[Suggestion] Stunning the X-COM way

Here is the situation.

IF alien has for example 100HP, you make 95HP stun damage then 5HP normal damage, the alien dies instead of being stunned. It doesn't make any sense. In X-COM the alien would be stunned, because stun damage is applied over Health.

Yeah, that shouldn't be happening that way. Damage should also apply an equal amount of stun damage.

Damage should also apply an equal amount of stun damage.

This will destroy the difficulty of capturing tougher aliens like Officers and Leaders.

Currently that is tough because you basically need to whack them with the cattle prod. Several times, too. If normal damage also applied stun damage, you could just shoot them once or twice normally, from the safety of your cover, and then finish the capture with a well-placed electro grenade, or simply one hit with the stun rod.

At the risk of accidentally killing them, yeah. Nevertheless, you'd have thought that something on the edge of death would be easier to subdue than something completely uninjured.

But whatever you do, stun damage isn't meant to apply an equal amount of normal damage too. In the given example, the alien should either be stunned (my way) or left on 95HP (your way) rather than end up dead.

I had not noticed stun damage also applying normal damage, but that is definitely wrong if that is so.

As for bullets applying stun damage,

At the risk of accidentally killing them, yeah.

it's my gut feeling that the above would not apply when it actually matters. With the tougher aliens that is, Leaders are almost certain to survive being shot.

it's my gut feeling that the above would not apply when it actually matters. With the tougher aliens that is, Leaders are almost certain to survive being shot.

You're probably right in the context of the vanilla game (since HP are so high and damage not massively variable). Nevertheless, it would be a nice optional feature for mods which also change those things (high damage variability + relatively modest HP totals + not displaying damage would make it much less reliable to wound an alien with real damage first). It would also add in some better possibilities for alien stun weapons if stun damage stacked with regular damage.

What if regular damage also added half-again stun damage? As chris says, it makes sense for an alien who is wounded to be subdued/pass out easier. Blood loss, pain (and biological pain-killers), physiological effects from being wounded. If a person gets wounded severely, they're also likely to pass out, or at least not be as alert, due to blood loss and shock. I would say the aliens should go through a similar process. Therefore, it would make sense that when you wound them you also subdue them.

But to avoid doing 95hp of damage to your 100hp alien then hitting them with a flash-bang grenade to stun them, instead when you do 95hp of damage they receive 47 stun damage, so you still have to do a fair amount to subdue them (and not injure them in the process).