Since I have gotten fairly good responses from my first article Tips for Brand New Players and I enjoyed writing it, I decided to try my hand at it again. As it before, I am writing this for those new to the Chamber. As the title suggests this article will specifically talk about combat. I think I was a bit vague in my last article when talking about weapon types and so I will revisit the subject in greater detail. As always, comments, questions, and additions from other players is appreciated.

Alert Crew Status

Alert crew status is gained at the start of every turn and lost when a ship begins a jump. Some cards prevent alert crew status from being gained, such as Raw Recruits, or take it away, like Battle Totem. There are other cards like Hive Queen (Reborn) and Precise Timing that let your ships keep their alert crew status even when they make a jump.

Why do we care? Alert crew status gives +2 damage to all existing weapons. On a typical scout, which shoots a beam weapon two times, which translates into +4 damage. On a typical cruiser, which fires missiles twice and cannon three times, that is +10 damage. Hence, the defending side of a battle generally has an innate advantage.

Additionally, using a weapon modification to grant a new weapon type will allow for alert crew to get +2 damage on those new shots too! So if your cruiser did not have beam weapons before but has a Mounted Pulse Gun played on it, those 4 beam damage shots can become +6 while alert (for a total of +12 damage). Ouch.

Leadership

Leadership is important for two reasons: firing first and extra damage.

Firing first is most important when each ship does enough damage to destroy the other. A normal scout vs. scout battle (ignoring Android and Thrass scouts) is not going to depend too much on leadership as each can deal only 12 damage (while alert) but take 15. However, if each has already taken damage and has only 7 hit points left, then firing first is going to decide who survives. In very large battles where you and the opponent use the same weapon type (think of 4 scouts vs. 4 scouts) firing first is going to make a difference since one ship may be totally destroyed before it gets a shot off.

Leadership provides +1 damage to all weapon types for each 2 points of leadership. So, a leader with 1 leadership provides no extra damage, 2 or 3 leadership is +1 damage, 4 or 5 is +2 damage, and so on. Some life decks are very capable of getting a hero to 10 or higher leadership, which gives all ships +5 damage to all weapons. Scary. Having multiple weapon types is important for taking advantage of leadership damage bonuses too.

Targeting

An undamaged ship's chance to be shot is exactly equal to the ratio of its "healthy" hull divided by the total hull in your fleet. This means that bigger ships are shot at more often. I guess this is because they are bigger targets! For example, a Silica scout has 15 hull and a Silica cruiser has 35 hull. If you are in a battle with one scout and one cruiser, the total fleet has 50 hull. Therefore, the scout has a 15/50, 0.300, or 30% chance to be shot at each time the enemy fires. Take a second and make sure that made sense! ..... Okay? Now you can understand why bases almost never get shot at, since they all have "... 1 effective hull when calculating opposing fire in combat."

Damaging a ship's hull makes it more complex. If a ship takes hull damage (which Silica ships always do) they get an additional chance to be shot at. This is supposed to simulate a wounded ship being an easier target (I think). It is calculated by taking the original amount of hull when the ship is "healthy" and adding it to how much hull damage it has taken. If our Silica scout has taken 5 points of hull damage, its new "hull" (for purposes of targeting) will be its original 15 plus 5 points of hull damage. So: 15 + 5= 20 hull for targeting purposes. This also increases the fleet's total to 55. Now the scout's probability to be shot is 20/55, or about 36.4%.

I should take a second to point out that I used Silica ships in my example. Silica scouts and cruisers do not have shields. Other ships can be shot at, take only shield damage, and not have their chance of being shot at increase. The damage must be done to the ship's hull to change its probability of being shot at.

Vanguard works in the same way as hull damage does. If we go back in time to before the Silica scout was should remember that it had 15 hull, the cruiser had 35, and it had a 15/50 or 30% chance to be shot at. Lets say some mean opponent plays the card Painted Target on your scout. Painted Target gives a ship vanguard 50! The scout gains 50 hull for targeting purposes! It is now 15 + 50 = 65 hull when calculating targeting. That brings the fleet total to 100 "hull". Even next to the cruiser, the "painted" scout now has 65/100 hull (for targeting) in the fleet, or 65% chance of being shot at.

If all that math was too much for you, just know these three things:

• More hull = greater chance to be shot at
• More Hull damage = greater chance to be shot at
• More Vanguard = greater chance to be shot at

Predicting Outcomes

Predicting the outcome of a battle can become downright impossible at times. The smaller the battle, the more predictable it is. A scout will not kill a bomber because it does only 12 damage and the bomber can take 24. Easy. How about my alert peacekeeper and two scouts defending against their two Clave cruisers with a Mounted Laser on one of them and a Clave Warlord (with 3 leadership)? That is tricky! Still, lets try. It can't hurt.

My peacekeeper has torpedoes that do 4 damage, +2 for being alert, for a total of 12 damage. Then the Clave cruisers will fire their missiles for 3 damage, +1 for the leadership, for 8 total damage. Then my scouts will unload 2 shots each of 6 beam damage (4 damage +2 for alert crew) dealing 24 damage total. I have dealt a total of 24 + 8, or 32, damage to them. That still isn't even enough to kill a cruiser. Another volley of Clave missiles for 8 more damage to me, then they start firing their cannons (4 damage each shot). Since I have no leader, their cannons will both fire before my peacekeeper can fire its cannons once. By this point, who knows what is dead and what isn't! I guess this was too messy to predict precisely.

What I can predict is that the two cruisers will do a total of 48 damage if they get off all their shots, and take a total of 70 (Clave cruisers have 35 hit points each). I can predict that my ships can deal 30 (peacekeeper) + 12 + 12 (two scouts) for a total of 54 damage if they all get their shots off. My ships can take a total of 25 + 15 + 15, or 55 damage. Therefore, by the end of the battle, I know we will both have some ships left alive. That is pretty much all I know before the fight.

If I lost you there, just add up the total damage and hit points for each fleet before the battle and you can predict if anyone will be left alive, and who it will be (sort of). Do not forget to include damage changes from losing alert crew status though, since it is very important!

This is probably a good time to inform you that I have a shortcut on my Windows XP desktop to the calculator provided with my operating system. I definitely use it for Star Chamber often - you might want to too.

Surprises

Like I mentioned in my first article timing when you play cards denies your opponent from accurately predicting the outcome of battles. No one is afraid to go 1 v. 1 scout early in the game right? Well, they should be if they are playing an entropy deck with Mounted Pulse Gun in it! Don't let them know you have it until the last second when it is too late and their ship is toast. Similarly, look out that they don't do this to you!

All Done!

Well, that is all I can think of. This was a long, drawn out article so I am very impressed if you made it this far! As always, I humbly hope it was helpful to anyone who read it, and feel free to ask me questions or correct me if I have made any errors!

GL + HF
Wuppin