Missing shots???!!! No Damage shots

[DannyboyWPG]

Maybe I must of miss understood, but I thought in Phoenix point that if you can get the FULL circle/target on the Pandoran or whoever you're trying to hit, that it WAS in fact a hit. I keep getting FULL misses from my snipers and every inch of the circle is touching and these are not far shots, I'm talking like 10 - 15 squares away type of deal. WTF is going on?

Also, can someone help me with damage types, I'm far enough along in the game now that I feel my Faction weapons are garbage, I ran into the PURE and Do absolutely NO dmg to them at all, I can run up with a shot gun and blast a head and it takes no lie like 1% of dmg. TO THEIR ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ SNIPER. I don't know to many things that can take a full shotgun blast to the head at point blank range and be like, "what was that". In my current scenario I dashed up with one of my Assaults to attack those blood suckers with a rifle, I'm 2 squares away does like 10% of his life. WTF am I doing wrong here. Sorry a bit frustrated.

Just went back to the Scenario, It's a Triton Footpad Alpha, Do they have some special power that makes you miss even if your cross-hairs are fully on them. Just missed two more shots on that particular Pandoran.

D,

[Artek [General]]

Your target is not fully encercling the enemy, simple as.
There's 1,5 pixels of free space undernearth the thing's arm pit or something and that's exactly where your snipers are taking shots at. Only point blank shots at the main body mass will never miss, unless target moves last moment.
Oh right, there's also the fact that targets can move when you take a shot. They move in like 99% slowmo, but enough to cause at least some descrepancy.
NEVER TAKE shots when enemy is in the middle of an idle animation. Wait for them to stabilize. I missed enough shotguns shots like that to learn my lesson.

Damage types are actually relatively simple, but i'm too tired right now to write them all out. Perhaps in a separate message, let me get the wiki first.



The Pure consitst almost entirely of heavy armor augmentations. Which provides them with, i believe, 45 armor per body part with sole exception being head which is 30.
Which means that any weapon under 45 damage per projectile will literally fail to penetrate most of their body.

In other words: you seriously need to understand how armor works.
Assault rifles and shotguns are worthless against high armor enemies. The only things capable of penetrating them are weapons capable of 100 or more damage, which is: sniper rifles, hel-2 cannon, anu's revolver, phoenix' slamstrike shotgun and literally any melee.

Alternatively: you could try shredding armor.
Grenades shred 10 armor from every body part caught within the explosion. So after 2 grenades The Pure will have 25 armor on their body... Which is still considerably high, but at least it's better than 0 damage.
Berzerkers have a level 2 ability which provides their next attack with 30 shred and i even applies to grenades. Do you know how powerful it is to shred 30 armor from most of opponent's body in a single grenade throw? Try it and you will know.
Level 6 snipers can learn "Weak Spot" passive skill, which automatically removes armor from body parts snipers disable.

[DannyboyWPG]

Thank you a TON for explaining that, I'm surprised these missions come up so early if we don't have the ability to take them on, I can't make melee yet I can barely afford the few assault guys I have and my Heavies are garbage, 2 low level snipers is all. No way they can take these guys on. So my only hope would be mass grenades and then hope for the best.

Thanks a ton!!!

[Artek [General]]

STANDART DAMAGE
Your average bullet to the face. Has no special effects, simply applies damage to the target, minus armor value of the limb hit.
I.e. 50 damage pistol shot to 30 armor bodypart results in 20 damage.

SHRED DAMAGE
Shreds armor, simple ass. Does nothing else.

BLAST DAMAGE
The unique gimmick of this one is that it applies listed damage to every limb caught within the explosion and has a line of sight on explosion's center.
I.e. throwing a 60 damage grenade at 200 HP enemy will result in a 140 HP target... But with limbs that individually suffered 60 damage. So if limb had 60 or less HP - that's disambled for sure.
Also tends to shred armor, very useful.

