Explanation of ship stats?

[ipselorn]

Howdy, all. I've been trying for a while now to find out what the heck the ship stats mean mechanically. A ship with higher Offense presumably does more damage, for instance, but how is that actually reflected in the game? Does that mean that my damage stat will be higher? What else does Offense affect? What about Support? What all does that affect? The wiki doesn't seem to have any information on this, the Beginner's Guide on this very forum doesn't mention it, there's no information to be found in the game... halp plz!

And thanks. : )

[Aitherix]

I'm not on to check exactly what it affects, but on the Talents Tab each specialization has 4 unique skills of which any one can only be active. Each one affects not just yourself, but other players around you as well. You can find the description of each stat whenever you mouse over one of them (what it does, who it affects, how much % of the effect is). In general, the specializations are self-explanatory. (Sorry if I wasn't able to provide a more detailed guide, but there's not really much more to it)

[lightningdragon10065]

The 3 stats you see (Offense, Defense and Support) are modifiers for relevant stats.

Offense affects Damage, as you guessed.
Defense affects Hull and Sails (meaning a ship with higher defense will have more hull and sail HP than one with a lower defense stat).
Support affects the Diplomacy stat, which directly affects things such as price discount, and amount of HP recovered by the water barrel.

These can be viewed by mousing over the relevant stats in your inventory screen, where you'll see a percentage value on the stat's description popup. This should be the same as the value listed in the town's ship page. (i.e, a ship with, say, an offense 'stat' of 300 would show 300% on the damage stat card.)

[ipselorn]

Originally posted by lightningdragon10065:

These can be viewed by mousing over the relevant stats in your inventory screen, where you'll see a percentage value on the stat's description popup. This should be the same as the value listed in the town's ship page. (i.e, a ship with, say, an offense 'stat' of 300 would show 300% on the damage stat card.)

Oh man, that's what those "effectiveness" percentages mean? Suddenly so many things make sense. Thanks a bunch for the explanation. : )

[lightningdragon10065]

Alright, I just checked in-game to look at it, and this must have changed at some point... the % shown on the stat card now looks like it shows the faction's stat mods... NOT the actual ship's stat modifier...

...So, my previous explanation is apparently completely wrong.
Since I don't have any idea on the exact mechanics now, I'm guessing the ship's stat modifier now takes your current stats and applies the multiplier to that.
The effectiveness value looks like it shows the percentage of the base stat that you currently have.
As an example of this, one of my characters, who currently has a corvette, has a damage stat of ~1100ish, and the effectiveness value is 992%.

[Siedlerkiller]

What about the Specialists, ist +10% Support or -10% better? I mean is it adding +10% to the reload time or reducing it by 10%?

[KrysisMode]

Specialists add or take 10% of the cool down time.

Support at -10% is better as it decreases cooldown time by 10%. stack with a talent focus in support and you can get some very fast cycle time going on. Trade off is taking a +10% to another set of talents. It gives a strength and weakness obviously. Plus crews and captains can have this trait as well.

Obviously this lets you try and build specialist builds that are devestating when done right. Imagine taking the offense specialization which shaves off cooldown time a good bit. Then getting a specialist who removes another 10% from offensive talents. THEN get a crew who does the same thing. Now a captain who loves cannons and cannon accessories.

Bam, you now have gatling cannons and a firebarrel launcher on steriods.

The only drawback is whatever skills are nerfed in the process of stacking those reductions.