)

To test to see if you hit the game first makes a number of rolls. First it rolls to hit. This is you 1-100 with BS+30+modifiers being the target number you want to roll under. The highest you to hit you can get is 95 (with any further to-hit added to crit-chance at half value)
After that the game roles for dodge (I think. it might be cover first). This is a similar roll based on the targets Agi and attacks Per. The roll is a 1-100 trying to roll under 30+Agi+modifiers-(shootersPer+modifers). If it succeeds the attack is dodged dealing no damage.
After that Cover is rolled. This is also a 1-100. If you are in half-cover the target number is 35. If it is full cover the target number is 60. If the roll succeeds the cover is hit, takes damage and is potentially destroyed. Various abilities, talents and gear can increase the value of cover. Modifiers that reduce the effects of cover are rare. Effects that negate cover are more common.

Now as for managing enemy defensive layers (armor, dodge, cover (and Deflection)):

Fundamentally armor does not have any "counter stat" that you can put points into. The Armor penetration on your weapon reduces armor by that many percentage points but beyond that you need to look at abilities, talents and equipment. Generally Soldier don't have ways to reduce armor relying instead on increased damage to overcome it. If allies can reduce the enemy armor (or increase the soldiers armor penetration) it will substantially increase the soldiers effectiveness.

Dodge is countered directly by Perception as your base Dodge Reduction is equal to your perception. Beyond this there are a lot of abilities, talents and equipment that help as well. Laser weapons (Las weapons) specifically provides large amounts of dodge reduction. Argenta will probably be your demolition specialist so you will not be able to spec into perception and will have to find other solutions to high dodge enemies. It might also be advantageous to keep her perception low if you intend on spraying down areas with you allies in them (and don't want to take Controlled Shot). More often than not dodge reduction will be handled by other characters.

Cover again has no direct counter. Various abilities, talents and equipment can help but generally your just stuck with the enemy getting cover protections. Soldier is however uniquely skilled at getting around it. Both Run and Gun and Dash can give you a lot of mobility, allowing you to flank the opponent. Be wary though as that will often leave you with your ass hanging out. Soldier can also spec into cover allowing them greater protection from cover. If you do hit cover at least you can feel good that you damaged it and in time it might be gone.

Of the top of my head I don't recall if AoE weapons are special cases when it comes to cover but I believe I read that if an enemy dodges an AoE attack but can't get out of the aoe, with the movement provided (3 I think), it will still be hit.

[tempest.of.emptiness]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3161962543
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3161962735
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3161962920

Those screenshots show the detail view of an attack, opened by right-clicking on the combat log entry for that attack. You can open them up and see a lot of the details going into your combat calculations, which is very useful for learning how things work.

I'm posting them mostly to give an example of the kind of details that are available, but also because there's a small correction to Dregster's post that I'd like to point out.

Note the line "Hit chance increased (over 95%)" under Critical Hit. This is adding 115% to crit chance. Then note the line "Max value" under Hit Chance. This shows "95% (210%)". The 210 is the actual total, and the 95 is the cap. The excess over 95 is what rolls over to crit chance. 210-95=115, which is what was added to crit chance.

In other words excess hit chance adds to crit chance 1-for-1, not at half value. It's not a big deal, but it does make a difference in how easy it is to push up crit chance.

Also note that crit chance over 100% is lost. This is good to know because if you have a choice between a talent that raises crit chance and one that raises damage, and you already have a lot of crit chance, the one that raises crit chance may be worthless (or worth less, anyway) to you.