Hit Rate and Effective DPS vs. Power Efficiency

[Winterhome]

Right now we've got this bizarre meta that glorifies machineguns and rapid beams in terms of Structure HP damage and potential hit rate.

Machineguns tend to have a higher effective DPS than straight Cannons, and straight Cannons tend to have a higher effective DPS than Cannon-Pulse, due to the firerate and the ease with which a player may correct their firing angles. It's easier to track your shots and your enemy's position when you're using a machinegun, because not only are you able to see a steady stream of bullets, you're also giving yourself a consistent, steady reference to base your estimate of the enemy's velocity off of.

Beams don't have the issue of target leading, but they still have the issue of block breaking potential per second when you're comparing Beam-Cannon to Beam-Pulse.

On top of it all, Rapid weapons come with the extreme benefit of being able to get away with far, far less power capacitors for the same DPS, which gives rapid weapon users the edge in terms of block count to DPS efficiency.

When was the last time any of you saw someone *seriously* using Cannon-Pulse as a capital weapon for doing something other than Shield or Armor HP damage? How about beam-pulse?


My suggestion is simple - boost Cannon-Cannon and Beam-Cannon power consumption to 12 energy per damage, and reduce power consumption for Cannon-Pulse to 8 energy per second, with base Cannon staying at 10. I do not recommend touching Beam-Pulse, as it has ridiculous alpha damage potential. Missile-Cannon power usage does not need to be readjusted, as it's already a much less popular weapon system than any other.

 

[Groovrider]

Cannon>pulse was something I used to one-shot cores back in the "old days" and taking down shields. It really wasn't much good for anything else pre-meta-change so I don't see how its lost anything. If cannon>pulse>explosive had a bigger radius I could see it's use expanded but no matter how powerful your shot is its still only killing a few blocks.

I disagree about machine gun power usage as it puts too much of a power burden on smaller ships. Machine guns are great at armor but its still like trying to melt a snow bank by pissing on it.

 

[Spartan-228]

I don't agree with this. If you were to implement what you are suggesting fighters would get nerfed again. its already hard to build effective missiles on small craft and almost just as hard to build a good gun.

 

[Winterhome]

I don't agree with this. If you were to implement what you are suggesting fighters would get nerfed again. its already hard to build effective missiles on small craft and almost just as hard to build a good gun.

The idea is that fighters are inherently able to power oversized guns - extremely high power efficiency comparatively.

Large capitals over the softcap are increasingly encouraged to use maximal efficiency weapons.

 

[DivineEvil]

Right now we've got this bizarre meta that glorifies machineguns and rapid beams in terms of Structure HP damage and potential hit rate.

Machineguns tend to have a higher effective DPS than straight Cannons, and straight Cannons tend to have a higher effective DPS than Cannon-Pulse, due to the firerate and the ease with which a player may correct their firing angles. It's easier to track your shots and your enemy's position when you're using a machinegun, because not only are you able to see a steady stream of bullets, you're also giving yourself a consistent, steady reference to base your estimate of the enemy's velocity off of.

Beams don't have the issue of target leading, but they still have the issue of block breaking potential per second when you're comparing Beam-Cannon to Beam-Pulse.
system than any other.

The trade is not one sided. Rapid fire weapons do increase hit chance by spreading damage over time, but in return you trade penetration depth.

- Stock 50 ton Cannon can penetrate up to 22 blocks deep;
- 50 ton Cannon/Cannon can penetrate up to 7 blocks deep;
- 50 ton Cannon/Pulse can penetrate up to 42 blocks deep;
- Finally, 50 ton Cannon/Pulse/Explosive can penetrate to 36 blocks deep. Because of Explosive AoE modifier, that results in a hit, that destroys roughly 80 structure blocks.

All in all, while each miss with a Pulse-based weapon worth a lot in combat, these weapons can pierce trough the entire chassis of an enemy ship, potentially disabling weapons and other systems by evaporating their CPUs. While you're going to try and spread your damage all over the armor, your target might just spit a couple of powerful slugs, which would instantly cripple you. Same is true for Beams - while you try and puncture an armor somewhere with persistent beam, powerful Beam/Pulse/Punch will lick it off in one tick and proceed to mow-down the whole clusters of underlying sub-systems.

This is called an Alpha-strike, and is particulary essential for anti-ship turrets, which are not great at consistently hitting the same spot. Rapid-fire weapons are fine. Issues with weapon balance exist in a completely different field.

 

[Winterhome]

If a single cannon strike "cripples" your ship, then you're doing something horribly wrong.

