This issue has been brought up before, but it seems like it didn’t gain any traction here, or on Canny.
Sometimes explosives and acid do double amount of damage. In the case of acid, this is the amount of acid covering a body part (so an Arthron grenade of strength 30, shows an effect of 60 on the affected body parts).
This seems to happen with all kinds of explosives and acid weapons, both human and Pandoran. It’s very difficult to replicate, as the conditions that make this happen are unclear (it is often reported as happening on direct impact, but that doesn’t seem to be always the case). Also, the obscurity surrounding damage from explosives makes it hard to understand what exactly is going on - except that sometimes an explosive weapon will do absurd amounts of damage. (so while we are on it, the game is really missing a combat log where we can see what caused how much damage to what).
Though there aren’t many complaints from players doing double damage with furies and thors, it’s certain that a significant proportion of complaints regarding explosive Chirons is related to this bug.
Please note that this seems to affect all kinds of explosions, including acid worms, but it’s hard to know what is going on during an explosion, which is a pity. PP is generally very good at being transparent about what is happening and why (things like damage from direct fire weapons, mind control…), but not so with explosions.
I concur this is a problem, mainly because of the acid damage conundrum at the moment. solving the double damage hit problem will make acid damage survivable, but I would still suggest looking into how acid damage stacks on limbs, especially since the mutations prefer long and medium range AoE application.
I also support the combat log as a additional tool, as I was wondering about the order of operations once multiple DoT’s are active at the same time.
I haven’t experienced the new Acid damage yet, I’ve only heard about it - which is why Acid Lobbers are now first on my target list in any mission, even ahead of Sirens.
But from what I’m reading, the biggest complaint with acid as it stands is not that it does vast amounts of damage - but that it does vast amounts of damage without any way of stopping that from happening turn after turn after turn. So a multi-location acid hit is effectively a death sentence to any Squaddie who can’t get back to the evac zone in time.
A simple way to fix that would be to give Medkits a Neutralising function - so when you heal an acid-burned limb, it neutralises the acid and stops it burning through. Effectively, using a Medkit makes the acid go away.
Of some help against acid is the technician heal. This restores 10 armour to all body parts per go which is the same amount acid removes, effectively neutralising it. One tech can’t heal more than two soldiers per turn though and dosn’t help if you’re getting the double damage thing above? Just a thought.
Don’t you think it is kind of alpha-strike and counter to alpha-strike category? Something is too powerful and then you have something similarly powerful to negate it.
I think that initial acid attack should be weaker, and there can be something to negate it, but using it shouldn’t be necessity, just a tactical choice.
If something like that would be introduced then I would see it like that:
neutralize acid is separate ability of medkit - so you have alternative to use medkit, you either use it to heal or you use it to neutralize acid, not both things at the same time.
neutralization works only on acid when there is no armor on body part - if acid is still on armor (so body part has more than 0 armor) then acid is not removed from that body part
It helps. There must be at least 1 point of armor to prevent damage to body. So it effectively can prevent acid from dealing high amount of damage at least for few turns. But it is really niche solution, as not all players will have access to mech arms.
IMO, the buff to acid was not done with alpha striking in mind at all, because acid in no way negates a-s, if anything it encourages it.
In my entire playthrough I never came across an acid lobbing Chiron, but based on my experience with acid worms, crabs with acid launchers and the forsaken with acid pistols the problem is rather obvious - acid just does way too much damage (btw, also when the player uses it, the problem is the essential assymetry between the player and the OF, in that for the player it’s not enough to do massive amounts of damage, it also has to be timely too to prevent a retaliatory attack).
The fact that you can’t remove acid adds to the grievance of very high damage, but being able to remove acid wouldn’t be enough to take care of the problem, IMO.
I think there are two basic approaches to solving the acid problem:
Reducing damage/changing the way acid works, e.g. as suggested elsewhere by @conductiv make it work like fire, applying only highest damage to limb to the total HP pool.
