Engines and Shields explanations

Porcupine

Spaceman
First, the engines, because the data is simple. Regen is the Power Supply of your engine, the rate at which it generates energy in GW to recharge itself. Limit is the length of your Energy Gauge in GJ. Regen is the MUCH more important stat.

Engine Upgrade 0 is if you are poor and have no engine upgrade. The ship values are for enemy ships only. Enemy Centurions don't obey the same rules as your Centurion does. In general enemy ships have more power than you do! Unfair for you.

Now for shields. Levels is the number of levels you can step your shield strength to. If your shield has 2 levels, step 1 is 50% power and step 2 is 100%. If it has 3 levels, step 1 is 33%, step 2 is 67%, and step 3 is 100%. You should know this already.

Front, Back, and Sides are your shield or armor strength in cm. These values don't look like the coincide with what the game manual says, but they do. The game manual is just wrong for most of these values. ;) Later on I will post stats for the enemy ships (like in the game manual) and you will see that the armor values coincide nearly exactly.

Power is the amount of power that is used if the shields are undamaged. The more damaged shields are, the less power they use proportionately. Notice that some shields are not as efficient as others power-wise, but most shields are the same efficiency.

Regen is the rate at which your shields regenerate. This is possibly the most important stat for shields. The values are exactly ripped from the game but I haven't figured out their units yet, or converted them into any standard units. The numbers are relative though. Enemy ships tend to have totally crapshitty shields (Light Shields, Medium Shields, Heavy Shields) compared to you! Unfair for them.

Now the mysterious stat Effect. It's kind of redundant. An unecessary stat that could be incorporated into the other stats. But ohwell that is how the game works. Multiply the Effect percentage into your shield cm levels and regen rate. That gives you the ACTUAL shield thickness levels and regeneration rate for your shield. Redundant...I don't know why it's done that way. Most of the time Effect is just 100% so you change nothing.

Now for more confusion...the final blow! The shield/armor cm values you end up with after taking into account Effect ARE correct. But, cm values for shields and cm values for things that do damage (guns, missiles) are not the same units! They are both called cm but they do not match up! Why do I label them this way? Because that is how they are in the game manual (when it is correct), and that is how they are ripped directly out of the game. Weird.

To convert shield/armor values in cm to the proper gun values in cm, its easy though. Just multiply by 8/5th, exactly. Why? I don't know but it works perfectly.

Let's try some examples. Shield Generator 1 has 11.1 cm per side. Shield Generator 1 is actually among the best shields in the game because it regenerates a bit faster than other Shield Generators, although it is power inefficient. Multiply 11.1 cm by 8/5th, gives 17.76. That means it will just barely protect you from any missile hit. Should match with your playing experience.

Now look at Light Shields (which you can't buy) or Shield Generator 2 set to half power (which you can buy). 10 cm times 8/5th gives 16.0 cm. That means it's exactly enough to stop 1 HS Missile, but a FF or IR Missile will chip into your armor. Not good. Try this out if you want, my own playing experience tells me this is right.

Scary huh? Bet I scared almost everyone away. -_-;
Privateer mathematics are more complicated than it seems to appear on the surface.
 
Darn, I posted in the wrong thread

This message should be in the "Wing Commander Privateer" thread. Can someone please move this? :)

I tried to copy the message and paste it there but it came out wrong. Ohwell.
 
Uh, erase this whole thread please

I succesfully copied this message into the thread it's suppose to be in. :)

If anyone can erase this thread please do.
 
"New Thread" instead of "Reply", eh? It happens. Although deletion of this thread is unlikely unless/until someone/people screw it up. ;)
 
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