About damaging components

[bbq]

Lets say a ship takes 100 points of damage from a SINGLE hit. The game decides that the ECM III (10 damage resistance) is hit, naturally the ECM III is destroyed, but what happens to the other 90 points? Does it go to the next component and the next until all 90 points are spent, or can a single attack only damage one component at a time?

Thanks.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Any left-over damage carries over to the next shot.

[Fyron]

For normal damage, yes. But for special damage types (Only Component X), it is all or nothing. Any built up partial damage is converted to that type before it is applied.

[Alneyan]

To answer your specific question Bbq, a given shot will target components based on their relative hitpoints, where smaller components (ie with fewer hitpoints) are less likely to be hit than bigger components. The exception is for armour, where smaller pieces are more likely to be destroyed first; an Armour III (50kt) will usually be destroyed before a Scattering Armour III (150kt).

So, if your damage has been applied to the ECM device, and there remain 90 points of damage, another component will be selected, and destroyed if possible. If you still have some damage points, they will go to yet another component, until the selected component cannot be destroyed. Once you reach this point, the damage left will be "partial damage", and will be added to the damage of your next hit on this ship. Note that this partial damage is not located in a specific component, as components are either destroyed or intact.

I do not know if 40 partial damage would add to, say, a shot from an Ionic Disperser; "Only Component" weapons do not deal partial damage, but do they use up partial damage, when there is some still present on the ship? It would probably not matter, save for the sake of completiveness, but...

[Fyron]

I do not know if 40 partial damage would add to, say, a shot from an Ionic Disperser; "Only Component" weapons do not deal partial damage, but do they use up partial damage, when there is some still present on the ship? It would probably not matter, save for the sake of completiveness, but...

As per my previous posting, yes. All partial damage is always added to the incoming shot, and takes the damage type of said shot. For normal weapons fire, this doesn't really matter. For special damage, it does. It means that the ionic disperser will likely waste any saved partial damage, as it will all become Only Engines type, for which no partial damage is saved. This is also the feature that makes Crystalline Armor capable of being really powerful. As long as an entire CA component is not damaged, all of the partial damage will be added to the next shot and have to go through the shield layer again. This can allow for semi-invincible ships, assuming that the enemy has no shield depleters/disruptors and no weapons capable of destroying a CA component in a single shot...

[AMF]

Here's a strange question that I wasn't sure what thread to post it in, so this one seemed closer than any...:

You know in the empire wide build queue window, how you can choose to show "planets" "Ship SY" and "Planet SY"? Well, at the top of that list you can also choose just plain old "Ships" - but I have never figured out under what situations you might need that. Are there ship components that can build things that aren't spaceyards?

I feel stupid asking but...what the heck is that button for? Anybody use it?

Thanks,

Alarik

[Alneyan]

This button serves an important purpose for SEIV: it is to avoid having only three such buttons, since "three" is an unlucky number for 4X games.

So it has indeed no purpose whatsoever, and is only nice if you want one more green dot in your Construction Queues window . After all, it might be useful if you use it to keep in mind you have to recall *something*.