[Qent]

So a while back I learned that "Big Ship" works just as well as "Huge" for killing corvettes and larger, and I wanted to see for myself. My results so far are

• "Big Ship" does in fact work just as well as "Huge" for damage scaling for normal primaries and secondaries. The effects are not cumulative.
• Small weapons (neither "Huge" nor "Big Ship") have logarithmic damage scaling against "Big Damage" ships: they do full damage when hull integrity is 100%, reduced damage against lower hull integrity, and no damage against 10% hull integrity.
  • If you have a small weapon that does enough damage, you can bypass the "Big Damage" scaling, hurting a capital beyond 10% (for only one shot) or even destroying it.
• "Big Ship"/"Huge" weapons do 25% damage against supercaps.
• Normal small and "Big Ship"/"Huge" primaries and secondaries cannot damage supercaps past 75% (unless it's really powerful; see above).
• The "Supercap" weapon flag does not nullify the "Big Damage" flag: a "Supercap" non-"Huge" non-"Big Ship" weapon will damage a Sathanas down to 10% and no further.
• The "Supercap" ship flag doesn't add logarithmic damage scaling versus non-"Supercap" weapons: they do full damage (subject to "Big Damage" flags) down to 75%, then stop.
• Beams seem not to be affected by the "Supercap" flag. Damage scaling unknown.
• Shockwaves can damage "Big Damage"/"Supercap" ships below their respective thresholds. I haven't checked how their damage is scaled yet.

Among other things, this means that blobs have an advantage over fighter primaries when it comes to taking down the last 10% of a capital ship. I.e. mostly useless instead of totally useless.

[General Battuta]

How about the difference between player damage dealt and NPC damage dealt?

[Qent]

"Big Ship" serves as "Huge" for getting around that too. I still need to try more flag combinations and AI ships though. The only AI test I've done so far was to verify that blobs can kill corvettes.

[rubixcube]

I should attach a flag to my phone that says "supercap" to make it indestructible.

[Qent]

Starting some more comprehensive testing, small player primaries do 1% of normal vs. Big Damage, small player secondaries 5%, as expected (starting at full HP!). If given explosion radii however (no shockwaves), the explosion damage seems to be 0.01% for primaries and 0.25% for secondaries (so the crazy player nerf divides damage by 100 or 20 for the impact, then 100 or 20 again for the explosion? TBH sounds like a "bug" in Retail, if it is in Retail). Shockwaves always do full damage vs. Big Damage, aside from distance attenuation.

I should attach a flag to my phone that says "supercap" to make it indestructible.

It also turns out that shockwaves from small weapons do full damage to supercaps, so EMP missiles will slowly but surely destroy your phone, making it call random people in the meantime.

[BengalTiger]

It also turns out that shockwaves from small weapons do full damage to supercaps, so EMP missiles will slowly but surely destroy your phone, making it call random people in the meantime.

And swap connections randomly when people start picking up their phones.

That's actually an idea for a smartphone prank virus...

[Qent]

Oh now this is interesting. Flak has an enormous penalty against capital ships: it only does 5% of normal damage against ships with the "Big Damage" flag. I only tested firing from a player ship, but the test weapon had "Big Ship"/"Huge" flags, so the player penalty should not have been applied. This could be to balance Standard Flak's awesome damage in comparison to beams and the like, or perhaps to prevent destroyers from killing themselves with flak. Flak shockwaves (not present on any Retail weapons) still do full damage.

If this holds true for AI turrets, then any blob turret is better than Standard Flak for shooting at corvettes or larger. (Except possibly for taking out subsystems, but flak is already bad at that.)