Light of Nova Combat Guide

Light of Nova Combat Guide by Marc-Andr_w55y

While combat in this game isn’t too complex, it’s not terribly well explained too. I received a few questions about it, and I saw lot of people having problems with some of the concept behind it. I will try my best to explain it here.

This guide is there to explore a bit more in depth the combat and balancing between ships.

The Battle

The battle is two Fleets facing each other. Each fleet shots at each other in a rounds way. Each fleet fires technically at the same time, so there’s no “who fires first”. Each Group of ships fires at another group. A group can only fire once per round, but a group can be fired on multiple time by other groups. At the end of a round, killed ships are calculated and removed from the fleets.
The battle is fully automatic, as you can’t give order or change the course of the battle. Your fleet composition and groups size and number is what will decide the outcome of the battle. There is no need for orders as ships will always fire on the target they are best at damaging first. For this reason, Winds will always fire on other fighters first. (See Ships stats)
The battle goes on untill one of the fleet has no longer any ship.
You cannot retreat from a battle once it’s started. The big X button is only to skip the animation of the fight.

The Fleet

A fleet is composed of an Officer and Ships. No fleet can exist without those. The stats of your officer determine the possible size of your fleet, also known as Tonnage. Each ships have a specific weight, and your fleet cannot have more weight than what your officer is able to handle.
Your fleet can also have a Flagship. Those are special ship that doesn’t count toward your tonnage cap. But you can only have one flagship per fleet.
You can also load your fleet with special Ammo to increase their damage output.

The Officer

The officer you choose for your fleet greatly affect the outcome of the battle. Every time your officer levels up, it gains one or more skill point to put on specialities and a number of stats points. There’s three stats you must be aware of when building yourself a combat officer:

* Military
Straight foward stats, this increase the capacities of your ship in combat. Each points of Military increases your ship Armor and Attack. Every 10 points of military increase all your ships attack power by 1 and every points of military increase your ships armor as follow:
– Fighter : +1
– Frigate : +2
– Cruiser : +3
– Battleship : +4
– Flagship : +10

* Leadership
This stats does only one thing, but a terribly important one, it increases the maximum tonnage your officer can handle in his fleet. Every point of leadership increase the maximum by 30 tons.

* Skill
You can change your officer skills by buying a skill manual from the Item Mall. Each ship has a manual that increases the ship attack power. But there’s another one I consider quite important : “Control Skill Specialization”. This skill increase the maximum tonnage by 200 tons per skill points, but it cost 50 diamonds.

Tonnage

So a question that come back often, how do I increase my maximum tonnage?
– Leadership (+30 per points)
– Control Skill (+200 per points)

Ships tonnage:
* Wind – 20 tons
* Eagle – 30 tons
* Raptor – 40 tons
* Tempest – 25 tons (Note this, as the game advance, the only real strategy is spamming tempest due to its very low tonnage/armor/attack power ratio)
* Vulcan – 35 tons
* Destroyer – 45 tons
* Hammer – 45 tons
* Longbow – 50 tons
* Battle Cruiser – 60 tons
* Knight – 60 tons
* Dreadnougth – 65 tons
* Aegis – 70 tons

Potion / Elixir

Potion (or elixir) are Diamonds items that can be bougth in the Item Mall.

* Battle Elixir (10 Diamonds)
Double all your ship Attack Power for 10 hours. Good to use in combo with ammos in very hard fight.

* Guardian Elixir (10 Diamons)
Double all your ship Armor for 10 hours. Good if you are short on ship and can’t build mass of them.

* EXP Potion (20 Diamonds)
Double all XP your officer receive from battles for 10 hours. To use before you burn all 200 stamina/20 warp energy for a real massive experience boost.

Groups

Grouping ship in a specific way is the way to victory, or at least reducing loses and increasing kills.
Keep in mind the rules:
* A group fire only once per round
* A dead group don’t bleed damage to other groups

If I face 5 groups of Winds with 1 group of tempest, I will lose fire power against them when I will kill a group. A battle that could last 1 rounds may take 5!
Let’s say I do 30,000 damage to 1 Wind. I just lost 29,600 damage I could have done to other groups!
A good way to test this is to send 1 group of ship agains the pirate in the wormhole. The fight will last 7 rounds. If you send 7 groups of ships, the fight will last 1 rounds.

