Phoenix Space Combat For Dummies - Part Nine Hull Damage
Having passed scintillators, shields and armour our damage has now hit the areas with more capacity for destroying the ship. Any damage getting to this point gets split into two. One section hits the juicy internals and basically damages and destroys stuff. The other section hits the hulls. To a certain extent this is another damage sink but the more hull damage a ship takes the more chance a ship has of being blown up and basically exploding. We will cover internal damage in the next post so this will concentrate on the hulls and how the damage is apportioned between the two.
Before getting into the damage it would be useful to cover how hull choice can impact a warship.
The first decision a budding warship builder has to make it 'what hull type' and to be honest for the majority of front line line of battle ships Heavy Hull is the only real choice 1
For other warship types then other choices come into play. I say other choices but the only real other choice is 'Normal Hull' . The advantages of the two types are simple to enumerate
Heavy Hull
Pluses
Harder to destroy (heavy hulls contain bulkheads built in so mitigate damage far more effectively than normal hulls either through controlling explosions and having a much higher defence and lower chance of destruction)
Defensive weaponry/items have less area to cover so are more effective (armour/scintillators/shields)
Negatives
Hold less 'stuff'
Harder to move about (needs more engines to get equivalent speed to less compact heavy hull types
Normal Hull
Pluses
Holds a lot more stuff!
Cheaper and build without some rarer minerals.
Minues
Blows up far easier.
To use an analogy picture a heavy hulled warship like a brick. Sure you can damage it but you have to use a lot of force to do so (especially to crack open entirely) and picture a Light Hulled ship like a balloon. It might hold a lot of stuff but one pin prick and its flying round the universe making an embarrassing noise. Normal hulls aren't quite as bad as light hulls but still are only really suitable for patrol ships and carriers.
Heavy hulls also don’t get damaged by routine activities as much as normal (every now and then you will Jump or enter a wormhole and see a 'ship lost something % integrity) if a heavy hull mark I then this damage is halved (and the better the hull Mark the lesser the damage). Normal Hull Mark I does not change but Light hulls have this damage multiplied by 2 and ExtraLightHulls have it multiplied by 8!. This means less maintenance will be required on Heavier Hulls than lighter ones. It also impacts combat due to two things. Every day in combat a ship takes an automatic integrity loss (due to the heavy maneuvering breaking stuff) and there is also an attack dependant on ISR engines. For a heavy hull this is negligible but it is quite damaging to light and Extra Light.
Damage Apportioning
When damage hits it is split according to a fixed formula dependant on hull size and the differential between inner space and hulls.
Heavy Hulls - These have two big advantages. Firstly they contain less inner space than the other types so less damage gets sent to the internals. For heavy hulls only 23% of the damage gets sent to internals and the hulls absorb 77%. You might think this makes them weaker as in other hull types more damage gets 'absorbed' by internals and therefore there is less chance of the ship exploding but this is not quite the case because Heavy Hulls take a lot more damage before blowing up. This is heavily impacted by Mark and type so to show how this can affect an engagement we will take the damage that has 'hit' the hulls so far and see what it would do to each Mark of Heavy and Normal (and for freighter comparison light hull Mark I and Extra Light Hull Mark I as well) 2
For simplicity's sake let us pretend that 70 damage has managed to get through the defences to this point (let us say a single high mark Photon Cannon)
Heavy Hulls - Before we care about the Mark of the hulls the damage is apportioned so that 23% goes to the internals. So in this case 16 damage will go to the internals. All the other 54 hits the hulls.
Heavy Hull Mark I - This has a defence of 200 so 54 damage is added to the plates (note this accumulates throughout the battle. Plates aren't checked individually but work on a Stack principle so the 1st plate takes damage until it is destroyed then damage starts accumulating on Plate 2. If the plate does not blow up on a hit it is more likely to blow up on the next ). 54 damage is 27% of its defence so it has a 27% chance to be destroyed.
Heavy Hull Mark II - This has a defence of 275 so now the damage is only 20% so less chance of random destruction and its longer lasting.
Heavy Hull Mark III - This has a defence of 350 so the damage has dropped to 15%
Heavy Hull Mark IV - a huge defence of 425 meaning the damage to the plate is only 13%
As a rough figure if we pretend that a ship 'will' explode at 25% of its hulls then a 50HH Mark I warship would require about 38 hulls to be destroyed taking a max of 7,600 damage (note that's a max as some of these hulls will blow up earlier unless the ship is really lucky). A Mark IV hull would take 16,150! Damage. If the attacks were exactly the same size and type (they are not) then it would need 140 individual attacks for the Mark I hull and 299 for the Mark IV (please remember if the ship is really unlucky it might explode at 50% and some ships survive to 1-2%. Also don't forget that by the time you start getting past 50% of hulls a lot of shields and armour and defensive gear has gone so hull damage increases.
Let's switch to normal hulls next
Normal Hulls - The ratio here is 38% so 27 damage will go to the internals and only 43 hits the hulls
Normal Hull Mark I - This has a defence of 75 so a single shot is 57% of the defence which means a more than average chance to destroy a hull with that one shot. IF a hull is destroyed in this fashion then you will see that the hull damage is greater than the amount of damage caused in the attack.
Normal Hull Mark II - This has a defence of 105 so the shot now does 40% - still a good chance of destroying it in one shot.
