I had a few questions about how the blocking value for Shields are calculated. For this example, lets say I have two weapon groups. Group A is 3 lasers doing 5 damage each for 15 total (I know the numbers are not accurate just keeping it simple for the example). Group B is 5 neutron beams doing 10 damage each for 50 total. Grand total is 65. Lets say my shield block is 5. How is the block calculated? I can see a few possibilities. 1) Once Per Weapon: The value is taken from each weapon. In this case my lasers would do 0 dmg each, my Neutrons do 5 damage each...total of 25. I am very confident this is NOT how its done but I'm using it for completeness. 2) Once Per Group: In this case I take 5 off the laser group, and 5 off the neutron group...total of 55. 3) Once per Ship: Just 5 off the top of all of my damage, total is 60. If a second identical ship attacked me, I would take 5 off of that ship as well, for another 60. 4) Once per Round: No matter how many ships attack me, my shields block the first 5 damage....and then all other damage goes through normally. Now let me ask a similar question about Accuracy. How often is the accuracy checked to see when a ship fires? 1) Once per weapon: Every single weapon gets its own attack check. 2) Once per group: Every group of weapons is checked once. Either the whole group hits or misses. As an addendum, do the second and third attack from Autofire have their own attack checks....and is that accuracy any different than the first attack?
Shield block is based on the weapon group/slot. Each weapon slot has the shield block applied to it once for all weapons in the slot. Given your examples, option 2 is correct for those 2 weapon slots (55 damage). We are of course ignoring the fact that each of these weapons may miss (tying into your second question) and that beams do less damage at range by default for this example. Accuracy is calculated per weapon, not per slot. Each weapon in the slot is checked to see if it is a hit or a miss. This would be equivalent to your option 1. Yes, each of the 3 or 4 (with overload) attacks from Auto-Fire are checked to see if they hit or miss separately. Each of these shots has the exact same chance to hit or miss. The -25% ship attack modifier applies to all the shots equally.
Auto-Fire has undergone some changes (in 1.1.3 unstable 3) that impact my answer from the other day, so I want to post a brief update here. Auto-Fire now has a progressive ship attack penalty. As it fires 3 (or 4 with overload) shots, each shot is subject to a different ship attack penalty. -25% SA on first shot -50% SA on second shot -75% SA on third shot -100% on fourth shot (if using Kinetic overload). If you want to use Auto-Fire and get the most out of the 2nd and especially 3rd shot, you will want to improve your accuracy as much as possible. This comes down to making sure you have ample ship attack when using this mod, and possibly finding ways to lower the enemy's ship defense in some cases.