A battle that last less round is always a better battle.

On the other way around, you can use that to create what I call weak shielding.
Let’s say I face 200 tempests.
If I don’t want them to fire on my Hammers, I can make douzen of small groups of 2-3 winds and 1-2 big groups of hammer. This way the tempest will lose many round trying to kill the small fighter group as fighters are their primary target.
This kind of strategy is particulary useful when facing very strong ships like Archans.

Ships

There’s 6 basic “ship” type :
* Fighter (Wind, Eagle, Raptor)
* Frigate (Tempest, Vulcan, Destroyer)
* Cruiser (Hammer, Longbow, Battle Cruiser)
* Battleship (Knight, Dreadnought, Aegis)
* Flagship
* Turret (Can only be encountered when attacking a player’s star) (Blaster, Pulse Laser, Railgun)

Each type aside Flagship has 3 subtype that are specialized in attacking a specific other type of ship.
Each ships has a series of stats:

* Armor
This is basicly the health of the ship. When fighting, this value goes down each time a ship receive damage. When it reaches 0, the ship is destroyed.

* Attack Power
A ship has specific attack power that is different against different ship type. This is the damage the ship will deal when attacking. It directly reduced the armor of the attacked ship.

* Weigth (Flagship = 0 Tons, Turret doesn’t have weigth)
Express in tons, this is how the game limit the number of ship in a fleet. For example, a tempest weigth 25 tons. If your officer has a tonnage cap of 25,000 tons, you can only control 1,000 tempest in that fleet.

* Fuel Consumption
This stat display is currently bugged. This is how much fuel is burn to send that ship somewhere. The distance or time to travel to destination is not a factor in fuel used. Sending a wind fighter anywhere in the galaxy always cost 190? (200?) fuel.

Fighters and Frigates are built using Light Manufactoring techno and mothership module.
Cruisers and Battleships are built using Heavy Manufactoring techno and mothership module.

Ship Stats

Ships are often listed as “Fighter II, Fregate III” and so on. Fighter I is a Wind and Fighter II is an Eagle, and so on.
Ships fire automaticly at the biggest group size of their best target.

If a group of winds attack 4 groups: 10 Hammers, 10 Tempests, 10 Winds, 15 Winds.
They will fire first on the 15 Winds group. (Bigger than the 10 winds, best target for Winds)
Once all fighters are dead, they will fire on the Tempest.
After that, they will fire on the Hammers.

It is VERY important to know this, as you can force the game to fire on ship you want it to.

Let’s take the 19,200 Tons fleet of the Warp Map:
– 600 Winds
– 160 Tempest
– 80 Hammer

If I face this with:
– 400 Knights
– Level 15-20 Thunderbolt or Tiger

I will lose no ship. See the following stats chart. The Winds, Tempest and Hammer will fire first and always on my Flagship, leaving my Kights alone because they do more damage to the flagship. If my Flagship has enough Armor, I will come out of that fight without a single lose. (Consider also that for the first few rounds, I will kill them while they won’t kill me a single ship)

However, you will often face fleet where every ship type is well covered. Fear not, it is also quite easy to break that kind of fleet.
In the storyline, if I face a Fighter III – Fregate I – Cruiser I – Battleship I combo, I will reply with a combo of Fregate I – Battleship I.
Some combo are harder than other to kill. But you will find that every ship type has a weak spot against other type.
Fighters for example cannot correctly fight against Cruisers, no matter the fighter type.

Here’s the list of all basic ship stats.

* Fighters

Wind
Armor : 400
Vs Fighter : 65 – Best
Vs Frigate : 20
Vs Cruiser : 13
Vs Battleship : 6
Vs Flagship : 18
Vs Turret : 4
Tonnage : 20
Fuel Consumption : 200

Eagle
Armor : 600
Vs Fighter : 32
Vs Frigate : 132 – Best
Vs Cruiser : 42
Vs Battleship : 16
Vs Flagship : 23
Vs Turret : 8
Tonnage : 30
Fuel Consumption : 300

