This video shows a space combat between two spaceships. The left one is controlled by the player and it is overpowered on purpose and the right one is controlled by the AI.
In Stellar Insurgency, there are three levels of defense prior to hull damage.
The first level which is passive (i.e. it doesn’t contribute directly to protection of the hull) is stealth (not show in the video) and the other two levels which are active (i.e. they actively protect the hull) are the force field and the armor.
Stealth field
If the spaceship has the stealth field component and this is active, the spaceship remains undetected when it is within the sensor range of an enemy spaceship and has the initiative when the space combat begins. Once the spaceship with the stealth field active starts attacking another spaceship it gets immediately detected and the stealth field disables automatically. When not in combat, the stealth field remains active for a maximum time that depends on this particular stealth field’s component stats or until the player deactivates it from the fleet manager screen. In addition the stealth field consumes energy for as long as it s active.
Force Field (or shields)
The force field protects the spaceship from energy weapons (beams, lasers) and similarly to the stealth field, it consumes energy but only when it recharges. When the shields are down, a minimum time that depends on this particular shield component stats is required before it starts recharging again. Similarly to the stealth field the force field can activated-deactivated from the fleet manager screen.
Armor
The armor component is not an energy component (i.e. it does not consume energy), however in contrast to shields it comprises of six parts:
Front Armor
Back armor
Left Armor
Right Armor
Top Armor
Bottom Armor
Which armor part is going to be damaged depends on which side the spaceship was hit by an enemy projectile or energy weapon. For example if the spaceship is being hit on the right side, the right armor side will absorb the damage. Once the armor of any particular side is compromised, the enemy projectiles will pass through it and the hull will start taking damage unless the spaceship turns towards another side where there is still some armor left. Once the hull points reach to zero the spaceship will be destroyed.
This particular tactic is showed in the video when the AI controlled spaceship turns sideways because its front armor is compromised. But since the player spaceship is overpowered once the hull damage increases above a certain threshold the enemy spaceship tries to retreat without any benefits whatsoever.
Thank you for reading.
