Guide to Combat Rating
Some notes about combat rating calculations I’ve noticed.
- Front armor is worth is worth more than back armor is, with diminishing returns. So you can get 40 for the first 10 armor, 30 for the second 10 armor. At 50 it starts going down by 1 for every 10. So you get 20, then 19, then 18, then 17, etc. It is a nonlinear decrease, the slowdown is slower and slower as you go up.
- Side armor usually reduces your combat rating due to lowering other combat stats from the weight.
- Nose weapons are worth more combat rating than hull weapons.
- Coil cannons are worth the most on the nose slots, then plasma, then lasers, then rail. Size 2 seems to be the sweat spot, filling slots with size 2+1 gives the most combat rating.
- Nuclear torps are worth the most on hull slots. Then plasma, then coil, then avd missiles, then laser, then rail, then regular missiles are worth the least. Copperheads have notably low combat rating when compared to Artemis torps.
- Kps above 75 doesn’t count to your combat rating. If combat thrust is less than 2g, kps will have no/minimal effect on combat rating.
- Combat thrust above 3g has no effect on your combat rating. Bringing combat thrust up to 2g has the greatest effect on combat rating thanks to making your kps contribute to combat rating.
- Turning rate affects your combat rating.
- Utility modules that increase your combat rating are from most to least: Magazine (dependent on weapons), ECM, component armor, and repair bay. Heat sinks have no effect on combat rating!
- Combat rating appears to be multiplicative with other factors. So if a ship fails at certain conditions, like a very low combat thrust, it will have far lower combat ratings.
- Ships with no functional weapons always get a combat rating of 0.
The best option for maximizing combat rating for the cheapest price appears to be a gunship equipped with a size 1 coil cannon, an ECM, 50 front armor, 3+g combat acceleration and 75 kps. This will give you about 200 combat rating per ship.
If you need to scare off the aliens or have the most combat rating of all factions for victory.
The best way to minimize combat rating to bait the aliens into combat appears to be stuff like armoring the back of your ships instead of the front and using low level missiles and other hull weapons as your primary weapons.
Note that when you’re trying to cheese the end game fleet power ranking, the limiting factor is likely to be construction time rather than resources. I was seeing nuke escorts with 500-1000 combat power on .76, not sure if that’s been changed significantly