Section 4:
Attacking is both simple and complex. On one side, its very easy and self-explanitory to attack, on the other side, attacking involves some complex equations that might not make much sense. I’ll start off here with how to attack, then go into some things you need to know about attacking, and then I’ll conclude with some of the equations used in attacking, and the order attack operations process. The equations are also linked from the login page.
Attacking is easy to do. You cannot attack until you have been in the game three days, and you cannot attack people who have also not been in the game more than three days. This means you have three days “newbie protection”, during which you cannot attack or be attacked. Also, planets cannot be attacked until you’ve been in the game at least five days, but your planets can be attacked no matter what.
To attack a ship, you must be in the same sector as it. Then click the Attack link next to the ship. Combat will ensue, and the results will be reported to you. Attacking ships costs 1 turn per attack. Planets are also easy to attack. When you are in the sector of a planet, click on the planet and if it is not owned by you, prompts to attack will come up. If you do the normal attack, the ship you are commanding will attack. If you do a fleet attack, every ship in your ship’s fleet will attack, but your ship will not. When you fleet attack, your ships don’t attack together really, instead, each ship attacks in turn and each ship takes fire from the planet’s defenses. Fleet attacking is just like the other “All” functions (such as sell all, pickup all, etc). Also, attacking planets is always free turnwise. Neither regular planet attacking nor fleet attacking will cost you any turns. You cannot use fleet attack against ships, only planets.
Now for some information on attacking. Attacking is the interaction between your ship’s defenses (shields, armor, drones) and your ship’s offensive capabilities (drones, weapons, Yap Grenades) and your opponent’s. Quest for Yap does not have any bonuses for the defender, other than the fact that the defender will not lose any turns, only the attacker. So your ships are essentially equals unless they have superior defenses and weapons. Here is some information on defenses and weapons.
· Shields and Armor
Shields and armor are your ship’s primary defenses. Drones also defend your ship, read on those later. Shields and armor will be lost in combat, unless your opposition has nothing capable of harming your ship. Shields will be destroyed before your armor can take damage, and your ship will be destroyed when your armor is 0 or less than 0. Shields and armor can be purchased at the equipment shop
Weapons are the main offensive unit. Ships have turret slots, each which can hold one weapon. Some ships (cogs, for example), have no turrets, and so are not very good for fighting. Chances are if you attack somebody and you don’t have any weapons on your ship, people will laugh at you, so these are something you’ll want. Now, weapons do not do a base damage. Instead, they have a value for shield damage and a value for armor damage. You may have noticed this at the weapons shop. If a weapon does 0 shield damage and 1000000 armor damage, and your target has even 1 shield, your weapon won’t do any damage (except to drones). Ever wondered what those numbers next to the word “Damage” on the left of your screen meant? The first number is the amount of shield damage your weapons do, and the second is the amount of armor damage your weapons do. So its Damage: Shield/Armor basically. Based on these shield/armor damage values, there are four different types of weapons. One of them, Minelayers, we won’t be going over at this time. The other weapon types are laser, EM, and projectile. Laser weapons damage both shields and armor, and are common on ships you are planning to use to attack other ships. EM weapons do damage only to shields, and are usually used against heavily defended planets with many shields where the armor weapons are not worth much. Projectile weapons damage only armor, and their main use is to destroy a planet’s drones, or they can be used to sweep minefields. In general, laser weapons are probably your best bet for ship to ship fighting. Why? They have a balance between shield and armor damage, so you won’t find yourself losing all your ships because they can only damage shields. However, if you like to fine-tune, you might like equipping a ship with say 4 super lasers and 1 heavy missile. You’d lose 100 shield damage, but you’d gain an extra 50 armor damage. Depending on what you plan to be attacking, this might be a good thing. Also, especially in the vet game where there are bigger ships like the Bounty Hunter, you might want to use a 1-2 punch, where you have one ship with EM weapons that you attack first with, and another with projectile weapons you attack with second.
· Yap Grenades
Yap Grenades are unique. They are bought at the upgrade center and use an upgrade slot, not a turret. Yap Grenades are nice, although they can be a bit pricey. Yap Grenades do 125 shield and 125 armor damage which is done just like a normal weapon. They are a nice way to boost your ship’s attack capacity, and in the veterans game, you can use them to give Galleys a nice punch.
Drones are a little more complicated than the rest of this has been (although weapons are a bit complex). Drones must be destroyed for your ship to start losing armor, and take 5 armor damage to destroy (if a weapon does 50 armor damage it will destroy only 10 drones). They also do up to 5 damage each to the enemy, shields or armor, it doesn’t matter. For the most part, drones are the perfect all-around solution. Although minefields and yap bombs can destroy your ship without touching your drones, in normal combat, drones can make the difference between win and loss. If there are two frigates identical except for one having drones and the other not, the one with drones will just cream the one with them. Drones are also your planet’s main defense. And as for the drone’s damage, I’ll throw in a quick formula here… Drones do number of drones * random value between 5 and 3.75 damage. This can add some randomness to a battle and perhaps allow otherwise identical ships to win the fight. One very important thing about drones is that when you attack, your drones will fight first. If your target has no drones, those drones will attack the ship. If that ship is destroyed by your drones alone, you won’t even have to fight it’s weapons! So you can use drones to neutralize an otherwise potent threat such as a devestator.
I was going to put some formulas here, but I’ve decided that I’ll do those when I’m done with everything else. For now, go to the page linked from the login page, called Equations and Orders I believe. Thanks! Oh and happy attacking. J