Go for a more interesting solution, which to me is an active defense system against slow moving projectiles (nades, missiles, Chiron bombs) that could be a research for both humans and Pandorans. For example, imagine that the technician could deploy a turret that would shoot at incoming projectiles as if it was on overwarch. And there could be different ADS with their pros/cons, like being able to shoot down multiple projectiles at a single time but with lower accuracy. Of course the Pandas should also have a mutation that would enable them to do something similar. Imagine firing that Fury into a bunch of crabs only to have it shot down by the ADS Chiron…
It just makes so much sense to do something like this in PP!
its a bit off-topic to talk about acid specifically…but its a major part of what makes the double explosion bug at the moment so deadly. note that, even though getting 240-300 acid damage on a character will kill it quickly, so will getting all your limbs blown off by a 160 dmg double hitting crab grenade. I’m just saying that even though acid is a major danger, don’t forget that good old explosives can be just as dangerous when this bug triggers
@MichaelIgnotus yes that is a pivotal part of the reason why people complain about it…if it was like poison and a medkit would simply remove it…it would have a similar impact to poison as well. personally I feel the fact that it cannot be easily removed by a medkit isn’t that bad…however if a status cannot be easily removed, its effect has to be kept in check.
@Fisherman you are completely correct, I don’t know if electric reinforcement does the same thing (as the technician I used didn’t have a high enough level, and it depends on when the buff falls off at the start of the turn) but I have used the technicians limb heal to counteract acid hits. it does however have the downside Yokes states, it isn’t accessible for everyone and to be honest rather clunky.
@VOLAND point defense systems, hmm…while I do like the idea, as point defense systems have been thought up and build for various vehicles (the newest generation of tanks will have a point defense system to protect against missiles, and ships have had point defense systems since somewhere in the late 80’s) search CIWS to see what they look like on ships. the downside however is the huge impact on balance this has…having a techy with a point defense on hand would basically make any trooper in range of the weapon immune to grenade attacks…you don’t have to apply a status, knock out a gun or really even use a skill (apart from putting down a turret) to get a blanket immunity to something…that is extremely strong in my book.
you could make this a vehicle exclusive…as CIWS systems tend to be both big and ammo hungry, it could be a toggle mode like the turret can either inflict damage to panda’s or it could act like a point defense. so for the players side I can see some troubleshooting will have to be done.
for scylla’s however…I like the idea…they are big enough to have such weapons mounted on them to create a reaction bubble where they attack large projectiles. (and its befitting for a unit described as a battleship)
Of course there would be quite a bit of balancing involved. I see several different point defense systems, with different pros/cons. Most importantly it can’t be a blanket immunity. It has to utilize the game’s ballistics - there has to be a chance to miss and positioning must matter. It needs to be limited in that it can’t shoot down all the projectiles. It needs to have important range limitations.
What I like is the idea of putting PP’s game systems to good use. You have real ballistics for direct fire weapons, you have slowing moving projectiles that descend in an arch and can hit objects on their way. It just makes sense that you should be able to shoot down one with the other (realism issues aside, I mean it makes sense from a gameplay perspective).
That’s why I think it’s also natural to have different kinds of PDS, because, e.g. Crab nades and Chiron bombs are different, they move differently.
Now going completely off topic, I find it odd that there are no smart projectiles in PP.
Lol I just had situation where acid did triple standard damage to the head of my soldiers. Instead of 20 acid (or 10 after one tick) there was 60 acid applied (50 shown after one tick). So instead of 10 damage my soldier was expecting to receive 150 damage from single body part. There were also 3 other body parts affected, 2 with 40 acid and 1 with 20 acid. Little bit insane as for starting Arhron.
Oh maybe I will mention that in total he would receive 270 damage, 110 in 1st turn, 80 in 2nd, 50 in 3rd, next 20 and 10. So still managable. But having heavy armor he should not get damage at all (previous assumption of 10 damage from head was miscalculation).
Devs really need to check what is going on after hitting with explosives and high damage weapons. Just a moment ago I had situalion when my Hel Cannon took out 50 armor from Siren. 30 from torso and 20 from one of the arms (was in one line behind torso), also did 150 damage to torso.
How is it possible that it took out 30 armor from that torso? My heavy is single class and didn’t took any perk, so clearly there wasn’t any possible bonus. I have no research of Siren autopsy, not to mention vivisection. None of the soldiers fired at her before that heavy first shot.
And how it took out 20 armor from arm if it wasn’t even scrached with damage. I know that Hel can pierce through objects, but clearly damage was negated wholly by that Siren torso, so projectile shouldn’t go beyond that torso.
I assumed that was part of the hell cannons penetration aspect (in the front and out the back), it has been in the game since I started back in early december…I don’t know if it was in any of the BB’s.
I tend to line up the hell cannon so I hit multiple area’s that might have a different" hitzone" marker, causing another tick of shred. this allowed me to very quickly shred the armor off chirons abdomen, sirens tail and crab carapace.
