Rapid fire is a bonus shot. When a unit fires in Combat and the shot lands on something it has rapid fire against, it immediately gets a chance to fire again at a fresh random target. That is the whole feature, and it is the biggest single reason two fleets that cost exactly the same can get completely different results against the same planet.
Ratings are fixed. No research changes them. You can look up any unit's ratings in the game: open the Shipyard or the Defense page and click More Info. The green list is what that unit rapid fires. The red list is what rapid fires it.
How the extra shot is rolled
With a rating of R, the chance of getting another shot is (R - 1) / R.
These are all the ratings SFC2 actually uses.
| Rating | Chance of another shot | Rating | Chance of another shot |
|---|---|---|---|
| x2 | 50.00% | x33 | 96.97% |
| x3 | 66.67% | x50 | 98.00% |
| x4 | 75.00% | x100 | 99.00% |
| x5 | 80.00% | x125 | 99.20% |
| x6 | 83.33% | x200 | 99.50% |
| x7 | 85.71% | x250 | 99.60% |
| x10 | 90.00% | x500 | 99.80% |
| x15 | 93.33% | x1250 | 99.92% |
| x20 | 95.00% | ||
| x25 | 96.00% | ||
| x30 | 96.67% |
An example. A Poseidon Class Cruiser attacks a planet holding three Missile Batteries and a Laser Cannon.
- The Poseidon's shot is aimed at random and happens to hit a Missile Battery. Its rating against the Missile Battery is x10, so it has a 9/10 chance of another shot.
- The roll succeeds. The next shot is aimed at random again and hits another Missile Battery, so it rolls again at 90 percent.
- That roll succeeds too, and this time the shot lands on the Laser Cannon. The Poseidon has no rapid fire against the Laser Cannon, so the chain stops and it is finished for the round.
What a rating is actually worth
The chain does not stop at one bonus shot. Every extra shot picks a new random target, and if that target is also one you rapid fire, you roll again. So if the whole enemy field is made of a unit you have rating R against, the average number of shots you fire in a round is R, not 2.
Measured on the live battle engine. One attacking unit, 500 defenders, no research on either side, averaged over hundreds of battles.
| Shooter | Target | Rating | Average shots per round |
|---|---|---|---|
| Athena Class Battleship | Laser Cannon | none | 1.0 |
| Apollo Class Fighter | Hermes Class Probe | x5 | 5.0 |
| Hades Class Battleship | Athena Class Battleship | x7 | 7.2 |
| Prometheus Class Destroyer | Laser Cannon | x10 | 9.6 |
| Poseidon Class Cruiser | Missile Battery | x10 | 10.2 |
| Ares Class Bomber | Laser Cannon | x20 | 20.2 |
| Zeus Class | Hermes Class Probe | x1250 | about 1,250 |
Mixed defences kill the chain
All of that only holds when every target on the field is one you rapid fire. Targets are picked at random and the chain ends the moment a shot lands on something you do not rapid fire, so mixing one wrong unit into a wall drags the average down fast.
Here is one Ares Class Bomber shooting into a 1,000 unit wall. The Ares has x20 against the Laser Cannon and nothing at all against the Plasma Cannon.
| Share of the wall that is Laser Cannon | Average shots the Ares fires |
|---|---|
| 100% | 20.2 |
| 75% | 3.6 |
| 50% | 2.0 |
| 25% | 1.3 |
| 10% | 1.1 |
| 0% | 1.0 |
Going from a pure Laser wall to three quarters Laser costs the Ares more than 80 percent of its shots. This is the whole argument for mixing your defences instead of buying one cheap unit in bulk.
Shots still land on wrecks
Units are not cleared off the field until the round is over, so a long rapid fire chain will keep shooting at things that are already dead. The bigger your rating is compared to the number of live targets, the more of it is wasted.
100 Ares Class Bombers fire roughly 2,000 shots in the first round. Fired into 2,500 Laser Cannons that kills 1,368 of them, so about a third of the shots hit wreckage. Fired into 6,000 Laser Cannons the same 2,000 shots kill 1,687, and only 15 percent are wasted.
Who has rapid fire against what
Three rules cover nearly all of it.
- No defence has rapid fire against anything. Rapid fire is a ship thing only.
