General Info Questions, as well as PvP based questions

[Bigmancheatle]

Hello all,

I am a brand new player, been playing about a month and learning the game's in and out, but I have a ton of questions, and the information is so spread out/inaccurate that I figured I would ask them all here!

Q1 - I see that the max efficiency for Salvaging is 91 modules per output, so does this mean for cannons at 1:1 ratio to do 200 damage per block I need double the modules? Missiles the same? Beams 34? Pulse 17? How about their secondary effects? Cannons are faster, Beams have range, Missile shot gun, and Pulse does what? What is burst time and hit rate in relation to salvagers?

Q2 - How does docked armor work? Why is is so effective? Is it in relation to penetration? How does that work? Does a single weapon continue to penetrate based on a contiguous basis so that gaps stop them, or is is based on distance, so if it has 17 penetration that damage is applied to 17 blocks, or 17 spaces so that gaps are less effective? Or do you get a bonus to the 2nd entity's defense if a weapon shoots through a 1st entity?

Q3 - What are some efficient weapon's setups? I have heard that multiple weapons in a line works better for punching through armor, is it better to have 3 weapons in a line or 1 giant weapons? Do you want to do more Alpha damage or consistent DPS?

Q4 - In what instances is overdrive worth adding to your weapons? It seems that Ion, Punchthrough, Piercing, and EMP are all better in terms of energy used vs what they are designed to do.

Q5 - As I understand it AHP and SHP are the cumulative Hitpoints of everything added to those systems. When using AHP it subtracts 50% of damage before damage is applied to a block (after that block's own defenses), that damage is drawn from the AHP pool. So, adding bulk heads and other places of HPs is good? Whenever the AHP is gone does that mean all if your armor blocks are destroyed? For instance if you take a lot of AHP damage to the front of your ship, does that mean that whole blocks are disappearing else where? Or does that just mean after its gone blocks take a 100% damage after their defenses?

Thank you all for your help!

 

[Malacodor]

A1 - Adding slaves to salvagers isn't really worth it, considering how expensive weapons are compared to salvagers.

A2 - Docked armor starts to absorb damage before the ship's shields are down, allowing them to regenrate. This is especially good versus ion weapons, since those do reduced damage to blocks. A penetration of 17 applies damage to up to 17 blocks, gaps don't help against this.

A3 - Three smaller weapons are usually better in terms of damage than a single big one, as less damage is wasted. However, several weapon groups connected to the same computer consume more power, (N-1)*10% for N groups. Whether alpha or consistent damage depends on the ship's role. For a ship that operates solo I'd go for the latter.

A4 - Overdrive is good to get a lot of firepower out of small turrets, but otherwise rather bad.

A5 - AHP is subtracted before armor is taken into account. 10 000 damage to an advanced armor block will remove 5000 AHP. Yes, adding more blocks with AHP is good, if the additional mass isn't a problem. Note that advanced armor has 5 times the mass of hull, but only twice the AHP, so hull gives you more AHP per mass. When AHP reaches 0, armor blocks won't be removed, they just get 100% damage, and damage beams will do less damage to hull/armor, due to a bug.

 

[Panpiper]

Just a couple of tweaks to Malacodor's answers.

A1 - Adding slaves to salvagers isn't really worth it, considering how expensive weapons are compared to salvagers.

When just starting out, this is certainly the case. Weapon slaves are very expensive in the quantities you would need, in the beginning. However once you are set up and actually mining decent quantities and able to build the weapon modules yourself, or otherwise making enough money to buy them, then they can indeed be well worth the while. You can save a lot of ship mass by pairing up beam or pulse weapon slaves (pulse for instance reaches max effect with just 16 salvage modules and 16 pulse, but it uses a lot more power). Alternatively for the same mass, you can get a constant beam using cannon modules, instead of constantly having to switch between two sets of beams (or just waiting on the one). Basically after a while, the expense is less of an issue than the convenience or the ship mass savings.

A4 - Overdrive is good to get a lot of firepower out of small turrets, but otherwise rather bad.

The caveat I would make is if you are going to use overdrive on a small turret, try to make the turret as self powering as possible (power module lines in both the turret barrel and base). Overdrive uses a LOT of power, and even small turrets can create quite a drain on your main ship's resources if they are using overdrive. The advantage here is that it is indeed possible to create smaller self powering turrets using overdrive than it is to use regular cannon without.

 

[JinM]

Q4 - In what instances is overdrive worth adding to your weapons?

Effectively in no cases. Here is the math:
If you use overdrive to 100%, you get 25% more relative damage in the same space, but need 600% of the energy.

