Phoenix Space Combat System for Dummies - Part One A Generic Ship
But that does not mean that space combat is not important or useful to learn about. I will be writing a series of blog posts about Phoenix's combat system to describe the various components or protection/weaponry/speed/tactics to endeavour to explain in more detail how things are and what you might need to consider when contemplating combat orientated positions in the game. It might even be possible, should these, be successful, to get some guest speakers from the more successful combat or pirate affiliations to give more specialised advice. But we will see. The combat system in this game is just as nuanced as any online space shooter so this advice will be fairly vanilla and should not be regarded as the 'last word'. In space combat it is quite easy to get it wrong badly one battle and correct the next and there is no 'correct' setup. Experienced players will find nothing new (and probably disagree with a fair amount) but hopefully those who are not so knowledgeable might find something helpful.
A 'generic' Line of Battle Ship
Before even attempting to explain how the various systems work and their capabilities for your own naval use it would be useful to detail what I would term a 'default' line of battle design for the majority of affiliations out there.
Please note this is my terminology and not the games. To me a line of battle ship is a ship between 150 and 200 hulls intended to fight, in a group (usually with 7 or more compatriots minimum and often in game in the hundreds if not thousands). Larger ships exist which we can term battleships and naturally many more smaller ships which I tend to designate Destroyers, Frigates , Gunships, Corvettes and Sloops (usually 100 hulls and lower).
The most common line of battle ship in game would perhaps consist of the following
- Heavy Hulled
- Maximum Armour possible (Ablative or Plate and preferably Mark IV in either)
- Minimum Speed
- 10-20% more than the minimum crew factors
- No Shields
- Minimum Sensors (5-10 perhaps)
- Maximum Scintillators (30-40)
- Decent Point Defence (usually Gatlings but Phalanx missiles are also common)
- Decent Targeting computer levels (10-20)
- Minimal Marines
- Maximum Weaponry possible
This is a very common design and is this way because it is designed to fight in a group. A ship on its own can have very different design imperatives. Some of the logic behind these choices follow.
Heavy Hulled/Maximum Armour - Combined these produce the best defensive bonuses in the game. The choice of ablative/plate is down to the time ships expect to fight or be targeted and will be covered by the armour discussion
Minimum Speed - This might seem counter productive but the simple fact is that most opposing ships will either have missiles/torpedo's or enough targeting computers to make any combat speed defensive boost irrelevant and therefore adding the engines to increase speed simply remove weaponry.
Crew Factors - You want enough crew factors or AI Navigators to keep the ship at 100% and since crew can be killed and the Combat Navigators destroyed you need just enough to keep the ships efficiency at 100% for as long as the ship is a viable weapon. After 50% of the ship has been damaged it is unlikely to be very combat effective anyway so more crew/factors just means less weaponry for an advantage which does little to assist in the ships primary aim which is dealing death and destruction.
No Shields - I personally love shields but they rarely appear in capital ships unless your most common opposing weaponry are beam weapons of 'gun' or 'cannon' size. Most of the big fleets use missiles (anti matter), missiles (normal) then photon batteries in that order and against all those weapon types shields somewhat less effective (type dependant) and mean you are seriously outgunned versus equivalent opponents.1 When these type of ships hunt in huge packs there is a huge growing discrepancy the larger the fleet gets (and note that the ships with shields that are not being attacked are not using those shields but all the ships without shields but extra weaponry are using those weapons and you can see why people tend not to favour them for fleets.
Minimum Sensors - If you cannot see the enemy you cannot fight so minimum sensors are needed. Especially important for the point ship in a kill group.
Maximum Scintillators - Can be situation specific. If your enemy heavily favours missiles then scintillators might not be needed. They don’t take a lot of space and their protection only deteriorates if scintillators are destroyed so they tend to be common probably because the hassle of refitting to play the rock>paper>scissors game of countering your opponents equally changing builds is too much hassle for large fleets for minimal space saved.
Decent Point defence - The most effective one day kill weapon are anti-matter missiles and even normal missiles do vastly more damage than other weapon types so most ships try and have enough point defence to cope with several attackers
Decent Targeting Computers - Without these accuracy can become an issue which means speed becomes a factor., Most ships carry many of these because it means they don’t have to have speed and if the enemy has speed then it does not matter. If the enemy is equally slow then a high accuracy allows more specific targeting which can be useful .
Minimal Marines - Warships are not usually at risk of boarding because the boarder takes 4 rounds of point blank (double strength) fire from the position being boarded and since these ships move in packs all the other ships locally get to assist which is basically suicidal for the boarder. If the warship is on its own then this calculation can change but any ship under 100 hulls is unlikely to cover enough weapons to stop a boarder on its own so more marines are necessary.
Maximum Weaponry - Every spare inch of space is then filled with weaponry or ammunition for that weaponry. Most missile/torp ships have enough ammunition for 2-3 days of battle with the more aggressive affiliations going for two (or even one if very confident in their ability to refresh stocks by support ships that can stay safe)
So that is a very generic ship type and I should restate that it is generic but moving on it will allow us to discuss better the various weaponry/protections out there so you can get better results from your own combat operations.
There is one factor that you can keep in mind and this is wonderfully put by the great naval historian N.A.M.Rodger when talking about sailing warships and the differences between warships of similar class (for Phoenix you would have to add 'Mark')
The differences between these British and French ships arose almost entirely from the difference of size. Naval architecture is a question of balance: if two competent designers build rival ships of the same tonnage and type, one can only gain a marked advantage in any one quality, such as speed or armament, by sacrificing the others. Even a modest increase in size, however, permits a significant improvement in quality all round.
The next post in this series will be looking at the different hull types available.
1 To give a fag packet calculation assume a ship with 5 photon batteries attacks a ship with 4 photon batteries and instead of that extra photon battery enough shields for a shield depth of around 60. Each hit of the first ship does around 900 damage so 4,500 a round and 18,000 a day. The side with shields does more damage at around 950 a battery but with four batteries that is 3,800 a round and 15,200 a day. Don't panic about the numbers as we will explain those properly (well hopefully) as we move on. Plus these numbers change due to armour etc so don't treat them as gospel.
The Rocinante by Cannikin1701 - I picture most 50 Heavy Hulled Corvettes/Sloops much like this
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