Melee Dodge Chance

Melee Dodge Chance is a stat: Chance to dodge a melee attack that would've otherwise hit. Characters will not dodge while aiming or firing a ranged weapon. Its minimum allowed value is 0%. Its maximum allowed value is 80%. Its default value is 100%.

Base score

First, a base score, which we'll call M, is computed by adding up Melee skill and a few other modifiers:

Melee: skill level (0 to 20)
Moving: 1800% importance. No Max.
- For example, each bionic leg gives +12.5% or +0.125 Moving, which at 18x yields +2.25.
Sight: 800% importance, 140% limit
- For example, one bionic eye and one normal eye gives 118.75% Sight, and 0.1875 x 8 yields +1.5.
Traits
- Nimble: +15.0
- Brawler does not have any direct effect.
Melee specialist role: +7.0
Melee specialist's Berserk Trance: +8.0

Post-processing curve

Base score to Dodge Chance

The above graph shows how your base score M corresponds to the final Dodge Chance.

From a base score of M ≤ 5, Dodge Chance is 0%
From a base score of 5 < M ≤ 20, Dodge Chance increases by 2% per increase in base score.
From a base score of 20 < M ≤ 60, Dodge Chance increases by 0.5% per increase in base score.
Beyond a base score of 60, there is no increase in Dodge Chance (will be capped at 50%).

In other words, there are diminishing returns beyond 20 dodge chance base score (30% dodge chance): each point exceeding that yields 1/4 the benefit, before reaching a hard cap at 60 (50% dodge chance). For a normal pawn with melee 5, replacing a leg with an archotech leg would yield +4.5 base score and +9% dodge chance; but if it had melee 20, then the new leg would yield only +2.25% dodge chance.

A maxed-out pawn with two archotech eyes (150% Sight, capped at 140% -> +3.2 base chance), two archotech legs and a bionic heart (158% Moving -> +10.44 base chance), the Nimble trait (+15), and level 20 melee has a base dodge chance of M=48.64 and a resulting Melee Dodge Chance of 44.32%. Go-juice raises it to 49%. Adding in luciferium, wake-up, and fibrous mechanites yields M=73.5, which would translate into a 56.75% dodge chance if not for the hard cap at 50%.

Chance to dodge

Skill Level	Standard	Nimble	Skill Level	Standard	Nimble
0	0%	20%	-	-	-
1	0%	22%	11	12%	33%
2	0%	24%	12	14%	33.5%
3	0%	26%	13	16%	34%
4	0%	28%	14	18%	34.5%
5	0%	30%	15	20%	35%
6	2%	30.5%	16	22%	35.5%
7	4%	31%	17	24%	36%
8	6%	31.5%	18	26%	36.5%
9	8%	32%	19	28%	37%
10	10%	32.5%	20	30%	37.5%

Analysis

Base score to Effective Health Multiplier

When considering effective health ("eHP") instead of dodge chance, however, the diminishing returns beyond 20 largely disappear, though there are no returns above 60 (50% dodge chance = 2x eHP).

Intuitively, while each point exceeding 20 only gives 1/4 the dodge chance, dodge chance is more valuable the more you already have; the numbers work out such that these effects almost cancel out (see graph).

Note that capping out eHP by reaching 60 is very difficult in practice; even a Nimble (+15 points) 20 Melee skill (+20 points) pawn with 200% Moving (+18 points) and 140%+ Sight (+3.2 points) would only have a score of 56.2 (~1.93x eHP). Without Nimble, it would take ~304% Moving (+36.8 points) to max out dodge chance and eHP at 60 points.