Hull

Hull can be thought of as the structural integrity of all ships and fighters, or simply as their "HP bar". When it reaches zero the ship is disabled or destroyed. Even if it's not, taking hull damage can cause crew losses.

Normally, hull is protected by armor. An impact by weapons fire, another ship or other object, or an explosion from a disabled/destroyed ship, will reduce armor HP in the area of impact after damage reduction from Armor Rating is factored in (the higher the Armor Rating is relative to the damage from an individual impact/shot, the greater the damage reduction, which maxes out at 90% with the Polarized Armor skill and at 85% without it). Once the armor is completely destroyed, the hull will be exposed to damage, with all the Damage Types consequences that entails.

Residual Armor

Ships and fighters always retain 5% of their maximum armor, even after it's been completely stripped, which can significantly decrease performance of weapons(especially fragmentation damage weapons, as they suffer the harshest penalties against armor) against their hull. "Pure" hull with no armor generally only exists on missiles and torpedoes.

The damage formula against ship/fighter hull is as follows:

armor_damage_reduction = weapon_damage / (weapon_damage + armor)
damage_to_hull = armor_damage_reduction x weapon_damage

Where weapon_damage is affected by Damage Types; crucially, note that there are two damage types at play here: against armor in the first equation, and against hull in the second.

For example, a Locust SRM Launcher(200 damage fragmentation missiles) volley against an "armor-less" Enforcer(base armor rating of 900, now 45):

armor_damage_reduction = 50 / (50 + 45) = 0.52
damage_to_hull = 0.52 x 200 = 105.2

...multiplied by hovewer many missiles hit the Enforcer, up to 4,210 damage for all 40.

Change History

0.8a

• Armor value for damage reduction no longer goes below 5% of base armor value