Phoenix Space Combat System for Dummies - Part Eleven Test Battle Alpha
We have now covered a fair amount of basic detail concerning combat which is all very esoteric so I shall now run through some test battle reports in some detail to show what actually happens and what conclusions can be drawn - hopefully these conclusions will reinforce this series of articles basic assumptions but you never know.
Test Battle Alpha
The scenario is that two new players have set up their own combat ships and bumped into each other both being ready and willing to fight. This battle will therefore validate/invalidate some of their design decisions. Both players managed to source some decent Photon Gun Ivs and they have decent Mark Targeting Computers and a few Shields at that level
I have set up what we shall term as our 'Blue' ship which is an NHS flagged normal hulled, medium armour patrol ship. It has pretty good shields, poor speed, poor scintillators (only Mark I) and no less than thirty Photon Gun IVs. The officer in command is a Tyro (completely new) with no skills to assist.
I often find it helpful when thinking about naval combat to consider how much defence a ship can put up against a high Photon Shot. In this case the ships approximate Photon Cannon protection factor would be 55.7 at start of battle - 10 from scintillators, 20 from armour and 25.7 from shields.
The 'Red' Ship is a MRC flagged start Broadsword so 75 Heavy Hulls with poor shields, only 10 Photon Gun IVs, equally poor scintillators and another Tyro in command.
Before looking at the report take a moment to consider who you *think* will win. You would guess the Normal Hulled ship should dominate but will the heavier hulls and armour impact the engagement or will luck play a part?
Lets start with Blue's attack and damage
Shields: 5340(51.4)
Scint Coverage: 20
Armour protection: 40
ENEMY TARGETS SUPPORT TARGETS DEFEND TARGETS
All MRC(91) None None
Targeting MRC Furigeeto - Okami (#####):
MRC are on our enemy list.
Attacking MRC Furigeeto - Okami (#####)
---------------------------------------
Round 1: 30 Photon Gun mkIVs
- 29 hits - 761 (398) [2610] damage - 95%
Round 2: 28 Photon Gun mkIVs
- 26 hits - 801 (278) [2340] damage - 95%
Round 3: 28 Photon Gun mkIVs
- 25 hits - 772 (197) [2250] damage - 95%
Round 4: 28 Photon Gun mkIVs
- 28 hits - 935 (199) [2520] damage - 100%
ENEMY DAMAGE GOES HERE
Post Battle Summary
-------------------
Combat stress caused 4% integrity loss.
1 Susumu Kodai (#1) gained 2 experience.
1 troops promoted to veteran.
Naval Damage: 3 Gatling Lasers (215)
3 Photon Gun mkIVs (307)
1 Scintillator (125)
2 Sensor mkIIs (104)
1 Shields mkIV (118)
Civilian Damage: 1 Combat Engine mkIV (167)
2 ISR Type 4 Engines (155)
1 Thrust Engine mkIII (162)
Ship hulls have taken 1500 damage.
Total ship hull damage 1500 (20%)
Once the battle report starts it initially lists the main starting defensive components. Then lists the current target lists before moving to the current ships attacks.
The Blue Ship's Attacks
The first thing to note is that the Blue Ship seems to be suffering from an accuracy problem. Apart from round 4 in all three previous rounds less Guns hit than were fired. Since the Broadsword is slower than the Blue ship and their targeting/attack and weapon bonuses were identical this means something else is impacting things. It might be luck but it also might be that the 10 targeting computers assistance is being split among 30 guns so is less than the Broadswords 10 amongst 10 so has impacted accuracy. A guess but interesting anyway.
You can also see that the Red Ships shield protection is diving dramatically.
On the damage front from the red ship you can see that a wide array of useful defensive and offensive items were destroyed and the loss of ISR means this ship would find it hard to run should it decide to.
The 'Combat Stress caused a 4% integrity loss' is caused by stresses of high speed combat manoeuvre through the day and is quite a bad 'hit' against a normal hulled ship. Without that this ship would have taken 16% damage.
Since one opponent has done this you would assume that three similar opponents would be enough to remove this ship in 1 day as an effective combatant, 4 ships to likely destroy utterly and 5 ships would be overkill. This is important to note as it is rare for one ship to destroy another in a single day of combat unless one of the ships was vastly weaker on unprepared (for example no shields or gatling defence versus a ship armed with anti-matter missiles)
Ok let's now look at the Red Ships report
---------------------------------BATTLE REPORT----------------------------------
Shields: 1140(26.3)
Scint Coverage: 20
Armour protection: 80
ENEMY TARGETS SUPPORT TARGETS DEFEND TARGETS
All NHS(41) None None
Targeting NHS Furigeeto - Taka (#####):
NHS are on our enemy list.
