Bionic Dues:Mechanics

Vision & Sensors

Vision of basic exos is 16. sniper exo has a vision of 20. this is basically the range in which stuff around you is actually visible on the map and more importantly caps your attack range. what that means is that you can't target your weapons outside of your vision range. so no use in giving your weps more than 16 att range, or 20 att range for sniper exo. the only exception here is the epic siege exos shadow torpedo. this weapons is able to target any tile you have revealed with your sensors within it's 50 attack range. btw: awesome weapon to sniper away support bots.

Sensors allow you see map details beyond your vision range. while they are shrouded in fog of war, you'll still be able to determine map layout, enemy bots, traps, terminals, etc. Sensors range is capped by doors and false walls. so get rid of them to reveal more of the map. Sensor Range is also your whistle range, so the higher it is, the more enemies you can lure into your trap.

Power Generation

Exo's CANNOT be deployed on missions with negative power usage. While some modules equipable on them generate power, most modules consume power (A LOT OF IT with "who designed this circuit?").

Exo's power output = (base_power + sum(PowerModules)) * ( 1 + Sum(Power%Modules) )

The base Power outputs don't affect much in the lategame (small drops to the final numbers). (80 Brawler) (100 EBrawler, Assault, Ninja, Sniper) (120 EAssault, ENinja, Science, Siege, ESniper) (150 EScience, ESiege)

The #number of mod slots is the bigger factor determining the maximum power output of an Exo (more slots to put power generation in). In that regard (9 EBrawler, 11 EAssault, 12 ENinja, 12 ESniper, 12 ESiege, 14 EScience ) There are power generation modules that can fit even in the weapon slots but they have less amounts than the modules for reactor, computer, shields and propulsion.

Shields & more

Shields: basically the total health your exo has. if it's zero you are dead. -> worth mentioning since there is no armor or alike to keep you alive after shields are down.

Dmg Reduction: flat damage reduction is applied to each source of damage dealt to you. can be very useful to stack this up. reduction maxes out at 90% of original dmg. so 10% damage will always go through.

Regen: rather odd type of regeneration. makes you regenerate 1/5 of the regen value while you don't get hit. so far so good. however regen value itself determines how much damage can be recovered in total.

Total Shield = ( base + Sum(ShieldModules)) * (1 + Sum (Shield%Modules))

Base Shield Values (Science 75; Sniper 98; Ninja 128; Assault 128;)

Assault's 60% shield bonus is as expected part of Shield%Modules.

some examples to clarify:

• your exo has 400 shields, 200 regen. it takes 100 dmg before killing the threat. now the exo will recover 40 shields per turn. till max of 100 shields are recovered. your exo now has 400 shields again and no permanent shield loss occurred.
• your exo has 400 shields, 200 regen. it takes 300 dmg before killing the threat. now the exo will recover 40 shields per turn. till max of 200 shields are recovered. your exo now has 300 shields. so 100 shields are lost permanently.
• your exo has 400 shields, 400 regen. it takes 300 dmg before killing the threat. now the exo will recover 80 shields per turn. till max of 300 shields are recovered. your exo now has 400 shields again and no permanent shield loss occurred. Since Regen is as high as Shields, you will never have to suffer any permanent shield loss.

BOT activation

Enemy bots start the fight in sleep/wait mode. There are various ways, described bellow to activate them. Once activated only way to deactivate them is to kill them or make them expend all their ammunition. Pressure plates and hack-able computer terminals can disable bots in a certain area weapons and propulsion for a number of turns - DOES NOT PREVENT ACTIVATION OF SLEEPING BOTS.

What they do when active depends on their type : most of them will beeline towards the closest unit in the player's team (active EXO, turret, virusated bot, cryogenic pod, etc..) with intent to get them within their weapon range and fire upon them. Some have faulty drives and their motion is hard to predict making them very hard/expensive stealth wise to virusate once activated.

THE DISTINCTION OF DURING WHICH TURN (player or bots) BOTS ACTIVATE IS VERY IMPORTANT ! Ending the turn in gun range of an activated BOT means getting shoot at (some specials might cause it to miss but you will GET SHOT AT). Ending turn in vision and gun range of an UN-activated bot MEANS that bot will spend its next turn detecting you visually and merely activating.

