Damage
Damage is a measurement of how harmful an attack is to a character. In practical terms, taking X damage means losing X hit points. Damage will cause death if the total amount exceeds the character's available hit points.
All weapons have base damage values but the actual amount of damage dealt by an attack is rarely that exact number. The final damage delivered to the defender will be affected by whether or not the attacker scored a critical hit, the ammo they used, the perks they have, the target's damage threshold and damage resistance, the traits and gear perks of the two combatants, and much more.
Damage has six basic types: normal, laser, fire, plasma, electrical, and explosive; each damage type has its own special bonus and a lethal variant. The type of damage dealt by an attack typically depends on the weapon used, but some ammo types, such as 12 ga. Gecko's Breath, are able to override the weapon's default. The extent to which the defender's armor is able to mitigate incoming damage depends heavily on its type; for example, Tesla Armor makes you nearly invulnerable to laser damage, but provides almost no protection against normal damage.
Contents
Damage-type-based bonuses
Each of the main damage types has its own special bonus:
- Normal damage grants +5% max chance to hit.
- Laser damage applies one stack of Confusion to the target.
- Plasma damage ignores critical chance/power resistance.
- Explosive damage grants a chance to cripple limbs: Random(75, 250) must be lower than the damage you dealt to cripple; it also applies knockback (2 hexes per tier) and can knock you down.
- Electrical damage applies (20 - target's PE) Weakness stacks to the target.
- Fire damage applies one stack of Burn to the target.
Damage multiplier
Damage multiplier is the percentage of your base damage that would be dealt by your attacks if the defender had no damage mitigation.
The base value of a character's damage multiplier is class-based, and its final value is limited as follows:
| Attacker | Defender | Minimum | Maximum |
|---|---|---|---|
| Player | Player | 1% | ∞ |
| Player | NPC | 100% | 750% |
| NPC | NPC | 100% | 750% |
| NPC | Player | 1% | 150% |
Weapons by damage type
| Damage type | Weapons | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Normal | |||||
| Laser | |||||
| Fire | |||||
| Plasma | |||||
| Electrical | |||||
| Explosive | |||||
EMP damage
EMP damage is harmless to "organic" characters but deadly to synthetic beings such as Cyborgs or Robots. It ignores damage protection, but can never bypass EMP damage threshold/resistance.
There are only four sources of EMP damage in the game: EMP Grenades, Phazers, Shotguns loaded with 12 ga. EMP, and Cyborg's Rage effect.
Damage over time
FOnline 3 has three damage-over-time (DoT) effects: bleeding, burning, and poisoning. Damage taken from these effects cannot be reduced; instead, their respective resistances provide a chance to avoid the damage completely.
- Poison damage is sustained by characters with active Poison stacks, at the rate of 2% of their maximum hit points per tick.
- Bleeding damage is sustained by characters with active Bleed stacks, at the rate of a quarter of their healing rate multiplied by the number of Bleed stacks per tick.
- Burn damage is sustained by characters with active Burn stacks, at a rate determined by the type and number of Burn stacks they have received.
Lethal damage
Lethal damage is a damage class that ignores conventional defenses (DT/DR/DP). All main damage types have a "lethal" variant: fire damage -> lethal fire damage, EMP damage -> lethal EMP damage, etc.
A single hit can deal lethal and regular damage at the same time, both of the same base type. Any generic "lethal damage" bonus will adapt to your current damage type, augmenting your damage output with a "lethal" version of the base damage type you're using.
There is a cooldown that limits how often you can deal lethal damage to a target; the cooldown decreases as the tier of your weapon goes up: its base values (your "lethal rate") are 1200 ms (T1), 1100 ms (T2), 900 ms (T3), 800 ms (T4), 700 ms (T5), and 600 ms (T6).
Despite its name, lethal damage has nothing to do with Lethality.
- Small Ranged Damage (PvE perk) grants +1 lethal damage against NPCs per rank.
- Living Anatomy (level perk) grants +20 lethal damage against living organisms.
- Gunner (level perk) converts 10% of your base damage to lethal damage (critical hits convert double the amount) and converts all of your bonus damage-per-bullet into lethal damage.
- Weapon Handling (level perk) grants +25% lethal damage.
- Lethal Death (perk synergy) grants +25% lethal damage when the target is below 50% HP.
- Pyro! (perk synergy) grants 50% of Pyromaniac's and Phoenix Module's fire damage bonuses as extra lethal damage and reduces your targets' lethal damage protection by 10%.
- EMP Transformer (weapon perk) grants up to +140 lethal damage to synthetic targets (or up to +340 if you're a Hubologist).