- Every ship that has any rapid fire at all has x5 against the four throwaway units: Hermes Class Probe, Shadow Probe, Helios Class Solar Satellite and Genesis Solar Satellite. Those four, plus the Hephaestus Class Attack Platform, have no rapid fire of their own and nothing rapid fires the Hephaestus.
- Everything else is the two short lists below, plus the Zeus.
Ship against ship. This is the complete list.
Ship against defence. Also complete.
Only the Zeus has rapid fire against the Gauss Cannon. Nothing in the game has rapid fire against the Plasma Cannon, the Decoy, the Large Decoy, the Anti-Ballistic Missile or the Interplanetary Ballistic Missile. That is a large part of why those units hold up so well.
The Zeus
The Zeus Class is in a category of its own. It rapid fires everything in the game except the Plasma Cannon, both decoys, both missiles, the Hephaestus and other Zeus.
| Target | Rating | Target | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hermes Class Probe | x1250 | Carmanor Class Cargo | x125 |
| Shadow Probe | x1250 | Apollo Class Fighter | x100 |
| Helios Class Solar Satellite | x1250 | Particle Cannon | x100 |
| Genesis Solar Satellite | x1250 | Pulse Cannon | x100 |
| Zagreus Class Recycler | x500 | Gauss Cannon | x50 |
| Atlas Class Cargo | x250 | Poseidon Class Cruiser | x33 |
| Dionysus Class Recycler | x250 | Athena Class Battleship | x30 |
| Gaia Class Colony Ship | x250 | Ares Class Bomber | x25 |
| Hercules Class Cargo | x250 | Hades Class Battleship | x15 |
| Artemis Class Fighter | x200 | Prometheus Class Destroyer | x5 |
| Laser Cannon | x200 | ||
| Missile Battery | x200 |
What it is worth in a real fight
Three attack fleets, each costing 45,000,000 resources, no research on either side, sent at two walls that cost about the same as each other.
- Wall A is 2,000 Laser Cannons plus 2,000 Missile Batteries, 8,000,000 resources. The Ares has x20 against both of them.
- Wall B is 40 Plasma Cannons plus 75 Gauss Cannons, 7,975,000 resources. None of the three fleets has rapid fire against either unit.
| Fleet | Against Wall A | Against Wall B |
|---|---|---|
| 500 Ares Class Bombers | Wins in 2 rounds, loses nothing | Wins in 2 rounds, loses 24 Ares (2.2M) |
| 750 Athena Class Battleships | Draw at 6 rounds, wall not cleared | Wins in 2 rounds, loses 30 Athena (1.8M) |
| 360 Prometheus Class Destroyers | Draw at 6 rounds, wall not cleared | Wins in 2 rounds, loses 5 Prometheus (0.6M) |
Against Wall A the 500 Ares clears 4,000 units in two rounds and does not lose a ship. The same money in Athenas kills about 3,700 of the 4,000 in the full six rounds and then goes home with nothing, because a draw means no plunder. The Prometheus fleet does even worse despite hitting twice as hard per shot.
Swap in Wall B and the order flips completely. With no rapid fire targets on the field the Ares is the worst of the three and the Prometheus is the best. Rapid fire, not the stat line, is what decides which fleet you should have built.
Things that catch people out
- Rapid fire is more shots, not bigger shots. Each extra shot does the same damage as the first, so if your Weapons Rating cannot get through the target's Shield Rating, rapid fire does not help you at all.
- It works for the defender too. Ships parked on the planet and ships that arrive on Group Defend get their rapid fire exactly like the attacker does. Defences never do.
- The chain also ends if a shot is completely absorbed by a shield. In practice that never happens on a rapid fire target: a shot is only absorbed when it is worth 1 percent or less of the target's Shield Rating, and no rapid fire pairing in SFC2 is anywhere near that lopsided.
- Research changes nothing here. Weapons Tech, Shield Tech and Armor Tech change how hard shots hit, never how often you shoot.
- A lot of the rapid fire people remember from the old game is gone with the ships that had it. There is no Charon, Thanatos, Moros, Empusa, Erebus or Space Mine in SFC2. The Shadow Probe and the Genesis Solar Satellite are new, and both are x5 targets for everything.
- If you want to test any of this yourself, the in-game Calculator runs the same battle engine the game uses.
The Poseidon Class Cruiser as the Shipyard shows it, and the Laser Cannon as the Defense page shows it. Green is what the unit rapid fires, red is what rapid fires the unit.
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