Damage per hit

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Also known as DPH, sometimes referred to as Alpha damage. The term Damage Per Shot (DPS) is discouraged because it is easily confused with Damage Per Second. Consistently using Alpha damage or DPH for individual hits and Damage Per Minute (DPM) for theoretical time based damage performance will eliminate any confusion.

 ~ "Damage from a single attack per weapon."

This weapon parameter describes how much damage does a single projectile from a weapon deal.

## Projectile Weapons

The majority of the weapon systems in the game do what is termed **projectile** damage. This applies to missiles, torpedoes, rail guns, cannons, etc. that don't have an energy buzzword as part of its name (ion, for example). Because of the number of projectile weapons system, the rules for combat give huge advantages to ships that have a high armor value.

### How armor works

Every projectile weapon has a "damage per hit" value that is displayed on the weapon information popup.

* When a projectile weapon gets a hit on a target ship, the armor value is subtracted from the damage per hit for that weapon
* No matter how much armor the target has, all hits will score a minimum of 10% of the damage per hit value, rounded down to the nearest whole point

For example, if an unenhanced FG300, armored version, with an armor value of 15, is hit by a CT-240A torpedo system from a base variant Reliat, which does 35 damage, then the net damage is 20. On the other hand, if that same weapon were to hit a fully enhanced Winged Hussar, anti-ship type, with an armor value of 36, then the damage is 3, but only because of the 10% minimum.

An unenhanced Spear of Uranus heavy Battlecruiser has an armor value of 240, rendering many of the small ship weapons systems 90% ineffective. Because the Spear has 160,450 hit points, it would take the base variant Reliat a total of 45,843 hits at 3 damage per hit to destroy the Spear. In the meantime, the Spear's primary weapon has a DPH of 2,600 which can destroy the Reliat with 4 hits.

## Energy Weapons

The way the game is set up, energy weapons have a significant advantage over projectile weapons.

* Some ships have an **Energy Shield** value, listed on their armor system
* Damage caused by an energy weapon hit is reduced by the energy shield percentage
* Most smaller ships have little or no energy shield

Because the energy shield is a percentage of the damage rather than a flat reduction of the damage per hit, the actual damage per hit value matters much less, and some of the UAV energy weapon systems don't even list a value, only giving the damage per minute.

## Upgrades

There are two ways that players can upgrade their ships to improve their combat performance.

First, tech points can be used to enhance both the armor value and damage done by weapons systems. The details of enhancement vary from variant to variant.

In addition, weapon tech can be used to adjust the damage per hit some weapon systems. Many weapon systems have an option to adjust the base DPH by 5%, and then a second adjustment that allows additional increases to one of the systems **enhancements**.

### Special Note

Damage per hit is rounded down in combat to the nearest whole point. Since the smallest possible increase is 2%, this means that weapons with DPH smaller than 50 may not see any improvement in performance with small percentage increases. An unadjusted weapon with base DPH of 10 will only see an actual increase with a full 10% enhancement - nothing smaller will matter at all.