Special Damage Types vs. Units

Blackadder · Space Emperor Joined: Jul 01, 2010 Location: Charleston WV

It's pretty well known that some special damage types can affect units in SEIV, and some can't. I don't think I've ever seen a systematic listing of these. I'm going to attempt one based on my own observations. Please chime in if you've noticed anything different from these!

Shields Only, Skips Normal Shields, Quad Damage To Shields, Skips All Shields, Double Damage To Shields, Half Damage To Shields, Quarter Damage To Shields: Yes for drones/fighters/sats, not sure about WP

Only Engines, Only Weapons, Plague Level 1, Plague Level 2, Plague Level 3, Plague Level 4, Plague Level 5, Only Planet Population, Only Planet Conditions, Only Resupply Depots, Only Spaceports, Only Shield Generators, Only Boarding Parties, Only Security Stations, Only Planet Destroyers, Skips Armor, Only Master Computers: No

Pushes Target, Pulls Target, Random Target Movement: Yes for drones/fighters/sats, no for WP

Skips Shields And Armor: Skips shields but not armor for drones/fighters/sats, not sure about WP

Increase Reload Time, Disrupt Reload Time, Crew Conversion: No? (Has anyone actually tried this?)

Please report any observations you have made! Smile

ekolis · Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2015 5:10 pm Post subject:

Oh, that's interesting - units actually have shields? I thought shield points just added to HP... Does shield regeneration work on units? What about emissive armor?

Blackadder · Space Emperor Joined: Jul 01, 2010 Location: Charleston WV

I don't know about shield regeneration, but shield draining and skipping definitely work on space units. I've had AI ships hit a stack of my heavy fighters with shield depleters and then cut them to pieces with PDC's. Mad

PPB's also wreak havoc on fighters in stock because they don't have phased shields available.

I'm not sure how the shields on WP's work. It may not be possible to skip those.

Perimal · Space Emperor Joined: Apr 13, 2011 Location: London

Blackadder · Space Emperor Joined: Jul 01, 2010 Location: Charleston WV

Hmmm... I know I've had the shields stripped off my fighters by shield depleters, and I know I've seen PPB's cut through shielded satellites like a hot knife through butter. I didn't realize the type of attacker (unit or ship) might possibly made a difference. I guess I'll have to set up some controlled tests of all the possible combinations of attackers and targets in those cases. Confused

We can all agree that attacks that only affect single components (e.g., engines) don't work on units, right?

Blackadder · Space Emperor Joined: Jul 01, 2010 Location: Charleston WV

I tested shield depleters (i.e., 'shields only' damage). Below is attacker type vs. target type:

Ship vs. Fighter: Yes
Fighter vs. Fighter: Yes
Drone vs. Fighter: Yes
Satellite vs. Fighter: Yes
Ship vs. Drone: Yes
Fighter vs. Drone: Yes
Drone vs. Drone: Yes
Satellite vs. Drone: Yes
Ship vs. Satellite: Yes
Fighter vs. Satellite: Yes
Drone vs. Satellite: Yes
Satellite vs. Satellite: Maybe? Difficult to test and rarely comes up in the game.

In all cases, the unit shield bar was visibly reduced by the depleter hits and subsequent damage greatly enhanced vs. a control test (for example, without shield depletion it took the ship 12 PDC hits to destroy a shielded drone - with depletion it took only one PDC hit).

Next up: phased polaron beams vs. units.

Skyburn · Space Emperor Joined: Mar 12, 2008

Fyron · Galactic Guru Joined: Aug 04, 2003 Location: CA, USA

Shields are treated as general HP in ground combat. There is no concept of component damage, regeneration, phasing, emissive effects, etc. All weapons do range 1 damage every round, regardless of fire rate or damage type. In stock, the absolute best troop weapons are shield depleters because they have such a high dmg/kt ratio.

ekolis · Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2015 5:06 pm Post subject:

Weapon platforms get double shields? Huh, that's interesting... Maybe they count once as shields for the planet, and once as HP for the platform?

ekolis · Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2015 5:07 pm Post subject:

I wonder if SGFD stacks on unit stacks in space combat... A stack of 100 fighters, each with 5 points of SGFD, would be quite dangerous if it did!

Blackadder · Space Emperor Joined: Jul 01, 2010 Location: Charleston WV

I tested all the possible combinations of attackers and targets to see if PPBs work versus unit shields. I did this by comparing a PPB to an APB doing the same damage at a given range. In all cases the PPB did destroy shielded units faster than a comparable APB. This included cases like fighter vs. fighter. It took a little over twice as many hits with the APB to inflict a casualty on a shielded target. One reason why it might not seem like (for example) fighter vs. fighter works is that the shielded fighters are still pretty tough. It still took 3 hits with a PPB-V to destroy one fighter (versus 7 hits with an APB doing similar damage). I believe that, as some people have theorized, shielded units may get extra hit points as well as shield points, and the PPB doesn't skip the extra hit points. But in a head to head comparison there was no doubt that the PPB destroyed shielded units faster than a weapon that doesn't skip normal shields. It just wasn't anything to write home about.

Conclusion: "Skips normal shields" does work on space units regardless of the attacker type. But it's not as effective as draining the shields and then letting PDC's clobber the unit.