by Creamsteak
This comes to mind after my most recent game. I've basically always used some form of this when I play, but apparently it had not occurred to some of my friends. I understand it has problems, but I'll share my basic heuristic for combat judgement.This is a really basic back of the envelope way of calculating whether or not you can win a given combat. With some experience, you can get a very quick and dirty expectation of how much of a risk you are getting into. This is not going to tell you how combat will go (dice are random), and there are nuances this can't deal with, but it does get you a ballpark figure for when to pick a fight or retreat/concede.
First, evaluate every ship types average damage per round. Supposing the enemy ships all have the same level of shielding, this is given by a simple multiplication of your chance to hit by your damage done with each weapon.
So, for example, in the basic human dreadnought with a hull upgrade and a human interceptor with a hull upgrade your damage would be given as 4/6 and 1/6 respectively. The typical single alien interceptor has a damage against such ships of 4/6 as well (two ion cannons hitting on 5 and 6).
Second, divide each ship types damage by it's total damage to kill. For your interceptor with 2 hits, that would be 1/12. For your Dread, that's 1/6. This is the priority you should apply to attacking a target. In other terms, it means that damage to the dread is twice as good as damage to the interceptor, on average, though this is obviously flawed in some ways. It's only important here for evaluating what follows.
Now, in initiative order, add up average damage per round between fleets till one side hits the total damage needed to kill the highest priority target.
In this case, the interceptor does 1/6 to the alien's 2, then the alien interceptor does 4/6 to the dread, then the dread does 4/6 to the alien making it 5/6. Following this chain
Human, Alien
1/6, 0; interceptor shoots
1/6, 4/6; alien shoots
5/6, 4/6; dread shoots
6/6, 4/6; interceptor shoots
6/6, 8/6; alien shoots
10/6, 8/6; dread shoots
11/6, 8/6; interceptor shoots
11/6, 12/6; alien shoots
15/6, 12/6; dread shoots, 15/6 is > than the alien's health, the alien is dead.
After each ship is dead in priority order, you can continue from there.
If ships have missiles, just front load the equation with the missile math in order.
If ships have different shields, the equation gets rough a bit.
Regeneration obviously negates 1 wound per round on that ships action.
This won't get you anywhere near the exact odds you have, but it will get you an idea of whether or not you are likely to win or lose, and with casualties or without. It obviously ignores luck, retreating, and various other problems. Once again, this is just a back of the envelope ballpark idea of whether you are getting in over your head or not. Luck happens, and there are variables like damage overkill, mixed shields, targeting priority and opportunity, etc. I'm mostly suggesting this for those moments where you really don't know if you are ready to take out a specific alien cruiser or picking a fight. I also don't personally have the ability (or more the desire) to do the math with very complicated fleet combinations or series of battles. It's also no substitute for research or experience.