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Every ship has multiple defense stats. Smaller ships tend to have not all 6 types of defenses, with your race pick influencing what stat will be represented more. Advents unsurprisingly excel in shields, TEC in armor, and Vasari in hull regeneration. Vasari, being many millennia older than TEC or Advent will tend to utilize more defensive stats overall but usually at a higher cost. Defenses can be divided into two categories - hit points (shields, armor, hull, crippled hull) and damage reduction (durability, armor strength). To kill a unit, you need to set all of the hit points to 0. The 4 types of hit points are not just names, as each hit point type has a unique function.

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Damage Reduction

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

Durability is akin to “shield mitigation” from Sins: Rebellion: It has different numbersdoes not increase with the incoming damage, but the effect is similaris rather a flat value. The further benefit of this change is that people will no longer assume that “shield mitigation” only applies to shields, which was wrong for Sins: Rebellion. This means durability applies to ALL hit points (shields, armor, hull points, crippled hull). Durability is countered by the “Pierce” value of a weapon. The exact formula will be shown in a following chapter.

Armor Strength is another damage reduction attribute, which works only on Armor hit points. It is NOT countered by the Pierce value of enemy weapons, which provides a much more reliable source of damage reduction. The formula for of the 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. 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

Advent having the strongest shields, also have access to a unique technology “Shield Burst”, which is triggered some time after a ship’s shields are depleted. Basically, it’s a recharge of shield hit points after a timer. The timer depends on ship, but will usually be between 40-80 seconds - 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 its shields.

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Vasari Exodus do not get shield burst, but they do get an in combat shield regeneration technology, which fits very well into their other regeneration upgrades.

Meanwhile Vasari Alliance can get shield burst, as one of their unique technologies, which however will be weaker, when compared to Advent capabilities.

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

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Finally, repairing is not a hit point raw stat, but it contributes to the life of your ship. Each ship has individual passive repair stats; those are disabled during combat (with the exception of Vasari). 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 Alt, while hovering your mouse over your ship, or checking the defenses as shown in the picture:

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

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The base Durability value for capital ships is 500. Gauss cannons on the Kol have a Pierce of 500600, 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 they function. Each missile is a “unit” with a health bar, which can be shot down by flak weapons or abilities. Missiles TEC and Vasari missiles have high Pierce damagevalue, making them perfect capital ship slayers, and their DPS is one of the highest in the game. So surprising your enemy with a few missile cruisers can mean a quick end to his capital ship, unless he brings enough flak defenses. Meanwhile, Vasari do get even deadlier missiles, as those can bypass shields.

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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.

Ship Firing Arcs

As seen in the last screenshot, firing arcs can be a life changer. Unlike Sins: Rebellion, ships do not arbitrarily fire in a 90° arc. They have ROTATING guns! Well, not all ships. Some smaller ones did not get into the cool kids club.

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These are your giant slayer cannons with 500 600 Pierce, so being able to fire from them (or avoid their fire) is very important.

Due to their positions above and below the main hull, both cannons can rotate 360°, so flying in circles around the Kol will not help you avoid its vengeance.

However, Sins is a 3D space game; so, diving below or above an enemy Kol will , those guns still have blind spots, as ships do move in a 3D plane, and could end up bellow or above a Kol, which would render one of the Gauss cannons silent, as it will not be able to rotate and fire through itselfthe ship. That’s -50% DPS from gauss cannons, which are the real damage dealers.

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They do rotate, but only in a 180° arc (of the 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.

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

Ship Counters

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

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

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Ships listed here are not meant to be “the only ships you 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. In truth, there are plenty of disable and support capital ships who can counter this danger.

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A flak frigate with 0 Pierce would deal onlymere: 100/(100+500) = 16.7% of its original DPS.

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