Update #284 returns to ship combat meta to add new options for building our your specific strategy as well as improving well-known routes. Adding 4 new ship components that boost the Radiation or Void damage of your ship weaponry opens up an avenue for high focus on disabling enemy ships while buffing the ability of armored components of all types to soak up damage to your ship further empowers the heavily armored meta. To help in both cases, we've made the combat logs clearer, better organized and added missing lines of detail.

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Phase Inflectors for Crippling

Update #284 has added 4 new medium slot components which increase the Void or Radiation Damage of your capital ship weapons. These Quturaan and Katteduun Phase Inflectors can only super-charge one type of damage or the other, so focusing on a certain class of ship weapons will be important to make the most of your bonuses. Captains focusing on pulverizing a ship and crew into submission with Void and Radiation Damage now have all new angle to customize their ship. The most powerful Phase Inflectors are sold exclusively by Rychart (Void) and Thulun (Radiation) starports, To help with the new components and bonuses, the ship combat log now reports Void and Radiation Damage to a ship on a separate line.

Advanced Armor Protection

Armored components have always helped reduce overall Standard Damage that is passed through to your Hull and then turned into internal damage to turn your components into ash. With Update #284, they have gained a new intrinsic way to help prevent destruction to your ship's components even after all the dice have been rolled. Once all the damage is totaled, components from your ship are selected in a series of rounds to take portions of that damage. All types of components that are designed to provide additional protection (even not those explicitly armor) are now more likely to be selected to "soak up" the damage and protect other components from taking it. In a large ship with only one or two armored components, this effect may be pretty minor, but as you increase your set of armored components this balance change will come into play more readily. Specifically:

• Exploration Seals, Orbital Platings, Orbital Sealing increase their chance of getting hit by 20%.
• Armored Bulkheads, Hull Plating, Reinforced Structures and Battle Prows increase their chance of getting hit by 35%.

While this can help protect other key components -- such as Piloting modules, ship weapons and the engine -- it can also help more rapidly reduce a ship's armor as the armor components take damage and drop offline. If a ship is built with redundant Armor %, this double-edged sword effect will be prevented from taking effect longer.

Improved Combat Logs

The ship combat logs now include the Radiation and Void Damage of both capital ship and small craft. This key missing piece of intel is key for disabling captains to understand how their hits are hitting! We've also adjusted the spacing and lead in on most of the log lines to make them more clear and stand out from each other -- such as using (T) for Talent and (!!) for a Crippling Effect which now both really jump out in a busy logged turn. There are some more exciting meta changes coming for ship combat and improving strategy options, so stay tuned and we will be upgrading the combat log hand in hand as we go.

v3.2.17 - 11/22/2021

- Improved many armor/protection focused components to increase chance of taking hits in combat, therefore protecting other components - Added 4 new medium ship components (Quturaan and Katteduun Phase Inflectors) which increase ship weapon void and Radiation Damage by percentage bonus % - Best Phase Inflectors are sold exclusively by Rychart (Void) and Thulun (Radiation) - Improved ship combat logging to include details of Radiation and Void Damage from ship weapons - Improved formatting and consistency of ship combat logging - Clarified Damage Bonus in ship Talent and component effects as "Standard Damage" - Clarified description of "Upstaged Success", it does not increase Contact Influence gains - Fixed reported typos and crashes