Are there any good pages that describes how combat actually works?
I have also not been able to make much sense of the combat logs, nor do I understand how things like speed/evasion/hullsize factor into the calculations.
Also, when a ship with 20 beam modules fires, does it count as 20 shots or one shot?
Does anyone have any actual information on how the ship roles actually work? It appears that ships with "defensive" roles will not enter combat at all until all ships with "offensive" roles have been destroyed. I have seen fighters circle the map continuously while showing "out of range", until all my capital/assault ships were destroyed, before the fighters fired a single shot. What????
(I sometimes use carriers, but I like to also mix my fleets for roleplaying reasons. Despite reading the tooltips, my understanding of roles doesn't seem to be the same as whoever wrote the combat engine.)
At one level, if you have a clear advantage in tech/damage/hull/defense there is no point in worrying about the details of combat, but when the numbers are close, it is worthwhile to understand how to put an effective fleet together, and the understanding of the combat system is just not there to be had from the information in the interface. Like, if i lost a few fighters, how would I know when they have been repaired/rebuilt? To be safe, if I lose a few fighters, I retreat the fleet for a few ticks, and cross fingers that its enough. The information might be out there somewhere, but it is NOT in the interface.
Also, observation of the combat animations and combat logs appear to bear no discernible relationship to what I expected to happen. I have (since 1.1.) had to completely discard what happens in the combat animations. I have seen ships destroyed in the battle but not removed from the strategic map afterwards, and I have even seen a result go one way in the animation, but another way on the map. Also, i have often seen ships continue to fight for several turns after they were reduced to 0 hitpoints but not destroyed. It's also quite common to see one ship being targeted, but take no damage, while ships on the other side of the map were reduced to 0 hitpoints without apparently being shot at.
For an animation that is supposed to "data driven", the animations bear no resemblance to the actual data.