How the sim resolves a fight

1 · Turret hit chance

hit = clamp( tracking × min(1, targetSig / refSig) × (refVel / targetSpeed), 5%, 95% )

Three terms, in the ordering that matters: how well the gun tracks, how big the target paints, how fast it moves. Big guns lose to small fast hulls, always. Every input is the value as flown — a webbed target is slower, a painted target is bigger, and a dampened attacker tracks worse, because all of them are modifiers through the one pipeline (§6). Nothing is ever a certainty in either direction: the band is clamped to 5%–95%.

The speed term has no ceiling of its own, and that cuts both ways: a target slower than the gun's reference speed is easier to hit than one exactly at it, all the way up to the 95% rail. Slowing down is never free — which is what gives the aggressive stance a real price and makes a web worth firing at something that was already sluggish.

2 · Volley quality

roll > 0.98 → wrecking, 3× damage · otherwise damage × (0.5 + roll), i.e. 0.5×–1.5×

A landed turret volley is not a fixed number. It rolls a quality multiplier averaging about 1×, with a 2% chance of a wrecking shot at 3×. Missiles skip this roll entirely — they are exact, and pay for it in application instead.

3 · Missiles

application = clamp( min(1, targetSig / refSig) × √(refVel / targetSpeed) × guidance, 20%, 100% )

Missiles always land. What varies is how much of the volley applies — a heavy missile that catches a frigate delivers a fraction of its listed damage. Speed still defends, but softer than against turrets (the square root is the whole difference): missiles chase. The floor is 20% — even a perfect defensive profile eats something.

Guidance is uncapped for the same reason the turret speed term is: a guidance bonus offsets a speed or signature penalty instead of being thrown away on a volley that already applies in full. The 100% ceiling is the outer clamp, not the term.

4 · Damage into layers

raw = base × damageMult × qualityRoll × overheat × application × overtime
layerDamage = raw × layerResonance[damageType]

Damage is dealt per type — a Scourge Heavy Missile is kinetic, a Fusion round is explosive with a kinetic tail — and each type meets the target's resonance for the layer it is currently chewing through: shield, then armor, then hull. Resonances are exact SDE values, so the damage-type holes you know from EVE are the holes here. When a volley breaks through a layer, the remainder is converted back out of that layer's resonance before meeting the next one, so overkill is never double-taxed.

5 · Electronic warfare

Every timed effect lasts 3 rounds, which is what keeps a support turn worth taking: one turn of EWAR buys two turns of shooting. Cap warfare is honestly weak against Minmatar — autocannons and charge-fed boosters cost no capacitor, so there is nothing to deny.

A module stops when its hull does. Kill the ship projecting a web, painter, dampener, or tracking disruptor and the effect comes off the grid immediately, with whatever duration it had left. ECM is the exception, and it is not an inconsistency: a jam is a lock break that already happened, so a jammed ship sits out its turns even if the jammer is a wreck. Killing support early is the counter to support.

6 · The one modifier pipeline

value = (base + Σ adds) × Π unpenalized × Π (1 + (mult − 1) × exp(−(i / 2.67)²))

Every bonus in the game — skill, module, hull, stance, EWAR — is an attribute modifier resolved in one place. Flat adds land first and are never penalized (a shield extender adds real SDE hitpoints). Penalized multipliers are sorted strongest-first and diluted by EVE's stacking curve:

Stances and hull bonuses are exempt, exactly as in EVE. Piling on a fourth webifier is close to wasted; a fourth kind of advantage is not.

7 · Stances

Range is three stances rather than meters. Switching is free and happens alongside whatever else the ship does that turn.

Velocity also sets initiative: the faster ship acts first, ties broken by the smaller signature. Burning evasive to dodge a volley costs you the tracking to land your own.

8 · Heat and overheat

Overheat is an attack variant, not a turn spent buffing: fire now at 1.5× damage for +40 heat. Above 60 heat the option locks out, and heat sheds 15 per round. Spending a whole turn to improve the next volley would always lose to simply firing twice, so the sim does not offer that trade.

9 · The clock

from round 18: damage × (1 + 0.2 × (round − 18)) · hard stop at round 30

Overtime is a published sim rule, not a hidden nudge. Two tanky fleets that would grind forever instead converge, because from round 18 every volley from both sides hits 20% harder per round. If round 30 arrives anyway, the fleet holding the larger fraction of its total hitpoints wins on points.

10 · Skills

6 skills, 5 levels each, EVE-sized bonuses that run through the same pipeline as everything else and are stacking-exempt. Skills gate; they do not dominate — outcomes are decided by fit and piloting, with training as the edge. Hostile doctrine fleets fly at baseline skills, deliberately.

11 · Doctrine calibration

The hostile fleet is not a fixed wall. It scales to what you bring, on two independent dials, and both are auditable from the fit snapshot on your kill report.

fitScore = Σ tierWeight(module), where T1 0 · Meta 1 · T2 2 · Faction 3
level = number of thresholds [1, 5, 9, 13] the score has passed

Racks.Every fitted module scores its tier weight; the fleet total maps to a calibration level, and the doctrine flies that level's racks — STANDARD RACKS → FIELD-REFIT RACKS → VETERAN RACKS → HARDENED RACKS → ELITE RACKS. The rule for what it actually fits is player-identical: the doctrine flies the best legal rack it can afford, walking its last module down to a cheaper one in the same family and dropping it when nothing cheaper exists. A level never fields a weaker rack than the level below it.

Hulls. Navy and tech-two hulls are a tier no stack of faction modules answers, so they are a separate dial: bring a class above tech one and the doctrine escalates that whole class in kind. An upgraded hull also floors the rack level (T1 → L0, Navy → L1, T2 → L1).

Calibration reads your fit, never your earned-item count. A pilot who never opens the fitting bay always faces standard issue — progress is never punished for existing.

12 · Determinism

A battle is a seed plus an ordered list of calls. Replaying them reproduces the fight exactly — the random number generator's state is part of the battle state, so every roll is reproducible rather than merely repeatable. Daily fights are resolved server-side by replaying your recorded calls through this same engine; the outcome stored is the one the server computed, never one the client reported. Engine version ongrid-8 — replays are rejected across engine changes rather than silently reinterpreted.