I use the HC a lot, I can’t say I’ve ever seen it shred armor off a limb and not damage said limb. I have seen it deal significantly reduced damage to limbs. but I expect there to be a damage falloff similar to the falloff that happens when you target enemies through walls.
NJ snipers have a similar capability, if you line up crab legs you can knock them both out in a single shot, even though it counts the total HP damage only once.
Yes there is penetration and it is since Hel Cannon is available. Even sniper rifles can do so since first Backers Builds. Until full release it was working like multiple hits even with one projectile and it was best seen on Scylla who is an easy enemy to line up multiple body parts. But with Siren it is not so easy. Let me throw some image.
Before full release:
Trajectory A
It was possible to hit multiple body parts and projectile was doing damage to both body parts (here torso and left arm) and body part which took more damage was affecting unit’s general HP. Also before release shred value was applied before damage value for projectile weapons. In our example from picture (let assume current Siren parameters: 250 HP + 30 armor torso, 180 HP + 20 armor arm, and old Hel parameters: 180 force damage + 10 shred) Hel projectile would damage torso for 160 damage and arm for 170 damage, shreding 10 armor on each body part. General HP would drop by 170 HP.
Trajectory B
It was possible to hit single body part multiple times and projectile was doing damage each time (here tail two times) and sum of that damage was affecting unit’s general HP. In our example from picture (let assume current siren parameters: 300 HP + 30 armor tail) Hel projectile would damage tail for 160+170 damage, shreding 20 armor on this body part. General HP would drop by 330 HP.
In full release:
It looks like in full release two changes were made:
Shred is applied after damage for projectile weapons (so now for all weapons)
Projectile piercing through same enemy lose power (damage), so effectively first hit is subtracted from projectile overall damage (the same as with shooting through environment objects).
lets now use for Hel Cannon 20 shred value from Leviathan patch.
Trajectory A
Projectile hits point 1 and deals 180 - 30 = 150 damage also shreds 20 armor. Now it doesn’t have enough power to go further (full damage was stopped by 30 armor and 150 HP). If torso would have been disabled then projectile would hit arm in point 2).
Trajectory B
Actually it is the same case as with Trajectory A. Projectile should’t move further after point 1. I wonder what would happen if it would punch through… Probably it would apply the rest of the damage. Lets now assume that tail has only 120 HP and still 30 armor. So Hel projectile would deal 150 damage (overpowering HP and disabling body part) + 20 shred. So in this moment tail stopped only 30+120 damage, so projectile still has 30 damage to do. And it hits tail again in point 2, where now it only has 10 armor and 0 HP, so it deals 30-10 damage also shreding last 10 armor. So overall damage would be 180 damage and 30 shred?
Conclusion
We can guess that I have encountered conjunction of trajectory B + A. So for some reason game recognized that projectile would hit torso 2 times (how?) and then hit arm. Algorithm stopped damage of projectile on first obstacle (correct), but forget to stop projectile and applied shredding, so calculated it again for torso and then an arm (which is incorrect).
That is why I put that statement:
Devs really need to check what is going on after hitting with explosives and high damage weapons.
If they really feel the need to have acid, poison or bad breath in the game then it should be manageable.
Say for instance you are hit with a acid gob blob then that acid should have no effect for one turn giving to the opportunity to remove yourself from the acid snot ball.
But why the need for all this kill-you-quick stuff? I mean it makes the game look ridiculous with piles of multicoloured snot dotted all over the map anyway.
So it ocurred to me that one easy way to see when explosives do double damage is giving my heavy the viral trait (every projectile adding one viral damage).
And it worked. I caught my heavy doing double damage to a group of Arthrons twice in a row with different explosives. First he hit them with a Fury-2 rocket, and they all got 2 viral damage and then with a regular nade, and they got 2 more viral damage each. It was a hit from above, but it wasn’t a direct hit (obviously, as the 3 Arthrons were hit at the same time).
I can’t find post where someone was wondering about order of operations when “double damage explosive or acid bug” triggers. So I will post in here.
There was question if doubled damage is applied before the armor, so armor will be deducted once from double damage, or those are 2 consecutive hits, so armor is applied two times. I have checked that.
This double damage bug is treated as second consecutive attack. So armor applies two times.
Other case is that it can be even tripled with just one attack. Then even the weakest explosive or acid attack can be deadly.
But it is really niche solution, as not all players will have access to mech arms.
There were also 3 other body parts affected, 2 with 40 acid and 1 with 20 acid. Little bit insane as for starting Arhron. 
