Battle Basics

This is a description of roughly what happens when two fleets encounter each other.

Standard Combat Sequence

  1. A random ship is selected from attacking fleets, and a random ship from defending fleets.
  2. An initiative is calculated for each ship, based on weapon type and sensors versus the amount of stealth on the other ship, with some random element as well.
  3. The ship which wins the initiative roll gets to fire each battery in turn, using a targeting system based on the order selected.
    1. standard targeting: The battery selects three random targets out of all the enemy ships, and then targets the most damaged of the three.
    2. class targeting: If the battery meets the minimum requirements for class targeting, then it will select a short-list of ships (no of ships in the list depends on amount of sensors). The chance of including ships of the targeted class in the short-list depends exclusively on its sensors. A further dice-roll based on sensors determines the chance of actually targeting a ship of the targeted class out of that list, otherwise a random ship in the short-list. If successful, the ship with the highest threat value is targeted. The defending ship has a final chance then of avoiding the engagement based on its defense bonuses. If successful, a random ship in the list is targeted, otherwise it is successfully engaged.
    The hit or miss is determined by the weapon type, sensors, and enemy evasion versus that weapon. Note that each battery goes through this process individually, and there is no guarantee that more than one battery on the firing ship will hit the same target.If the battery scores a hit, the damage is applied to the targeted ship, which has its sensors, stealth, speed and damage reduced in proportion to the remaining hull integrity.
  4. The ship which lost the initiative roll then gets to fire its batteries.
  5. The next two random ships are selected for the initiative roll, and the process continues until either the attacker or defender runs out of ships. The side which still has ships left then gets to have those ships fire one after the other till all ships have fired their batteries.

Notes

  1. Because of the random elements introduced, even a very high sensor ship stands a chance of losing its initiative roll, and thus firing second.
  2. For class targeting to be successful, you must first have the minimum amount of sensors (25 for escorts, 50 for ships of the line, 75 for capital ships).
  3. Then, the more sensors you have, the more ships you will be allowed to your add to your target-list (sensors/10).
  4. The target list is then populated with ships, with each slot in the target list having a minimum 25% chance to select a ship of that class, plus 1% for every 5 sensors your ship has, otherwise it is a random ship.
  5. Lastly, you have a 35% chance, plus 1% for every 4 sensors on your ship, to target a ship of that class out of the target-list, otherwise a random ship in the list is targeted.
  6. In all of the above, the base sensors of the ship is used, without bonuses from officer or any other source.
  7. Once a target has been selected, at this stage only are bonuses applied to determine your chance to hit.
  8. Ships which have their hull reduced to zero are NOT cleared from the battlefield until the end of the tick. Thus it is possible for a 'dead ship' to be targeted, in which case the shot is counted as hitting debris. The battery gets one more chance to target an enemy ship. If it targets debris again, it does not fire. The side-effect of this is that if there are a lot of dead ships in the target-list, there is a high chance that a lot of firepower is wasted on debris. For this reason, you may see your shot-count drop drastically in your battle-report.

Exceptions

  1. If one or other side has a Kreel in the alliance, that side's ships ALL get to fire first, before any ships on the other side can return fire.
  2. If both sides have a Kreel in the alliance, the Kreel with the highest stealth tech wins the initiative roll and his side gets to fire first in its entirety.
  3. If the two Kreels have the same stealth tech, then the firing system used above applies.

Strategies

  1. Ships which fire late in the sequence may have taken damage already, and thus operate at reduced efficiency when their turn comes. Thus it is better to do as much damage EARLY in the sequence as possible, to as many enemy ships as possible.
  2. Having a large number of high firepower ships increases your chance of doing more damage early on.
  3. Having ships which fire as many shots as possible means you damage more ships when that ship has a turn to fire.
  4. Because there is a base chance of 10% that class targeting will fail regardless of enemy sensors, and standard targeting be used, there are a few things you can do to increase your fleets survivability under standard orders, such as seeding your fleet with a large number of evasive escorts (or other flak ship), causing the 'standard targeting shots' to miss.
  5. Ships which have taken damage are less likely to succeed at class targeting (because of reduced sensors), and so it becomes more viable to use evasive ships or cheap flak ships to cover your main fleet as the enemy fleet takes damage.

