Damage Calculation

[TechSY730]

How is actual shot damage determined, especially how the armor value effects the final result?
I couldn't find this anywhere on the wiki. (Speaking of which, there is a conspicuous lack of a link to the wiki on the home page)

[x4000]

The wiki is linked from in the AI War subsections of the site, I'm pretty sure.  And obviously the forums and from within the game itself.

In terms of shot damage, it's just the damage that the ship does, times the hull type multiplier of the target, times any bonuses from munitions boosters, minus whatever armor the target has (including the armor boosting in that).  There is also a minimum percentage of base damage that the incoming damage can't drop below, but I don't remember what exactly that is -- I think it's 5%, though.  There are also some other ships that use special logic for applying damage, like the implosion stuff for example, but those are unusual cases.  And those just replace the "damage that the ship does" in the calculation written out above.

[TechSY730]

Thanks. I figured it was probably something simple, but lots of game insist on trying to put silly coefficients, powers, roots, rational expressions, and sometimes even randomness into their basic damage formula. (See Pokemon for a particularly egregious example of such overcomplicated formulas) Just wanted to know if you did any such "mathamagic" with your formulas; thankfully, you decided to keep it simple.

[Ranakastrasz]

Thanks. I figured it was probably something simple, but lots of game insist on trying to put silly coefficients, powers, roots, rational expressions, and sometimes even randomness into their basic damage formula. (See Pokemon for a particularly egregious example of such overcomplicated formulas) Just wanted to know if you did any such "mathamagic" with your formulas; thankfully, you decided to keep it simple.

The nice thing about the lack of complexity, which is part of the reason in the design, is so you can quickly and easily get a general idea of how groups of ships would fare against each other.
This section has some of the reasoning behind this concept, http://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War_-_Lack_Of_Ship_Upgrades
A more complex damage system would make it harder to figure out, and is not really nessisary for the game to work.

I thought the damage bottom was 20%, but that may be just for armor.

[x4000]

Yeah, we used to have a really complex hit percent chance calculation, though, prior to 4.0.   That had all the jiggering in it, so it was easy to leave damage calculations simpler.  Then when we redid the range stuff so that "if you're in range, you can hit it for sure," then that added in the armor and thus made the damage calculations a bit more complex, but still pretty simple.

[FarAway Warrior]

One tiny qualifier to the explanation above, just so it's crystal clear:  Before deducting Armor, you deduct the "Amor Piercing" score from the armor rating (but never below 0).  Lightning Turrets do a better job with thick armor!