- Lethal Damage (weapon perk) grants up to +10 (or up to +20 if you're a Hubologist) lethal damage and up to +5% lethal penetration (or up to +8% if you're a Hubologist).
- Lethal Upgrade (legendary weapon perk) grants up to +20 lethal damage against NPCs and up to +8% lethal penetration against NPCs.
- Flat Converter (Alien-exclusive weapon perk) converts up to 100% of your damage to lethal damage and grants up to 16% lethal penetration.
- Intelligence grants +1 lethal damage per point.
- Luck Mastery converts 25% of your total damage to lethal damage (on a critical hit, this goes up to 50%) and reduces your targets' lethal damage protection by 25%.
- Wastelander reputation of 901+ points grants +10 lethal damage and +5% lethal penetration.
- LD (T1 WE stat) grants +5 lethal damage.
- S.LET (T2 WE stat) grants +5 lethal damage.
- Chem Reliant (trait) grants +3 lethal damage for each active drug effect (PvE only).
- Fast Shot (trait) grants +5 lethal damage.
- Regulator's version of Fast Shot completely prevents you from dealing lethal damage.
- Heavy Handed (trait) grants +2 lethal damage to your melee attacks.
- Damage dealers (class role) deal +10 lethal damage.
- Random Boy (class perk) has a chance to either gain 10 (lucky roll) or lose 3 (unlucky roll) points of lethal damage.
- Raiders (class perk) deal bonus lethal damage equal to their total action points.
- Soldier (class perk) receives +1 lethal damage, +1% lethal damage protection, and +1% lethal penetration, but loses 2 points of lethal damage per point of Luck.
- Wrecker (class perk)'s lethal damage is doubled; Wreckers also deal +3 lethal damage per point of Strength (this bonus is exempt from the doubling), deal +5 lethal damage against NPCs, and when using Explosive Small Guns, deal +15 lethal damage and gain +25% lethal penetration.
- Liver (Cannibal drug) grants +10 lethal damage and +5% lethal penetration.
- If you're a Regulator with the Chem Reliant trait, Liver grants +40 lethal damage and +5% lethal penetration instead.
- Radiated Liver (Cannibal drug) causes attackers to deal an additional 10 lethal damage to you.
- If you're a Regulator with the Chem Reliant trait, Radiated Liver causes attackers to deal an additional 15 lethal damage to you instead.
- Lethal Shield (PvE perk) reduces incoming lethal damage from NPC attacks by 2% per rank.
- Lethal Protection (level perk) prevents lethal damage from bypassing your damage resistance.
- Anti-Thermal System (armor perk) grants up to +80% lethal fire/plasma damage protection (or up to +160% if you're a Hubologist).
- Cured (armor perk) grants up to +100% lethal normal damage protection (or up to +150% if you're a Hubologist).
- Laser Reflector (armor perk) grants up to +99% lethal laser damage protection (or up to +180% if you're a Hubologist).
- Shock Protection (armor perk) grants up to +20% lethal explosive/electrical damage protection (or up to +33% if you're a Hubologist).
- Desert Armor grants +5% lethal damage protection.
- NCR Metal Armor grants +10% lethal damage protection.
- Endurance grants +0.5% lethal damage protection per point.
- Critical Shell (armor perk) improves your lethal rate by up to 500 ms (or up to 1200 ms if you're a Hubologist).
- VC Metal Armor improves your lethal rate by 100 ms.
- Tier 3 Claw Module (combat implant; Cyborg-exclusive) reduces your lethal damage by 5 for every 5 points of Charisma you have.
- FEV-ZMK (mutation) reduces your lethal damage by 10.
Burst damage calculation[1]
Bursts, with the exception of shotgun bursts, generally spread into 3 streams: center, left and right. This is to simulate a "cone" effect at range. There is an initial stream of rounds/6 which travels down the center, a left stream of (rounds+1)/3 that travels slightly off-center to the left, and a right stream of rounds/3 that travels slightly off-center to the right. The remaining bullets in the burst will go down the center in a second stream (rounds - rounds/6 - (rounds+1)/3 - rounds/3). The initial, left and right stream are integer-divided and thus rounded down. However, the initial stream will always contain 1 bullet at minimum. This is more or less the vanilla burst behavior of FO1/FO2, adapted for FOnline.
The initial stream is necessary because without it you'll literally shoot under the legs of someone who's one hex away from you. Now, let's say you're aiming at someone far away but a critter is blocking the path (at range). The blocker will absorb the second center stream (total rounds - rounds/6 - (rounds+1)/3 - rounds/3) and the guy you're aiming at will take the initial stream (rounds/6).
