Astraeus Player's Guide
Combat Basics
COMBAT BASICS
Using a Weapon
When a ship uses a weapon, it will be slowed and lock in on its target for the weapon's use time.
Next, the weapon will activate. When it is attacking another enemy, it will have a chance to hit. This is determined by a random number; there is no aiming.
The hit chance is based on accuracy and dodge, described in more detail below.
Finally, the unit must wait until the weapon's cooldown is complete to fire again.
DODGE AND ACCURACY
Dodge
Every unit has a chance to dodge attacks based on its current speed as shown in the entity panel
For example, if a unit is moving at a speed of 60, it has a 60% chance to avoid attacks.
This means there is a major advantage to keeping your units in motion!
Accuracy
Really fast units can be difficult to hit. Fortunately, most weapons provide an accuracy bonus between 0 and 100. This reduces a target's dodge bonus by that amount.
For example, if you attack a 60 speed unit with a weapon that has 50% accuracy, the unit only has a (60 * 0.50) --> 30% chance to dodge.
To keep it simple: if you opponent is using many light ships, you should equip your units with high accuracy weapons. In general, smaller weapons tend to be more accurate than large ones.
Note: When you use getCurrentSpeed(), it is measured in raw pixels per frame which is a different scale than what is shown in the entity panel and used to calculate dodge.
To convert, you'll divide by Values.SPEED. This is a global constant that is used to help keep the math simpler and easy to scale.
To make things simpler, if you're trying to determine a unit's dodge chance, you may want to use the getDodgeChance() method instead.
DEFENSE AND BLOCK
Defenses
Damage flows from one defense to the next, represented as different health bars.
Shield - The first layer of a ship's defense.
Regenerates over time automatically.
Shield regeneration pauses for a short time after taking damage.
Plating - The second layer of a ship's defense.
Structure - The final layer of a ship's defense.
This is the only defense that a basic unit starts with
While structure is damaged, the ship is slowed by up to 50%
Block
When you upgrade a defense your ship gains a bonus to its Block value.
Block represents a percentage of damage that is reduced from incoming damage.
For instance, a unit with 22% block that takes 100 damage will only actually take 78 damage.
This applies across all layers of defense.