Combat
Combat occurs when one fleet encounters another as the result of an Attack. The attacker's ships immediately fire on the defender's ships and defenses, if there are any. If the attacker destroys all ships and defenses, and still has cargo space available, plunder will occur.
How it Works
Combat lasts until either the attacker's or defender's forces are completely destroyed or six rounds of combat take place. In each of the rounds, all of the attacker's and defender's units fire randomly at the opposing fleet's units simultaneously. If any unit strikes a unit against which it has Rapid Fire, that unit will get a chance at firing an extra shot, also randomly. This will repeat until all units fail on their random Rapid Fire chance or hit a unit against which they do not have Rapid Fire.
Weapons
The damage dealt from each shot is equal to the shooting ship's Weapons Rating. So for instance an Artemis Class has a Weapons Rating of 50. If it hits an Atlas Class it will deal that Atlas 50 damage.
Shield and Hull
Damage done to a ship in each round is first absorbed by that ship's Shield Rating and then the remaining damage subtracts from the ship's Hull Rating. An Atlas Class has a Shield Rating of 10 and a Hull Rating of 400, so if it were shot by an Artemis Class, which deals 50 damage, the first 10 would be absorbed by the shield and the remaining 40 would reduce the Atlas's hull to 360.
Shields replenish between rounds but Hull does not repair until the end of battle. So in our example above, in round 2 the Atlas would start with 10 Shield again and only 360 Hull. After round 2, if it survived, it would have a Hull of 320.
Ineffectiveness Rule
Any attack that does equal to or less than 1% of the maximum Shield Rating of a unit is absorbed. As an example, The Artemis Class has a base attack of 50 and the Large Decoy has a base Shield of 10,000. Since 50/10,000 = .005 (.5%), any number of Artemis could never damage a Large Decoy that still has its Shield even partially up. In another subtle example, suppose an attack takes place and destroys everything except a single remaining particle cannon. Then two successive waves follow which contain only Atlases, but 200, then 100 . Both the Atlas waves will fail. The base attack rating of the Atlas is 5. The base shield rating of the Particle Cannon is 500. The Atlases don't hit at all, even if they nominally would be able to destroy the PC by sheer numbers and weight of minor damages.
Destroying
At the end of each round, when all ships are done firing, any ship that has less than 70% of its initial Hull Rating has a chance to explode equal to the total hull reduction.
So in our above example after round 4 the Atlas class will have suffered 160 total Hull damage and have 240 Hull (out of its starting 400) left. That means it has lost 40% of its Hull ((160/400)*100) and will therefore have a 40% chance of being destroyed.
If it survives, at the end of round 5 it will have suffered another 40 Hull damage for a total of 200, giving it a 50% chance of destruction. At the end of round 6 it will have suffered 240 Hull damage and have a 60% chance of destruction. Thus it is actually possible for an Atlas Class to not be destroyed by an Artemis.
NOTE : Only defenses and ships are affected by combat. Buildings are NOT affected by combat.
Result
Attacker Wins
At the end of combat if all of the defender's ships and defenses have been destroyed, and the attacker has ships remaining, the attacker will have won the battle and will Plunder the defender's planet.
Defender Wins
At the end of combat if all of the attacker's ships are destroyed, and the defender has ships or defense remaining, the defender will have won combat. No Plunder will be received by the attacker.
Draw
If at the end of combat both sides have ships left, or all ships have been destroyed, the battle will have been a draw and no Plunder will be received by the attacker.
