Damage beam/cannon VS cannon/cannon stats discrepancy?

[Panpiper]

I do not understand what appears to be a large discrepancy in the damage output of a damage beam/cannon weapon and that of a cannon/cannon weapon. A 1/1 damage beam/cannon will (apparently, according to the wiki) do 1 damage per module, 2 in this case, fire once per second with a beam duration of one second, but inflict damage five times during that second for a total of 10 damage, all this for 40 power, 20 power per module. A 1/1 cannon/cannon will however fire ten times, and do two damage per hit, for a power cost of 10 per module, so 20 in this case, times the ten shots for a total of 200 power.

Am I reading this right? Are damage beam/cannons half as dangerous as cannon/cannon for the same number of modules but vastly more energy efficient? They also have half the range at the same time as doing less than half the damage. Are damage beams meant to be this feeble?

Is there some other advantage to using such a pairing (damage beam/cannon) that I am unaware of? Is the AI more accurate with them maybe?

 

[sayerulz]

Beams have been generally inferior to cannons for some time, but I had never heard of an outright DPS discrepancy. Can anyone confirm this?

 

[MrFURB]

You've got some of the numbers wrong there, or at least they are wrong according to my own limited understanding.

Each weapon module adds 10 damage per second at the cost of 100 energy per second, not including effects which can make things more complex.
So both cannon/cannon and beam/cannon will be doing 20 DPS for 200 EPS.
The cannon/cannon should be firing 10 times a second to deal 2 damage per hit for 20 energy per hit.
The beam/cannon should be firing 5 times a second to deal 4 damage per hit for 40 energy per hit or 200 energy per second.
Beams drain damage differently than other weapons; the energy drain is constant while the beam is active instead of in bursts when damage is applied.

Beam weapons in their current state are regarded as inferior to cannons in many important areas. Namely anti-armor, maximum range, and scalability.
They do have some strengths though, as they are more accurate, sometimes have longer effective range than trying to lead a target with cannons, and can tag targets at long range even with subpar AI aiming.
They make good primary anti-shield and EMP weapons among other effects that don't require breaking past the enemy's armor. Once the armor is broken through they make quick work of the juicy systems underneath.

 

[Panpiper]

Thank you MrFURB. Could I get you to edit the WIKI entry in the damage beam chart to clear this up? Weapon Systems - StarMade Wiki

If you are correct, the WIKI is clearly wrong.

 

[Malacodor]

Thank you MrFURB. Could I get you to edit the WIKI entry in the damage beam chart to clear this up? Weapon Systems - StarMade Wiki

If you are correct, the WIKI is clearly wrong.

The wiki was clearly wrong, I fixed that.

 

[Scypio]

The low range of the beams is clearly a problem while it got the same dps as cannons.

 

[MrFURB]

The real range of weapons is measured in sectors and sector sizes are different for different servers. Weapon projectile speed is measured by the speed setting, also server specific.
Base cannons have a range of 1 sector and a projectile speed of 10x server speed.
Beams have a range of half a sector and an infinite projectile speed.

Servers with high speed and smaller sectors favor cannon ranges, while servers with low speed and larger sectors allow a beam's maximum range to exceed the effective range of cannons.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

This is what I've seen so far.

Cannons = armor shredders
Damage in a straight line; stopping only when they run out of damage or exceed maximum range. Decent range, though as MrFURB said, be mindful of projectile travel time. Good sustained fire with a high DPS will shred an opponent. Gets a noticeable buff vs shields and a nerf vs armor. When in doubt, build a bigger gun.

Beams (especially Beam/Beam/Ion and Beam/Pulse/Ion) = shield breakers
Lousy range unless you're playing in big sectors or you make a beam/beam combo. Beams cuts into armor but often wastes a lot of damage by not having enough pass-through to hit the next blocks if you don't set them up right. Explosion beams can be very nasty if the enemy's shields are down. I find that beams can make good alpha strikes vs shielded targets. Try a beam/beam/ion combo for a nasty surprise for those pesky shield tankers.