It doubles the damage output of the weapon system, but you need to dedicate 50% of the weapon system blocks to the overdrive effect:
1 cannon 1 cannon system: 2 units damage; 1c - 1c - 1 overdrive = 4 units damage;
equals: save 25% of blocks for the same damage.
2c - 2c = 4 units damage; 2c-2c-2o=8u; 4c-4c=8u

So there are rare cases overdrive makes sense, ofcourse! But not for a beginner at all, and never in a pvp situation. One example would be to save space on a small turret you want to be retractable into a hole with logic. Also stations have sometimes large reserves of energy, so the 6x power consumption could be ignored. Last idea I have is putting an overdrive on a fighter, that can use it as solo system for overdriving the thrust, and connect those blocks to one weapon system in hit and run situations.
[doublepost=1476843686,1476843096][/doublepost]Oh and to the docked armor question (q2):
I suggest to not use it, it might get fixed or get a change in like...half a year? It is a side effect of the rail system that got introduced about a year ago, but was not intended. Ofcourse now come some pvp fanboys who say, that you have to use it or you are not able to keep up with guys using it. But...well I for my part am able to pick the guys I play with, and don't join pure survival pvp server for exactly this reason. I go on servers where I can ask a dude to fight with me in a nice competetive match where we make one rule to not use this docked armor shit. Belongs for me into the same place where docked reactors went!

 

[MrFURB]

Q1 - I see that the max efficiency for Salvaging is 91 modules per output, so does this mean for cannons at 1:1 ratio to do 200 damage per block I need double the modules? Missiles the same? Beams 34? Pulse 17? How about their secondary effects? Cannons are faster, Beams have range, Missile shot gun, and Pulse does what? What is burst time and hit rate in relation to salvagers?

Salvage/cannon halves the salvaging power per tick and reduces the reload time of the weapon. Since it decreases the salvage power per tick, it's max effective group size nearly doubles which makes it a good choice for large salvagers in servers where salvage beam outputs are limited. It's ease of use as a constant beam makes it popular regardless of other factors.
The other weapon slaves aren't often used on salvagers.
Note that the salvage power per hit is divided by the number of split beams when using salvage/missile.

Q2 - How does docked armor work? Why is is so effective? Is it in relation to penetration? How does that work? Does a single weapon continue to penetrate based on a contiguous basis so that gaps stop them, or is is based on distance, so if it has 17 penetration that damage is applied to 17 blocks, or 17 spaces so that gaps are less effective? Or do you get a bonus to the 2nd entity's defense if a weapon shoots through a 1st entity?

Docked armor works in a couple of ways, some are bugs and some are unintended side effects of how shield sharing works. A ship's shields will protect everything docked to the ship until they are lowered to 25% shield capacity. That is usually the point in a fight where people's anti-missile turrets start flying off in spectacular fashion.
The primary advantage of a docked hull is that is adds more 'stages' to a fight. Once your shields are at 25%, there's suddenly an armor stage where the enemy needs to break through the docked hull with anti-block weapons before they can further damage your shields. Meanwhile, your shields are regenerating, often rising just above the 25% mark and taking one or two shots that further slows the destruction of the docked armor.
It also doesn't count against your maneuverability, screws over some effects (such as full piercing or ion weapons) and can do some pretty screw stuff with independent effects itself.

Q3 - What are some efficient weapon's setups? I have heard that multiple weapons in a line works better for punching through armor, is it better to have 3 weapons in a line or 1 giant weapons? Do you want to do more Alpha damage or consistent DPS?

Simple answer: Raw damage numbers, high alpha against shields. Good DPS, multiple lower damage projectiles for armor.

Long answer:
Shields don't care about how damage is applied, so go for raw numbers. The longer the enemy shields are online, the more they regenerate.
A single large beam/beam/ion is a good choice. Hitscan accuracy, 1.5 sector range, and 30 seconds worth of shield DPS all at once has a good chance of beaming someone's shields clean off.

Armor is different. Generally speaking, more numerous moderate damage outputs are better for block damage than a single high damage output.
Depending on a weapon's total damage, it has a 'penetration value' which marks the number of separate instances of damage the weapon will deal with one projectile. The first instance is the largest and the last is the smallest.
When the weapon first hits a block it will apply the first instance of damage to it, then check if the block is still alive. If it is it will apply the next instance to the same block and repeat. If the block is destroyed, the leftover damage of the current instance is wasted and the rest is applied to the next block after that, following the path of the projectile when it first hit.
Note that beams are bugged, and when hitting any armor block will only deal the first instance of damage. All the others are wasted.

