Some testing results: Fighters, Bombardment

[Markus_Ramikin]

Fighters

 

Last time we played, Enterprise and I couldn't agree about which attribute is important for a fleet Commander to enhance the fighters. Enterprise insisted it was Combat, I believed Leadership.

 

We chose to handle our differences like men. Namely, we sat down and tested. I was Rebellion, he was Empire, we made two planets close to each other into shipyards and made them churn out fighters for tests. First we tested fighters without commanders, to see where the balance lies. It seems 4 carriers full of X-wings can almost, but not quite, stand up to 30 Tie Fighters. Weird, I'd have thought 24 X-W would rip the 30 T-F a new one, but I guess this isn't the X-Wing/Tie Fighter games. So, testing results for X-W vs T-F, with no Commander on the imperial side:

 

24 X-W, 30 T-F

 

No Commander: all X-W destroyed, 6 surviving T-F

Commander Calrissian: all X-W destroyed, 5 surviving T-F

Commander Solo: all X-W destroyed, 7 surviving T-F

 

Commentary: While a fleet Commander may enhance speed and reaction time of fighters, he seems to have no real influence on their fighting power. The differences in results are negligible and accidental, probably depending on which group of fighters shot first and things like that. Clearly, Han didn't shoot first in this one

 

Next, we compared by substituting A-wings for X-wings just to see how they do in dogfighting.

 

24 A-W, 30 T-F

No commander: 11 surviving A-W, all T-F destroyed

 

Commentary: This is fairly understandable. Evidently these are the Rebellion's dogfighting specialists, they lose all the other applications - no torpedoes, no bombardment value - and yet retain the same cost in resource and maintenance, so they must be better at something.

 

24 B-Wings - lost horribly to the T-F, I didnt't record numbers. Most T-F survived. No surprise of course, I was just curious since we had the testing conditions set up nicely already, so might as well confirm...

 

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Bombardment

 

The other thing I wanted to report is my own tests on bombardment values. I'm sharing because I've seen a lot of misguided stuff on the internet, including the GameFAQs guides.

 

I tested mostly against a single type 1 shield, 40 shield strength, but I did a few spot checks on other configurations just to make sure my results can be extrapolated. No anomalies were found. So, here we go.

 

Both the bombardment value (from fighters) and bombardment modifier (from ships) are the same thing. You just add them up, and for my purpose I just call the sum Bombardment. Your total Bombardment from all ships and fighters in a given fleet tells you if a given shield can be broken through by that fleet. Despite what one of the FAQs tells you, turbolaser values add nothing to bombardment. Only the modifier counts.

 

For instance a 40 strength shield will hold up against 40 X-Wing squadrons. Or 30 X-w and 5 Mon Calamaari (2 Bombardment each). The shield will always hold up against that, no matter how many times you try.

 

With a Bombardment of 41, your fleet has a chance to break through though it may take a few attempts. 43+ and you're pretty much guaranteed to destroy something.

 

The influence of Admirals depends on their Leadership. It's very straightforward. Tested against a 40 strength shield:

 

No admiral: need over 40 bombardment

Admiral with 71 Leadership (Luke Skywalker) : 2x power, need over 20 bombardment (1/2)

Admiral with 80-107 Leadership (typical Rebel Admirals): 3x power, need over 13 bombardment (1/3)

Admiral with 120-150 Leadership (Imperial Admirals with Emperor on Coruscant): 4x power, need over 10 bombardment (1/4)

Admiral with 166 Leadership (Vader after lots of Recruitment missions): 5x power, need over 8 bombardment. (1/5)

 

The ranges aren't comprehensive but I am telling you the hard data I tested for. As to the exact thresholds, your guess is about as good as mine.

 

Also, it seems that the presence of a General on the defending planet puts this back at least 1 notch, so a 3x Admiral will need at least a bombardment power of 1/2 rather than 1/3 of the nominal shield strength if facing a general. I don't know the exact influence of a defending General and how it depends on the General's leadership or other stats, didn't test that much.

 

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Well that's it for now. Hope it's useful or at least interesting to someone.

[Slocket]

Yes it is. I was also wondering about the effect of shields have on fighters. It seems the chance to land a hit is influenced by agility?

 

I was trying to mess around with setting rebel shields to zero and compare that with normal using RebEd. Plus, do the shields regenerate while dogfighting?

 

This is good information for the game mechanics thread. Plus your right about the bombardment values. Turbolaser mean nothing. Plus the planetary shields do not wear out over time, pretting much a threshold effect to overcome them. Practically all or nothing to get damage through.

[Markus_Ramikin]

Yes it is. I was also wondering about the effect of shields have on fighters.

