Damage Types

Weapon damage is classified into 7 primary types, each with unique properties and effects. Other less common types may be discovered on your travels.

## 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 generally transfers heat to the target, and may cause meltdowns in hot enough targets.

## Kinetic

Ballistic weapons generally have a longer effective range and more destructive critical strikes, but suffer from less predictable damage and high recoil. Some kinetic projectiles, especially hypervelocity variants, are capable of penetrating one or more consecutive targets. Kinetic cannon hits also blast usable matter off target robots and have a damage-equivalent chance to cause knockback, with a (10 - range) \* 5 modifier and a +/-10% per size class (T/S/M/L/H) difference between the target and medium size (targets knocked into another robot may also damage and displace it, see Impact below). The amount of matter created per cannon projectile impact is randomized from between zero up to the absolute value of the weapon's salvage modifier, but only applies for those weapons with a negative salvage modifier below -2.

## 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. (Cogmind is less susceptible to EM-caused corruption, but still has a damage% chance to suffer 1 point of system corruption per hit.) EM-based explosions only deal half damage to inactive items lying on the ground, but can also corrupt them.

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 disrupted a robot may be rewired by bumping into it (see Hacking Robots).

## Explosive

While powerful, explosives generally spread damage across each target in the area of effect, dividing damage into 1~3 chunks before affecting a robot, where each chunk 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. Targets knocked into another robot may also damage and displace it. A robot hit by another displaced robot has a chance to itself be displaced and sustain damage, where the chance equals the original knockback chance further modified by +/-10% per size class difference between the blocking robot and the knocked back robot, and the resulting damage equals [originalDamage] (see Attack Resolution), further divided by the blocker size class if that class is greater than 1 (where Medium = 2, and so on).

Impact weapons ignore relative coverage when determining which components to affect, and are therefore effective at destroying fragile systems regardless of armor and other protection. By ignoring coverage, there is an equal chance for an attack to hit any given part, where each slot of a multislot part also has a separate and equivalent chance to be hit. A target's core also counts as one slot for that purpose. In addition, for every component crushed by an impact, its owner's system is significantly corrupted (+25-150%), though electromagnetic resistance can help mitigate this effect. (Cogmind is less susceptible to corruption caused in this manner.)

## Slashing

Slashing melee weapons are generally very damaging, and most are also capable of severing components from a target without destroying them.

## Piercing

Piercing melee weapons inflict less collateral damage, but are more likely to hit a robot's core, and get double the melee momentum damage bonus.