User talk:Jewcifer
TFTD Weapon-Alien Damage Chart
Attached is an excel spreadsheet that charts the damage each weapon does against each type of alien. It is saved in an older (97-2003) .xls format for better compatibility, but should display conditional color formatting if opened with a recent enough version of excel. There aren't any macros.
There is a separate sheet for each difficulty level. Each sheet has 3 charts. The top chart shows the chance of killing the alien in a single hit (having done no other prior damage). The middle shows the average number of hits it takes to kill the alien with that weapon. The bottom chart just shows the average damage (with a cap to keep numbers reasonable) per hit. The weapons are sectioned into the following groups: HTH (melee weapons), 1H (1-handed pistols), 2H (standard 2-handed weapons), GRN (grenades), and SWS (attacks for Submersible Weapons Systems). Aliens have multiple columns for each direction of attack for which their armor is different. F = Front, S = Left/Right, R = Rear, U = Under. Cells that involve an area-of-effect weapon and a column that does not include under-armor are always left blank, as are those for single-hit weapons and columns for under-armor only. The four ranked alien types (Aquatoid, Gillman, Lobster Man, Tasoth) each have 2 sets of columns, the first set being for the weakest rank, the second for the strongest.
This is simply intended as a quick-reference lookup for judging battle situations and as a guide to facilitate weapon analysis. I make no claims that it is completely accurate, and even if it were, Murphy's Law and the whims of the RNG God mean it shouldn't be relied heavily on. In fact, I am aware of the following issues:
- Some sources have claimed that weapon damage in TFTD throws 2 rolls over the damage range and averages them, instead of just throwing 1 and using that as in EU. I have been unable to determine if this is actually the case or not. Some have argued that this is highly unlikely since the TFTD team made very few changes to the actual game engine, which I am inclined to agree with. So, the well-known EU method is the one I've used to calculate this chart. If anyone knows for sure one way or the other, please let me know as that could substantially affect everything.
- Only direct hits with AOE weapons are considered. There is no effort to provide information for near-hits or blast radius. This is why values are only present for columns including under-armor.
- For AOE weapons against large-size units, damage is only calculated for a single square and the result just multiplied by 4. I believe however that the game does actually calculate damage independently for each square, as I think I have seen a single adjacent grenade cause a reduction to both the under-armor and directional-armor of a tank. Again, if anyone knows for sure, please let me know. However, the difference is pretty much negligible for this purpose (since only direct-hits are considered).
- None of these values take into account the additional stun damage that is also inflicted on a damaging hit by a lethal weapon. I believe it is well-known and documented how this works, so perhaps at some point I will update the chart to reflect it. For now, this means is that dropping (but not necessarily killing) an alien is about ~12% easier than all data shows.
- The hits-to-kill chart does not take into account armor reduction from successful hits. This will slightly overestimate the larger values.
- I have checked and rechecked most of the data entry and calculations multiple times, but there still may be errors, mistakes, or typos. If anyone actually looks at this and finds any, please point them out.
- There may very well be other things I haven't thought of at all. Please, mention anything you can think of!
Yes, I know, if I spent half as much time playing this game as I do analyzing it, I might actually be decent at it...