Quick question for the unity

I don't know off-hand, sorry, but ships show the effects they're currently under on their info cards, so it shouldn't be too hard to try it and see...

Cool, thanks. I could try it myself, but I don't have a save I could mess with. I don't get much time to play unfortunately, so I thought I'd ask instead so I can jump right in when I finally finish working.

Appreciate the answer though
Cheers,
Mopy

I don't believe it stacks. I haven't looked at Malice specifically, but all the abilities I looked at in the files are always either KeepOldBuff or ReplaceWithNewBuff I'll take a quick look when I get home.

I did some tests on a save game and it does not appear to.

I have a saved game against an AI right before I sent my small Capital Ship fleet against a swarm of enemy ships (55 Disciples and 3 Capital Ships). I thought this would be a good game to check, since the Radiance Battleships I had sported Cleansing Brilliance, a fairly controllable weapon with pretty reliable damage output.

I used the same target during all the tests, a level 3 Capital Ship since it would always survive the Cleansing Brilliance and distribute the damage to the lesser ships that surrounded it. I had the Cleansing Brilliance selected and it was warming up when I triggered Malice to try to make sure that the Cleansing Brilliance didn't outlast the Malice.

The first test I did one Radiance using Cleansing Brilliance and one Progenitor using Malice. The result was that all the Disciples had somewhere in the order of 100 to 150 shield remaining.

I then tried having two Progenitors fire after the Cleansing Brilliance was triggered. The results were similar, they actually had a bit more, ranging between 150 and 200.

So it does not look like they stack. Having my second Radiance open up with it's Cleansing Brilliance made things work very well though, and could result in the enemy being decimated.

I'm not sure how to explain the inconsistencies in this test. Shield mitigation may have been a factor, it was on enemy territory and against Advent, and the Radiance Battleships may have employed Detonate Antimatter during the end of one of the fights.

But as a rule, I've had really stunning results against Pirates or swarms of AI Light Frigates by teaming up a couple Motherships using Malice and having a Radiance Battleship (ideally two) firing off Cleansing Brilliance. The results can be spectacular, using Detonate Antimatter against enemy Capital Ships also helps as long as Malice is in effect, which you can just have two Progenitor's alternate since the cooldown time of Malice is the same as it's length, just 20, they can keep it going pretty constantly.

What's best about it is though is that the damage can come so fast that the enemy AI cannot flee, what it loves to do, and when it does it usually gets away with just a fraction of it's fleet.

Malice though is still a wonderful ability if you have the Anti-Matter to spare. The Mothership's Shield Restore is just so valuable and effective though that Malice usually takes a back seat.

Woo!

Thanks for that. Thinking about it, it makes sense. Malice stacked would be rather powerful. You also bring up an interesting point about the shield restore. In a previous game I always ended up using Malice/Cleansing brilliance together to pretty good effect. I don't think I've ever actually tried shield restore properly.

I will now

Thanks again for the detailed information there, much appreciated - and that means I can actually play (or start) a proper game tonight.
Cheers,
Mopy

Malice 25% is brutal against pirates, because as pirates have no shields and therefore no mitigation, if you malice the lot of them and kill 4 pirates, they practically all die. Not sure if there's a maximum percentile that Malice can damage something to, but with pirates, they fry like popcorn with pretty explosions everywhere.