Extreme Counterattack

About Extreme Counterattack

This intelligent system counters incoming attacks by launching its own attacks. Deals 80-200 points of damage to the attacker. (Only 1 piece of equipment of this type may be equipped at a time.)

While listed under Air Defense and requiring development of the Powered Pulse Cannon, Extreme Counter-Attack (ECA) is not solely an Air Defense weapon. In fact, it has very little to do with Air Defense. It works on all weapons fire and in conjunction with Ship Defense Science to return an absolute value of ATK to the enemy fleet on a per ship stack-by-stack basis. It is neither enhanced nor mitigated by the Commander Card and has never been observed to be restricted by Commander based Effective Stack limits. Neither is it effected by Ship Defense Science. If you have insufficiently developed Ship Defence Science you can still use this weapons module. If you have developed sufficient Ship Defence Science then this module will enhance the reflected ATK as per your developed Ship Defense Science by adding this aboslute value of ATK to the reflected result.

Benefits and recommendations

What is understated in this article is that while the counter-attack value adds to the existing reflected attack value, it makes the total attack value almost a full order of magnitude higher. Whereas reflected attack values are normally of five-digits magnitude, adding this module will make every attack value a six-digit sum, following the definition of an order of magnitude improvement.

Therefore, it behoves the ship designer to include this module in every ship design.

Technical Details

Blueprint Information
Module Blueprint Name		Source	Honor Points	Prerequisites to use
Extreme Counterattack		Instance 23	3174	research Powered Pulse Cannon-III

Attributes
Module Name	Max # of Modules	Volume	He3 Use	Metal Cost	He3 Use	Gold Cost
Extreme Counterattack-I	1	25	0.08	32	28	22
Extreme Counterattack-II	1	30	0.11	35	30	24
Extreme Counterattack-III	1	36	0.14	40	35	29

Counter attack ATK Values
Module Name	Counter-Attack Damage	Volumetric Efficiency (V.E.)	Pre-Req
Extreme Counterattack-I	80 Points	3.2	Powered Pulse Cannon III
Extreme Counterattack-II	140 Points	4.6	ECA I
Extreme Counterattack-III	200 Points	5.4	ECA II

Volumetric Efficiency is simply the Counter Attack Damage divided by the volume of the module.

Usage Considerations

This module is relatively easy to use. However, there are some considerations.

This isn't a once-per-round effect. Every time your stack gets hit it will return 200 units of ATK per ship in that stack and it will return it directly to the attacking stack. Your fleet can be attacked by many opposing fleets in a round and each one of them will be counter-attacked.
Ship Defense Science will reflect a percentage of an opponent's ATK value. This value is quite variable, even within the same attacking fleet. The ECA value is a constant and not dependent on either the attacking fleet, their Effective Stack or your own. Every ship in your defending stack will return the same value of ATK, every time it is attacked. A full stack Cruisers with ECA III will return 200*1000 = 200,000 ATK. It will erode shields according to the ATK value just like a normal attack.
A fleet with both ECA stacks and non-ECA stacks, the ECA equiped stacks usually return an order of magnitude more ATK than the non-ECA equiped stack. This is enough to destroy 5-10 ships per opposing stack. This is a significant counter-attack during defensive mode. There is no counter-counter fire meaning that, this module is inoperative during attack mode.
All of the above is easily verified in the new Arena feature.
Smaller ships, ships with less Effective Volume, may not be able to afford the volume usage in their design budget. These are ships smaller than Spinners, Devourers, and Whirlpools. In the end, the responsibility remains with each designer.

Further research results

The factor that governs the counter-attack value seems to be strictly determined by the hull-type of the defending stack, not to be confused with the actual Effective Stack. Battleships have a hull designated value of 900. Thus, the ECA value for a Battleship will be 200*900=180,000 counter-fire added to whatever the calculated reflected fire values. The number of stars of the Commander appears to be irrelevent to the value of the counter-attack. More testing needs to be done to verify this however, I'll let someone else do that.

Counter-attack values based on ship type
Hull Type	Stack Rating	Counter-attack Value
Battleships	900	180,000
Battleship Flagships	1000	200,000
Cruisers	1000	200,000
Cruiser Flagships	1100	220.000
Frigates	1100	220,000

This will be added to the reflected attack value.

Specific test results

Replacing a Common Commander with a 6*Divine on exactly the same fleet appears to make no difference on the counter-attack value.

Footnotes

Defense Module
Structure Modules	Atomic Framework · Ship Reinforcement Facility · Gravity Maint Facility · Hull Maintenance Mechanic · Quick Reaction Armor · Reflective Plating · Energy Armor · Daedalus Control System · Armstrong Radion Armor · Copernicus Gyroscope · Icarus Control System · Drexler Ratchet · Tensor Armor · Hybrid Defense System
Shield Modules	Orbital Shield · Energy Shield Booster · Particle Stun Shield · Heat Diffusion Shield · Space-Time Magnetic Shield · Detonator Shield · Shield Regenerator · Eos Phase Shift Shield · Sagan Kinetics Shield · Sagan Heat Shield · Sagan Magnetic Shield · Sagan Anti-Explosive Shield · Hertz Regenerator · Jack-O-Lantern · Tyson Kinetic Shield · Tyson Heat Shield · Tyson Magnetic Shield · Tyson Anti-Explosion Shield · Twilight Armor · Zeroth Accelerator
Air Defense Modules	Anti-Aircraft Cannon · Missile Interception · Fighter Interception Cabin · Powered Pulse Cannon · Extreme Counterattack · Aldrin Particle Cannon · Iron Veil