Hello fellow Xcraft players,

quite a few persons seem to struggle with the simulator at the start so I decided to write down how to use it correctly as easy as possible.

I will explain how to make the simulator more accurate and will give you an example how to simulate a battle against a human pirate correctly that is easy to understand.

This post will also partly cover how a player can replace specific things that are not included in the basic simulator without an upgrade.


1. The way

1.1 Information
You probably already tried to fight some pirates yourself and probably the results have been frustrating for you.
But this is good! It will help you to get rid of this problem.

A battle report will always contain all necessary information on how to beat a certain pirate fleet. So you can use this as a tactic and send 2 small transporters to be killed by a specific pirate so you get to know their specific technologies without the need to spy them or anything else.
(Please consider that a fleet which is too small and weak will be torn to shreds and you won't get a battle report, so no access to the necessary information.)

1.2 Remodeling the information
After you collected all the information you have everything you need. But the information are not in a way to use them yet. So you need to remodel them to fit your simulators needs. See 2.2 of the Example.

1.3 Now you can simulate
That's it! You're done and get a pretty accurate simulation!

However, you still need to be aware that there is a little bit of luck involved and in later battles with flagships even more luck is involved due to the possible modifications of Mass Damage for every single shot. Because of this reason it's important to do the same simulation multiple times! Look out for the best and the worst results out of ~10 simulations. That will most likely be the range of results your battle will be inside as well.


2. Fighting against pirates - The Example

2.1 Retrieving the Information
I took the following screenshot in a battle report. It shows all information about the enemy. The screenshot: http://prntscr.com/ot3reg
It's mandatory to get your hand on all this information. The admiral officer can only be seen in battle reports. The battle experience can be taken from the profile and the technologies can be retrieved by spying the main planet which is listed in the pirates profile.

2.2 Adding the information to the simulator correctly
First you should add the standard technologies to the simulator - weapon technology, shield technology and armor technology.

Now you are left with 3 medals, the battle experience and the Admiral officer lvl 7. All of this is not included in the simulator when it's not upgraded. But even the upgrade only unlocks to add the Admiral officer, neither the battle experience nor the medals. You need to manually add them.

To add the things manually you simply calculate the total influences in % and convert the percentage to technology levels which are always available in the simulator!

The battle experience adds 30.2% to everything.
The Admiral officer is on lvl 7. Each level adds 5%. 5% * 7 levels = 35% to everything.
The medals adds 1% to attack of light fleet, 1% to attack of all fleets and 1% to armor and shields of defences.
Since there are no defences in a pirate battle you can leave the last medal out.
You can convert 1% to attack of light fleets to 1% to all fleets to create a even safer simulation result for you.
So there is +2% attack damage due to the medals.

Now you calculate the added %'s for each technology into the corresponding amount of levels.
The weapon technology grants +4% attack damage per level.
The shield technology and the armor technology grant +8% shields/armor per level.

For Weapon Technology:
The Battle XP ( +30.2% ) + Admiral officer lvl 7 ( +35% ) + Medals ( +2% ) = +67.2%
Divide by 4% per level weapon technology: 67.2 / 4 = 16.8.
-> You need to add 16.8 levels to weapon technology in the simulator to the levels that were added by the normal technologies to include the battle experience, the admiral officer and the medals.
Since you can't add 16.8 levels I suggest to add 17 levels. If you still beat the fleet with a higher amount of damage from the enemy you're on the safe side of the simulations.

For Shield Technology:
The Battle XP ( +30.2% ) + Admiral officer lvl 7 ( +35% ) = +65.2%
-> Medals can be left out. They only add damage or shield and armor to defences. In pirate battles there are no defences so you leave this medal.
Divide by 8% per level shield technology: 65.2 / 8 = 8.15.
-> You need to add 8.15 level to shield technology in the simulator to the levels that were added by the normal technologies to include the battle experience and the admiral officer.
Since you can't add 8.15 levels you now have to make a decision. You can add only 8 levels but you're risking that the enemy may be stronger than you simulated. I always recommend to round up in this case - even when it's only .15 above the last level. It will take you to the safe side of the simulations when rounding up.

For Armor Technology:
The Battle XP ( +30.2% ) + Admiral officer lvl 7 ( +35% ) = +65.2%
-> Medals can be left out. They only add damage or shield and armor to defences. In pirate battles there are no defences so you leave this medal.
Divide by 8% per level armor technology: 65.2 / 8 = 8.15.
-> You need to add 8.15 level to armor technology in the simulator to the levels that were added by the normal technologies to include the battle experience and the admiral officer.
Since you can't add 8.15 levels you now have to make a decision. You can add only 8 levels but you're risking that the enemy may be stronger than you simulated. I always recommend to round up in this case - even when it's only .15 above the last level. It will take you to the safe side of the simulations when rounding up.

The final levels of the technologies including base technologies and the calculated values (assuming I rounded up all the time) are:
Weapon Technology: Base 12 + Calculated 17 = LVL 29 weapon technology in total.
Shield Technology: Base 12 + Calculated 9 = LVL 21 shield technology in total.
Armor Technology: Base 12 + Calculated 9 = LVL 21 armor technology in total.

2.3 Now you can simulate
Congratulations! You now have considered all relevant information to attack a standard human pirate, even when you were not able to add them to the simulator directly or you do not own a upgraded simulator at all!

Just one last thing..
After you've done all this please don't forget to add your own units to the simulator. After 25 000 points it costs 1000 vespene to do a simulation and you don't want to forget this and waste your vespene on a empty simulation.


Best greetings from

Tii


3. Beating the simulator
You can beat the simulator and the results by assuming higher technology levels than the ones given in reality. If you simply add 1 or 2 levels to everything your results will be worse than before but if you manage to buff your fleet up so you still beat it with a acceptable result (very small losses) you will loose still less than what you've simulated.
But don't add too much! It will falsify the results too much instead of adding a benefit.

Further you NEED to simulate multiple times the same battle without changing the fleet units or anything else. You look out for the best and the worst simulation results out of ~10 simulations. You form a range from the worst to the best simulation result. Most likely your result will be at the better end of this range when you have added 1 or 2 levels extra.


4. Disclaimer and final thoughts

4.1 Final Thoughts
All in all this is the basic principle of how you compensate technologies, buildings and other things that influence a battle without the need of upgrading your simulator.
However, this method can not fully replace an upgraded simulator because this technic is not applyable to fleet units. The most fleet units can not simply be replaced by a combination of other units. For a very few ones this is possible but never for Flagships.
Unfortunatly adding other races and things to the post would let the calculations get out of hand too fast and would make things much more difficult to understand for beginners so I left that out.
For some of you it also will be necessary to consider the Aggression parameter which can be seen on a pirates profile. It increases when you kill a lot of large pirate fleets from the same pirate. It increases attack damage, shields and armor specifically against you and the increase in % is equal to the level of aggression.

4.2 Disclaimer
This article was written by Tii on the 15th August 2019. It only is valid for a very limited time. Changes are implemented nearly every day to the game so that there is no guarantee that this article will be complete or correct in the future anymore. Its only cause is to show players the direction of how to approach and handle simulations, not every necessary detail.
Please do not use the values seen in the example for own simulations against the pirate RedHead in the future!
The post was written for beginners, not advanced or expert knowledge levels on this subject.
This post ONLY covers the attacking of a human pirate and how to use the simulator on this specific example. For other pirates and especially for other races and players the values will differ a lot. More or different things have to be considered which are NOT covered by this post.
In case you discover any problems or mistakes please let me know either by answering here or writing me a direct message so I can correct it.



I wish you all happy simulating!