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.
| Laser/Armor | C | O | E | P |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| C | 100 | 60 | 60 | 45 |
| O | 100 | 50 | 100 | 55 |
| E | 110 | 125 | 50 | 75 |
| P | 100 | 100 | 125 | 100 |
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.