SHOCK DAMAGE
Causes "Dazed" status effect if weapon's shock value is higher than targets HP after the hit.
I.e. hitting a 200 HP enemy with an attack that deals 100 damage and 110 shock will result in target becoming dazed, because surviving 100 HP < 110 shock.
To clarify: "Dazed" is effectively a stun. It leaves the unit with only 1 AP for the next turn and it won't be able to use abilities.

SONIC DAMAGE:
Does the same thing as SHOCK, only instead it compares itself to Will Points, not HP.
I.e. 15 Sonic vs 14 WP = Dazed because 14 < 15.

VIRUS DAMAGE
Eats will points at the begining of target's turn. Once target's WPs hit below 0 - it will panic, skipping their next turn on recovering.
However they will be immune to panic on turn after that, so take that into account.
I.e. applying 10 virus to a target on your turn means that the target will lose 10 WPs on its' turn. Then 9 on the next turn. Then 8 and so on until virus wears off completely.

PSYCHIC DAMAGE
Basically does what Virus does, but directly. Very few units are actually capable of that one.

PARALYZE DAMAGE
Builds up paralysis, which gradully reduces victim's APs until paralyzing it completely.
1 point of paralyze damage basically equals to 10 HP.
So if you deal with a 300 MAX HP target it means that it will lose 1 AP for each 8 paralysis points until becoming completely paralyzed after 30.
Paralyse damage ignores armor for the most part, but can bounce off particularly heavy armor.

POISON DAMAGE
Applies poison which will take away target's HP when its' turn begins. Stackable and doesn't care for armor, at all. The attacks itself might fail to penetrate, but poison will still go through all the same.

BLEED DAMAGE
Poison by function, just red in colour. However it is only applied when a limb is destroyed, 10 bleed per limb.
The only weapon in the game capable of causing bleed directly is Anu's sword.

FIRE DAMAGE
Poison's weird cousin. Does not stack and is hardcaped at 40 (but can be reapplied).
The unique feature of FIRE is that it can set tiles on fire as well.
When a unit moves through a burning tile - it takes 40 damage to its HP as well as 40 damage to EVERY LIMB.
Fire Grenades are deadly as ♥♥♥♥ because they tend to not leave the unit any other way of moving besides trying to run, which of courses causes them to eats lots of damage.
Moving through but 3 tiles of fire in a row means up to 120 damage to HP and usually means guarnateed destruction of multiple limbs, which in itself means a whole bunch of bleed on top of 40 fire damage.
Downside: FIRE does care about Armor, and so heavily armored individuals can move through it freely.

ACID DAMAGE
Another wieird DOT damage type, ACID directly assaults Armor values, and once Armor is completely gone - it will go for HP next.
Applying 1000 ACID to a 1 ARMOR limb will cause the limb to become naked on 1st turn (but deal NO DAMAGE whatsoever), but then on 2nd turn it will deal 990 damage to target's HP.
Basically it means that acid always takes 2 turns to register any meaningful damage. Of coursem you can bypass it by... I don't know... Having someone else shred that armor to 0, allowing acid to skip the pleasantries and go straight for the kill.
Robotic Enemies such as The Pure are weak to Acid. By that i mean: they receive double ammount. I.e. a 10 acid attack becomes 20 for them.

PIERCE DAMAGE
Ignores armor, simple as.
If a 130 damage sniper rifle with 30 pierce hits a 40 armor limb that's
130 - (40 - 30) = 120 damage it will deal.

VIROPHAGE DAMAGE
A unique damage type that counts as BONUS DAMAGE to targets carrying traces of pandoravirus. Which basically exclusively means Pandorans any Anu units who have at least 1 mutation.
This technically should also include The Forsaken but currently they are bugged and do not care.
Virophage damage, technically, is affected by Armor... But it is applied together with main damage as a single whole attack.
Which means that, for all intents and purposes, a
110 Standard + 80 Virophage sniper shot
effectively counts as a single 190 Damage shot. That's an ouch.

