Combat

Combat in Sunrider is fought out in turns and each unit is primarily limited in what actions it can take during a turn by the amount of energy it has available (EN).

Battles take place in a 2-dimensial battle grid of 16 by 18 cells. Positioning is vital as defenses such as shields and flak protect friendly ships near them. Often the player will need to make difficult choices between moving a ship to cover others, retreat into cover or using powerful abilities.

In addition to commanding each individual unit the player also has access to special orders that can turn the battle when used, but require valuable command points, which are earned by performing well in battle.

Unit ability types

in Sunrider units have 5 general subtypes of "actions" that ships can use by expending EN.

Kinetic weapons

Kinetics and Assault weapons fire physical matter at ships at great speeds. Kinetic weapons typically are very powerful but have low accuracy. They pass through shields easily but armor counters it directly. Although the the high fire rate of Assault weapons makes them useful against poorly armored ryders, the low accuracy of heavier Kinetic cannons make them useful only to slower and larger targets. Their high damage is very effective at puncturing through armor, however.

Energy weapons

Laser and Pulse weapons fire concentrated energy at enemy units. Energy weapons typically have great accuracy making them viable at range, but they are directly countered by energy shielding. Multiple shield generating ships together can create and energy field so powerful that it negates energy weapons completely, making them effectively useless until you deal with enough ships in some other way.

Missiles

Missiles do great damage and are dependable even at long range, but their stocks are very limited. Commanders need to consider the best time and place to use them. Rockets are a variant that do far greater damage but are very expensive and do not get replenished between missions. Missiles and rockets are directly countered by Flak. Units capable of doing so will try to shoot down any enemy missiles that come into range, allowing them to defend units near and behind them.

Melee

Although rare some ryders are equipped with short range weapons specialized for anti-ryder operations. These attacks does massive physical damage, easily overpowering any armor that may be present and ignores shielding. The point blank range of Melee attacks means having to get in close and personal, which could prove to be a challenge as moving within a single cell of an enemy equipped with an Assault type weapon triggers a free blind-side attack from the opponent. Any ryder moving in for a Melee attack should either be confident in it's armor or have another way to deal with the counter attack.

Unique skills

Very rarely a custom ryder will come equipped with unique skills that can buff, curse or even repair units. The effects can be extremely varied and when used properly can turn the tide of the entire battle.

Accuracy

The chance to hit for most weapons is equal to the weapons base accuracy minus a distance penalty. the actual formula used in game is: base accuracy + 50 - (accuracy degradation * distance). the degradation value is 15 for all weapons except missiles/rockets, for which it is 5.

Although upgrades modify the base accuracy of weapons, buffs add an additional flat value on top of the end result.

Defenses

In Sunrider energy shielding and flak extend outwards around a ship. Therefore, a key part to battle strategy is optimizing the positioning of friendly units such that units protect each other. There exist 4 general types of defenses that vary from ship to ship and which can be improved through upgrades

Flak

Units can use machine guns or flak cannons to try and intercept approaching or passing enemy missiles - reducing the damage taken by allies. The value shown in the status and targeting window represents the percentage chance of each missile within a salvo to be intercepted. this means that if unit A fires a salvo of 8 missiles and unit B as a flak value of 15 then there exists a very tiny chance (0.15%^8 = 0.007%) that every single missile gets intercepted and a moderate chance (0.85%^8 = 27.2%) that no missile gets intercepted at all. The range at which a unit can intercept passing missiles can vary and is shown by a red outline on the battle map when the mouse hovers over the unit, or when the mouse hovers over a missile/rocket weapon.

Flak becomes less effective as it gets overwhelmed by enemy missile. each time a unit tries to intercept a salvo it's effectiveness drops by 3% per enemy missile within the salvo. that means a salvo of 8 missiles will leave the interceptor at only (100%-8*3%=) 76% effectiveness. this would drop a flak rating of 30 to effectively 23.

Rockets have the innate property of reducing the enemy flak value by 10 on account of being a lot tougher than regular missiles, which is represented in the displayed value in the targeting window. This is a simple subtractive penalty to flak, meaning a 15% effective chance to intercept missiles becomes 5% against a rocket. this value can be improved further through R&D, even for regular missiles.

Combining these 2 concepts means it's optimal to only fire rockets only after weakening the enemy flak with a few salvos of regular missiles first. Effective flak is calculated as: (base flak-flak reduction)*flak effectiveness. The main thing to take away from this is that the flak value gets reduced by the missiles resistance before the effectiveness penalty caused by being overwhelmed opposed to after, which would give very different results.

Shielding

Energy shielding reduces incoming energy damage (from Laser and Pulse weapons) by a percentage before armor, equal to the shield value shown on the status and targeting window. Ships that generate an energy field will also protect units within their range, which is shown when the mouse hovers over the unit in the battle map.

Shields stack from multiple sources additively, meaning a unit in range of 2 units that generate a shield will have a shield value of both summed together. this makes it possible to reach a full saturation point of 100% shielding which completely negates all energy damage to that ship.

Because shields reduce damage before armor a combination of the 2 is quite effective at defending against Pulse weapons because of its multi-shot nature.

Practical example:

• A unit with no shielding but 8 armor being attacked by a pulse weapon doing 25x10 damage will take on average (25-8)*10=170 damage from the attack (assuming each shot hits the target).
• A unit with 30% shielding (generated by itself or a nearby ally) being attacked from the same weapon will take (25*0.7-8)*10=95 damage from the attack, nearly halving the actual damage despite the shielding only being 30% thanks to the synergy between shielding and armor.

Armor

Armor reduces each hit by the amount equal to the value shown on the status and targeting window. this makes armor especially effective against low damage multi-hit attacks such as Assault and Pulse weapons. In addition, the armor value is doubled against Assault and Kinetic weapons, making it a straight counter to Assault weapons more than anything else.

As ships take damage the effectiveness of it's armor gets reduced alongside it's HP. this could make assault weapons viable even against heavily armored cruisers if they are already heavily damaged. Try to keep the health of your own units up to counteract this effect!

Evasion

As one would imagine, small and nimble units are a lot harder to hit than slow or even immobile units. This is represented in game by the evasion value shown in the status window.

Generally, most ryders will have about +25 evasion, frigates get no bonus or penalty and capital ships get -25 evasion, actually making them easier to hit. Immobile units like stations and bases can have up to -50 to evasion making them very easy to hit, but those tend to make up for it with lots of armor and repair facilities.

The evasion value gets directly subtracted from the attackers chance to hit. e.g. a weapon with a chance to hit a frigate of 60% can be expected to have a chance to hit of 35% against most ryders at the same distance.