Rapid Fire

Rapid Fire
Most ships have the Rapid Fire feature. Simply put, while in combat, Rapid Fire is the ability of one unit to attack another unit multiple times in one turn.
You can check Rapid Fire in the special properties of ships in the Technology or Shipyard menus. If a ship has rapid fire, it will be followed by a type of target ship and a number. This number, its Rapid Fire rating, represents the average number of extra shots the firing ship can make against enemies of the target's type in a single combat round. It is a bit messy to understand, so the better way to do so is with an example.

Cruisers have Rapid Fire 10 against rocket launchers. We launch a cruiser against a defense of 2 rocket launchers and 1 light laser. Each defensive building will shoot once against the cruiser, as it is the only attacker. When it's the cruiser's turn, it chooses a target randomly from the three available targets. Let's suppose it chooses one of the rocket launchers. The cruiser shoots as normal but then, since it has rapid fire, it gets a dice roll to decide if it has another chance to shoot. Let's suppose the roll is successful, and it gets an extra shot (it is important to note that destroyed ships and defensive facilities are not removed from combat until the end of the round in which they are destroyed, meaning that that a ship [the Cruiser in this case] can target a defensive facility which has already been destroyed, effectively wasting the shot). Then it randomly chooses another target. Let's suppose this time it chooses the light laser. It'll shoot, but since cruisers do not have rapid fire against light lasers, doesn't get a rapid fire roll, and the round ends here. Had it chosen the rocket launcher it would have been granted the chance to roll dice again for an extra shot.

Statistics
The chance that the ship fires again depends on the Rapidfire rating against the target ship.
The relationship between Rapidfire and the percentage chance is where r is the Rapidfire rating.

So, a Small Cargo ship firing against an Espionage Probe has a = = 0.8 x 100% =80% chance to fire again.

Here are the rapid fire ratings of all ships and defenses and the chance that if it destroys a certain Ship that it has of firing again.

Rapid Fire Comparisons

Ship has
Rapid Fire
against: Ships Defenses
Esp.
Probe Solar
Sat. SC LC LF HF Cr BS BC CS R B D DS Rocket
Launcher Light
Laser Heavy
Laser Ion
Cannon Gauss
Cannon Plasma
Turret Small
Shield Large
Shield
Small Cargo (SC) 5 5
Large Cargo (LC) 5 5
Light Fighter (LF) 5 5
Heavy Fighter (HF) 5 5 3
Cruiser (CR) 5 5 6 10
Battle Ship (BS) 5 5
Battlecruiser (BC) 5 5 3 3 4 4 7
Colony Ship (CS) 5 5
Recycler (R) 5 5
Bomber (B) 5 5 20 20 10 10
Destroyer (D) 5 5 2 10
Death Star (DS) 1250 1250 250 250 200 100 33 30 15 250 250 25 5 200 200 100 100 50
Rapid
Fire Chance to
fire again
1250 99.92%
250 99.6%
200 99.5%
100 99.0%
50 98.0%
33 97.0%
30 96.7%
25 96.0%
20 95.0%
15 93.3%
10 90.0%
7 85.7%
6 83.3%
5 80%
4 75%
3 67%
2 50%