Left Mouse vs Right Mouse

[GRHayes]

As most no the left mouse button goes for a precision shot putting all fired weapons on a single point.
This doesn't work for maximizing damage. Well it doesn't if you don't know a bit more than just that.
I got to playing around with staggering my distance of my dumb fire missiles to see what a difference it makes.

Since explosions have been changed the primary explosion happens doesn't pass through blocks it hasn't broken. This means 90% of an explosion is wasted. However if you punch a hole into a structure and fire again into that same hole you create greater damage.

This is were left mouse now shines. If you stagger the distance that your weapons are each shot will arrive one after the other. Thus each additional round will enter a larger or deeper entry doing more damage.

The image below shows what I mean by staggered. Center is closest to target and each outer ring is a bit further back. The ship below has 77 barrels. If you are wondering about the power rings. All but the first one: Each ring consists of (4) 20x20x9 reactors.

In truth if you wanted to create a more narrow hole through your target it would require spiraling backwards with each new barrel. rather than just each row. I went ahead and built one see second image.

Just got done with the tests on this. The 25 barrel Spiral system seems to perform at near the penetration level of the 77 barrel system against advanced armor. that said the 77 will take shields down faster with the right button. The spiral system also requires a lot more patients to build because you can't duplicate across the axis each barrel is on block behind the previous one encircling the original barrel. So you end up with 25 barrels at different distances from the front. considering how easy it was to produce adequate power for the system it should be more than easy to build one powerful enough to just drill through someones large ship.
Damage from Spiral test 3rd image. TL 1 shot TR 2 shots BL 3 shots BR 4 Shots all against advanced armor.

One last note: spiral fired with left mouse destroys 50 blocks right mouse destroys 35 using 4 shots.

Each barrel is 20 missile 20 cannon 20 overdrive

Hope that helps some of you.

 

[Argyle_Ninja]

Also in agreement on the differences on left vs. right. First test fire into that Next Gen Ballistics gel ship, (crystal armor, same as adv, if I recall) went on the right side, barely 5m deep in the round output pattern of the barrel. Fire two was focused, that pin-hole to the left, and slowly expanded out as it carved through around 120m of armor.

Having your weapon outputs staggered back in line, spread out, or both, you can see some pretty dramatic results.
I test fired it later on NuclearFun's Manticore Heavy Destroyer, same pin hole in the face, damn near came out the engine, just shy by like 10m. Granted this thing is ludicrously power hungry, as noted by the size of the power tank up in the stat bar... Totally needs all of that.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

This rail gun is logic controlled. It fires a 3 meter wide burst of antimatter that will pierce advanced armor and devastate internal systems. I'm going to work on a "blind fire" auto-aiming variant that tracks a target and fires a wall of flak at enemy units.

 

[GRHayes]

View attachment 16504
Also in agreement on the differences on left vs. right. First test fire into that Next Gen Ballistics gel ship, (crystal armor, same as adv, if I recall) went on the right side, barely 5m deep in the round output pattern of the barrel. Fire two was focused, that pin-hole to the left, and slowly expanded out as it carved through around 120m of armor.

Having your weapon outputs staggered back in line, spread out, or both, you can see some pretty dramatic results.
I test fired it later on NuclearFun's Manticore Heavy Destroyer, same pin hole in the face, damn near came out the engine, just shy by like 10m. Granted this thing is ludicrously power hungry, as noted by the size of the power tank up in the stat bar... Totally needs all of that.

Nice test and thanks for sharing. Glad someone appreciated this. Makes a nice difference. It kind of make armor next to worthless when you can punch through it so fast.

 

[Groovrider]

I've been doing this for the last year after someone mentioned it in chat. I assumed everyone knew.

 

[Keptick]

If you hit a flat surface with a missile 50% damage would be wasted, not 90%. Conveniently, missiles have twice the damage per blocks as other weapons (for the same poser cost), so in reality they have the same damage/block ratio as other weapons (in most situations).

 

[GRHayes]

If you hit a flat surface with a missile 50% damage would be wasted, not 90%. Conveniently, missiles have twice the damage per blocks as other weapons (for the same poser cost), so in reality they have the same damage/block ratio as other weapons (in most situations).

It was only meant to make a point we have no idea of the shape of the explosion you are employing for it. If it is purely round or roughly round or if it cones inward. The point being a lot is wasted.

The biggest thing to take away is by using the method I can cut through that 20 advanced armor block in short order talking seconds. The ship only has 1M power. You can even cut from left to right or up and down cutting it in half pretty quickly.

With the way current shield regen is during battle they are next to pointless.

Right now I am working on a vastly larger version of it. You can probably imagine what something like this will do scaled up.

 

[Nauvran]

There seems to be one issue with your testings.
You need a new target each time you fire as you are damaging the armour HP.
The lower this HP is the more damage blocks receive (or something like that)
And as Keptick said, on flat surfaces missiles only lose 50% of their damage output. So if you in general are good at aiming with the missiles you will get good amounts of damage, for example hitting between the ship hull and an armour plating versus hitting a pointy bit of a wing.

 

[GRHayes]

There seems to be one issue with your testings.
You need a new target each time you fire as you are damaging the armour HP.
The lower this HP is the more damage blocks receive (or something like that)
And as Keptick said, on flat surfaces missiles only lose 50% of their damage output. So if you in general are good at aiming with the missiles you will get good amounts of damage, for example hitting between the ship hull and an armour plating versus hitting a pointy bit of a wing.

It provided no significant measurable difference firing at different blocks of orange. I started off that way. I ended up creating this block simply because I could simply take one screen shot and be done. Maybe with a larger yield from a weapon it would have been noticeable though what you are talking about.

The point isn't just to cause damage it is to cause internal damage and get at critical systems. You can pretty much leave a ships armor nearly intact and kill the ship by taking out its systems. If you take out their weapons controls and so on then you have an even greater advantage.

 

[Nauvran]

It provided no significant measurable difference firing at different blocks of orange. I started off that way. I ended up creating this block simply because I could simply take one screen shot and be done. Maybe with a larger yield from a weapon it would have been noticeable though what you are talking about.

The point isn't just to cause damage it is to cause internal damage and get at critical systems. You can pretty much leave a ships armor nearly intact and kill the ship by taking out its systems. If you take out their weapons controls and so on then you have an even greater advantage.

The point is exactly to cause damage, if you do not cause damage you do not destroy blocks.
If you want to test it against systems then make some system targets but I still suggest to shoot at more than one target to get proper accurate results as the armour HP value is a big factor when doing block damage.

 

[GRHayes]

The point is exactly to cause damage, if you do not cause damage you do not destroy blocks.
If you want to test it against systems then make some system targets but I still suggest to shoot at more than one target to get proper accurate results as the armour HP value is a big factor when doing block damage.

The point is was to see how fast one could go through armor so that one can get at the systems.

The point of the post was to show how to make the best use of the weapons system and that the left mouse system could be taken advantage of to concentrate fire on a single position and not loose the damage bonus as you do if the weapons aren't staggered.
I've already tested it myself against a good number of ships and targets with shielding so on. You can peal the armor off a ship it won't be a win.
You cause a core overheat when structural reaches 50%. So it is more important to get at the inside of the ship where you can do the most damage. If you can take the systems out even better.