Stun
General Information
A unit's stun damage is displayed as a grey bar superimposed on the red Health status bar. If a unit's stun damage equals or exceeds its current Health, it will fall unconscious, and be temporarily removed from combat. See Unconscious for more details.
Several events can cause stun damage:
- A Stun Rod will cause 0-130 points of stun damage.
- A Stun Bomb will cause 0-180 points of stun damage with a direct hit, and less with an indirect hit. Stun from this type of weapon always affects under armor at GZ.
- Standing in smoke will cause 1-3 points of stun damage per turn (but see Incendiary#Quirks). Tanks, X-COM units wearing a Power or Flying Suit, Sectopods, Cyberdiscs, Floaters and Zombies are all immune to stun from smoke.
- Conventional weapons will sometimes inflict a small amount of stun damage on both X-COM and alien units, along with a lot of normal damage. Each hit deals from 0 to damage/4 points of stun damage. This is based on damage dealt to the target, after the damage is rolled and armour is applied. All damage types but incendiary, smoke, and of course stun apply this effect.
Stun decreases at a natural rate of 1 point per turn. Stimulants from a Medi-Kit will reduce stun damage by 4 points per dose.
4-space units will never wake up if stunned. Cyberdiscs, Sectopods and Reapers are VERY susceptible to Stun Bombs, because damage from the bomb is applied to each section of the unit. 4-space units can be even be knocked unconscious with the lowly Stun Rod, if poked enough.
As an added benefit, the Cyberdisc will not go through its normal auto-destruct sequence if taken down with a stun rod. The Small Launcher will trigger the auto-destruct sequence as usual, therefore remember to stand well clear of its blast area.
Unconscious cyberdiscs are always treated as dead at the end of the mission. The only way to research a live one is to interrogate an alien medic.
Excess Stun Damage
Units can take more stun damage than their total health. In fact, stun level is a stored variable and has a maximum value of 255. Therefore, a Sectoid (with 30 health and 1 for under armor) could receive 100 points of stun beyond its health from the Stun Rod and 150 points from the Stun Bomb. Because units recover from stun at a rate of 1 pt/turn, it could take 100 turns to see that Sectoid recover naturally from the Stun Rod and approximately 150 turns from the Stun Bomb. Stimulant injections can help circumvent the time factor by a quarter, but a lot of shots are still necessary.
If that Sectoid wakes up and is subsequently stunned again, it could have potentially even more stun applied. In the best case scenario, if it has a stun level of 29 when it wakes up and you manage to max out damage for the stun rod, it will have a resulting stun level of 159. For the Stun Bomb, it's 209. Units with huge health numbers (such as Mutons, Chryssalids and Silacoids) who are stunned, wake up, and then are stunned again will frequently max out the stun variable at 255. This may also happen when you have to stun a unit multiple times before it drops unconscious.
Stun Modifiers
All units take 100% stun damage, with the following exceptions:
Personal Armour: 90% Power/Flying Suit: 80% Ethereal: 80% Chryssalid: 90% Zombie: 0% HWP's: 0%
See Also
