Attack vs Defense is the primary damage calculation. A ship's size determines the maximum amount of damage that can be done in a single shot.

Shields and Hull indicate how much damage your ship can take before it is disabled, but they have no effect on how damage is calculated. These are just 2 types of 'Hit Points'.

Thanks Dan, always great that you are lurking and enlightening. So how much does pure defense play into it? If player A has a defense of ___ and is attacked by player B who has an attack of ____ the damage done is ____

And how exactly do decks figure into that? I understand that the more decks you have, the more damage, how does that work though? For example if player A has 250 decks more than player B is the damage multiplied by 2.5?

Put more simplly, Dan said that decks determine the damage cap, not more damage.

I understand that but what does determines damage? Even with decks figured in attack power - defense power doesn't equal the amount of damage actually taken.

Anyone can tell what doesn't make a difference. Scientist do not determine the amount of damage. Engineers do not determine the amount of damage. Engines do not determine the amount of damage. Cargo holds do not determine the amount of damage. Lots of things do not determine damage.

My original question was and still is, what EXACTLY determines the damage done between Ship A and Ship B.

I don't know the equation, but it's Attack vs. Defense, with max damage reduced by the amount of decks. So, if you have 300 attack vs his 100 defense, you might do around 30 damage. If he's got very few decks, the damage will be cut off, down to maybe 15.

if you fight the npcs which show stats, you will quickly be able to estimate damage.

The damage "cap" seems more like a ratio since I don't really hit the same number over and over. Like...

(your attack - their defense)*(their decks/your decks)= damage per round

Probably nothing like that, but it seems somewhat close. You would be hitting 1 damage on someone if they were turtled up most of the time and I haven't really seen that happen.

I'm pretty sure that there's a random component (a die roll of some sort) in the Attack vs. Defense part of the equation. I think the cap is a flat limiter ie. with this many decks, you can't take more than 30 damage.

I've battled some Zolazin NPCs that I never did more than x amount of damage to (I believe 25?), and I think that was because of the damage cap. They were only level 15 vs. my then level of 59. So, I was doing WAY more damge than 25 but 25 was the max. With a smaller ship, they might occasionally hit the cap of 25, but they may also do only 20.

Once the shield recharge problem is fixed I will battle a bunch of NPCs and post the stats so someone with more math skills can figure it out. Right now its just to costly to do any experimentation.