Damage Types

Weapon damage is classified into 7 types. each with unique properties and effects.

Thermal

Thermal energy weapons generally have a shorter range, but benefit from a more easily-predictable damage potential and little or no recoil. Thermal damage also transfers heat to the target, a random amount up to the amount of damage dealt.

Kinetic

Ballistic weapons generally have a longer effective range and higher chance of critical strike, but suffer from less predictable damage and high recoil. Some kinetic projectiles, especially hypervelocity variants, are capable of penetrating one or more consecutive targets.

Electromagnetic

Electromagnetic (EM) weapons have less of an impact on integrity, but are capable of corrupting a target's computer systems. Anywhere from 50 to 150% of damage done is also applied as system corruption, automatically maximized on a critical hit. (Cogmind is less susceptible to EM-caused corruption, but still has a damage% chance to suffer 1 point of system corruption per hit, or 5-20% of the damage on a critical strike.) EM-based explosions only deal half damage to inactive items lying on the ground.

Some EM weapons cause "disruption", which is a per-shot chance to temporarily disable an active part on impact. If a robot core is struck, there is half this chance the entire robot may be disabled. While disabled a robot may be rewired by bumping into it (see Robot Hacking).

Explosive

While powerful, explosives are less likely to achieve a critical strike and often spread damage across a target. Explosive damage is divided into 1~3 chunks before it affects a robot, where each chunk of damage selects its own target part (though they may overlap).

Explosions also tend to reduce the amount of salvage remaining after destroying a target, and sometimes cause cave-ins in non-reinforced areas.

Impact

Impact melee weapons have a damage-equivalent chance to cause knockback, with a +/-10% per size class (T/S/M/L/H) difference between attacker and target. While incapable of a critical strike, they affect components based on relative durability rather than coverage, and are therefore effective at destroying fragile systems. Durability is calculated by inverse max integrity, so low-integrity components are considered fragile and thus more likely to take damage from an impact.

Slashing

Slashing melee weapons are generally very damaging, and can even sever components from a target without destroying them (damage/3% chance).

Piercing

Piercing melee weapons achieve critical strikes more often, and are more likely to hit a robot's core (+33% core exposure for hit location calculations).