Having a massive weapon can cause the first few instances to waste a ton of overkill damage, even against the best armor. For anti-armor/anti-block weapons you will want to split your weapons into multiple outputs or have rapid firing and lower damage weaponry.
Cannon/cannon/punch is a good multi-use weapon that performs very well against armor without any major weaknesses.

Q4 - In what instances is overdrive worth adding to your weapons? It seems that Ion, Punchthrough, Piercing, and EMP are all better in terms of energy used vs what they are designed to do.

Overdrive does this: Triples the damage of the weapon in comparison to other equally sized weapons, but also doubles the energy needed per damage point. In most normal cases you won't want to part with your energy so quickly because most ships just aren't built for it.
What overdrive is good for is packing a lot of heat in a tiny space. They also vastly decrease the material cost of manufacturing the weapons since you need fewer weapon modules and those are ten times as expensive as power blocks.
I utilize them in large drones and self powered turrets to keep size and costs down since those all have their own independent power sources that aren't being hogged by all the other subsystems.

 

[Malacodor]

Effectively in no cases. Here is the math:
If you use overdrive to 100%, you get 25% more relative damage in the same space, but need 600% of the energy.

It doubles the damage output of the weapon system, but you need to dedicate 50% of the weapon system blocks to the overdrive effect:
1 cannon 1 cannon system: 2 units damage; 1c - 1c - 1 overdrive = 4 units damage;
equals: save 25% of blocks for the same damage.
2c - 2c = 4 units damage; 2c-2c-2o=8u; 4c-4c=8u

This is not how overdrive works, see MrFURB's post.

You can save a lot of ship mass by pairing up beam or pulse weapon slaves (pulse for instance reaches max effect with just 16 salvage modules and 16 pulse, but it uses a lot more power).

No, you can't. While getting the same number of blocks mined with less weapon blocks, the reload is longer. You cannot increase the average salvage damage per block per second by adding slaves.

Alternatively for the same mass, you can get a constant beam using cannon modules, instead of constantly having to switch between two sets of beams (or just waiting on the one).

Adding 100% cannon slave (doubling weapon block count) increases the number of mined blocks by only 33% due to a bug.

 

[JinM]

This is not how overdrive works, see MrFURB's post.

The only page explaining how overdrive works is this one:
Effects - StarMade Wiki

So is it 3 times damage, 600% power consumption if connected to 100%?

I can correct my math, but I need the raw numbers. But with "Triples the damage of the weapon in comparison to other equally sized weapons, but also doubles the energy needed per damage point.", I dont know exactly what it does to power consumption.

 

[Malacodor]

The only page explaining how overdrive works is this one:
Effects - StarMade Wiki

So is it 3 times damage, 600% power consumption if connected to 100%?

I can correct my math, but I need the raw numbers. But with "Triples the damage of the weapon in comparison to other equally sized weapons, but also doubles the energy needed per damage point.", I dont know exactly what it does to power consumption.

Base values per weapon block are 10 dps and -100 eps, that's -10 energy per damage point. With 100% overdrive it's 30 dps and -600 eps. With 2C+2C+2O you'd have 2 + 2 + 2 = 6 weapon blocks, which is 6 * 10 dps = 60 dps and 6 * (-100 eps) = -600 eps as base values without effect factored in. The overdrive effect increases these: 3 * 60 dps = 180 dps and 6 * (-600 eps) = -3600 eps, which is -20 energy per damage point.

 

[JinM]

okay so what is the base?
2c + 2c=?
my solution: 2c +2c= 40dps/400eps
2c+2c+2o = 180dps/3600eps

Are all the written solutions now right?

My final question then would be: Is this right:
9c + 9c = 180dps / 1800eps

 

[Malacodor]

okay so what is the base?
2c + 2c=?
my solution: 2c +2c= 40dps/400eps
2c+2c+2o = 180dps/3600eps

Are all the written solutions now right?

That's correct.

 

[Edymnion]

Q2 - How does docked armor work? Why is is so effective? Is it in relation to penetration? How does that work? Does a single weapon continue to penetrate based on a contiguous basis so that gaps stop them, or is is based on distance, so if it has 17 penetration that damage is applied to 17 blocks, or 17 spaces so that gaps are less effective? Or do you get a bonus to the 2nd entity's defense if a weapon shoots through a 1st entity?

Yup, as already mentioned its mostly decoy and ablative armor its used for these days.

AI will tend to go after docked entities first (seems like they're programmed to give priority to attacking turrets), so every shot they're taking at the docked armor plates is a shot that is NOT going for your main ship.