The issue is that 90% or more of ships totally ignore individual cannon shots regardless of penetration depth. Machineguns of that size may only kill 7 blocks per hit, but that equates to 70 blocks per second, or 1050 blocks in the same space of time that it takes for a cannon-pulse-explosive to reload.

The likelihood of hitting a computer in one shot of cannon-pulse-explosive is well under one in a thousand. Why try that when you can just kill the entire ship with a machinegun even faster? Literally the only reason to use cannon-pulse or cannon right now is to give an extremely small ship the alpha to penetrate advanced hull and a handful of systems behind it, which realistically ends up being 1100 damage in a hit. Not a lot.


Machineguns are vastly better than slower firing weapons. There needs to be incentive to use high alpha, low firerate cannons and beams other than "lol maybe it'll kill a computer?"

 

[Zaphord]

Agreed. Bigger guns need to be more effective in the damage they do, maybe machine guns to lose ROF the bigger they get? That way, the 15 block machine guns on my fighter won't be affected, but a 150+ machine cannon on larger ships wouldn't be able to fire like a minigun on speed.

 

[Spartan-228]

If you build the alpha weapons right you can do massive amounts of damage. I have built a cannon capible of punching a hole 7 by 7 and 50 deep, into an enemy ship.

 

[Lecic]

- Stock 50 ton Cannon can penetrate up to 22 blocks deep;
- 50 ton Cannon/Cannon can penetrate up to 7 blocks deep;
- 50 ton Cannon/Pulse can penetrate up to 42 blocks deep;
- Finally, 50 ton Cannon/Pulse/Explosive can penetrate to 36 blocks deep. Because of Explosive AoE modifier, that results in a hit, that destroys roughly 80 structure blocks.

Cannon/Cannon can fire 10 times a second, meaning it's penetrating 70 blocks in the same time it takes a standard cannon to penetrate 22 blocks. Even if you miss half your shots with Cannon/Cannon, you're still doing significantly higher damage.

Cannon/Pulse takes 16 seconds to reload. Sure, you can destroy 80 blocks in one shot, but a Cannon/Cannon can destroy 1120 blocks in the same time period.

Honestly, Cannon/Cannon needs to have all of its innate punch removed. Even without it, it's still destroying 160 blocks in the same time it takes Cannon/Pulse to reload, which is double the blocks Cannon/Pulse destroyed, and you DON'T get screwed over if you miss, because even if only half your shots land, you're still doing the same damage as Cannon/Pulse/Explosive is.

 

[kookster]

If you build the alpha weapons right you can do massive amounts of damage. I have built a cannon capible of punching a hole 7 by 7 and 50 deep, into an enemy ship.

Using what combination?

 

[DivineEvil]

Cannon/Cannon can fire 10 times a second, meaning it's penetrating 70 blocks in the same time it takes a standard cannon to penetrate 22 blocks. Even if you miss half your shots with Cannon/Cannon, you're still doing significantly higher damage.

It "can" penetrate 70 blocks, but it wouldn't be able to due to low per-block damage. MGs of conventional size can barely destroy 2 blocks. Massive MGs can destroy a lot, sure, but there's nothing stopping a pulse cannon at this point. There's a point when using a plain pulse cannon is counter-productive because your shots can just piernce trough an entire length of the enemy ship. Again, MGs and Pulse has the same DPS, and the amount of blocks destroyed is tied to the damage-per-shot.

Cannon/Pulse takes 16 seconds to reload. Sure, you can destroy 80 blocks in one shot, but a Cannon/Cannon can destroy 1120 blocks in the same time period.

Exactly. When you shot that, you have 16 seconds to use any other weapon you have, or you can play a cozy whale, turn your size, do barrel rolls and spread MG's damage all over your armor and let your anti-ship turrets do the work. When you've done reloading, you turn back and shoot another slug, which eliminates one or two armor blocks and hundreds of structure blocks underneath. This makes pulse a just more efficient weapon for overheating a ship with least damage. And your enemy is forced to face you to keep doing the damage.

It's not the problem of math; 1/1 pulse cannon deals 160x times the damage of a cannon-cannon with 160x longer reload. The question here is just how you should scale ratio of pulse blocks to make that damage efficient. But hey, if it's not enough for you, lets make some power investment, and make a group of six pulse cannons (+50% power drain), which all penetrate your target's armor at one point and proceed to destroy hundreds of structure blocks inside, instantly. If you're not convinced at this point, you don't really understand the idea of alpha-strike to begin with - there's no point wigglin' your MGs over 16 seconds, when your ship is already severely damaged at the first second.

