[TC] Out Of Sector - Combat Mechanics

[Lea Flamma]

Martinez90 asked my in a priv about the OOS combat. So I decided to get it in the open, as I might not know everything about it, or might know something wrongly. So please commute and let's look into all the aspects of OOS combat.



So to start, there are two main types of combat. In Sector and Out Of Sector, further names IS and OOS. The first one occurs, when the fight takes place in the same sector the player is in. The second one happens in any sector other then the currently visited. So let's point out the main aspects of each type of combat.



IS:

- missiles can be shot down, run out of fuel or miss;
- bullets can miss or be dodged;
- ship's size and shape are one of the factors;
- stearing and speed are taken into consideration;
- placement of turrets will influence the ship's damage output;



OOS:

- missiles will always hit, they can't be shot down, miss or run out of fuel;
- you can miss or dodge bullets;
- ship's size and shape do not influence the combat;
- speed determines the ability to chase enemies;
- stearing is irrelevant;
- weapons in turrets are added to the main batteries and shoot at the same target;
- ship fires a set ammount of bullets;
- ship can have one target per round;



The biggest diference between OOS and IS is that the former takes place in rounds. There are two diferent intervals, depending if the player is watching it on the sector map or not.


To understand it better, let's consider an example. Two ships, let it be Argon heavy Centaur Prototype and Terran Vidar, face each other and are ready to fire. Let's see how the ships compare to each other.


Argon:
- has 800 MJ of Shielding and 67k of Hull;
- Shield reacharge is at 2900 MW;
- it has 6 Main guns and 6 Turret Guns, which makes of 12 total;
- is fully equpied with CIGs;


Terran:
- has 1000 MJ of Shielding and 65,6k of Hull;
- Shield recharge is at 3800 MW;
- it has 10 Main guns and 4 Turret guns, which makes of 14 total;
- is fully equiped with EMPCs;


Speed of both ships is not important as they are facing each other and closing in. Who will attack first is determined by orders each ship has. And "Defend (...)" will cause the ship to return fire rather then shoot first. Stearing is not important as the ships can't dodge.


So how will the combat proceed:


1. Ship A will decide if to shoot weapons or fire a missile (if it has one and it's fire missile % is higher then 0)

2. Ship A will fire all it's weapons, both the main and turret at one target (unless his turrets are set to any "Defend (...)" command, then they will return fire in third round) OR fire one missile (unless it's an M7M and was ordered to use "Missile barrage")

3. Ship B will take damage equal to a set ammount of bullets fired from the equiped weapons of Ship A

4. Ship B will decide if to shoot weapons or fire a missile

5. everything loops untill one ship is destroyed



Worth noting is that a ship can fire a missile or shoot guns. Never can do both of those things in the same round.


Worth noting is, that a ship can have one target per round. Even if it overkills a ship, which means it can deal 500k damage, but need only 60k to kill, it will not change targets untill the next raound.


Worth noting is that there are two types of damage a weapon does. DPS which occurs in IS combat and DPB which occurs in OOS combat. The first one is displayed in your in-game Pedia. The second one can be calculated easily. Take the numbers for each shield and hull damage. multiply by 60 and divide by the rate of fire. Now you have the Damage Per Bullet of a weapon for each shield and hull. In OOS there is a set ammount of bullets fired, that's why Rate of Fire is irrelevant here.

In our example, let's consider the Vidar shoots first. Let's assume he shoots 10 bullets from each weapon. It has 14 EMPCs equiped.

Shield: 2000 x 14 x 10 = 280000
Hull: 800 x 14 x 10 = 112000

It means in the first round the Vidar will deal 280000 damage to Centaur's shields. Then the Centaur shoots back.

Shield: 7845 * 12 * 10 = 914400
Hull: 2615 * 12 * 10 = 313800

It means the Centaur will deal 914400 damage to Vidar's shields. And then it will repeat untill one of the ship runs out of hull points.



What I would like to ask of the community is to fill the gaps. For example, I do not know how the shield regeneration works. If it's after each round or after each round the ship is not attacked in. Also please fill in the missing time leanght of each round for watched OOS and non-watched OOS. Also, if you happen to know how many bullets are fired per round of OOS, please post this info too, if it diferes between watched and non-watched.

[Lea Flamma]

Thanks to Nanook for telling about dodges and misses in OOS.
I did some research on missiles and so far all hit the target. Might be the RNG playing tricks on me. Need further insight.

[hisazul]

General command supersedes turret command. So if your ship has attack all enemies command and turret has missile defense it will shoot first. Don't remember anyone ever providing any sort of prove that it works differently OOS.

Its too hard to tell if shield generator is included in each round because in general OOS combat ends fast. Considering shields regen OOS and everything OOS is round based I would imagine it works.

Also if you going to talk about OOS combat, first thing that should be mentioned is that its all point blank before even mentioning that it is round based No models no range its all math.

[Nanook]

....
OOS:

- missiles will always hit, they can't be shot down, miss or run out of fuel;
- all bullets hit the target, no misses or dodges;...

From what I've observed, these two statements are not quite accurate. When watching OOS combat, I've observed differing levels of damage in subsequent combat rounds between two ships. This implies that the RNG determines the level of damage inflicted each round, somewhere between none and the maximum amount of firepower of the firing ship, simulating 'hits' and 'misses'.