Demolition Ship Damage Vs Ships

[tiberiansun371alexw]

The Demolition Ship only seems to do 85 damage against the galley line instead of 110. Two demolition ship direct hits can destroy a galleon. Other galleons that take the reduced splash damage will be weakened, but most of them will not fall below 85.

For game balance purposes this makes sense. Fire ships destroy galleons, demolition ships are very resistant to fire ships and destroy massed fire ships (although hilariously they still fail 1 vs 1), and galleons can dispatch demolition ships from range as well as being the "tankiest" of the ships so that ships that suffer from the splash aren't going to lose enough HP to die to a direct attack from the demo ship. In contrast 5 demolition ships that reach their targets of a blob of fire ships will blow almost all of them. The ship triangle is intact.

However, I don't get how this mechanically makes any sense. Units with melee and pierce armor reduce the damage taken by melee and pierce damage. Specialized armor like cavalry armor will reduce damage from anti-cavalry attack. So a cavalry unit with 3 melee armor and 3 cavalry armor will take 22 damage from a pikeman with castle age upgrades. However, I don't see how this works against the demolition ship.