Examples

  1. A fleet with 50 identical ships (assume battleships), versus a fleet with 200 identical ships (assume destroyers). After 50 ships from each side has fired, all 50 battleships have fired, unloading 100% of its damage on the second fleet. The second fleet has unloaded 25% of its damage, and it is likely that many of the ships which still have to fire are already either dead or badly damaged.
  2. A fleet with mixed weapons giving 8 shots per ship, versus an equal sized fleet with homogenous weapons, giving 4 shots per ship. After 10 ships from each side has fired, the first fleet has fired 80 shots, potentially damaging 80 ships. The second fleet has fired 40 shots, potentially damaging 40 ships. Side A has the advantage within the tick, because of the high likelihood that Side B has damaged ships returning fire. Side B has the advantage in the next tick, because 80 ships repairing their hull has recovered more total hull than 40 ships repairing their hull.
  3. The likelihood of targeting a ship of the desired class when using class targeting is actually pretty high. Consider an HBC ((Heavy Battle Cruiser) with 80 sensors attempting to target a capital ship out of a large fleet. It will generate a target-list of 8 targets, out of which 3 are likely to be capital ships, and the rest random ships. It will have a 55% chance to select one of the capital ships, otherwise a random ship out of the list. Given that possibly 1 of the random ships might be a capital ship anyway, there is an additional 50% chance to hit a capital ship since 4/8 of the targets in the short-list are capital ships. Ultimately, it might successfully target capital ships up to 80% of the time.

Battery Fire

One of the intriguing features of the targeting system used in space is how damage is applied during combat. Each starship is considered to have a number of weapons batteries, and each battery selects a target and fires on that target independently of other batteries. So individual batteries may hit or miss without influencing other batteries on the same ship. When you design a starship, you may designate a certain number of slots to a given weapon, and the more slots you designate, the more damage that weapon does. It is these slots which determine how weapons batteries are grouped.

BEAMS AND MISSILES
The first battery consists of one weapon slot. Each successive battery consists of one more weapons slot than the previous battery, until all weapons slots are taken up by the last battery.

EXAMPLES
- 4 slots, translates into battery assignment of 1-2-1
- 5 slots, translates into battery assignment of 1-2-2
- 6 slots, tanslates into battery assignment of 1-2-3
- 7 slots, translates into battery assignment of 1-2-3-1

Damage is divided equally between all weapons slots, so a 2-slot battery does twice the damage of a 1-slot battery, and so on.

FIGHTERS
Fighters work exactly the same way, except that each slot of fighters is counted as 2 fighters. So for example, if you have 5 design slots, you are considered to have 10 fighters.

EXAMPLES
- 4 slots, 8 fighters, battery assignment of 1-2-3-2
- 5 slots, 10 fighters, battery assignment of 1-2-3-4
- 6 slots, 12 fighters, batter assignment of 1-2-3-4-2

Damage is divided equally amongst each fighter. So a 4-fighter battery will do 4x the damage of a 1-fighter battery.

Combat Evasion

MISSILE EVASION

  1. Speed contributes towards a ship's ability to evade missiles.
  2. 80% of the ship's missile evasion score is derived from its speed.
  3. 20% of the ship's missile evasion score is derived from its stealth.

BEAM EVASION

  1. Stealth contributes towards a ship's ability to evade beams.
  2. 80% of the ship's beam evasion score is derived from its stealth rating.
  3. 20% of the ship's missile evasion score is derived from its stealth rating.

FIGHTER EVASION

  1. Speed and Stealth contribute equally to a ship's ability to evade fighters.

EXAMPLES

  1. A ship with 100 speed and 0 stealth, will have 80 evasion to missiles, 50 evasion to fighters, 20 evasion to beams.
  2. A ship with 50 speed and 50 stealth, will have 50 evasion to missiles, 50 evasion to fighters, 50 evasion to beams.