Attacking NHS Furigeeto - Taka (#####)
--------------------------------------
Round 1: 10 Photon Gun mkIVs
- 10 hits - 366 (239) [900] damage - 99%
1 Tractor Beam mkIII
- 1 hit - 0 [0] damage - 100%
- Tractor beams reduced positions speed by 0.82%
Round 2: 10 Photon Gun mkIVs
- 10 hits - 353 (264) [900] damage - 99%
1 Tractor Beam mkIII
- 1 hit - 0 [0] damage - 100%
- Tractor beams reduced positions speed by 0.86%
Round 3: 10 Photon Gun mkIVs
- 10 hits - 324 (250) [900] damage - 99%
1 Tractor Beam mkIII
- 1 hit - 0 [0] damage - 100%
- Tractor beams reduced positions speed by 0.88%
Round 4: 4 Photon Gun mkIVs
- 3 hits - 121 (66) [270] damage - 99%
Incoming Fire from NHS Furigeeto - Taka (#####)
-----------------------------------------------
(SHOWN ABOVE)
Post Battle Summary
-------------------
Combat stress caused 0.5% integrity loss.
1 Shogo Kawada (#1) gained 2 experience.
1 troops promoted to veteran.
Naval Damage: 2 Gatling Lasers (215)
3 Photon Gun mkIVs (307)
2 Scintillators (125)
1 Shield Generators mkII (120)
3 Shields mkIVs (118)
2 Targeting Computer mkIVs (110)
Civilian Damage: 2 AI Combat Navigator mkIVs (923)
1 Quarters (131)
Ship hulls have taken 1800 damage.
Total ship hull damage 1800 (24%)
The Red Ship's Attacks
This ship is hitting repeatedly with everything but is taking a much bigger pounding in return with 24% hull damage in a day. The absolute key item loss was the 2 AI Combat Navigators in turn three. This must be what occurred as you can see only 4 Photon Guns fired round 4 (when 7-10 remained at that point). Basically it reduced the ships efficiency and in this case costing the battle. The ship design probably needs more Combat Navs for resilience, an officer with high leadership or more Crew. You can also see that no crew were lost in either ship mainly because crew are a tiny component of a ship but also showing that high crew numbers provides more resilience than reliance on combat navigators.
The red ship not only lost more hull it also lost more defensive/offensive items than Blue BUT even though blue did much more damage the internal items destroyed was broadly identical. This is due to the Heavy hulls better damage absorption ability.
Moving On
Post battle the Blue ship's Photon Cannon shot defence has dropped from 55.7 to 54.05! With no Armour plates burnt and then shield depth drop more due to the loss of a shield so its defences are essentially unchanged. Its loss of three photon cannons matter less due to the large number it is carrying. This ship is still combat capable.
The Red ship is basically a combat loss and would have to leave combat. If it hadn't lost the Combat Navigators then it could have carried on. Its Photon Cannon defence factor dropped from 63.15 to 53.11 with a portion of an armour plate gone. That drop is due to the easy removal of its admittedly weak shields.
In the next test the ships will be reconfigured with one carrying nova cannon and the other photon cannot to see how this weaponry impacts things. Both officers will be better with the Red ship training up Damage Control (it doesn’t appear to have an accuracy issue) and removing its shields (which aren't helping) but upping its armour to Mark II and carrying more crew (22)(. The Blue officer will be training accuracy and increasing its shields at the expense of a weapon - it will carry 1 Photon Cannon III so the reduction in weaponry count should increase its existing targeting power. Since the Normal Hulled ships has better quality weapon (mark III versus mark I) it should definitely also 'win' that combat but it should still be an interesting result.
The reduction in weapon count will both reduce accuracy issues and allow us to see in depth what a single hit does. Plus it stops me losing so much gear in test fights that will be expensive to replace.
On the battle report side you see your own attacks and the enemies and your items lost but will not be shown your enemies items damaged. This information is on the ship turn (if reported) but also in a separate battle report which lists all your ships and a battle summary at the end.
---------------------------------Battle Summary---------------------------------
NHS Furigeeto - Taka (#####) - Ship
Patrol Cruiser Class Heavy Cruiser [G] {Medium Armour}
Armour: 40.0 Scints: 20.0 Shields: 4683(48.1)
Hull Damage: 20.0%
Targeted by MRC Furigeeto - Okami (#####) - 1161 [2970] Damage
Attacking MRC Furigeeto - Okami (#####) - 3266 [9720] Damage
MRC Furigeeto - Okami (#####) - Ship
Broadsword Class Heavy Cruiser [G] {Heavy Armour}
Armour: 79.7 Scints: 20.0 Shields: 70(6.5)
Hull Damage: 24.0%
Targeted by NHS Furigeeto - Taka (#####) - 3266 [9720] Damage
Attacking NHS Furigeeto - Taka (#####) - 1161 [2970] Damage
One final note is that this sort of fine tweaking is only really done by players with very few warships. The big war fleets can have one player managing hundreds of the things and this leads to (usually) a big reliance on template identikit designs as there is not the time to individual design each ship. It also leads (I think) to less analysis of designs on reports as there is so much going on. One of the advantages to playing with less perhaps. Those players probably have a squadron of elite ships with their best officers that get individual attention and the rest follow the template pattern with a lot of 'refit to template' orders post battle,
The accuracy for the NH ship was just luck. The first three rounds, each gun had a 95% chance to hit. Round 4, each one hit 100% of the time.
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