EMP DAMAGE
Wiki tries really hard to explain this one, but i don't care.
TL:DR - very good against robotic enemies: which means The Forsaken, Tech's turrets and vehicles.
Not only deals damage but disables augmented limbs hit for the next turn, i.e. hitting The Pure's both hands with an EMP grenades effectively makes him handless for a turn.

[Artek [General]]

Publicado originalmente por Dannyboy:

Thank you a TON for explaining that, I'm surprised these missions come up so early if we don't have the ability to take them on, I can't make melee yet I can barely afford the few assault guys I have and my Heavies are garbage, 2 low level snipers is all. No way they can take these guys on. So my only hope would be mass grenades and then hope for the best.

Thanks a ton!!!

Yeah, most sidequest missions are made available way too early. Always do them last second, to get some headstart on whatever it will introduce to your playthrough. You really don't wanna deal with either The Pure or The Forsaken until you AT LEAST research a grenade launcher, a rocket launcher or just craft lots of grenades.
Scarab with Kaos Engines' MK2 Rocket Launchers absolutely massacres both.

[mergele]

There is also the option that the enemy moved and got body parts out of the circle between you clicking the button and the soldier actually taking the shot. There can be quite the delay for some of the animation when they have to step out of cover etc. Very frustrating when it happens.

[ElPrezCBF]

I agree the animation is frustrating. This is turn-based combat, which should literally mean target moves then attacks/stops completely, then your turn. If your soldiers don't move when it's the enemy's turn to shoot them, why should the enemy play by a different rule? That aside, fully covering the target area with the outer circle should always hit. If you miss due to a design technicality too small for the human player to see, that should be fixed. Afaik, the only reasonable exception to missing when fully covering the target is grenade/scarab rocket launchers due to their unpredictable trajectories.

[LeftPaw]

From you tube vids I was led to believe that there was no Xcom cheese shots in PP. If the outer circle was covering the target it was a guaranteed hit. We we all know this to be a lie by now. :(
Guaranteed shots do in fact completely miss. Being next to your target with a shot to the face do miss, rarely, but possible.
I understand the power of shred but the damage put out by some weapons confuses me. Like at times, a enemy with a pistol can do more damage at long range then your sniper.
And then there's grenades. You read up on them and think, wow, the ultimate weapon. When in truth you may as well be throwing a water balloon.

[Artek [General]]

Publicado originalmente por WetNose:

And then there's grenades. You read up on them and think, wow, the ultimate weapon. When in truth you may as well be throwing a water balloon.

PP grenades are different from XCOM grenades. In XCOM yes - they were a god send and you pretty much shouldn't go into an operation without at least 1 dedicated demolitioner.

In PP grenades play even more of a supportive role of armor shredders and limb breakers.
And they are pretty neat for murdering worms, but that's something else entirely.

[Crypto Gamer]

Only thing I want to add:posion,virus is applied ONLY if the enemy took at least 1 point of standard(main hp) dmg from the status effect weapon.Likely same for paralyze but all of them have high pierce.

So shooting a virus rifle at a high armor part will deal zero stanard and zero virus dmg.
Acid always applies even if you deal zero standard dmg.
Afaik "daze" also halves ranged accuracy.

Weapons some of them also can penetrate/hit stuff like a lamp post but this will/can reduce the dmg,it is possible your sniper kills a lamp post and also hit the intended enemy for vastly reduced dmg.
For some weapons like Heavy 200 dmg cannon cover penetration does not seem to reduce any dmg you can even penetrate and kill more than 1 enemy with a lined up shot.

Enemy idle animation can "dodge" sometimes even point blank.Had it happen to me many times,was worse few patches ago.Some of them have recoil/in pain animations which can also "dodge" some bullets.

On rare certain angled cases pointplank some weapons can clip trough the enemy model and shoot through him,not dealing any dmg.Happened to me with Triton,but it is very rare.Might be fixed by now.

Shred and fire can demolish many limbs easily.

