So, say I'm attacking a planet with <12.2M shields and I've got 12.9M beams in the attack preview. The planet has very low beam levels (381k beams) and it's out of fighters and torps.

I have enough energy to power my beam and shield at full strength. Why is it that, during the beam exchange portion of the attack, the planet's shields are only hit for, say, 5M damage?

Okay, fine. Here's my understanding.

60% of ship energy goes to powering beams. If this is less than beam level allows, then beams are limited to that. (The other 40% powers shields.)

Beam capacity (or for that matter, cargo at a given hull tech level) is 1.04138^techlevel * 10
Energy cap is 1.04138^powerlevel * 50

5% of beam goes to destroying planetary fighters, 5% to planetary torps. 90% goes against planetary shields. Each beam unit does 2000 hit points of damage. Each shield level takes 3500 levels of damage. Some of this damage is randomized (beam overloads, etc).

There seems to be another factor that I'm not making sense of. Long story short, my empirical tests seem to yield that a given amount of beam capacity (taken from the attack preview or the formula above) destroys 0.375 times as many planetary shield points (give or take, based on random attack success).


Why this number differs so wildly from my reading of the code and forum posts, I don't know.

The problem is, even though you are destroying planetary shield points, as long as the planet has energy, you will never penetrate the shields.

Break out your nova. Far cheaper to nova the planet down levels than it is to buy the ship that will bust it.

I'd still like to know what I'm missing in the attack calculations, just so I know what's going on. Also so I know what level planet I can take with a certain level ship.

And Tarnus, that response didn't make sense. If a ship has massive beams and a planet has really really low shields, you can take the planet no matter how high the energy is.

Val go back and read what I responded to.

Are you saying that the shields regenerate while they're under attack, and this leads to the difference in theory and experiment? Your use of the word never doesn't seem correct is all I'm saying.

Most planets store far more energy than their shields will use when attacked. If you attack a planet and drain all of the energy that is CURRENTLY allocated to the shields it will be replenished from the planets storage for any new attacks.

See val? THATS what I was saying

Well I knew that. But it still doesn't answer Nomic's question.

There is a planet_shield_multiplier that increases the usage of energy by a planet by a factor of 10. A planet will use 10 times the normal amount of energy to protect itself.

I've been saying for well over a year now, that the energy used does not get subtracted from the planets total, only a third does (give or take).

For example you scan a planet and it has 10M energy.
In one attack you see that the planet used 1M to defend itself.
You would expect the planet total to be at 9, but it's not. It's around 9.7.

Hola AK, PJ redid the code for .31 so it maybe different now. I know I have done some testing and it appears to work fine for me.