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Have you ever fought a battle , where you seemed to have a bigger fleet, but your friend somehow managed to come out on top and now you are losing the game? That’s probably because he read this guide before you did. ;)

In this guide we will talk about basic combat mechanics, ship counters, changes in Sins 2 II and much more!

Understanding Defense Stats

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Defenses can be divided into two categories - actual hit points (shields, armor, hull points, crippled hull) and damage reduction (durability, armor strength). To kill a ship unit, you need to set all of the hit points to 0. The 4 types of hitpoints hit points are not just flavorsnames, as each hit point type has a unique featurefunction.

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Damage Reduction

We actually Before we get to hit points, we have to start with the damage reduction attributes, before we get to the hit points.

Durability is very akin to the old “shield mitigation” from Sins: Rebellion. : It has different numbers, but the effect is pretty much the samesimilar. The benefit of this rebranding change is that people will no longer assume that “shield mitigation” only applies to shields, which was wrong for Sins: ReRebellion. This means durability applies to ALL hitpoints hit points (shields, armor, hull points, crippled hull). Durability is countered by “pierce” the “Pierce” value of a weapon. The exact formula will be shown in a following chapter.

Armor strengthStrength is another damage reduction attribute, which however works only on armor Armor hit points. It is NOT countered by pierce the Pierce value of enemy weapons, which provides a much more reliable source of damage reduction. The formula for damage reduction for armor strength is very similar to that of durability.

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Let’s move on to hit point attributes and start with shields Shields. TEC frigates and cruisers do not have those until later into the game, but their capital ships have them from the start. Other races utilize shields on a more common basis. Shields’ unique feature is “shield burst”“Shield Burst.” Shield burst Burst is triggered some time after a ship’s shields get downare depleted. Basically, it’s a recharge of shield hit points after a timer. The timer depends on ship, but will usually be usually between 40-80 seconds . Meaning, - meaning your ship can get a spontaneous extra pool of health, should it survive a bit longer in combat. Enemies do see the timer of the shield burst, so a skilled player will try to focus fire a ship, before it is able to recharge it’s its shields.

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Armor is your next line of defense , once shields are down. This is also the most effective type of hit points, as armor Armor combines damage reduction from durability Durability and armor strengthArmor Strength. The benefit from armor strength Armor Strength is actually multiplicative with durabilityDurability, so this is really a tough spot on a ship.

Hull will be the last hit points pool for smaller ships. Armor strength Strength no longer applies, so frigates and cruisers who are down to hull , will likely not see the other next day. Capital ships (and titans) are another story. Those gigantic ships have an extra mechanic. : Once hull Hull reaches 0 they get a new health bar “crippled hull” called “Crippled Hull” which allows them to live a bit longer.

Crippled hullHull is really the final hit points pull for your most elite shipsunits. It can often save lives of those valuable ships, as you get that extra life. However, if a ship enters a crippled state, it will not be able to use any abilities, weapons or components. You have to repair your ship above a certain threshold before it becomes functional. Crippled hull Hull is hidden from the UI until your capital ship has lost all other hull points, such as in the screenshot below:

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Finally, repairing is not a hit point stat, but it contributes to the life of your ship. Each ship has individual passive repair stats. Those ; those are however disabled during combat. Therefore, they do not contribute to survivability in a single battle , but help a lot if you deal with waves of attacks. You can access those values either by pressing altAlt, while hovering your mouse over your ship, or checking the defenses as shown in the picture:

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Understanding Offense Stats

We will switch to the Kol battleship to explain the offense stats. After all, it’s the capital ship which has been greeting new players from the intro video for over a decade.

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Each weapon has 4 stats shown in game. It’s : quantity, type (e.g., autocannon, gauss, missiles), DPS and piercePierce.

The weapon type, unless it’s missiles, is mostly relevant for buffs and flavor. Buffs can come from abilities, components or technologies. Especially technologies Technologies are often limited to buff only a specific weapon type . Like - like this T1 technology for TEC buffs only autocannons:

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Second The second stat is dpsDPS. This is a straight forward straightforward value of damage a weapon deals per second (before damage reduction comes into play).

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Pierce is a counter value to durabilityDurability. Having more pierce, Pierce than the enemy has durability Durability provides no benefit. So usually Usually, you want to match ships with high pierce Pierce against high durability ships Durability units (such as capital ships) , and throw your low pierce Pierce ships against low durability Durability ships (such as corvettes).

Base durability The base Durability value for capital ships is 500. Gauss cannons on the Kol have pierce a Pierce of 500, making the Kol a capital ship killer.

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Missiles deserve their own tiny chapter, as Sins 2 introduces a major change to how those they function. Each missile is a “unit” with a health bar, which can be shot down by flak weapons or abilities. They Missiles have high pierce Pierce damage, making them perfect capital ship slayers, and their dps DPS is one of the highest in the game. So surprising your enemy with a few missiles missile cruisers can mean a quick end to his capital ship, unless he brings enough of flak defenses. Meanwhile, Vasari do get even deadlier missiles, as those can bypass shields.

