Combat in Wasteland 2 is one of the primary methods of resolving conflicts between the Rangers and the world.
The basics[ | ]
Combat is resolved in a turn based system, with the order of turns determined by the combat initiative of the participants. All combat takes place in the game world, using a square-based grid, with actions and movement consuming action points during execution. The usual activity includes running around and shooting, though certain types of enemies can use special attacks that can cause status effects, knock the Rangers around the map, or otherwise cause problems.
Accuracy[ | ]
Bringing the enemy's hit points or Constitution to 0 kills them. However, if a Ranger ends up at 0 CON, they are knocked out of the game and become Unconscious or, if the damage was particularly severe, incur a serious wound (or worse). While an unconscious Ranger will typically revive at the end of combat (sometimes even during the engagement), a wounded one will require surgical intervention using a trauma kit.
The way to deal damage is to shoot or pummel them. The accuracy with a given weapon is primarily determined by the appropriate skill (explosive weapons use no skill and always hit the designated area), with modifiers from range, weapon modifications, enemy chance to evade, cover, etc. being applied to the raw accuracy score to determine the chance to hit.
Damage[ | ]
Damage is primarily determined by the weapon's damage score. For conventional weapons, it's modified against the armor rating and adjusted as needed. See Armor Penetration for more details. Certain actions, like bursts, Headshots or Critical hits will increase the amount of damage dealt. Note that in case of bursts, damage and chance to hit is calculated on a per-bullet basis, making it possible to deal extreme amounts of damage with heavy weapons.