Raptor
Armor : 700
Vs Fighter : 19
Vs Frigate : 50
Vs Cruiser : 83
Vs Battleship : 366 – Best
Vs Flagship : 92
Vs Turret : 22
Tonnage : 40
Fuel Consumption : 400

* Fregates

Tempest
Armor : 1000
Vs Fighter : 90 – Best
Vs Frigate : 50
Vs Cruiser : 20
Vs Battleship : 10
Vs Flagship : 30
Vs Turret : 5
Tonnage : 25
Fuel Consumption : 250

Eagle
Armor : 1500
Vs Fighter : 32
Vs Frigate : 160 – Best
Vs Cruiser : 61
Vs Battleship : 20
Vs Flagship : 70
Vs Turret : 10
Tonnage : 35
Fuel Consumption : 350

Destroyer
Armor : 1800
Vs Fighter : 15
Vs Frigate : 70
Vs Cruiser : 280 – Best
Vs Battleship : 140
Vs Flagship : 80
Vs Turret : 17
Tonnage : 45
Fuel Consumption : 450

* Cruiser

Hammer
Armor : 2100
Vs Fighter : 10
Vs Frigate : 180 – Best
Vs Cruiser : 80
Vs Battleship : 40
Vs Flagship : 80
Vs Turret : 12
Tonnage : 45
Fuel Consumption : 450

Longbow
Armor : 2500
Vs Fighter : 3
Vs Frigate : 12
Vs Cruiser : 25
Vs Battleship : 50
Vs Flagship : 900 – Best
Vs Turret : 500
Tonnage : 50
Fuel Consumption : 500

Battle Cruiser
Armor : 3200
Vs Fighter : 15
Vs Frigate : 42
Vs Cruiser : 175
Vs Battleship : 550 – Best
Vs Flagship : 110
Vs Turret : 34
Tonnage : 60
Fuel Consumption : 600

* Battleship

Knight
Armor : 4000
Vs Fighter : 32
Vs Frigate : 52
Vs Cruiser : 466 – Best
Vs Battleship : 198
Vs Flagship : 110
Vs Turret : 29
Tonnage : 60
Fuel Consumption : 600

Dreadnougth
Armor : 4500
Vs Fighter : 15
Vs Frigate : 95
Vs Cruiser : 210
Vs Battleship : 600 – Best
Vs Flagship : 150
Vs Turret : 45
Tonnage : 65
Fuel Consumption : 650

Aegis
Armor : 7000
Vs Fighter : 556 – Best
Vs Frigate : 310
Vs Cruiser : 66
Vs Battleship : 33
Vs Flagship : 60
Vs Turret : 16
Tonnage : 70
Fuel Consumption : 700

Flagship

Your flagship is your biggest and most badass ship. You can only have one per fleet and it doesn’t count toward your tonnage cap. However, as you progress in the game, you will face battles where not having one can be an advantage.
Flagship are built using Shipyard.
There’s 12 kind of flagship avalable. Each have different requirement to build them.

Basic Flagship and Leopard can be built without blueprint.

5 are rewards for exploring the galaxy (1 blueprint given):
* Thunderbolt : 5% exploration (100 stars)
* Valkyrie : 15% exploration (300 stars)
* Dragon : 30% exploration (600 stars)
* Executioner : 60% exploration (1200 stars)
* Holy Avenger : 100% exploration (2000 stars)

5 remaining flagship requires you to aquires their blueprint by battling fleet in the warp map:
* Lion : 6,000 Tons fleet (1 Structural Blueprint needed per ship)
* Tiger : 12,100 Tons fleet (1 Structural / 1 Propulsion Blueprints needed per ship)
* Rhino : 19,200 Tons fleet (1 Structural / 1 Propulsion Blueprints needed per ship)
* Mammoth : 27,600 Tons fleet (1 Structural / 1 Propulsion / 1 Firepower Blueprints needed per ship)
* Titan : 42,500 Tons fleet (1 Structural / 1 Propulsion / 1 Firepower / 1 Armor Blueprints needed per ship) Can also be bought for 10 diamonds per blueprint in the Item Mall

But a flagship that just came out of the shipyard is quite weak and will be easily be destroyed. In the “Repair/Fit” panel, you have “Merge Flagship”.
This panel allows you to Merge flagship with each other, create a stronger flagship.
You can also build equipement for your flagship, weapons, armor and special effect “skill” items.

