So the calcs have been changed and tweaked a few times so that I have lost track of exactly they work.

I know that size doesn't really matter anymore and a little ship with mostly crew can take out a larger more powerful ship.

What exactly are the new calcs based on? How does crew/size/shield/hull/defense all figure in?

TMK its the same battle equation as before hull=more damage, but now instead of hulll=damage cap, decks decide it.

Ok, but what exactly is that calculation.

For example:

hull divided by # of decks + defense means ______________

Or
Power of weapons plus crew means ___________

I accept that the battle calcs have nothing to do with how things should work so I am trying to understand how they actually do work.

I don't think we need to know how they work EXACTLY but it would be good to know the best mix to protect our ships.

I am hoping that good defense is a prerequisite to a good defense. I am still confused to how Shields and Hull interplay.

From reading around it appears that there is a suggestion that the more hull points you have the more damage you are allowed to take such that a ship with more hull points taking on a small ship with fewer hull points would take more damage. (someone please correct me).

I can understand that there is a need to balance the game so that strong players can't crush the smaller players out of hand but between players of equivalent rank a big ship with lots of guns and hull points should beat a smaller ship with lots of crew fewer guns and hull points.

Some clarity would be nice.

Attack vs Defense is the primary damage calculation. A ship's size determines the maximum amount of damage that can be done in a single shot.

Shields and Hull indicate how much damage your ship can take before it is disabled, but they have no effect on how damage is calculated. These are just 2 types of 'Hit Points'.

Thanks Dan, always great that you are lurking and enlightening. So how much does pure defense play into it? If player A has a defense of ___ and is attacked by player B who has an attack of ____ the damage done is ____

And how exactly do decks figure into that? I understand that the more decks you have, the more damage, how does that work though? For example if player A has 250 decks more than player B is the damage multiplied by 2.5?

Put more simplly, Dan said that decks determine the damage cap, not more damage.

I understand that but what does determines damage? Even with decks figured in attack power - defense power doesn't equal the amount of damage actually taken.

Anyone can tell what doesn't make a difference. Scientist do not determine the amount of damage. Engineers do not determine the amount of damage. Engines do not determine the amount of damage. Cargo holds do not determine the amount of damage. Lots of things do not determine damage.

My original question was and still is, what EXACTLY determines the damage done between Ship A and Ship B.

I don't know the equation, but it's Attack vs. Defense, with max damage reduced by the amount of decks. So, if you have 300 attack vs his 100 defense, you might do around 30 damage. If he's got very few decks, the damage will be cut off, down to maybe 15.

if you fight the npcs which show stats, you will quickly be able to estimate damage.

The damage "cap" seems more like a ratio since I don't really hit the same number over and over. Like...

(your attack - their defense)*(their decks/your decks)= damage per round

Probably nothing like that, but it seems somewhat close. You would be hitting 1 damage on someone if they were turtled up most of the time and I haven't really seen that happen.

I'm pretty sure that there's a random component (a die roll of some sort) in the Attack vs. Defense part of the equation. I think the cap is a flat limiter ie. with this many decks, you can't take more than 30 damage.

I've battled some Zolazin NPCs that I never did more than x amount of damage to (I believe 25?), and I think that was because of the damage cap. They were only level 15 vs. my then level of 59. So, I was doing WAY more damge than 25 but 25 was the max. With a smaller ship, they might occasionally hit the cap of 25, but they may also do only 20.

Once the shield recharge problem is fixed I will battle a bunch of NPCs and post the stats so someone with more math skills can figure it out. Right now its just to costly to do any experimentation.