Damage and critical hits | Turn-based combat system XCOM: Enemy Unknown Guide

Last update: 11 May 2016

Hitting the target makes it lose a certain number of hit points. The amount of damage done depends on the weapon, and although it is somewhat random, it has a very specific damage range.

 

Shot does up to 7 points of damage unless ...

Sometimes, while looking at a number of hit points of some opponents (e.g. Muton or Chryssalid), we can wonder how we can kill them before they kill our troops. However, in this case, the game offers a mechanism that helps us to fight the strongest aliens. Some accurately placed shots are able to hit the sweet spot the enemy and thus inflict far greater damage than the game tells you. They are called critical hits. When shooting, you are told what is the overall chance to perform a more effective attack. When you press the F1 key, you can find out what elements affect it.

 

Pressing F1 gives us information about the possibility of a critical hit.

As in the case of shooting the enemy, there are several modifiers here that can increase, reduce or completely eliminate the possibility of a critical hit. One of them comes from the type of weapon used. The choice of a weapon determines whether and how often your character will be able to inflict damage bonus. Sniper rifles have basically a 25% chance to critically hit, shotguns and rifles: 20% and 10%, respectively. Pistols and machine guns have 0% chance of additional damage, so using them it is necessary to use other modifiers.

Machine guns are not in able to inflict critical hits without additional modifiers.

The most important modifier, which you shall try to get in almost any situation, is a bonus for shooting a flanked enemy or an enemy located in the open terrain. It can amount to as much as 50%, which means that every second shot fired will be able to do much more damage! More importantly, it can be combined with other bonuses, so a sniper who shoots an enemy located in an open area has 75% chance of a critical hit. Only the stronger aliens will survive to their next turn.

 

Laser Sniper + Sniper Rifle + Headshot = dead alien.

Just as during the aiming, the calculation of the critical strike chance can be influenced by skills that increase both the frequency and the amount of additional damage. More detailed information can be found in the description of each class of soldiers.