Personally I like to give my docked armor plates their own shields (I call them shield bugs for that reason) so that when the main shields are down, AI will switch to targetting the shield bugs for a while and give my main ship time to regenerate it's shields back up as well.

 

[Scypio]

Personally I like to give my docked armor plates their own shields (I call them shield bugs for that reason) so that when the main shields are down, AI will switch to targetting the shield bugs for a while and give my main ship time to regenerate it's shields back up as well.

When you shoot at something it's first their shield and then the mothership's shield.

 

[Malacodor]

When you shoot at something it's first their shield and then the mothership's shield.

Correct, but if the docked armor consists of doors, it can be "activated" after the mothership's shields are down.

 

[Edymnion]

When you shoot at something it's first their shield and then the mothership's shield.

Technically yes, but in effect its the other way around (as I recall), in that it acts a lot like energy usage.

You hit the docked entity, the first check is made on it's shields. If the docked entity's shields can absorb it all, they do. If they can't, then it moves down the line towards the mothership and uses up shield capacity until the hit is fully absorbed.

Meaning when the main ship's shields go down, the docked entities should still have their own independent shield generation going on, in addition to whatever the mothership is doing.

So you effectively end up with the docked entities keeping their shields up even when the mothership's are down.

 

[Bigmancheatle]

Thank you everyone for all of your information, I do have 3 more questions!

Q1 - How does shield regen work during combat? Someone explained that it actually decreases.

Q2 - If I have a ship with docked armor and shields on them, in what order will damage be applied? How is damage applied when AHP comes into the fight?

Q3 - What are the best defensive uses of effects? Also, can I use defensive effects on docked entities? Seems like you can't, but with the trick of using the up/down keys, couldn't you move into a docked entity and turn on defensive effects?

 

[Edymnion]

Q1 - How does shield regen work during combat? Someone explained that it actually decreases.

Shield regen drops to 1/10th normal during combat, though it picks up to I think it was 12 or 15% when under 10% total. So big drop in regen rate when you're in combat, but it speeds back up a little when your shields are dangerously low.

Q2 - If I have a ship with docked armor and shields on them, in what order will damage be applied? How is damage applied when AHP comes into the fight?

Unless I'm mistaken (and thats entirely possible) the docked entities count as their own entirely separate thing when it comes to damage. So a 1 block thick layer of docked armor will completely stop a piercing or punch through effect from hitting the rest of your ship because that docked plate counts as an entity, and you have to completely shoot a hole through it before you can hit whats behind it. Kind of like if you had a fighter flying between you and the attacker, they couldn't shoot through the fighter in one hit and still hit you behind it.

Q3 - What are the best defensive uses of effects? Also, can I use defensive effects on docked entities? Seems like you can't, but with the trick of using the up/down keys, couldn't you move into a docked entity and turn on defensive effects?

Depends, but Ion and EMP are both good choices. Lot of people will make shield breaker weapons with Ion to lower your shields fast, so Ion defense will keep your shields up longer. EMP is another good one because again, a great way to cripple a ship without doing massive damage is to hit their power generation. Most people don't build huge amounts of excess power generation, so its typically fairly easy to EMP them down to the point that their power tanks. No power means no shields, no weapons (unless you build power into turrets).
[doublepost=1476904953,1476904287][/doublepost]

Q3 - What are some efficient weapon's setups? I have heard that multiple weapons in a line works better for punching through armor, is it better to have 3 weapons in a line or 1 giant weapons? Do you want to do more Alpha damage or consistent DPS?

For a larger ship, you'll want a mixture of weapons.

Big alpha strike weapons do massive damage, but the reload time is so long that depending on the ship you hit they may be able to fully regenerate their shields before you can fire another shot. Smaller fire won't punch through high regen either. A mix of the two will, however. A big alpha strike followed by sustained DPS to help keep their shields from regenerating while the next shot loads is very effective.

For me, I go 4:2:1 in sustained dps/crippling/alpha.

So for every big alpha striker turret like missile/beam, I have two turrets that focus on things like stop, ion, and emp. Then for each one of those I have 2 more sustained dps like cannon/cannon and missile/cannon.

Q4 - In what instances is overdrive worth adding to your weapons? It seems that Ion, Punchthrough, Piercing, and EMP are all better in terms of energy used vs what they are designed to do.

Overdrive works best for letting smaller turrets punch above their weight class. On smaller ships, the energy requirement is usually not as hard to absorb because the overall energy requirements of the weapon are fairly small to begin with. Cannon/Cannon takes very little energy per shot, so they can benefit from Overdrive without making TOO much of a strain on your power.

