Pardus/Fighting

Fighting is a major part of the game. It will affect almost everything, from stocking buildings to running FWE to traveling. At this first section, we'll dissect the parts of a ship that affects its ability to fight.

Ship layout
Before you start equipping your ship to fight, you'll need to know some information about it all and for choosing what ship you want as well as equipment. We'll be using the mercury, a low level fighter/ranker/exp-er for an example.

Armor
The armor will absorb almost all of the damage you take in combat. The amount of armor you will have is your ship's armor statistics*the strength of your armor. the mercury has 390 armor. If you put on a *6 ebidium armor on it, you'd have respectedly 2340 armor points. The class of armor you use will affect the damage you take as well. If you use organic (org) armor, you'll take less damage from conventional (conv), electromagnetic (e-mag), and pardus weapons while taking more damage from electromagnetic weapons. In general, pardus armor is the best, with no weaknesses, organic and electromagnetic are second, with one weakness each, and conventional is the worst with 100% efficiency or more to all weapons. Their prices are respective of their quality however, so it's hard to get the best stuff. This table will show the effects of armors versus different weapons.

Hull
The hull basically is like armor, but it's working right outside the box and you can't upgrade it. Trading ships generally have high hull, to provide protection but not giving the owner the ability to try and make it into a trading ship. The marauder has 210 hull, meaning once the shield and armor is gone you have to inflict that much damage before the ship is destroyed.

Size
The size of your ship won't make much difference for anything except missiles and cloaking, and lasers to a minuscule extent. The larger your ship is, the more likely a missile fired by an opponent will hit you and the lower the chance to cloak successfully is.

Cargo capacity
Cargo capacity is how much cargo and equipment it can carry. Although it seems that it's only important for people looking to trade, it's just as important for people looking to fight as well. It will limit the amount of equipment you can carry which will restrict you from using the best weapons that weigh more. Most conventional guns have a light-weight (LW) version that costs substantionally more, but weighs less. Use this to plan out your equipment for your ship carefully.

Missile mounts
The missile mount is the number of missiles you can arm on your ship. Many trade class ships have many of these but are rarely used for fighting. Missiles are almost never used in fighting an NPC, but are almost always used in fighting another opponent. Missiles will deal most of the damage in PvP combat, so it's important that you arm your ship with fleet missiles before fighting someone else.

Gun mounts
Gun mounts are the number of guns that you can equip on your ship. These will fire every turn, and can fire 1-3 salvos depending on what weapon it is. Like armour, it's effifency depends on the armor that you fire against and what gun you have.

Trade Class Points
Although these have very little effect on fighting, these can make a difference on people's decisions on ships for players that have played over 1,000,000 AP. You will gain a miniscule amount of ATP (Advanced trade points) everyday for each trade class your ship has. These are used to train advanced skills that can help your playing significantly.

Choosing equipment and ship
Now, if you're a new player, chances are you aren't going to need to plan much about your ship other than slapping a gun, some armor, and a shield on, but for more experienced players looking to fight big beasties, you'll need to carefully choose your ship and layout. This is a ship calculator, which will provide an interactive layout for you to choose your ship, choose equipment, and then generate the damage, price, and free space availible. For the sharing of ship designs, click on the export button and copy the text it shows. Then, to see somebody elses, have them give you the text and then click import and copy it in the box. For example;

It makes sharing ship designs easy and efficient. Now, we'll take a look at your options for your different ship parts and show the advantages and disadvantages.

Ship
Your ship is a very important part of your fighting experience, but less so if you're new to the game and in a sabre or such. However, check and ask about ships when choosing one for your fighting set up. Consider all of the parts above, and get a good layout for your ship in the Ship calculator before getting it. As a rule, high armor, low size, and a lot of guns and missiles mount will classify something as a fighter. Just because a extender has over 8 missiles doesn't make it a good fighter. It's too big, has almost nil armor, and only two guns. On the other hand, there are so called "battleships". These ships are normally high in missile slots, about 4-5 gun mounts, medium armor, large cargo, and large size. These are often used in ambushes and heavy combat such as MO combat or ambushing.