Missles = Weapons of mass distruction
Effective vs hull/armor and nightmarishly devastating vs systems. Inefficient vs shields due to the explosion mechanic venting half of the explosion damage to space. I'm stopping here; you guys know everything there is to know about missiles. We ought rename the game "MissileMade" at this rate...

 

[Malacodor]

Cannons [...] Gets a noticeable buff vs shields and a nerf vs armor.
Beams (especially Beam/Beam/Ion and Beam/Pulse/Ion) = shield breakers

What do mean? Cannons do 10 DPS per block against both, shields and armor (before reduction), so do beams (unless armor HP = 0, but that's a bug).

 

[Madman198237]

I would recommend, Dr. Whammy, that you use Beam-Pulse-Ion, because it'll really down the shields, really fast. And efficiently, since you won't need to fire it again for some time. Hit them once with that, have a turret or something set to hold down their shields with a B/C/Ion, and you're set.

 

[StarWars1981]

Weapon systems have different effectivenesses against armor and shields (I believe).
For instance, missiles are bad against armor but absolutely devastating once internal.
Cannons are all-around good, whereas beams are incredibly good at dropping shields. They're also effective against blocks, but perhaps less so than cannons. It's not set in stone, of course; the largest weapon is going to be the best (disregarding things like PDTs and shield/power gen/cap info) in almost every situation, as it deals more damage.

 

[Malacodor]

Weapon systems have different effectivenesses against armor and shields (I believe).
For instance, missiles are bad against armor but absolutely devastating once internal.
Cannons are all-around good, whereas beams are incredibly good at dropping shields. They're also effective against blocks, but perhaps less so than cannons. It's not set in stone, of course; the largest weapon is going to be the best (disregarding things like PDTs and shield/power gen/cap info) in almost every situation, as it deals more damage.

Can you provide a test setup to prove this? It contradicts my test results.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

What do mean? Cannons do 10 DPS per block against both, shields and armor (before reduction), so do beams (unless armor HP = 0, but that's a bug).

On small arrays this is true but I've noticed that cannons seem to do more damage against shields. It's entirely possible that I'm reading the master/slave ratio wrong so take this comment with a grain of salt if you know better.

Madman198237, while I understand your method, I stand by the beam/beam/ion idea. I can throw over a million anti-shield at a target every 15 seconds from one of my 100 meter long Pathfinders and I can do it from 3 times the distance of a beam/pulse/ion. Also, using beam/beam/pulse would eat too far into my ship's power to use missiles. Your way probably wins for PVP but my frigates will put a hurting on an opponent when part of a fleet. I'll definitely experiment with both methods when I have some time to build a new design.
[doublepost=1474674167,1474673968][/doublepost]Edit: Beams suck against armor because they have innate pierce instead of punch through. They'll wreck your systems though. Cannons will eat through anything until they run out of steam. Missile blast damage is cut in half by the explosion mechanic.

 

[Madman198237]

I'm no good at building larger vessels, and I hate flying them, so when I finally stop playing other games and work on SM, I'm going to end up probably with a fleet like yours---small yet effective (Hopefully). The goal being that I have "fleet ships" that are only ever used in a fleet, and are specialized---like a beam/pulse/ion alpha ship meant only for the destruction of opponents' shields, accompanied by a missile ship or something. Unless, of course, I simply make fleets of warhead drones and send them to terrorize my enemies....

Yes, beam-cannon or beam-beam works well too, but if you've got to drop the shields of a tanky vessel with lots of regen, the best way's always to hit them so hard and fast they don't even know what's going on.

 

[Gasboy]

Thank you MrFURB. Could I get you to edit the WIKI entry in the damage beam chart to clear this up? Weapon Systems - StarMade Wiki

If you are correct, the WIKI is clearly wrong.

The wiki got fubar'd a bunch of months back when they switched the wiki to the same system (as in, same machines) as the forums and the rest of the website's infrastructure. It's not yet been restored to it's former glory.

 

[Winterhome]

Missles = Weapons of mass distruction
Effective vs hull/armor and nightmarishly devastating vs systems. Inefficient vs shields due to the explosion mechanic venting half of the explosion damage to space. I'm stopping here; you guys know everything there is to know about missiles. We ought rename the game "MissileMade" at this rate...

lol

Effective vs armor

You sure you're playing the same game I am? Armor utterly ruins missile damage. Thick armor fucks missiles harder than even point defense turrets do, and missiles do somewhat worse average block damage per second than cannons do because of how explosions work.

