Starflight Resource Pages

The UHL is completely invulnerable to any weapons before the UHL weapon is used.  The G'nunk shield nullifier will not have any effect on it.  Once the UHL's shields are drained by the UHL weapon the G'Nunk shield nullifier WILL work on it.   5 Plasma bolts are necessary to kill the UHL with it's class 25 shields up.   Only 3 plasma bolts are necessary with it's shields down.

Spemin Battle Tactics:

With their battle jumper (which seems to work flawlessly, unlike yours), Spemin fleets are a major pain to combat throughout the game. Even once you have full class 7 shields, plasma bolts yourself, and your own battle jumper, a flood of plasma bolts is more often then not more then you can take. However, there is a decent strategy to get around this problem:

Maneuver and fly diagonally whenever a plasma bolt is on the screen, stop and shoot as much as possible when one is not, as the other spemin weapons have pitiful damage (class 1 missiles and class 2 lasers)

Hope and pray that a plasma bolt doesn't get launched too closely to you before you can quit combat, jump to maneuver, and get out of range. If you repeat this procedure and simply shoot as often as possible whenever possible, you'll eventually either lose all the spemin ships as they "stop" to shoot at you (it's impossible to escape the encounter before going into combat, but not after you are already in combat) or you'll eventually wipe them out through attrition as you continually get in lucky hits between running for your life.

I once wiped out a fleet of spemin with class 2 missiles and class 2 shields using this tactic, unfortunately it took forever.  Lasers are highly suggested if you plan to try this.

Damage Measurements

Damage in the game is recorded by "Class".  When scanning alien ships, one ship with "Class 5 Shields" may have quite a different level of protection as another ship.  This is because alien ship armor is not measurable by sensors, and "Class 5 shielding" is an approximation.  One ship may have slightly more or less shield strengths, but just happen to be close enough to still fall into the same catagory.

Alien shielding absorbs exactly 350 damage per class.

Alien Shields: (350 damage per class)
"None Apparent" = 0 points
Class 1: 1-699 points
Class 2: 700-1049 points
Class 3: 1050-1399 points
Class 4: 1400-1749 points
Class 5: 1750-2099 points
..etc..

Alien shields do NOT regenerate.  See the Ship Table below for more information on alien shield/armor strengths.

Interstel Shields (500 damage per class)
Class 7: 3500 / 70 pixels (top 20 pixels are invisible)
Class 5: 2500 / 50 pixels
Class 4: 2000 / 40 pixels
Class 3: 1500 / 30 pixels
Class 2: 1000 / 20 pixels
Class 1: 500 / 10 pixels

Shield Regeneration: 2.5 pixels/sec using the default DosBox 0.63 settings

Interstel Armor (250 damage per class)
Class 5: 1500 / 50 pixels (30)
Class 4: 1250 / 40 pixels (24)
Class 3: 1000 / 32 pixels (19)
Class 2: 750 / 24 pixels (14)
Class 1: 500 / 16 pixels (9)
None (base hull): 240 / 8 pixels
None (damaged hull): 0

Armor absorbs exactly 60% of the damage of your shields. All damage ratings listed below are in shield damage. Take the shield damage and divide by .6 to get the resulting armor damage (and round up). You can also assume that your full class 5 armor is worth in value to "30 pixel, class 3 shields" and convert the numbers appropriately.

Missile vs Shields/Armor
(Located at 0x51C05 in STAR2B.COM)

Class 1: 200 / 6/10 pixels (Spemin Warship)
Class 2: 400 / 8/14 pixels (Tandelou Scout/Transport)
Class 3: 700 / 16/27 pixels (Tandelou Warship or Ng-Kher-Arla Scout)
Class 4: 1000 / 20/34 pixels (Humna)
Class 5: 1500 / 32/50 pixels (GNunk Scout, Ng-Kher-Arla Warship, and Umanu around Shyneum planet)
Class 6 (Plasma Bolts): 4000 / 80/133 pixels (Spemin/Uhlek)
Class 7: 500
Class 8: 600
Class 9: 700 / 16/27 pixels (Umanu not around Shyneum planet)
Class 10: 2000 / 42/70 pixels (GNunk Warship) - bright pink missiles
Class 11: 900
Class 12: 1000

50 damage = 1 shield pixel damage
30 damage = 1 armor pixel damage

Laser damage vs Shields/Armor 
Located at 0x515DE in STAR2B.COM
Primary damage measured at range 5.5, or exactly 50% strength of point-blank range
* Pixel damage is based on actual empirical testing, measured at point blank range, not at range 5.5, which is exactly 2X of the actual damage table.