 

[Lecic]

The problem with c/p and c/c having the same DPS/block is that it doesn't account for the fact that players miss their shots. A lot. If you miss with an c/c, it's easy to recover. You won't even notice you missed, unless you're missing a large number of shots, because you fire 10 times a second. with c/p, if you miss, there's 16 seconds worth of damage wasted. You could have just had a c/c array and gotten the exact same DPS out of it, you just wouldn't be screwed if you missed. And THAT is why c/c and c/p can't have the same DPS/block, because c/c is inherently better.

 

[DivineEvil]

The problem with c/p and c/c having the same DPS/block is that it doesn't account for the fact that players miss their shots. A lot. If you miss with an c/c, it's easy to recover. You won't even notice you missed, unless you're missing a large number of shots, because you fire 10 times a second. with c/p, if you miss, there's 16 seconds worth of damage wasted. You could have just had a c/c array and gotten the exact same DPS out of it, you just wouldn't be screwed if you missed. And THAT is why c/c and c/p can't have the same DPS/block, because c/c is inherently better.

I don't want to repeat myself. I've already elaborated on my first reply, that missing is a payback for potentially doing an highly-efficient front-load damage, which kills Shp faster. At the ship sizes where missing shots on range of 3km is common, pulse weapons has much higher block destruction power, where CCs only good at consistently doing damage, but not destroying the blocks themselves. After performing a shot you're free to maneuver around your opponent, causing him to spread the damage and miss more shots while you're reloading. Fact of a weapon relying on precision more, doesn't automatically makes it inferior.

Cannon slave reduces the damage and increases the rate of fire, Pulse slave does the opposite. It's a basic weapon tweaking mechanic, and I cannot see where an imbalance lies.

 

[Zaphord]

The big difference between high dps and one high one shot damage in most cases is that dps is better for mitigating shield regen compared to alpha strike weapons.

Your big gun could knock down a ship's shields in one shot, but those shields will start to regenerate by the time you're ready to fire again.

Machine guns will take time to take out shields, but once they're down you can continuously cause damage and keep the shields down as long as your aim is half decent.

My suggestion; make it so that there is a minimum number of cannon modules needed before the punch through effect is applied.

 

[petrenko17]

I don't agree with this. If you were to implement what you are suggesting fighters would get nerfed again. its already hard to build effective missiles on small craft and almost just as hard to build a good gun.

Small ships will be weak until starmade change to skill based game rather than bigger box based game. We can balanc weapons how we want, but until the core machanics of fighting change, any weapon balanc changes are useles.

 

[Rokiyo]

My suggestion; make it so that there is a minimum number of cannon modules needed before the punch through effect is applied.

What if armor blocks provided innate punch/pierce resistance? Eg hull counts for 2 system blocks, standard for 3 and advanced armor counts as 4 system blocks.

Then a double layer of advanced armor could completely stop a 7-punch cannon-cannon but wouldn't do much to stop a 70-punch cannon-pulse from mangling a bunch of system blocks.
[DOUBLEPOST=1437134078,1437130798][/DOUBLEPOST]

The problem with c/p and c/c having the same DPS/block is that it doesn't account for the fact that players miss their shots. A lot.

That only makes a difference if you're saying slow weapons miss MORE.

If a CC fires 160 shots and 80 of them hit, and meanwhile the CP fires 2 shots and one of them hits, then both systems have a 50% hit rate and did the same raw damage on average.

For a weapon fired by a player, the constant stream may help a player adjust their aim. For an AI-driven turret I don't see it really mattering.

 

[AtraUnam]

To sum up this thread so far: At the weapon size you see on most ships cannon/cannon does far more block damage than any other cannon combo; given a 100% hit rate their shield damage is identical, at anything below that cannon/cannon once again gains the advantage due to significantly faster recovery. On paper their dps will always be the same regardless of hit-rate, in reality cannon or cannon/pulse is far harder to hit with in exchange for very little reward.

 

[Rokiyo]

Uh, that's only one side of the debate, and your conclusion contradicts many of the points made by DivineEvil and myself.

While you are entitled to your opinion, I would not consider your post a fair summary of this debate.

 

[godmars]

My suggestion; make it so that there is a minimum number of cannon modules needed before the punch through effect is applied.

This already happens, at least for CC. It's a pretty small minimum, though, more than likely to accommodate for smaller ships.

 

[DivineEvil]

Oh, for the love of...

When you have a Missile slave, that does nothing but making a result weapon inherently less accurate (except for missiles), that's fine,nobody cares. When you have a Beam slave, that triples the range and doubles the projectile velocity for free, thats all good, no problem here. We don't use these weapon anyway, so why should we bother? Let us instead go round and round like sheeps about how rapid-fire weapons are SO MUCH better by the virtue of compensating player's lack of skill to track a moving target! SERIOUSLY?