How is the damage done from the PSI – Rift ability calculated

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The damage done from the Rift ability on the final mission seems hard to calculate, and seems based on will of the attacker and defender.

Does anyone have a good calculation for this yet?

I've noticed:

15 Damage on Muton Elite
10(?) Damage on Ethereal.
8 Damage on Uber Ethereal.
4 Damage on Stim'ed assault soldier with 150+ willpower (I sent her in for the kill!)

Best Answer

I assume you mean Rift ability? It is only one that seems to match your description.

Anyway, the damage is calculated by taking the casters Will score and the targets Will score and deducing targets score from casters and using remainder to see how much damage is done.

Unless my own studies are wrong, it deals base damage of 4 and then additional +1 for every 5 Will left after deducting victims Will from users Will.

This means, that targets with low Will (such as Mutons and especially robotics) suffer a lot, but units with very high will will suffer less.

As such, for example, if the caster has 100 will and opponent has 80, then when the rift hits it's going to do 4 + (100-80)/5 = 4 + 20/5 = 4 + 4 = 8 damage.

tl;dr

Less Will the target has, more damage it takes.

I try to see if I can find the exact math from the game files, but I doubt it. If anyone has the exact formula, feel free to say it.

Related Solutions

Does the Mind Shield improve a psionic’s ability to attack with their Psi attacks

As of version 1.0.0.20072 (the so-called update 3) Mind Shield increases Will the same way as Psi armor does: both for psi-attacks and for psi-defense.

This is noted in "Mind shield" article on wikia.

Yesterday I played this game on Classic difficulty. My squad of all psionic warriors has an encounter with Chryssalid monsters. I checked chances to Mind Control one of them (it was unharmed). Here is what I got

                    Soldier 1   Soldier 2
Base Will:          95          100
Psi Armor:          Equipped    Equipped
Mind Shield:        Equipped    Not equipped
Chance to Mind
Control Chryssalid: 85%         60%

This clearly shows that Mind Shield is used to calculate chances for both psi-offense and psi-defense.

How critical is it to have psi soldiers in the squad

You have to get extremely lucky to get a whole squad of PSI-powered soldiers. I tested quite a lot (30-40) of soldiers and I had maybe 5 that were gifted and 3 that survived and made it to the highest rank.

I like to bring at least 2 PSI-powered soldiers with me in every battle. The very high hit-chance of Mindfray can take out monsters when it really matters (team fires at monster, but it remains with some low HP). Or – even better – they can mind control an enemy, which can turn the battle in your favor instantly. Turning a berzerker Muton is one of the greatest things. Not only will it draw (and soak up) enemy fire, you can also go and kill stuff with it in the next turn.

Regarding PSI-skills to select: The defensive PSI-skills are good as well, but I have only used them once (to calm down a panicked soldier), whereas I use the offensive spells pretty extensively. I think smoke-grenades make for a better defensive tool most of the time.

So in summary: PSI-powered soldiers aren't critical to your squad, but they can broaden the number of tactics you can choose. The spells don't cost ammo and can be casted multiple times, which makes them a no-brainer. Mind-control is extremely powerful and can hit with a chance of 100% almost all the time with an experienced soldier that wears PSI-armor.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Does the Mind Shield improve a psionic’s ability to attack with their Psi attacks

How critical is it to have psi soldiers in the squad

Related Topic