Combat

**Effect** | Add combat capabilities to Von Neumann Probes

**Combat** is a project during stage 3. It involves fighting the probes that have drifted away from your control.

If you accidentally go into stage 3 without at least 1 drone, **You are screwed**, and you will have to use Quantum Temporal Reversion to restart.

This project becomes available when you lose the first probes in combat with drifters. This in turn happens shortly after they have a population of 1M, and begin to fight your probes.

## Summary

It displays space battles, which are added to the game shortly before the project is unlocked. Your probes will attack and reduce the number of drifters depending on the Probe Trust allocated to this option. Until you unlock it, your probes will be defenseless and thus will be killed (a counter for "Lost in combat" appears).

New counters will also appear: "Drifters Killed" and "Drifters" (note: sum is equal to that of "Lost to value drift" above it).

Not all battles will result in wins or losses, and some may engage in particular routines - either by being one next to another and gliding across the screen like a bouncing logo, or otherwise engaging in constant loops. Though, these loops **can** be broken, but only by luck.

## Combat calculation

When at least one probe from each team collides, the game runs a series of calculations to determine which are destroyed:

### Damaging Your Probes

The full equation for destroying your probes is

```
diceRoll = Math.random() * dX * ((numRightTeam / numLeftTeam) * 0.5);

```

If this roll is greater than 0.5 + your OODA factor (probe speed times 0.2, given The OODA Loop), your probe will be destroyed.

* `Math.random()` calculates a random value anywhere between 0 and 1.
* `dX` is 1.75. Combining this with Math.random makes the value range between 0 and 1.75.
* `(numRightTeam / numLeftTeam)` is the number of colliding Drifters at that point divided by the number of colliding Probes at that point. Thus, a normal two-ship collision makes this factor 1, while having 2 Probes being hit by a Drifter would make it 0.67 or having 2 Drfiters hit a Probe would make it 1.5.
* `0.5` is a simple last multiplier. It may be easier to think of this factor as affecting the roll threshold, in which case it would be ignored in this equation and the threshold would be (1 + probe speed times 0.4) instead of 0.5.

### Damaging Drifters

The full equation for destroying a Drifter is

```
diceRoll = ((Math.random() * pX) + (probeCombat * 0.1)) * ((numLeftTeam / numRightTeam) * 0.5);

```

If this roll is greater than 0.5, the Drifter will be destroyed.

* `Math.random()` calculates a random value anywhere between 0 and 1.
* `pX` is calculated as your Combat skill multiplied by 0.15.
* `(probeCombat * 0.1)` is based directly on your Combat skill. This factor being added means that you can ensure a minimum roll of 0.X where X is your combat skill, in addition to the random factor. A combat skill of 10 thus usually destroys all Drifters who do not destroy it.
* `(numLeftTeam / numRightTeam)` is the number of colliding Probes at that point divided by the number of colliding Drifters at that point. Thus, a normal two-ship collision makes this factor 1, while having 2 Drifters being hit by a Probe would make it 0.67 or having 2 Probes hit a Drifter would make it 1.5.
* `0.5` is a simple last multiplier. It may be easier to think of this factor as affecting the roll threshold, in which case it would be ignored in this equation and the threshold would be 1 instead of 0.5.

## Following Projects

This is required for Name the battles, which unlocks Honor from battles, and The OODA Loop, which increases the combat effectiveness by the Speed trust option.