Early pure is badly balanced for most new players,game still has some polish balance issues(was much worse).

[LeftPaw]

And how is it that face huggers miraculously spawn on roof tops where your jetpack guy lands when distanced from the group where no one can rescue them.
You know last night I shot a face hugger stone dead from overwatch yet it still managed to hug my face?
Just a hour ago I watched one enter the map but because it was on the other side of the map I ignored it. On their go the face hugger had somehow respawned itself 5 squares from my position.
Face huggers are part of the games cheat engine.

[Artek [General]]

Publicado originalmente por WetNose:

And how is it that face huggers miraculously spawn on roof tops where your jetpack guy lands when distanced from the group where no one can rescue them.
You know last night I shot a face hugger stone dead from overwatch yet it still managed to hug my face?
Just a hour ago I watched one enter the map but because it was on the other side of the map I ignored it. On their go the face hugger had somehow respawned itself 5 squares from my position.
Face huggers are part of the games cheat engine.

I highly doubt this is the case.

Facehuggers are very stealthy. Being a small target they can easily avoid being spoted and they have A LOT of speed, way more than one would expect. It also seems that their facehug attack either costs 0 AP, ot the bastards have so much speed - they never use it to it's fullest, instead settling for finding cover first, THEN going for the hug once a victim is in range.

It could also easily be that there was another facehugger on the map who you didn't noticed. Again - they are very stealthy.

Facehuggers can spawn on the rooftops at the begining of a mission and during "Cleanse the haven" Festering Skies missions they have a spawn point on top of the building where the corruption node resides.
On any other map the facehugging reinforcements only come from edges of the map.

One of the reasons i prefer doing scavenging missions with Vehicle teams is that vehicles make these little bastards useless. As long as all your soldiers are hiding inside - they can only sneak around, hiding behind benchs and rocks, hoping for an opportunity that one of your men will leave the car and not come back before the end of the turn.
They can still bodyblock your however. It absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ maffles me why a heavily armored 2 ton Armadildo can't just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ run this squishy meatbag over. Utterly pathetic.

[LeftPaw]

I don't know, you call it AI, I call it a dirty rotten low down cheating. :)
I guess they need a edge when playing against master tacticians, and besides we have that ace in the hole called save scumming.
BTW, I have spikey armour on my buggy so I want them to come up close for a smell. And yes to let us run the b*****s over.

[Nijuyin]

dunno if someone mentioned it, but bullets will mostly be shot from the guns muzzle. sometimes the gun clips trough heads and bodyparts at point blank range, then shoots on the other side and misses.

[Artek [General]]

Publicado originalmente por Nijuyin:

dunno if someone mentioned it, but bullets will mostly be shot from the guns muzzle. sometimes the gun clips trough heads and bodyparts at point blank range, then shoots on the other side and misses.

This is a fairly rare occurance and i experienced it VERY rarely. Maybe once. But this is why i prefer taking shotgun shots with 1 tile buffer, just in case.
I even did that in XCOM too back in the days, as it made me more calm that the game won't bug-out and give an enemy some magic cover.

[Californiadreaming]

Publicado originalmente por WetNose:

And how is it that face huggers miraculously spawn on roof tops where your jetpack guy lands when distanced from the group where no one can rescue them.
You know last night I shot a face hugger stone dead from overwatch yet it still managed to hug my face?
Just a hour ago I watched one enter the map but because it was on the other side of the map I ignored it. On their go the face hugger had somehow respawned itself 5 squares from my position.
Face huggers are part of the games cheat engine.

Face huggers are on my Top 5 Most Feared Pandorans list. They're so small that you often can't spot them until you're right on top of them. If you're going to have one soldier flying off with no close back-up, it's a risk you take. As for overwatch, if you miss a flying face hugger it's because a) you hit the body in that tiny moment between when the face hugger head detaches and the body goes inert, b) you just missed. There's actually an achievement, "Facehugger Interceptor", for hitting one from overwatch while the head is in flight.