• EXO whistle (based on EXO position and its sensors statistic; blocked by closed doors/false walls)
  
• direct sight DURING BOT TURN (based on EXO position and sight obstructions; all bots have different sight length - shortcut to display it MANDATORY !! ) (if deployed at the starting of the mission in LOS of enemy bots cloaking or moving out of LOS before their turn WILL NOT ACTIVATE THEM - activates during their turn)
  
• sound !! ( shots landing within around 2 or 3 tiles - activates during PLAYER turn - can cause player to get shot when breaking door with noisy weapon (all of them) ?)
  
• receiving damage ( from long range sniper or SilenceBot that redirects EXO damage to other bots)
  
• receiving damage II* when they TAKE DAMAGE BOTS AOE YELL to activate other bots (BEWARE bosses have ~5 tiles yell range); beware of mine; floor damage near un-activated bots
• special RazorBot - activates when EXO closer than x? tiles and HATES both bots and EXOs.
  
• special HunterBot - activates when it gets within any EXO sensor range
  
• special ThreadBots - they have 0 vision. Any activated ThreadBot activates ALL remaining ThreadBots on the map.
  
• special When activated AND HAS LOS ON PLAYER TEAM MEMBER or is damaged from mines for example (you can whistle it to you from behind corners) the SentryBot activates ALL!! bots within X? tiles (HUGE AREA !!)
  
• special (failed alarm trip wire causing auto-whistling)
  

Stealth

Stealth allows you to sneak up on enemies, or get past them. there are tons of ways to make use of it and it will save your exos life countless times. also it's fun to use. Ninja Exos can even shoot while remaining cloaked. this is powerful when you wanna gun down annoying bots in your way. as for all other exos, their cloak will be disrupted after you fire while cloaked.

EMP blast from EMPbot won't decloak you.

Hacking

required for opening hackable doors (->loot & refills) and activating terminals.

Virus

allows you to turn enemy bots permanently to your side. need to stand directly in front of a bot for it though -> stealth will help here alot ;)

There are lot of great options of bot models to brainwash and I will go through some of them later.

A great general advice is not to let your new allies wander and ALERT half the map. Most of the time is much better to PRECISELY control their position with the pistol. (around a corner works for short range heavy damage converts).. Virusing does end turn but NOT break cloak.

Also a few BEWARES:

- obvious after the fact but SilentBots transfer damage they receive to allies (your EXO) 
- misses (targeting one of your converts) can hit you even when cloaked !! (they can even land outside their targeting range)

Sentry Turrets

well, well... these little buggers are basically your gateway to your own stationary army of killer turrets... turrets stats are modified by your trap skill. base stats at trap skill level 0 are

• shields:300 (+60 per trap skill level)
• attack:150 (+30 per trap skill level)
• range:6 (+1 every 3 levels, capped at trap skill level 15, so 11 range total)
• ammo:10 (fixed, no way to increase it)

so for example at a modest trap skill level of 25 each turret you place will already have

• shields:1800
• attack:900
• range:11
• ammo:10

now imagine having 20-30 or even more at your disposal...

Mines

Mine Damage = MineLvL * ( 50 + 10 * TrapSkill)

MineLvL is displayed when hovering over deployed mines.

MineLvL goes up as as days go by (is the same as the cost per locked door hacking). On the final mission on a youtube lets play mine level was 17. The player had 97 trap skill level on the science EXO.

Mine damage was thus 17 * ( 50 + 97 * 10) = 17340 .

Mine damage is pretty pathetic for the first half on the game on high difficulty settings (can serve as stealth bot alarm). But it can get ridiculous even on misery difficulty during the second half.

Overload

turn yourself into a not necessarily self-sacrificing bomb with a fixed blast range of 4, and when you explode you yourself take "only" 25% damage. -> now why on earth would this be a significant asset? but still, it's fun. =)

since I figured out Regen I wonder if you could maybe create a combo with overload? basically it would allow you to keep bombing enemies around corners and such and afterwards recover from the damage as long as Shields & Regen value is higher than the 25% dmg dealt to yourself... will try this some time -> could possibly save some valuable ammo...