Normal Hull Mark III - The defence is up to 131 so the shot is only 32% so it is much more likely to survive to face the next shot
Normal Hull Mark IV - The defence is now 158 so now only 27%
For light hulls things get much, much worse. A light hull sends 54% of the damage to internals so 38 leaving 32 hitting the hulls
Light Hulls Mark I only have a defence of 25 So 32 damage will instantly destroy 1 hull and then the remainder of 7 damage will affect the next hull and gives a 28% of destroying two in one shot.
Let's scare ourselves by looking quickly at extra light hulls. Its split is 69% so 48 damage hits internals with the hulls absorbing only 22. Seems like nothing! But Extra Light Hulls are like a tin can and only have a defence of 5 so that single shot instantly destroys four plates with 2 damage rolling over to the 5th providing a 40% of destroying a 5th. That means a single shot has reduced the hull to around 92% strength. If the attacking ship was firing 5 identical guns a round then this ship would probably explode on round 2 or possibly round 3. 3
Alternatives to these hulls sometimes can involve lack of alternatives or simply more mission based navies. 4 After all if your navy is designed to ward off pirates and perhaps to fight off other small affiliations with equally crap ships or perhaps even to 'hunt' defenceless merchants then other hull types or ships designed to take advantage of bad accuracy suddenly can become key.
Finally we have to bring back our rolling example. At this point the attacking ship has fired two Photon Gun Ivs for one round. The first shot has only managed to get 7 damage through and the second 30. Our defensive ship has Normal Hulls Mark I
Round 1 Attack 1 - 7 damage gets through so this is split 38% with 3 (rounded up? Not sure on rounding assuming midpoint rounding but that is 'just' an assumption) going to the internals and 4 to the hulls. The hulls defence is 75 so it has a 1% chance of destroying a plate and unsurprisingly does not.
Round 1 Attack 2 - 35 damage gets through so this is also split 38% with 11 damage going to internals and 19 hitting the hulls. This is added to the existing hull damage of 4 to make 23. 23 is a 31% chance of destroying a hull.
We are off the attack lines now and on the Damage Section so the above would be reported as follows
Ship hulls have taken 23 damage.
Total ship hull damage 23 (0.61%)
If we pretend that the second Attack did destroy the hull (on 31%) then the Damage report would be more like
Ship hulls have taken 75 damage.
Total ship hull damage 75 (2%)
Because the random hull destruction increased the damage done. Therefore if the damage done per day (first line unless in a multi day battle) is greater than the damage received then you know hulls have been popping. This is less likely for heavy hulls and much more likely the lighter the hull gets.
Anyway next up in this series we will look at how the internals damage is dealt with.
1 To be pedantic there are more than one type of heavy hull but this series of articles isn't attempting to create a mess of information so complicated no one understands it. That's a politicians job. For those really interested this article is primarily saying that 'Light' and 'XLight' hulls are not good choices for warships. Variations on heavy hull types exist (i.e there is a Heavy Crystal Hull type and I vaguely recollect an organic one as well. Both sit more in the 'Heavy Warship hull space' and not in the 'light freighter' space and involve trade-offs in cost/protection etc.
2 A fleet of high mark III/IV armour HH ships running into a fleet of the same size mark I HH warships armed the same way 'should' win. Numbers count though so doubling the cheaper Mark I ships count can drastically change this situation. In this game there are many very high mark ships in the big military affiliations who are jealously looked after and have long and glorious combat histories. You also expect the 'best' officers to have command of these ships as you want your most deadly ships to be the most efficient as well.
3 From what I remember this was done to prevent the system being gamed. At some point in the distant past a player decided he would stick weapons in a lot of traders and then attack warships with those. Ok the warship would blow up a trader a round but would receive hundreds of attacks in return and warships>> expensive. Therefore the integrity loss stands a chance of destroying non-fleeing 'fighting' light hulls and extra light hulls instantly. Amusingly you can also see that the lighter the hulls the less weapons the ship can carry (called 'Hard Points' in the ship editor). This is because an equally 'not the spirit of the rules' player decided in the past he could put 300 photon guns in an XlightHull and thus outshoot everything. The Hard point was a restriction put in to stop that behavior
4 As a historical example from the days of sailing navies a warship was such an enormous sunken cost that many nations considered risking that capital in a pitched battle with another nation was a total waste of money. Therefore they designed ships to fulfil a specific mission. The Spanish designed very good frigates whose main purpose was to escort their gold carrying freighters from the New World to Spain which were well built and manned but not over armed. The French were strong proponents of the ships mission so a single warship arriving at a post in South America influencing a land operation was more important than the same ship fighting an enemy ship and not turning up to do its mission. Therefore their ships tended to be light and fast which made them very good at their mission but a not good in a stand up fight versus a British Frigate. This was partially caused by sailing warfare prior to 1750 being very much an epoch in warfare where ships could refuse combat relatively easily and it was rare for ships to be sunk in combat. British warships tended to be over armed with cannons and (from the 1740s only) very inclined to move very close to and destroy enemy ships in close combat. It cuts both ways though. The US Navy of the sailing period had only a few military ships in the early 1800's and these were specifically designed to be larger/better armed/ stronger than British frigates and proved so good at defeating them that the British navy issued orders that no British frigate should attempt to fight one of the big US ones unless they outnumbered it 2:1
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