I am trying to find good description of how exactly combat
works. I see that different ships have different weapon types, like beam,
plasma, etc. Also, there is different armor type like light, medium, heavy. And
also, there are shields and numerical value of armor, like 1 or 3, which can be
either increased through research or through special abilities of some ships.
What do all those things mean? How are the damage calculations exactly performed?