Some capital ships have flak weapons installed on them, ; the Sova Carrier is probably the best capital ship in this matter as it houses 9 point defense cannons , which are able to shut down fire from several Javelis frigates.

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The Sova Carrier can easily shoot down all missiles from a single Javelis frigate. But once it faces multiple Javelis, missiles get dangerously close even through it’s its specialized defencesdefenses:

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As you can note on the screenshot, many PD guns are not facing the incoming missile. This is not because they are shooting down missiles from the other direction, but because they cannot fire through the “bridge” of the ship. There are 4 PD guns at the rear, but only one of them is currently firing. If we were to face our rear towards the Javelis frigates, the bridge would be no longer in the way , and 8 of 9 PD guns would be able to provide protection.

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This makes knowing your firing arcs important. You will get a feeling of for it , simply by observing your ships, but we will give a few examples here.

As we mentioned, the Kol has 2 gauss cannons. Both are marked in the screenshot below:

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Those These are your giant slayer cannons with 500 piercePierce, so being able to fire from them (or avoid their fire) is very important.

Due to their position positions above ( and below ) the main hull, both cannons can rotate in 360° in 2-Dimensional space, so flying in circles around the Kol will not help you avoid it’s its vengeance.

However, Sins is a 3-Dimensional space. So 3D space game; so, diving below or above an enemy Kol , will render one of the Gauss cannons go silent, as it will not be able to rotate and fire through Kol himselfitself. That’s -50% dps DPS from gauss cannons, which are the real damage dealers.

Another example with Kol weaponry - is on the left side of Kol where you have 2 of it’s its medium autocannons.

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They do rotate, but only in a 180° arc (of the 2-D 2D plane). Therefore, if you do want to maximize your damage against smaller ships, you should place your Kol not in front but in the middle of the enemy formation.

There are also mounted fixed mount weapons. If you were to look at a cobaltCobalt, you would notice, that it’s its cannons are in fact mounted to the ship:

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This means , cobalts Cobalts have a very limited fire arc in front of them. And ; and it’s not 90° , as it would have been in Sins: ReRebellion. The actual value is closer to 15°. So even flanking cobalts Cobalts makes a huge difference, as they will not be able to fire back.

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Each race has their set of ships , with the same counters for the same class of ships, but with differences in the ship classes themselves. For example, your light frigates (TEC: Cobalt, Vasari: Ravastra, Advent: Disciple) are the most basic frigate, and will excel against enemy flak frigates. But However, Vasari do not have any flak frigate class, so light frigates will have a much more limited usage against them.

Light frigates are a semi-counter to corvettes . If - if they can catch them of course. But if facing Vasari, you should rather specialize your fleet and build own flak frigates , which counter corvettes.

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Carriers allow you to fight from a farafar, and heavy cruisers are the ultimate non-capital ship class.

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Finally, support cruisers are countered by everything, but their role there is to support your fleet, so that’s where they excel.

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Titans and some capital ships have abilities capable of destroying entire fleets in a matter of a single button click.

Those These are the AOE abilities. Some AOE abilities will require several shots (like from the Ragnarov titan), ; some will actually be a “fire and forget” (like the Marza’s missile barrage). Not knowing, and more importantly, not countering those abilities will often lead to the loss of an entire fleet.

This is why you should watch out for the following ships:

 [UPD (ADVENT AOE SHIPS)]

Ships listed here are not meant to be “only “the only ships you build”build.” Sins II is all about finding a counter to your opponent. And while those ships are dangerous, this statement is true only if you try to “auto battle” them. But in In truth, there are plenty of disable and support capital ships , who can counter this danger.

To come out on top of your opponent, you will have to make use of both , the AOE damage dealers , and their counters.

Damage Reduction Formula

For the most hardcore players, this section will explain the math behind values of durability Durability and armor strengthArmor Strength.

Durability affects all 4 kinds of hit points , and is calculated BEFORE armor strength comes in for armorArmor Strength.

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First of all, you need to subtract pierce Pierce from durabilityDurability. So, if a capital ship has 500 durabilityDurability, and a Javelis has 400 piercePierce, that’s 500-400 = 100 (effective durabilityDurability).

Damage dealt to a ship is calculated as 100/(100 + effective durabilityDurability) in %. So for For our example that’s 100/(100+100) = 50%. Meaning a Javelis frigate deals 50% of it’s its original damage to a capital ship.

A flak frigate with 0 pierce Pierce would deal only: 100/(100+500) = 16,.7% of it’s its original dpsDPS.

In other terms, when comparing dps DPS between ships , keep in mind , that a Javelis frigate has 3x more effective dps, DPS than a garda Garda against capital ships.

Here is a graph of effective damage %, depending on effective durabilityDurability:

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Armor strength in fact Strength uses the same formula, applied to effective damage AFTER it was reduced by effective durabilityDurability. This means a multiplicative stacking between those 2 parameters. But keep Keep in mind that this one applies to armor Armor hit points only.

It would require a 3-D 3D graph and a PhD to understand the graph, so we will simply look at a few examples in a table:

[UPD (Add 3 advent ships to the table)]