Ships in Capital Command don't have colorful bubbles of glowing energy that magically absorb damage. Instead, projectiles are physical objects that can be attacked and destroyed.
When you play Capital Command, you can assume your ship will often be targeted by enemy attacks. It should therefore be a high priority to limit the impact of these attacks and prevent excessive degradation of your ship's combat capabilities and structural integrity.
Dodging, i.e. moving out of the way of incoming projectiles, can be an effective tactic in some situations. However, larger ships accelerate slowly, and in any case guided missiles cannot be dodged at all, since ships can't hope to match their acceleration and maneuverability.
Fortunately, ships in Capital Command have another, far more reliable way to protect themselves: shooting the enemy ordnance clear out of the sky! This is referred to as "Point Defense" and is one of the basic functions of shipboard weaponry.
How It Works
If the captain has enabled point defense targeting on a secondary battery, that battery will automatically engage incoming ordnance, both guided missiles and unguided shells. Or, the captain can take control and direct battery fire manually, ensuring the right targets are prioritized.
However, nothing is perfect and point defense does have its limitations. Small projectiles cannot be reliably targeted, thus they are effectively immune to point defense. Even heavier ordnance isn't guaranteed to be hit, and even worse, might not be destroyed by the first, or even the tenth strike! Also, point defense uses up ammo at a very fast rate, and batteries can't fire during their reload cycle.
And there is another, even more significant limitation. Secondary weapons are usually mounted in casemates with limited fields of fire. If the ship is not correctly oriented, the guns cannot execute their firing solutions. Even ships with turret-mounted secondaries still have significant vulnerable angles.
It is the captain's responsibility to make sure that his point defenses can do their job. If correctly employed, they will likely intercept and neutralize a large percentage of incoming damage. To defeat a competent defense, an attacker must either overwhelm it with a large volume of fire, or use specialized ammunition such as canister/fragmentation warheads or high-velocity impactors.
That's it for the first episode of Tactical Analysis. If you enjoyed this presentation, don't forget to post a comment and add Capital Command to your wishlist! For next time, I'm planning a post on Missile Combat in Capital Command, but I'm open to any suggestions for topics of interest.
Thanks for reading, stay safe and good hunting
The dev