Chance to HIT

Chance to hit in combat is 100% with the fallowing exceptions:

• GaffeBots and BlunderBots always miss their first shot selecting a wildly random tile as target within their firing range (you need to provide them with a valid HOSTILE target within their weapon range - sentry turret, virusated bot, hates everyone bot, .. NOT 100% SAFE to trigger the first guaranteed miss with your EXO - the AOE still has NON 0 chance to hit you !! ). Second shot is deadly accurate

• Some bot models (DumBots, Invigorated DumBots) miss ever other 2 shots and 3 respectively (miss the target by 1 tile, way less dramatically than the gaffe and blunder bots )

• BlasterMaster bot curses bots in range for the remainder of the mission TO MISS EVERY OTHER SHOT

• RadarBot causes ALL non-AOE shots in an 2-3? tile area centered around him to have a 100%! chance of missing (1 tile difference)

• Not technically missing BUT it can surprise and get you killed - ShieldBots draw (even AOE) hits within x? tiles to themselves. SilenceBots transfer the hits aimed at them towards a random ally within 5 tiles (if any available) . How can it kill you ? Transferring a crucial motion disabling pistol shot do a different target at the worst possible moment !
  

SilenceBots CANNOT be motion disabled via pistol shot as long as it has allies in range !
ANY BOT CANNOT be motion disabled via pistol shot as long as it has shield bot in range !

MISSING in this game doesn't mean the projectile disappears - usually it lands 1 tile away from the target (EVEN BEYOND THEIR TARGETING RANGE) !! Careful when counting on GUARANTEED misses that your EXO aren't in the possible landing areas. Also BEWARE of AOE misses.

Damage Calculation

it was a pain to determine, but now that I figured it out, I'm relieved and more than happy to share my findings. so here is the formula to determine actual damage dealt by a weapon.

TD...Total Damage per Shot

a...Wep Base Damage

b...Sum of +% Att Power Bonus

c...Sum of +% Att Power to all Wep Bonus

• TD = a * (1 + b + b*c) * (1+c)

here is an example to clarify:

a...Wep Base Damage = welding laser = 300

b...Sum of +% Att Power Bonus = +80% = 0,8

c...Sum of +% Att Power to all Wep Bonus = +25% = 0,25

TD = 300 * (1 + 0,8 + 0,8 * 0,25) * (1 + 0,25)

TD = 750

another example to show how significant the additional damage can be:

a...Wep Base Damage = welding laser = 300

b...Sum of +% Att Power Bonus = +300% = 3

c...Sum of +% Att Power to all Wep Bonus = +150% = 1,50

TD = 300 * (1 + 3 + 3 * 1,50) * (1 + 1,50)

TD = 6375 ...not bad for a ninja's simple welding laser. just imagine what it would look like on a kinetic burst weapon, or a plasma cannon? =D

Observation 1: the 50% damage from in-mission virusing a leader bot is added to the b parameter in this formula for all the Exo's weapons.

Observation 2: OVERDRIVE missions *10 damage for both Exos and Robot army indeed provide and extra *10 to the Exo weapon damage formula.

so what does that mean for you?

the moment you use +% Att Power bonus and +% Att Power to all Wep bonus at the same time, you'll trigger a hidden dmg multiplier. it also means the more you stack both of them up, the harder your exo can hit. this explains why you end up with a significantly higher damage bonus than you'd expect. enjoy blasting away some bots in new ways through your new found knowledge. =D

AOE Attacks suffer from damage fall-off mechanic

The game targeting system illustrates this with the size of the targeting circles constantly decreasing as they go further from the aimed tile. The effect is most pronounced/visible for weapons with (en)large(d) area of effect.

For most AOE weapons the damage fall-off is a simple 15% per circle size. // extra damage multiplier * (1 - N * 0.15) where N is the number of times the aiming preview circle is decreased compared to the maximum circle size at the aimed tile. 100% 85% 70% 55% 40% 25% ..

Most AOE weapons seem to fallow the rule above (I tested dissolver, rocket launcher, plasma cannon and overload).

Shotgun's damage fall-off progression is different (more severe) and the maximum damage displayed in the UI can never be achieved even when targeting the brawler using it (beyond point blank range ) ..

Volatizer also has different damage falloff formula.

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