Missiles are only good for big, single hits, and for squashing extremely squishy ships. Cannons are vastly superior against armor.

 

[Panpiper]

You sure you're playing the same game I am? Armor utterly ruins missile damage. Thick armor fucks missiles harder than even point defense turrets do, and missiles do somewhat worse average block damage per second than cannons do because of how explosions work.

I have no experience with large ship PvP, so I've been building largely on guesswork. I would have thought however that a missile/beam/punch warhead with 400/400/400 modules would do enough damage (a little over a million) to bust through at least a few layers of armor at the point of contact. This especially if they are coming in as a staggered simultaneous pair from the same turret launcher. Am I wrong?

(The main guns on the turrets of the ship I last built actually had six such sized missiles on each turret barrel. The first two were ion, the next two were punch and the last two were explosive, and all were preceded by a screen of around 20 1/1 module decoys. Those turret barrels 'also' contained a 850 cannon/850 cannon/850 punch rapid fire cannon designed so that each bullet could crack an advanced armor block regardless of how fresh the armor.)

The ship most of you have probably already seen (I've spammed it several times of late).

Spoiler

 

[Dr. Whammy]

lol
You sure you're playing the same game I am? Armor utterly ruins missile damage. Thick armor fucks missiles harder than even point defense turrets do, and missiles do somewhat worse average block damage per second than cannons do because of how explosions work.

Missiles are only good for big, single hits, and for squashing extremely squishy ships. Cannons are vastly superior against armor.

Effective, yes. Efficient NO! You have to wait 15 seconds or more to fire again.

While the initial effects aren't very noticeable in terms of block destroyed, they tear the armor HP to bits with each hit. You will have to knock the armor HP down considerably before you can get to the squishies but once that happens... OUCH!!! Why else do you think I flew around in a frigate with 19 point defense guns AND advanced armor? I'd rather be hit by cannons after some of the missiles hits I've taken.
[doublepost=1474679074,1474678916][/doublepost]

I have no experience with large ship PvP, so I've been building largely on guesswork. I would have thought however that a missile/beam/punch warhead with 400/400/400 modules would do enough damage (a little over a million) to bust through at least a few layers of armor at the point of contact. This especially if they are coming in as a staggered simultaneous pair from the same turret launcher. Am I wrong?

(The main guns on the turrets of the ship I last built actually had six such sized missiles on each turret barrel. The first two were ion, the next two were punch and the last two were explosive, and all were preceded by a screen of around 20 1/1 module decoys. Those turret barrels 'also' contained a 850 cannon/850 cannon/850 punch rapid fire cannon designed so that each bullet could crack an advanced armor block regardless of how fresh the armor.)

My medium sized missiles land about 400,000-600,000 damage after the explosive mechanic kicks in. My experience has been that they rip the armor HP down first THEN start to rip big gaping holes in the target.

 

[Winterhome]

Look, if you're using only 2-3 layers of armor, you're obviously going to get fucked by missiles. 5 layers of armor will, however, utterly ruin a 5000 module missile/pulse/piercing array's damage potential, and 6 layers will completely stop it.

That's not as thick as you'd think.

In general, if your ship isn't laughing at nuke impacts with or without armor HP, you're not flying an armor tank - you're flying a slightly reinforced piece of styrofoam.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Look, if you're using only 2-3 layers of armor, you're obviously going to get fucked by missiles. 5 layers of armor will, however, utterly ruin a 5000 module missile/pulse/piercing array's damage potential, and 6 layers will completely stop it.

That's not as thick as you'd think.

In general, if your ship isn't laughing at nuke impacts with or without armor HP, you're not flying an armor tank - you're flying a slightly reinforced piece of styrofoam.

And that is why you and I are not playing the same game. If you have the time to invest in gathering the ridiculous amount of (uncommon) fertikeen needed to build something like that, then more power to you. I have no such surplus of time to dump into near-invincble bricknoughts.