Critical hits

I don't think it does. I'm not sure this would be good idea in the scale of the game, but it might be in smaller scope game. I think the ship design part of the game would have to be much more detailed to make this worthwhile. You should be able to counter critical hits by good design or save "money" and not protect against every possiblility (as in the "real" world.)

Yes, there are critical hits. The following lines are taken from the default settings.txt:

Number Of Rare Hit Types := 2
Rare Hit Type 1 Name := Near Miss
Rare Hit Type 1 Percent Chance:= 5
Rare Hit Type 1 Damage Percent := 50
Rare Hit Type 2 Name := Critical Hit
Rare Hit Type 2 Percent Chance := 5
Rare Hit Type 2 Damage Percent := 200

I don't know if these are actually working yet, but the framework is there.

I'm fairly sure that more than half a year ago, crits were working (as I always edited the Settings file to have big crit and near-miss chances). This is easy to test for someone with time - set crit rate to 50% double damage, 50% half damage and run a combat simulation.

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Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE