Area Damage is as it’s name imply any type of damage being dealt in a spherical area. How much damage you will do is defined by two concentric spheres and a damage falloff value.
About
The most common source of Area Damage seen in game came in the form of explosive damage, but in practice any attack that deal damage in a sphere will behave the same.
Examples of non explosive Area Damage include the second part of the melee attack from the Pickaxe (melee damage), the passive See You In Hell (disintegrate damage), Gas Cloud explosion (fire damage).
Area damage can also in some case include attacks that don’t do any damage but affects temperature like the Snowball overclock for the Cryo Cannon.
The area is defined by 3 factors: 2 concentric circles and a damage falloff value.
Terminology
- Area Damage: The maximum amount of damage you can do (unless a creature is weak to weapon’s damage type).
- Full damage radius: Read it as radius where full damage will be done. In this area, the damage done is the same everywhere and is equal to your Area Damage.
- Falloff radius: A concentric sphere, the same size or bigger than the Full damage radius. At the edge of this area, you will do the minimum possible damage.
- Damage falloff: The damage done at the edge of the Falloff radius is determined as a percentage of the Area Damage. By default that value is 25%, but most weapon got a custom value.
In the area between The Full damage radius and the Falloff radius the damage will scale linearly.
Mods and Overclock effects
Any Mod or Overclock that increase the damage radius in game will only affect the Falloff damage radius, not the Full damage radius.
The radius displayed on the weapon stat in the in game terminal is the Falloff radius as well.
Calculating the Damage Done at Any Range
We will take as an example a weapon with the following stats:
- Area Damage: 60
- Full damage radius: 2 m
- Falloff radius: 4 m
- Damage falloff: 20 %
That mean that weapon will deal:
- 60 damage withing a sphere of 2 m or less
- 20% of 60 = 12 damage at exactly 4 m
- No damage beyond 4m
- The damage will scale linearly between 2 m and 4 m
To calculate the damage, we got 2 equations we have to solve in the form of damage = distance × x + y
1ˢᵗ equation: 60 = 2x + y 2ⁿᵈ equation: 12 = 4x + y Solution: x = -24, y = 108
Now to calculate the damage done at any point, just reuse the previous formula replacing the x and y values by the one we just found:
Damage at 2.5 m: 2.5 × (-24) + 108 = 48 damage Damage at 2.8 m: 2.8 × (-24) + 108 = 40.8 damage Damage at 4 m: 4 × (-24) + 108 = 12 damage
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