VCR Side Advantage
Left / right side of the VCR ] In ship to ship combat, ships are lined up against eachother one by one. One ship fights from the left-hand side of the VCR, the other ship from the right-hand side. Which ship gets which side depends on their battlevalue. Basically, the ship with the lowest battlevalue fights from the righthand side. The only exception to this is when two ships fight eachother twice. In the first battle, the ship with the lowest battlevalue gets the right side. If this battle times out and the two ships fight eachother again, the ship with the highest battlevalue of the two will get the righthand side.
There is a difference between fighting from the left-hand side of the VCR and the right-hand side, when carriers are involved. Put simply, fighters launched by carriers from the lefthand side have a better chance in fighter vs fighter dogfights in mid air, and thus carriers from the left side have a better chance against carriers from the right side. To compensate for this, the ship on the right-hand side has a chance to get a bonus mass, making it less vulnerable to fighterhits. This chance of a bonus mass also exists for torpedo-ships fighting from the righthand side, if they fight against a carrier.
The following summary is a blunt generalisation. It assumes the carriers involved are large ones with sufficient fighterbays (so no Geminis, Q-tankers etc), where in general beams never get to hit the enemy ship; fighters do the work for the carrier, torps for the torper, one of them dies before ships start firing beams against eachother (or upon the first beams being fired). If combat involves carriers where eventually beams are fired against ships, the mass of each ship becomes more important and thus getting the bonus mass from the righthand side becomes more important.
Torper vs torper: no difference between left and right
Torper vs carrier: torper has an advantage from the right side, so...
- If the torper weighs more than 140 but less than 320 kilotons, it wants the right side for the bonus mass
- If the torper is lighter than 140 kilotons there is no chance for a bonus mass,
so the torper will want the left side to deny the carrier the left side advantage
- If the torper weighs 320 kilotons or more already bonus mass has no influence,
so the torper will want the left side to deny the carrier the left side advantage
Carrier vs carrier: fighters fight better from the left, chance of bonus mass from the right:
- if both carriers weigh 140 kilotons or less, there's no chance of a bonus mass so each carrier wants the left side
- if both carriers weigh 320 kilotons or more, bonus mass doesn't help much so the left side is desirable
- if one of the carriers weighs between 140 and 320 kilotons, it gets complicated *
And here is an example of battlevalues:
| Friendly code | Kill mission? | Primary enemy | Battle value |
| 619 | yes | yes | 619 |
| 631 | no | no | 631 |
| h45 | yes | yes | 1000 |
| yes | no | 1005 | |
| k p | no | yes | 1010 |
| m7v | no | no | 1015 |
So it isn't the lowest FC necessarily but the lowest battle value that fights from the right hand side. So sometimes you wan tto fight from the left, sometiems from the right, dependin gon who you are expecting to fight. This chart should help you tilt the odds in your favor. If you want to fight from the left side, you want the highest battlevalue, so idealy, alpha numeric friendly code with NO PE and NO KIll mission. Basically you want him to fight you.