Merging Flagship

Each flagship can be merged with others. Each flagship type can be a merge a specific number of time, gaining armor and attack power each time. A flagship has the following stats:

* Level
Level of the flagship. Each time you merge a number of flagship into another, it can gain a merge level.

* Max Merge Level
Number of time a flagship can gain a merge level. (Ex.: Leopard max merge level is 10)

* Merge Coefficient
Deffine what type of flagship can be merge into another and how much effect they will provide to the receiving flagship.

Each flagship has a different set of value to be merged and a maximum level possible:

* Basic Flagship : 5 lvl, Coefficient 1
* Leopard : 10 lvl, Coefficient 2
* Lion : 15 lvl, Coefficient 3
* Tiger : 20 lvl, Coefficient 4
* Thunderbolt : 20 lvl, Coefficient 4
* Rhino : 25 lvl, Coefficient 5
* Valkyrie : 25 lvl, Coefficient 5
* Mammoth : 25 lvl, Coefficient 6
* Dragon : 30 lvl, Coefficient 6
* Titan : 30 lvl, Coefficient 7
* Executioner : 35 lvl, Coefficient 7
* Holy Avenger : 40 lvl, Coefficient 7

Now, what does that all means?
1. It is best to only merge a flagship into a flagship of similar or higher Coefficient. Ex.: You can merge a Leopard into a Tiger, but you shouldn’t merge a Tiger into a Leopard… That’s just stupid.
2. Each level a flagship gain, it can only gain a maximum of 50% of his original attack and armor. If a ship can get to level 10, it can gains a maximum of 500% his original values.
3. Coefficient gives how you the ratio how much a ship will gain from the merged ship. Ex.: Merging a Tiger into a Tiger lvl 0 will add 500 Attack Power and 20,000 armor. Merging a leopard (Coefficient 2) into a tiger (Coefficient 4) will only give 250 Attack Power and 10,000 armor.

For best result, it is advices to merge ships of the same coefficient with each other.
Note that the ships rewarded for exploration CANNOT be merge into another, they can only be the receiving end of the merging. Ex.: You can merge a tiger into a thunderbolt, but you cannot merge a thunderbolt into a tiger.

It is very important to know that to gain a new flagship level, you need that level number in flagship to merge.
If you want to go from level 4 to level 5, you will need to merge 5 ships into your level 4 ship.
Be very careful as to what ship you merge into another. If you merge a ship with equipements into another one, you will lose your equipements. Equipements are not lost if it is the receiving ship that has them.

A “Pure” flagship is a flagship that was merge at the best coefficient possible. Ex.: Only merging tiger into tiger will make a pure Tiger.

You can then know that:
* Basic Flagship : 15 + 1 ships needed for level 5, 0 blueprint
* Leopard : 55 + 1 ships needed for level 10, 0 blueprint
* Lion : 120 + 1 ships needed for level 15, 121 blueprints
* Tiger : 210 + 1 ships needed for level 20, 422 blueprints
* Thunderbolt : 210 Tiger + 1 Thunderbolt for level 20, 421 blueprints
* Rhino : 325 + 1 ships needed for level 25, 652 blueprints
* Valkyrie : 325 Rhino + 1 Valkyrie for level 25, 651 blueprints
* Mammoth : 325 + 1 ships needed for level 25, 978 blueprints
* Dragon : 465 Mammoth + 1 Dragon needed for level 30, 1396 blueprints
* Titan : 465 + 1 ships needed for level 30, 1864 blueprints
* Executioner : 630 Titan + 1 Executioner for level 35, 2521 blueprints
* Holy Avenger : 820 Titan + 1 Holy Avenger for level 40, 3281 blueprints

You read that right. You will need 3280 titan blueprint to create a pure Holy Avenger level 40.
It is also 129,760,000 metal and 129,760,000 crystal, 68.3 days of uninterrupted production using a level 48 shipyard. (Not counting the ressources needed to upgrade the shipyard and power plant)
And if you have the brilliant idea of using diamonds to reach that:
Blueprints : 32,800 diamonds
Metal/Crystal : 38,930 diamonds
+60 Diamonds for the blueprint to get the shipyard to level 48
71,790 diamonds… With the currently economy, this is only 5386 $US.