Doesn't seem to be much of an effect, at least vs fighters. Nor does laser attack strength seem to mean anything. B-wings are nominally more heavily shielded than X-wings and A-wings, and have greater Attack Strength than A-wings. And yet they lose so horribly compared to them. X-wings have the same shields and more Attack Strength than A-wings, yet they fight worse.

 

Perhaps in small enough numbers that the swarm effect wouldn't effectively make the shield not matter this would be noticeable, but who ever flies fleets with single starfighters? Also, turbolasers are supposedly crap vs fighters, maybe shields can absorb a single turbo shot.

 

It seems the chance to land a hit is influenced by agility?

You mean maneuverability? Possibly. Although it may be hits always land, but highly maneuverable craft fire them more often. I'm sure I was seeing more frequent shots from A-wings than anything else. And B-wings were only firing once every two geological eras or so

 

Which would make the in-game encyclopaedia misleading to say the least. As it only lists those useless shield and attack strength values, but doesn't list the important one.

 

I was trying to mess around with setting rebel shields to zero and compare that with normal using RebEd.

So what did you discover?

 

Plus, do the shields regenerate while dogfighting?

Haven't tested, but I vaguely remember some battles where there were only fighters and an enemy capital ship and I didn't lose a single fighter - I mean I didn't even get a damaged squadron. However, this is only from memory. If i"m right thought, it would be either due to infrequent and target-changing turbolasers only managing to take out a shield each time which regenerates by the time it targets the same exact fighter. Or it could be due to the turbolaser missing its few shots, I don't know if that happens.

 

This is good information for the game mechanics thread.

Thanks. Feel free to add a link then. I saw that it's "for programmers" and it mostly consisted of cracking attempts so I am staying away, not qualified.

[Slocket]

Here are some results from testing I did about year and half ago. How does this data compare??

 

The attack strength does seem to matter...confusing.

 

Do Rebel Fighter Shields Regenerate during Battle??

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4205

 

I need to try out some testing on this subject. Using RebEd and placing in very high values, or setting some to zero and try to understand what is going on.

 

Or toss it out the window, and use a new game mechanic rules instead for the remake.

[Markus_Ramikin]

Yeah, actually shields and lasers do matter somewhat. Just not as much as one would expect. I've got more data so will post again soon, as soon as I get organised and find a moment to look through it.

[Doje]

2Markus_Ramikin,Slocket

 

Liedership bonus when bombarding a system is counted on the basis of 40:

Liedership 0-39 = x1,

40-79 = x2,

80-119 = x3,

120-159 = x4, and so on.

When bombarding a system its admiral's bonus which is vital for ships and fighters alike, commander adds nothing.

 

A long time ogo I experimented a lot with bombarding, LNR and KDY fire on ships, their target aquisition algorythms, attack versus defence strength of troops, Liedership bonus of admirals and generals and where it applies, TL and laser values against hulls and shields and other Rebellion mathematics. Got some useful results. If someone shows interest, I'll share it here. Won't post it otherwise as all data is originally in Russian.

 

ps. from here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4205

TIE has attack of 5 and 0 shield. XWing has attack of 8 with 5 shield. One hit from a full TIE squadron did nothing, 5-5 =0 (Shield absorbed and depleted). Second hit takes out full 5 fighters leaving 12-5= 7 XWing left in Squadron??

Reverse, full Xwing squad hits TIE for full 8 leaving only 4 left in Squadron on first hit. Second hit is zero left.

..............

A single X-wing squadron only killes 2 tie fighters on a single hit

Perhaps because TL, lasers and ions only do exactly 1/3.75 damage of their nominal value. Dunno why, but thats the case according to my computings. 8/3.75=2.133

[Markus_Ramikin]

Yeah that makes a lot of sense, with the thresholds being multiples of 40. Now that I think of it, I could have tested for this exactly, but back when I was doing this I wasn't really into RebEd. Thanks!

 

The fighters/shields stuff is interesting, too. However, but in my experience, when the fleets get big enough, it all stops mattering really, and the only truly important thing becomes maneuverability. I think this is because once a fighter group is big enough to kill an enemy squadron in one shot every time, any extra firepower is wasted in that round. So the group's effective damage-per-second depends only on how fast it can switch to a new target and fire again.

 

Which makes the Tie-Interceptor a surprisingly dominating fighter at a cost of 3 Material and 3 Maintenance. Make the opposing groups big enough and the T/I is going to win against the costlier fighters against which it normally loses in small numbers.

[Slocket]

I think your correct about that. For the maintenance/production cost, it also seems to me that in large numbers the TIE Interceptors did better than the TIE Defenders against anything the Alliance would throw at them. It would seem that the attack rating / maneuverability is very important.

 

Though nominally 'mano y mano' the TIE Defender will beat a TIE Interceptor.