At a range of one hex, the blocker would take both the center, left and right lines (rounds - rounds/6) and the guy you're aiming at would eat the initial stream (rounds/6). If you're bursting a target at one hex, it's reasonable to assume that all three stream (and therefore all bullets) will connect with your target.
So, what does this mean in a practical fight? It means that even if your gun bursts 40 bullets, the expectation is that roughly 1/3 of the fired rounds will connect with the intended target at range, assuming no misses.
Example: The Avenger Minigun fires 40 rounds. Initial Volley: 40/6 = 6.6667, rounded down => 6 rounds Left Volley: 41/3 = 13.6667, rounded down => 13 rounds Right Volley: 40/3 = 13.3333, rounded down => 13 rounds Second Center Volley: 40 - 6 - 13 - 13 = 8 rounds
The Avenger Minigun bursts 6 + 8 = 14 rounds at a ranged target.
Bonus damage per bullet
Your bonus damage per bullet is capped at the following values depending on the tier of your weapon: T1: 6; T2: 12; T3: 15; T4: 24; T5: 30; T6: 9999. For semi-tanks, the values are slightly higher: T1: 9; T2: 18; T3: 23; T4: 36; T5: 45; T6: 9999.
Melee and ranged damage
Melee damage is any damage dealt either through kicking and punching, or through the use of melee weapons.
The opposite of melee damage is ranged damage, which is inflicted through the use of ranged weapons, such as rifles or pistols.
Damage mitigation
To take less damage from incoming attacks, your character needs to build up one or more of the following stats:
- Damage threshold (DT), a flat amount subtracted from incoming damage (each damage type has its own DT);
- Damage resistance (DR), a percentage reduction to damage taken applied after DT (each damage type has its own DR);
- Damage protection (DP), a damage reduction that applies to all major types of damage (normal, laser, fire, plasma, electrical, explosive) and that can only be reduced via damage protection penetration.
To avoid attacks entirely, you may want to invest in your armor class instead.
Note that lethal damage won't be resisted by normal means unless you have the Lethal Protection level perk.
Damage threshold
Damage threshold (DT) is a flat value subtracted from incoming damage whenever a target is hit. Each of the main damage types has its own damage threshold.
Damage threshold reduces damage before the damage reduction provided by damage resistance is calculated. For example, if your fire DT is 2 and your fire DR is 50%, an incoming hit worth 100 points of fire damage will only deal (100 - 2) x 0.5 = 49 points of fire damage to you.
The main source of DT is the body armor you're currently wearing. The maximum DT that you can achieve (your "DT cap") is based on your currently equipped body armor's base DT. To determine the value of your DT caps, the base DTs will be multiplied by a value from the table below:
| Tier | Armor type | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leather armor | Metal armor | Combat armor | Combat robes | |
| 1 | 1x | 1x | 1x | 1x |
| 2 | 1x | 1x | 1x | 1x |
| 3 | 1x | 2x | 3x | 4x |
| 4 | 2x | 4x | 4x | 5x |
| 5 | 3x | 7x | 7x | 7x |
| 6 | 6x | No cap | No cap | No cap |
- Your class role modifies your base DT cap as follows: tanks: +5; semi-tanks: +2; specialists: -1; damage dealers: -2; shooters: -4; sneakers: -6.
- When you are hit, the attacker's ammo applies its DT MOD to your DT, either increasing or reducing your DT against that specific hit.
- Hubologist attackers can get up to -15% to their ammo's DT MOD from Ammo Upgrade (weapon perk).
- DT (T1 WE stat) grants +1 to all DTs.
- S.DEF (T2 WE stat) grants +1 to all DTs.
- Mutie (drug) grants +4 to all DTs.
- If you're a Regulator with the Chem Reliant trait, Mutie grants +8 to all DTs.
- Salvatores' blessing grants +3 to all DTs.
- Special Force Bonus (armor perk) grants up to +2 to all DTs (or up to +4 if you're a Hubologist).
- Terminator (armor perk) grants a large boost to all DTs when the Terminator mode is active.
- Powered (legendary armor perk) grants +1 to all DTs against NPCs at ranks E and S (the bonuses stack and ignore your DT cap).
- Robot (class perk) gains +2 DT per Fury stack in its Sentry Bot form.
- Leader (class perk)'s Defense flag buff grants a bonus to DT equal to the Leader's Charisma/4.
- Monument Chunk (drug) increases all DTs by +10%.
- Adrenaline Rush (level perk) grants +1/+2/+3 to all DTs if you've lost 25%/50%/75% of your HP.