(Note, if you got that kind of cash to burn, how about sending some my way? :p )

Pure Flagship stats (No Equipements)
* Basic Flagship : 1,050 Attack / 35,000 Armor
* Leopard : 3,000 Attack / 90,000 Armor
* Lion : 8,000 Attack / 300,000 Armor
* Tiger : 14,000 Attack / 560,000 Armor
* Thunderbolt : 14,000 Attack / 560,000 Armor
* Rhino : 28,500 Attack / 1,140,000 Armor
* Valkyris : 38,000 Attack / 1,330,000 Armor
* Mammoth : 36,100 Attack / 1,710,000 Armor
* Dragon : 60,000 Attack / 2,400,000 Armor
* Titan : 60,000 Attack / 3,120,000 Armor
* Executioner : 87,000 Attack / 4,350,000 Armor
* Holy Avenger : 170,000 Attack / 6,800,000 Armor

You might be interrested to know that there is no easy way to kill a pure Titan, a pure Executioner or a pure Holy Avenger.
Longbow deal 900 damage to flagship… But knowing than, you would need 7555 longbow… Which is 377,777 tons of ship to kill the Holy Avenger in one round.  So you would need a fleet of only Longbows to have a good chance at killing it in 9-12 rounds. But good chance the Holy Avenger wouldn’t come alone.

But rest assure, you are very unlikely to even encounter one of those.

Elite, Ace, Archans

As you move up in the Adventure storyline, you will face other ships that aren’t standard, or ship that you can’t build. Saldy, there’s no real way to gain the info about the stats of those ships aside trying to kill them.

* Elite : Same ships as you, but have double all stats. For exemple, an elite Wind have 900 armor and all it’s attack power are doubled as well.

* Ace : Same ships as you, but appear to have a ???% bonus on attack and armor (Number are to be tested)

* Archans : Special ships you cannot build or have base stats about. Only way to know, is to blow them up!
Tarentula:
Armor : 10800
Vs Fighter : 198 Poor
Vs Frigate : 798 Poor
Vs Cruiser : 1680 Excelent
Vs Battleship : 840 Good
20 Tons

Zealot:
Armor : 11900
Vs Fighter : 660 Poor
Vs Frigate : 150 Poor
Vs Cruiser : ???
Vs Battleship : 1100 Excelent

ARCHANS STATS TO BE REVIEWED.

You read that right, 2 tarentula can blow up a battle cruiser in 1 round.

If you start encountering Archans ship in the storyline, be sure to take a break and level your officer in the warp map. Expect yourself to need about 45-50,000 tons of ship to faces the first few fight against them (Third fight is 500 tarentulas / 200 zealots), and try to keep your ammo/potion for those fight! Also expect massive loses against them.

Ammo

Ammo can be equiped on a fleet and increased the attack power of ships that can use those ammo.
There’s 4 ammo strength for each of the ship primary type (Fighter, Frigate, Cruiser, Battleship); 10, 20, 30 and 40% of attack power increase.
10, 20 and 30% ammo can be bought from the Trade Port in your Defense screen. They cost Nova Coins.
40% ammo can be bought with diamonds from the Item Mall.

* F Type : Fighter Ammo (600 coins / 1200 coins / 1800 coins / 2 Diamonds)
* S Type : Frigate Ammo (4000 coins / 5000 coins / 6000 coins / 3 Diamonds)
* M Type : Cruiser Ammo (6900 coins / 7800 coins / 9000 coins / 7 Diamons)
* L Type : Battleship Ammo (15,000 coins / 18,000 coins / 21,000 coins / 12 Diamonds)

Each ammo package gives 10,000 ammos.
Each time a ship fire in a battle, it consumme 1 ammo.
If you have a group of 100 ships in a battle that last 20 rounds, this group of ship will use 2,000 ammos.

Ammo are loaded on your fleet in your fleet screen by clicking on the ammo icon on the left. It then ask you which type of ammo you want to load.

Leadership or Military?

In short : Military.
In long : There’s some hidden effect of skill book, even if you don’t put points in them. I will explain more once I messed a bit with the numbers. But it does make military the clear winner, as long as you use ships you are specialized in.