Class 1: 90 / 4/6 pixels dmg
Class 2: 210 / 8/14 pixels dmg (Spemin Scout & Warship, Tandelou Transport)
Class 3: 360 / 14/24 pixels dmg (Tandelou Scout, Ng/Kler/Arla Scout)
Class 4: 510 / 20/34 pixels dmg (G'Nunk Scout, Tandelou Warship)
Class 5: 660 / 26/44 pixels dmg (G'Nunk Warship, Ng/Kler/Arla Warship)
Class 6: 700 / 28/46 pixels dmg
Class 7: 700 / 28/46 pixels dmg (Human Humna Scout)
Class 8: 700 / 28/46 pixels dmg
Class 9: 700 / 28/46 pixels dmg
Class 10: 1000 / 40/68 pixels dmg (Gorzek, Leghk Guardian)
Class 11: 1100 / 44/74 pixels dmg
Class 12: 1200 / 48/80 pixels dmg (Humna Humna Transport)

Laser damage drops off over range: the distance between the player and enemy ship is calculated using the distance formula [dist = sqrt(distX^2+distY^2)]. At distances of 0.0 or 0.5 units away, lasers do 100% of the damage listed above. For each additional 0.5 units away, the lasers suffer a -5% damage penalty. Thus, lasers do 95% damage to targets one square away, 90% damage 1.5 squares away, 85% damage 2.0 squares away, down to 50% damage at 5.5 squares away. I have not observed any enemies that can fire a laser at a target 6 squares away (seems to be out of range). 

Player lasers suffer a 5% damage penalty per 0.5 units of distance the target is away (as per the distance formula)

Alien lasers suffer a 5% damage penalty per 0.5 units of distance the target is away (as per the distance formula), not counting the first 0.5 units

Class 10 laser damage (Gorzek)

Here's a few more Starflight II damage tests:

class 10 missile vs class 2 shields: (42)
should be 20 dmg to shields, 22 dmg applied to armor at 60% = 36/37 dmg vs armor

Test #1: 16 dmg wrap to armor
Test #2: 34 dmg wrap to armor
Test #3: 22 dmg wrap to armor
Test #4: 14 dmg wrap to armor
Test #5: 20 dmg wrap to armor
Test #6: 6 dmg wrap to armor
Test #7: 22 dmg wrap to armor

As you can see, something is serious wrong here. All normal tests when shield damage does not disappear is almost 100% consistent, only slight differences seen due to the two pixel round off.  Damage done to a alien vessels is also always 100% consistent.

Just to verify that class 7 shields take 70 damage:
Class 7 missile vs class 7 shield:
Should be 42 damage, 20 hidden, 22 displayed:

Test #1: 20 damage
Test #2: 22 damage
Test #3: 22 damage
Test #4: 22 damage

Once in a while it seems that class 10 missiles are doing 40 dmg instead of 42, class 5 missiles are doing 30 damage instead of 32, but due to the consistency, I don't think any DR is being done here.

Now let's take plasma bolts: Uhlek in the past vs. class 7 shields:
(formula is 14 armor dmg * 60% or 0.6 + 70 shield damage = 78.4 real damage)

Test #1: 14 dmg wrap to armor = 78.4
Test #2: 8 dmg wrap to armor = 74.8
Test #3: 16 dmg wrap to armor = 79.6
Test #4: 10 dmg wrap to armor = 76
Test #5: 10 dmg wrap to armor = 76
Test #6: 4 dmg wrap to armor = 72.4
Test #7: 10 dmg wrap to armor = 76
Test #8: 2 dmg wrap to armor = 71.2
Test #9: 14 dmg wrap to armor = 78.4
Test #10: 6 dmg wrap to armor = 73.6
Test #11: 6 dmg wrap to armor = 73.6

So assuming the plasma bolt damage is perfectly consistent, and the damage variation is due to the "wrap" irregularity as seen above with missiles.

Due to the "lower" then expected damage seen on the missile damage wrap tests, I'm guessing that at times the shields randomly take "overload" damage, or absorb more damage then they're supposed to at random times when the damage causes the shield to fail.

Plasma bolt damage therefore varies between 71 and 79 pixels, or in actuality closer to 80 pixels in damage.

Blastopod Damage

Blastopods seem to send shockwaves of damage outwards from a center point.   That center core does the highest amount of damage, and as you get further and further away, the blast damage decreases.  Measuring blast damaage was done by "hitting oneself" with shields raised, so like all other measurements in this document, damage is in the # of shield pixels used.

0 spaces: 86 damage
1 spaces: 80 damage
2 spaces: 74 damage
3 spaces: 68 damage
4 spaces: 62 damage
5 spaces: 56 damage
6 spaces: 50 damage
7 spaces: 44 damage
8 spaces: 38 damage
9 spaces: 32 damage
10 spaces: 26 damage
11 spaces: 20 damage
12 spaces: 14 damage
13 spaces: 8 damage
14 spaces: 0 damage

• Energy and Bio information is always shown as 100% on the scanner screen.
• Movement delays and firing delays are relative to the ship's activities.  Larger the delay, slower the activity.
• If a ship is firing constantly in combat, it's movement will be even slower, as it can't move and fire at the same time. Certain ships are immobile, and will never move despite their movement delays.