- Firefighter (level perk) grants +15 DT against fire and explosive damage.
- Toughness (level perk) grants +4 normal DT.
- Dermal Module (combat implant) grants +1 to normal and explosive DT at tiers 1 and 2.
- Phoenix Module (combat implant) grants +1 to fire, laser, and plasma DT at tiers 1 and 2.
- Endurance grants +1 explosive DT per point.
- Advanced Plate (armor perk, PvP only) grants up to +3 normal DT (or up to +7 if you're a Hubologist).
- Firegeckon's Enhancement (armor perk, PvP only) grants up to +40 fire and explosive DT (or up to +50 if you're a Hubologist).
- Mirror System (armor perk, PvP only) grants up to +7 laser DT (or up to +18 if you're a Hubologist).
- Tesla Addition (armor perk) grants up to +9 to plasma and electrical DT (or up to +18 if you're a Hubologist).
- There are six mutations that grant +1 DT against a specific damage type.
- Armor King (perk synergy) increases your DT cap by 10.
- Soldier (class perk) gains +1 DT cap per armor tier.
- Death Sense (level perk) causes your hits to penetrate 30% of your targets' total DT if they're below 50% max HP.
- Bypass (critical effect) allows the hit to ignore target's DTs.
- Grenade damage penetrates 25% of explosive DT per tier, 20% of fire DT per tier, and 10% of plasma/electrical/EMP DT per tier.
- Raider reputation of at least 901 grants +5 DT penetration.
- Radiated Liver (drug) grants +10% DT penetration (normal, fire, explosive).
- Agility grants +0.2 DT penetration per point in PvP if you deal more damage per bullet than your opponent.
- Bonus Max Damage (weapon perk) grants up to +10% DT penetration (or up to +15% if you're a Hubologist).
- Penetrate (weapon perk) grants up to +25% DT penetration (or up to +40% if you're a Hubologist).
- More Bonus Damage (legendary weapon perk) grants +5% DT penetration against NPCs at rank A.
- Penetrator (Alien-exclusive weapon perk) grants +50% DT penetration at ranks E and S (the bonuses stack).
- Double Range (Alien-exclusive weapon perk) causes your attacks to ignore 1 point of their targets' laser DT at ranks A and S (the bonuses stack).
- Super Mutant (class perk) ignores the target's DT when using Rocket Launchers.
- Random Boy (class perk) has a chance to either gain 10% DT penetration (lucky roll) or lose 3% DT penetration (unlucky roll).
- Medicine Doctor (perk synergy) grants +20% DT penetration protection when you have 50% or less of your HP left.
- Infantry (class perk)'s Rage effect grants +40% DT penetration protection for 10 seconds.
- Penetration Protection (armor perk) grants up to +25% DT penetration protection (or up to +40% if you're a Hubologist).
- Advanced Defense (legendary armor perk) grants +5% DT penetration protection against NPCs at rank A.
- Random Boy (class perk) loses 1 DT per Fury stack.
- FEV-ONK (mutation) reduces all DTs by 1.
- Liver (Cannibal drug) reduces all DTs by 2.
- If you're a Regulator with the Chem Reliant trait, Liver reduces all DTs by 5.
- Killer (class perk) suffers -2 to all DTs per point of Intelligence.
- Kamikaze (Regulator trait) sets all DTs to 0.
- Deathclaw (class perk) has no DT cap and follows custom rules for base DT calculation; see Class perks#Deathclaw for details.
Damage resistance
Damage resistance (DR) is a damage-type-specific percentage value by which incoming damage of its corresponding type is reduced.
Perks (such as Adrenaline Rush and Toughness), armor, and drugs (such as Psycho, Jet, and Beer) can modify your damage resistance(s).
Damage resistance has a default cap of 90% but your class role may change it.
Each damage type (normal, laser, fire, etc.) has its separate damage resistance.
See Class perks#Basic framework for class-role-related DR modifiers, and ammo for information on how different types of ammo affect your defenses.
Damage protection
Damage protection reduces incoming normal, laser, fire, plasma, electrical, and explosive damage. It has no effect on EMP damage.
If your character has several active damage protection bonuses, they apply independently rather than stack. For example, if you have 10% + 10% damage protection, and take 100 damage, the reduction will be calculated as 0.9 x 0.9 x 100 rather than 0.8 x 100.
Some damage protection sources are limited to a specific damage type or matchup; for example, the Advanced Plate armor perk grants normal damage protection and only works in PvP.
If your damage protection drops below zero, you will take additional damage.