Weapon Penetration And Shield Resistance

Weapon Penetration

  1. When ANY weapon hits a starship, a percentage of the damage is applied to the shields, and a percentage to the hull.
  2. The weapon type determines the basic percentage which penetrates the shields. For missiles, this is 50%, for fighters this is 25%, and for beams this is 0%.
  3. The weapon penetration is INCREASED by improving the tech level of the weapon. Higher tech weapons will receive a bonus to penetration.
  4. As you improve weapon tech levels, your old ships still do the same damage, but their weapons have improved penetration.

SHIELD RESISTANCE

  1. Shield resistance will reduce the percentage of damage applied to the hull.
  2. Heavier ships like battleships get a bonus to shield resistance.
  3. As you improve your shield tech levels, the strength of the shield will remain the same, but resistance is increased (less damage penetrates to the hull).

Combat Bonuses

Fleet Strength Bonus
When you merge your starships into a fleet, each ship contributes a certain amount of points. These points equate to a percentage 'strength bonus' which is applied to the fleet. The maximum strength bonus is 10%. You can view the current 'fleet strength bonus' by viewing the fleet info page for that fleet. Escort ships make the smallest contribution, while capital ships make the largest contribution, to the fleet strength score.

Officer Bonus
If you have assigned an officer to the fleet, the officer gains experience in proportion to the base salvage that the fleet earns (before race bonuses). This officer experience is converted into points that you may assign to accuracy, evasion or damage, to get a bonus in that area. 1 point = 1% bonus.

Class Bonus
Each class of ships offer the fleet a specific bonus, provided minimum criteria have been met. Escort ships offer a bonus to speed and a bonus to stealth. Ships of the Line offer a bonus to damage for other classes. Capital ships offer a bonus to sensors for other classes. These bonuses only apply to ships in the same fleet.

Type Bonus
Within each class of ships, one type of ships may offer other ships within that class a specific bonus. So for example, scout ships offer a sensors bonus to other escort ships, while corvettes offer a speed/stealth bonus to other escort ships. Similarly, destroyers and cruisers offer sensors and damage bonuses to other ships of the line, and battleships/assault carriers offer uniques and weapons platforms a sensor bonus.

Retreat

  1. A fleet in combat which meets the requirements to retreat (% hull damage) will attempt to do so at the end of the combat tick.
  2. The chance to retreat depends on the average evasion of your fleet versus the average sensors of the enemy fleet.
  3. There is a maximum chance for success, and a minimum chance.
  4. Fleets which have the order 'Always Retreat' set, will not fire during the combat tick, but have a 45% bonus to their evasion, meaning they will be less likely to take hits and more likely to be able to retreat.
  5. Fleets covered by the Oomari unique will take 50% less time to reach the retreat destination.
  6. Fleets covered by the Toag unique will take 50% longer to reach the retreat destination.

Repairs

  1. The basic rate of repair is 1.02^nano * 1% of the hull (rounded up to nearest integer) up to a maximum of 6% hull per tick.
  2. A space station ADDS another 2x the repair rate to the base ship repair rate, giving an effective 3x repair rate, to a max of 12% hull per tick.
  3. Drall repair rate is always double that of other races, so is effectively 2x normally, and 6x when merged with a space station. The doubling of the repair rate is applied AFTER the cap is applied, so Drall ships can repair at higher than the capped amount for other species, given sufficient nanotech levels.
  4. The Zeeb Overseer (unique), adds 4x the base repair rate on top of the ship repair rate for ships merged into a fleet with one. If there is less than 1 overseer per 20 ships, the bonus is reduced in proportion. The cap is 6% hull per tick.
  5. The repair event occurs at the start of the tick, before combat.

Salvage

  1. Salvage is ore that you gain from destroying enemy ships.
  2. The 'base salvage' you earn is 10% of the ore-cost of the ship you destroyed.
  3. The ship which earned the kill also has the salvage added to its 'experience', and if it earns sufficient salvage, it's abilities will be improved (see ship experience).
  4. If you had an officer assigned to the fleet, the officer gains experience based on the salvage earned by the fleet.
  5. The Shy'dow unique earns salvage at five times the basic rate for hull-damage inflicted, but not for scoring ship-kills.
  6. The Sirnef unique earns salvage at seven times the basic rate for hull-damage inclicted, but converts it into research points and not ore. It earns no salvage for ship-kills.
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