Loot Bonuses

Concept · Game mechanic

A loot stat scales specific resources, and a hostile is affected only if its drop table carries one of them — the buff’s own conditions never say which target.

Every loot bonus is a modifier that multiplies the amount of one or more specific resources a defeated target pays out. Unlike combat stats, the buff carries no clue to its target: its conditions only ever gate on the ship flying it (a hull, a faction), never on the enemy. So whether a loot bonus does anything against a given hostile is a drop-table question, and the answer is on each loot modifier’s page under “Boosts” and “Dropped by”, and on each hostile’s page under “Loot bonuses”.

The link from modifier to resource is not in the game data at all. It was mapped by hand and confirmed in-game upstream, one resource at a time, and some pairings tested negative: a bonus can be named for a family of resources and still leave a sibling untouched. The generic Armada Rewards scales every armada currency, while the rarity-specific Epic Armada Rewards raises only the Epic Armada Credit of the faction armadas, not the same-rarity Borg, Dominion or Open Armada credits.

Stacking is additive across loot stats, with one measured exception. Every stat that reaches a resource contributes its bonus to one pool, multiplier = 1 + the sum, and a stat’s own sources add together first. The exception is the ship-parts pair: the all-class Broken Ship Parts bonus and the class bonus (Battleship, Explorer, Interceptor) multiply each other, (1 + all-class) × (1 + class) − 1, and that product then adds to the pool with everything else. On a 6★ Battleship drop, +320% all-class with +75% Battleship paid a +635% parts term, not +395%, and Survey parts, which have no class stat, paid the all-class bonus alone. The game data cannot tell you this: every loot buff carries the same MultiplyAdd operation, so the rule is measured from logs rather than read from a field. Parts are also grade-gated: 7★ parts are not scaled by any parts stat at all.

A kill pays each drop as one whole roll from the drop table’s range, times the multiplier, rounded-sm down. A Hijacked D7 paid 7,569 of a 250–300 drop: a roll of 261 at ×29. A Romulan Imperial Legion paid 21,437 Battleship parts: a roll of 2,032 at ×10.55 is 21,437.6, and the fraction is dropped.

A kill pays twice: its drop table, rolled and scaled by the loot bonuses that reach it, and a chest on top, which is a separate payout. An armada gives its chest on every kill and the chest holds the same full set each time (a Borg Type 03.2 chest: 6,000,000 credits on every kill), while the drop-table payout beside it varies with the roll. A hostile’s chest is a chance, not a certainty, and holds one item drawn from a pool: a level-72 Ganmadan Sentinel gave its chest on about one kill in four, each time a single item out of seventeen seen.

A few loot stats key on something other than a resource. Dominion hostile loot keys on the hostile’s faction, so its page lists that faction’s families and everything they drop rather than a tested resource. PvE Rewards and Hostile Loot apply by target type and list no drop table at all. The cheat sheet flags a loot row as “not from target” when the selected hostile drops nothing the bonus scales; it never changes the computed total, which is the bonus itself.