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Combat
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This document describes combat as implemented in PHost.
There are two types of combat in VGA Planets:
After movement is complete, ships which end up on the same position in space can engage in combat. Likewise, ships can attack planets (and their starbases) and vice versa.
The standard combat system in VGA Planets can resolve battles only using pairs of two units (i.e. two ships, or a ship and a planet): if you have multiple ships attacking a common enemy, they'll all fight that enemy one after the other. Your most important tactical utility is battle order, i.e. the order in which your ships fight. You can set that order using friendly codes. PHost implements a similar battle order system as HOST 3.20.
There are a number of fleet combat systems which resolve combat in a completely different way: all ships at once. Those are not part of PHost, and are not described here. There also are a few alternative 1:1 combat systems which basically behave similarily to PHost.
Here are some basic rules concerning who will fight. More details are below in the phase descriptions:
Once PHost has determined what units will fight at a particular place, it will sort the list according to battle order values. You can choose battle order values for your units by using (numeric) friendly codes.
When two units have the same battle order value, the one with the lower Id number fights first. When a ship and a planet with the same Id number and the same battle order value fight, the ship fights first.
Examples:
Friendly Code | Numeric Value | Rules |
---|---|---|
001 | 1 | (rule 1) |
010 | 10 | (rule 1) |
01a | 1000 | (rule 5) |
10b | 1000 | (rule 5) |
a10 | 1000 | (rule 5) |
oof | 1000 | (rule 5) |
5ia | 1000 | (rule 5) |
5o9 | 1000 | (rule 5, this is a lower-case letter "o" not the digit "zero") |
-13 | -13 | (rule 2) |
-09 | -9 | (rule 2) |
-a5 | 1000 | (rule 5) |
-3* | 1000 | (rule 5) |
33 | 33 | (rule 1, since PHost 4.0h; earlier PHost versions handle only friendly codes consisting of exactly three characters and would use rule 5 here) |
Combat consists of two major phases: Intercept Attack ("XA"), and the Aggressor/Opponent Phase, also known as "normal combat".
The intercept attack phase is only run when enabled in the configuration (AllowInterceptAttack). During intercept attack, ships which reach their intercept target attack their target. A ship must fulfill all of the following conditions to be considered for intercept attack:
The intercept target must satisfy these conditions so you can attack it:
Interceptors are processed in the correct Order of Battle. When two ships intercept the same target, the one with the lower battle order value attacks first.
(v3.4b:) In PHost 3.4a and below, as well as in HOST, intercept attack does not honor battle order. Instead, ships fight in order of decreasing interceptor Id.
Remember that Intercept Attack is only available for
cloak-capable ships. Most ships cannot do
Intercept Attack.
Most combat happens in the Aggressor/Opponent phase. During this phase, the following happens:
Battles are divided into battle ticks (sometimes rendered as seconds). During each tick, a certain series of events happens. The fight ends when a winner can be declared. Therefore, a battle tick is to a fight what a turn is to a game.
Ships start at a distance of 58000 meters.
Planets behave mostly identical to ships. They obviously cannot move in the last step, but are otherwise treated the very same way as ships.
The battle ends immediately if one of the following happens:
New v4.1a: When a fight does not progress, PHost will cancel it. This does generally not happen in regular games, but can happen when the combat configuration has suboptimal values. PHost will cancel a fight if StandoffDistance has been reached, but no unit has taken damage, fired torpedoes, or lost fighters for 5000 battle ticks. In this case, the fight ends as if both units ran out of ammo.
Combat is not deterministic. Weapon recharge is a probabilistic process, and weapons have a certain hit/miss ratio. Therefore, many fights have no predetermined outcome. Whereas HOST has just 110 possible outcomes, PHost has a theoretical set of 65536 outcomes.
If a ship ends the fight with 100% damage or more, it is destroyed, and the opponent is declared winner of the fight. This also applies to Lizard ships: although they can fight until they reach 150% damage, they cannot survive any further with more than 100% damage.
If a ship ends the fight without crew, the enemy can capture it. He will man the ship with an emergency crew of up to 10 crewmen (for simplicity, the capturing unit doesn't lose crew by doing that). The ship will become passive for further fights this turn. Unlike in HOST, planets can capture ships in PHost.
If a ship has lost shields, crew or ammunition, or got damaged in fight, it will carry over this damage to further fights this turn. Shields will be recharged for the next turn, but damage remains until you repair it. The first chance for repair is given after combat: ships can repair themselves using supplies (see Supply Repair).
If a planet ends the fight with 100% damage or more, it is captured. The fight will have destroyed all its offensive potential, so all the defense posts and the starbase will be destroyed. At the default configuration, all colonists will have been killed (see ColonistCombatSurvivalRate), and the planet will be manned with a single colonist.
Damage is handled a little different for planets compared to ships: whereas a 30% damaged Annihilation Class Cube with Mark 8 Tubes is still an Annihilation Class Cube with Mark 8 Tubes, the planet (and its starbase) will lose some of the defense posts making up its strength: if a planet with 50 defense posts gets 30% damaged, it will lose 30% of its defense, and begin the next turn with 35 defense posts. It will therefore start the next turn as an undamaged planet that happens to be weaker than the turn before. Put in other words: whereas ships keep their strength but accumulate damage, planets simply lose strength, but don't get permanent damage.
If a planet/base combo fires ammunition, it will first take the ammunition from starbase storage. The base will also receive damage and lose tech levels if too badly damaged.
See also: Combat results for ships, Combat results for planets.
Ground combat happens at the beginning of the turn, before movement, in the CargoDump stage of host processing. Ground combat happens whenever a ship unloads colonists onto a hostile planet.
Preconditions for Ground Combat:
In ground combat, attacking colonists will fight the planet's inhabitants. Depending on their strength, one party will survive. Whereas attackers have only their GroundKillFactor, defenders have GroundDefenseFactor as well as a bonus from their defense posts. See Ground Combat formulas for details. If all parameters are known, ground combat is 100% deterministic.
Effects of Ground Combat:
Imperial Assault is a special case of ground combat.
Last updated 20 September 2008.