If you have played Black Nova Traders (BNT) or Nova Gaming System (NGS) in the past then you need to throw out everything you learned about combat because the combat system in Alien Assault Traders (AATrade) is totally different. We decided to base the combat system around the style of board based strategy games. Those games used hit points for the amount of damage an item could take and damage points for the amount of damage something could inflict. Plus the amount of damage that could be inflicted was based upon a die roll so the amount of damage varied between 1 and the maximum damage it could inflict on something. This ment you never really knew exactly what the outcome would be. You might win or win and get hurt badly or lose or lose and get hurt badly or ect. It was highly variable and you had to think just a little more about what you were going to do. Even though this is the Ship to Ship combat FAQ just about everything explained here is the same for Ship to Planet combat. The Ship to Planet combat FAQ will only detail the differences.

So now everything has hit points and damage points. On some things the damage points are different depending upon what they are used against. An example are beams. Beams can do about 80% more damage to shields than they can to anything else.

Beams are good against shields
Beams are poor against armor
Beams are excellent against fighters and torpedoes

Fighters are good against fighters
Fighters are excellent against torpedoes

Torpedoes are poor against shields
Torpedoes are good against armor

If you are the attacker you will get a special attack bonus. The default is 20% and this means your attack will be 20% more effective. If you are the defender then your effectiveness at defending is dropped the same percentage.

Here is the flow of combat. There are four distinct phases of combat. Each phase happens at the same time.

Beam Phase

Attacker Defender Energy is divided up from what is availible.

2.5% to attack torpedoes
5% to attack fighters
What is left after removing energy to attack fighters and torps is divided between beams and shields. Shields get 40% of the remaining energy and main beams get 60%.

Attacker Beams fire at defender shields. If beams breach shields then left over beams attack armor.
Attacker Beams (default is 5%) fire at defenders fighters.
Attacker Beams (default is 2.5%) fire at defenders torpedoes.

Defender Beams fire at attacker shields. If beams breach shields then left over beams attack armor.
Defender Beams (default is 5%) fire at attacker fighters.
Defender Beams (default is 2.5%) fire at attacker torpedoes.

Fighter Phase - If a players fighters were wiped out by the beams then they have nothing to attack with in this phase.

Attacker Fighters attack defender fighters. If the attacker fighters destroy all defender fighters then the fighters attack defender torpedoes.

Defender Fighters attack attacker fighters. If the defender fighters destroy all attacker fighters then the fighters attack attacker torpedoes.

Torpedo Phase - If a players torpedoes were wiped out by either beams or fighters then they have nothing to attack with in this phase.

Attacker torpedoes fire at defender shields. If shields have been breached then torpedoes attack armor.

Defender torpedoes fire at attacker shields. If shields have been breached then torpedoes attack armor.

Resolution Phase

If both shields and armor of either ship has been reduced to 0 then that ship is destroyed.

How the combat works

This is a very simplified explanation of the combat system. There are many things that come into play as the system compares many things between both attack and defender. I will use fighters vs fighters as an example.

When fighters attack fighters the combat routine compares the attackers fighter bay tech level to the defenders fighter bay tech level. If there is a wide disparity between the attacker and defender tech levels then confusion comes into play. If you have a fighter bay of 20 attacking someone with a fighter bay of 1 then alot of your fighters are going to get confused as there are too many friendly fighters flying around. Your fighters have a hard time locking on to the small number of fighters you are attacking. So they don't find anything to attack. They basically go back to your ship.

There is also a failure possability of one of your tech levels when in combat. The higher the tech level of an item the more unstable it becomes. This means there is a chance it will not function at 100% capacity. It will still function but you may not get as many items launched or beams fired. Beams may overload, launchers may jam. There is even a very, very, very remote chance that a tech level will have a 100% failure and not do anything.

The amount of damage each item inflicts is based upon a damage number given to a unit. An example is one unit of beams can do upto 1250 points of damage to armor and one unit of armor can absorb upto 1500 points of beam damage. So 10,000 beams can do about 12,500,000 points of armor damage maximum and 10,000 armor points can absorb 15,000,000 points of beam damage.

Now one unit of beams will not always do 1250 points of damage to armor. It varies depending upon the ECM and Sensor tech levels of the ships. The firing ship compares its sensor tech level to the defending ships ECM tech level. Depending upon how well it pierces the ECM will determine the percentage range for damage. The attacker percentage range would be something like 37% to 100% damage if attacker sensors and defender ECM were level 10. The defender attack percentage range would be 1% to 80%. This calculates out to the attacker beams can do between 462 and 1250 points of damage for each beam fired. The defender can do from 1 to 1000 points of damage for each beam fired. As the sensors and ECM vary so will the percentage range and scale. The higher your sensors are above their ECM the tighter the percentage range. It might go as low as 90% to 100% damage per unit. If your sensors are way below their ECM your percentage range could go as low as 1% to 20%.

Breached Shields and Internal Damage

If you lose all of your shields during an attack you can start taking damage to your armor. The more armor you lose the more damage makes it inside your ship. When this happens you can start taking damage to your tech levels. The more armor lost the more tech level damage you might take.

The internal damage is based upon the percentage of armor you lost. If you started out with 10,000 armor points and lost 5,000 armor points then you lost 50% of your armor. This means that upto 5 of your tech levels can take damage. You are not guaranteed they will take damage just that they might. All of your tech levels are scanned and each one has an 80% chance (default) that it will be selected to take damage. So out of the 5 possible tech levels that can be damaged you might only have 1 or 2 that get selected.

Once a tech level has been selected to take damage the amount of damage is based upon the percentage of armor lost. In this example the selected tech could drop 0% to 50% of its tech level. If it was your Shields that was selected and they were at tech level 20 they could be damaged upto 10 tech levels. So your new shield tech level could range anywhere from 10 to 20. You would have to go to a Spacedock to get them repaired at a fraction of the cost to buy the tech levels.