Weapons & Defense

{{SectionTemplate |h=h2 |title=Weapons |content=From the lowly Star Cannon to the Nightmare Torpedoes, weapons are the tools of the navy. The currently available weapon types are Kinetics, Beams, and Missiles. Each one has its own strengths and weaknesses. Here is a quick summary of their differences.

• Kinetics: Short range, High Cost, Fast Cooldown, Medium Accuracy
• Beams: Mid range, Low Cost, Medium Cooldown, High Accuracy
• Missiles: Long Range, Long Cooldown, Medium Cost, Low Accuracy

Weapon Stats Accuracy – chance to hit the target. Attack Power – combined total of attack values of all the weapons of a given category. Each category of weapon can only fire once. Cooldown – each phase the cooldown of each weapon is reduced by one. Once the cooldown is completed the weapon is ready and will fire. Once fired the cooldown will be reset. Range – maximum weapon range. If the ship’s target is within this range it will fire.

In any given phase, the combined attack rating of all of a ship’s weapons of a given type will fire one time. It doesn’t matter how many weapon hardpoints the ship is equipped with and what variant of the weapon types are being used.

Example: A ship equipped with 2 x lasers (1 damage each) combine (1 + 1 = 2) for an attack roll between 1 to 2 damage. A ship with 1 x laser (1 damage) and 1 x particle beam ( 2 damage) combine (1 + 2 = 3) for an attack roll between 1 to 3 damage.

Weapon Tips Remember, ships can only fire once per weapon type. You do not need to create some designs with all resource based weapons and other designs with no resource based weapons. Adding an enhanced railgun or 2 can give your ships a little extra punch while keeping their strategic resource cost low. All the late game weapons require resources but you can outfit the ship with the previous tier weapons to balance resources verses attack power. Weapons will improve over time through research, even without upgrading the variant used.

Defenses

In Galactic Civilizations 3, defenses worked like a rock paper scissors system. This has been scrapped in favor of a system one can interpret from watching a show like Star Trek. When an attack comes in, the defender can dodge it, absorb it with their shields, or mitigate some of the damage with their armor. Any remaining damage is applied to the hull. When the player runs out of hull points the ships are destroyed.

Evasion is the chance to avoid the attack entirely. It represents all the jinking and electronic counter measures of the ship. Also, fighters and bombers are very small and maneuverable, so they have a +50% bonus to their evasion rating. If the attack is evaded, no damage is applied and it's noted in the Evaded column of the battle log. Some ways of increasing evasion are weapon jammers, precursor artifacts, and events.

Shields are like a shell around the ship, think Star Trek. They always start fully recharged at the beginning of combat. As long as the ship has shield remaining the ship does not take any damage. It’s costly and very limited but it’s damage you do not have to repair after combat. This can be increased by shield modules, artifacts, and techs.

Armor deflects all or some of the incoming damage. This can be the plating on ships or the tough hides of organic beings. Armor can stack very high, but a bad roll can spell doom for your ship. After each attack, armor is reduced by 5%.

Hull Points (HP) once this depletes the ship is destroyed. At the end of the turn each ship will regain a few hit points. Most ships do not fight long when their defenses drop.

Defense Tips Shields and armor repair after combat. Consider putting at least a couple shield modules on your ships. This will prevent having to repair light damage after combat. This is important for attacking multiple fleets in a turn and overall efficiency. Armor will generally mitigate more damage than shields, but will get wiped out quickly to a swarm of cheap fighters. Shields will hold up until they are depleted but can easily be wiped out by a large damage roll. Generally your ships will be more well rounded by having some of each. Some defense is better than no defense. Glass Cannons typically do not work. Typically ships with 33%, 50% or 66% of their mass devoted to defenses work well. The actual values you choose are going to entirely depend on your fleet composition. I generally stick to 50%. If I find I'm loosing a lot of ships of one role I increase their defenses to 66%. If I feel one role is safe I reduce their defenses to 33%. You may find this approach best so avoid memorizing complex layouts. You can also roleplay this and say the Klingons have 2/3 offense to 1/3 defense. The federation ships have 2/3 defense to 1/3 offense.