I just found out that in a battle, there is a limit to the amount of damage someone can receive in one attack. An example


My stats (at the time)
Attack: 1521 / Defense: 1169
Damage I received - 49

His Stats:
Attack: 300+ / Defense: 0
Damage he received - 69

Weapons Heavy Graviton Shearer x2, Heavy Laser Cannon
Energy Omicron Injector
Sensors none
Hull Hardened Durtanium Plating x4
Shields none
Cloaking Zolazin Jammer
Defenses none

He attacked me and when I retaliated even though I have 5x his stats (and he has no defensive parts at all) I only did 1.5x the damage. Why? Because evidently there is some stupid rule that you can't do to much damage to a ship in one attack.

How does that make any sense? If anything one attack should completely blow him out of the sky. If a torpedo hits a rowboat what happens? If a missile hits a cessna what happens? If you use a shotgun to hunt chipmunks what happens? No one says "OH, your guns are to big so we aren't going to calculate the real damage."

Dan, I am really hoping their is some logical reason for this nonsense.

As has been said many times, there is a damage ceiling based on ship size. I encourage you to also read the latest updates here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=913

If you want a 'sensible' explanation, you can consider that smaller ships are more agile and can escape enemy fire more easily than a large behemoth of a vessel.

I read that update but I didn't realize how badly things were biased to smaller players until the example I gave above.

The part about smaller ships being more agile simply doesn't hold true. It doesn't matter how agile you are, if you get hit you get hit. If I shoot a track star with a bullet, no one says you only quarter killed him because he is faster and more agile than you.

Attacks should be figured on the full value of the weapon against the full value of the defense. Based on recent battles someone with about 600 attack and defense and a size of less than 600 spaces will deal almost as much damage as I do to him because he is to little. The current system makes it pointless to invest in better weapons because there is a limit on the damage to be done no matter how powerful the attacker is.

The question is more of how well will you hit the track star. Because if an enemy dosnt move you can just hit them perfectly square on, if they are moving however chances are your not going to get a headshot. This is infact the ideology behind defense.


No it simply means that CCers(and higher ranks) dont have an overwhelming advantage (trust me we still got a heck of one). The more decks there are to hit the more effective weapons are, if low ranks are doing to much damage then you got to invest some of the decks into hull/shields.

Who doesn't hit full on with something moving at or faster than the speed of light? At that speed you either hit it or you miss it and you would have to be a horrible shot to miss with something traveling faster than 300,000 kilometers a second.

Shine a laser pointer across the room and tell me if anything could move fast enough to avoid that light. Does the wall only get hit by part of the beam? I appreciate you weighing in but that was just a silly thing to say.

I think the Millenium Falcon would disagree with you

oh snap

ok 2 things
1: From what I have concluded in other topics due to your ability to attack other ships while guarding planets when ships fight, it is infact a sniper fight Thusly due to the enormous space between planets it could in fact take minutes to hit a target that was standing still.
2: Due to the movement limitations in space it would be very hard to target things with any kind of turret system+due to the mass amount of calculations required to actually hit a target that far away your ship does a bit of guessing which causes some inaccuracy.

That made me laugh

As for the hitting a moving target with turrets or whatever, that is a targeting question, not a matter of attack power. When you hit a target, you still hit with full power. You can't dodge half a 4/5ths of a laser/proton/quark/ion/quantum/whatever beam. If that beam hits you it hits with full power and no one has been able to give a reason why it shouldn't be that way.

and what if only half of the beam hits? will the other half magically get redirected into the half that did hit?

Considering this all has to deal with shipsize its more of an issue of acceleration from a smaller size. Both sized ships probably would have the same max speed but one could actually change directions and be a smaller target at the same time.

I'm pretty sure a lot of these ships can move faster than light. Targeting gets a little tricky at that point.

Unless the energy beam travels through subspace. I dont think any of the weapons in GL travel thru subspace. Maybe you could make that a high level weapon Dan

but think about it! (using me as an example) how can a crusier loaded with 7 heavy graviton shearers and a psionic amplifier not blow up a frigate with nothing but a light graviton shearer and a Heavy phase cannon?

1:Its called having doors that are air/vacuum tight. Kudos youv taken out the vending machine area, we can still blast you.
2: Missing, it happens.

Well then why not just have a chance to miss whenever you fire, but when that doesnt happen you do full dmg?

because lasers act like 3D objects, and as a 3D object like a hammer for instance, you dont always hit the nail square on the head. Just because they're lasers doesn't mean it cant graze you.

Half your lasers might hit, half might not.

Its not black and white its a whole spectrum of grey.

Infact by this logic, a headshot is the same as getting grazed by a bullet.

really? look at this:
if it's the thickness of their ship, that is what hull modules are for.
if it's doging my lasers, that's what thrusters and dampeners are for.
if it's that they're smaller, I doubt a 4:1 weapon ratio hits 4:5 damage ratio. (especially since they're bigger)

Its like take a beam and a flee. No matter how big the beam is the flee will take about the same amount of damage. Yes the power is greater but even a flee given its size is more likely to live threw a nuke them a person. Not as well as a cockroach but still a higher chance based on it could hide well.

but what I'm saying is even a flea can't survive a wide-bore shotgun.

edit: or better yet, 7 wide-bore shotguns, side-by-side.

why not? its probably small enough that even if it was point blank it could slip through the balls (not saying its likely).

but if its a shotgun then the target has to be smaller then a fly...a mite would do.