Eeek, am I doomed?

[Possum]

No doubt the answer to this is somewhere within the hugely long "Tips & Tricks" thread, but...

The question concerns defensive to-hit modifiers in SEIV V1.94/v1.95

ECM III 60%
Stealth Armor III 15%
Scattering Armor III 15%

Do all three of those stack, for a total defensive to-hit bonus of 90%?

****edit****

Testing in the simulator seems to suggest that they do all three stack.

I use two Light Cruisers (CL).

CL Alpha
Sensors III
ECM III
PPB's

CL Zulu
Sensors III
ECM III
PPB's
Scattering Armor III
Stealth Armor III
Emissive Armor III

I fire up the Simulator, turn off Computer Control for Race 2, assign one cruiser to each side.

Hitting begin, I drive both cruisers to the middle of the map, and park them 2 squares apart.

Alpha's chance to hit Zulu is 43%

Zulu's chance to hit Alpha is 77%

Now, the difference is 34%. Clearly 30% is from the Scattering and Stealth armors.

Given that both races show "Average" for Aggressiveness and Defensiveness, where does the other 4% come from?

[capnq]

Possum said:
ECM III 60%
Stealth Armor III 15%
Scattering Armor III 15%

Do all three of those stack, for a total defensive to-hit bonus of 90%?

Yes, they do. But that doesn't necessarily mean you're doomed. There are a couple countermeasures you can use, depending on the situation.

1) The attack bonuses from combat sensors, ship and fleet experience stack the same way.

2) Missile weapons are unaffected by defense bonuses, if you can flood whatever point defenses the opponent has.

3) Fighters, Wave-Motion Guns, and another weapon that I'm blanking on also have attack bonuses.

[Possum]

hey, cappy

1) Yes, I have those. But so does he, I'm sure

2) Uhh, yeah, but I'm not a big fan of missiles in the mid to late game.

3) Point Defense gets a to-hit bonus as well. I didn't know about WMG's. Those are under High Intensity Weapons, no?

Oh, and can you offer some insight as to why he's bothering with the Emissive Armor? What am I missing about that?

[douglas]

The other 4% comes from racial and/or cultural bonuses. "Average" covers the whole range from 100% to 104%, plenty of room for a mere 4% difference to show up without changing the description to the next category. The difference could be as high as 8% without either race being non-"Average", or even higher if one of them has a higher cultural space combat bonus than the other.

Edit: It's "High-Energy Discharge Weapons" for the Wave Motion Gun. Incinerator Beams from the same tech area also have an accuracy bonus. Neither weapon's damage output is high enough to be worth it in most situations imo.

The High-Energy Magnifier also has a +30 to hit combined with better damage output than the WMG, but it's a crystalline racial tech weapon.

[Possum]

Thank you, Douglas.

Nice to hear from you again. What made you drop from our game?

[douglas]

I had some problems I'd rather not talk about in RL and let the game fall by the wayside when I really shouldn't have. I could come back to it now, but I see that Nivek is back already.

BTW, that Zulu light cruiser design looks suspiciously like what I had in major production before I stopped and I know I had the tech to start exploring your part of the galaxy at long last... Your opponent wouldn't happen to be Nivek's Romans, would it? If so, then yes he most definitely does have ship and fleet training if he knows enough to use the facilities I left him.

[douglas]

Possum said:Oh, and can you offer some insight as to why he's bothering with the Emissive Armor? What am I missing about that?

The in game description of emissive armor isn't quite accurate. Hits for 30 damage or less are indeed completely negated, but hits for more than 30 damage get reduced by 30 as well. It only works against shots that hit the hull, but when you're dealing with ship sizes that can't really spare the room for shields it's really nice when a 60 damage hit gets reduced to 30.

[Possum]

Ok, guys, thanks for the info.

Time for some frantic retrofitting.

Do you consider Shield Regenerators worth fitting to a BC/BB size ship?

[PvK]

Shield regenerators can be good if the enemy might use Boarding Parties...

Otherwise, I think they are generally too weak to be worth their tonnage in the unmodded game.

[Possum]

Speaking of that, what provision for boarding did your "Zulu" cruiser design have?