Damage Caps (PVP)
See Damage Caps (NPCs) for information about damage caps for selected NPCs.
PVP Damage Cap Rationale
A smaller ship build with fewer decks should be harder to target and hit then a larger ship. So the game gives smaller ships a relative advantage by capping the amount of damage other ships can do to them.
PVP Damage Cap Formula
- The current PVP damage cap formula is the LARGER of the following two possible formulas:
Decks / 2(Rank + 19) / 2
A ship that minimizes their damage cap using either formula is considered a small ship build or SSB.
PVP Damage Cap Evolution
Post Re: Ship Defenses
The formula is more complex than just attack - defense. If this were true, many ships could be 1-shotted. It is based instead a hyperbolic tangent formula, random variances, and a single shot damage cap. The damage cap means that it has to take at least 4 shots to disable any ship (even a level 1). If you have raised your shields/hull, only to see it get hit harder, this is because the cap was applying to you.
Combat damage calculations have been adjusted. Prior to this change, there was a scaling damage cap to prevent ships from being 1-shotted. However, this algorithm was a bit flawed and caused scaling hull and shield values to inflict more incoming damage when there was not enough defense. The damage cap has now shifted to scale based on the size of the ship instead. Thus, larger ships have a higher damage ceiling than smaller ships.
As a result of this change, you will notice a few things:
- Shield and Hull are much more powerful (and needed) than before, especially as your ship gets larger.
- Typical damage thresholds you may have been used to seeing will be different
SpoonyJank wrote: the only problem I see with it is that a lower level could just neglect defense and use the space for something else to take advantage of the cap
Nope, that wouldn't work. As the ship becomes larger, it is more likely to be 1-shotted without defense.
SpoonyJank wrote: Not if they spent most of their points on crew and use all their existing space for weapons.
Well, maybe folks will start putting points into crew now.