So its mostly good for when you need a tiny little turret that has to do a lot of damage. Anti-boarding weapons (small turrets inside the ship set to shoot astronauts) do really well with Overdrive because you have to make them really tiny to fit inside the ship, but still want enough damage to one shot a boarder.

Q5 - As I understand it AHP and SHP are the cumulative Hitpoints of everything added to those systems. When using AHP it subtracts 50% of damage before damage is applied to a block (after that block's own defenses), that damage is drawn from the AHP pool. So, adding bulk heads and other places of HPs is good? Whenever the AHP is gone does that mean all if your armor blocks are destroyed? For instance if you take a lot of AHP damage to the front of your ship, does that mean that whole blocks are disappearing else where? Or does that just mean after its gone blocks take a 100% damage after their defenses?

You will still have armor blocks on your ship, and they will still stop fire like normal, but you just won't have any additional protective bonuses from it.

If you go spend a little time fighting pirates with a salvager (basically a warship with a salvage array so you can eat the pirates) you'll see that even though you tore through all of their armor and half their systems, they still have a good number of blocks of each kind left.

And the bigger the ship, the more the damage to those numbers is multiplied (meaning you might have to vaporize half a fighter to get it to overheat, but only a 10th of a titan to get the same effect).

 

[Malacodor]

A1 - Shield regen is reduced to 12.5-25% for one minute after a hit. If the shield is nearly full it's 12.5%, if it's nearly down it's 25%. If the shields are <100%, power cost for regen is ten times as high as with full shields. So in effect combat regen consumes 1.25 - 2.5 times as much energy as out-of-combat regeneration at 100% shields.

A2 - Shields of docked entity -> shields of mothership until under 25% -> blocks of docked entity
If the docked entity receives block damage its AHP pool goes down. There's no sharing of AHP or SHP across entities.

A3 - What Edymnion said. Plus, pierce and punch are often recommended, but only if you have enough armor. Manually entering entities and switching on defensive effects works, but it also deactivates AIs, so you have to switch them back on afterwards.

 

[MrFURB]

Q1 - How does shield regen work during combat? Someone explained that it actually decreases.

Shield regen will decrease as soon as you fire or are fired upon. At 100% shield capacity your shield regeneration rate will be 12.5% of it's listed amount. As your shields are lowered that will increase until it reaches the in-combat maximum of 25% of the listed amount while your shields are nearly empty.

Q2 - If I have a ship with docked armor and shields on them, in what order will damage be applied? How is damage applied when AHP comes into the fight?

1. Mothership shields are hit until they reach 25%.
2. Docked entity shields are hit until empty.
3. Docked entity blocks are hit until projectiles break through.
4. Remaining 25% of mothership shields are hit until broken.
5. Mothership blocks are hit.

The only thing that AHP does is transfer half of the damage taken by armor blocks into itself instead, further improving armor's ability to soak up damage. When you run out of AHP, that stops. Armor blocks will still have their own block armor and block HP, they'll just be twice as easy to destroy as before. Nothing else changes.

Q3 - What are the best defensive uses of effects? Also, can I use defensive effects on docked entities? Seems like you can't, but with the trick of using the up/down keys, couldn't you move into a docked entity and turn on defensive effects?

The most commonly used defensive effects are ion, pierce, and punch.
Ion is expensive in block count and sometimes energy, but negates 60% of the damage taken by your shields. It is essentially multiplying your effective shield capacity and regeneration by 2.5, a massive bonus that makes it worthwhile on any ship that has at least 'okay' shielding for it's size.
Pierce will increase the amount of damage to armor blocks that your AHP redirects from 50% to 75%, again doubling your armor's effective health at the cost of causing your AHP bar to deplete 50% faster. It is cheap to use in both blocks and energy and so make a good passive for anything using a good layer or ten of advanced armor.
Punch passive will negate up to 25% of the damage dealt to your AHP, making it last longer. It is especially good for negating the excess AHP drain caused by running the pierce effect, and always useful if you have lots of advanced armor but little hull or other lighter armor to help pad out your AHP. It is also cheap in both block count and energy use.

Combat ships don't need to utilize all three of them to be effective. Shield tanks do not need pierce/punch, armor tanks will have too much mass to make running an ion passive worthwhile, and mixed tanks could find that they have enough AHP to ignore the punch passive.

You can activate defensive passives on docked entities, but they will not stay on.

 

[Malacodor]

You can activate defensive passives on docked entities, but they will not stay on.

They will. Tested today with punch-through effect.

 

[Panpiper]

You can save a lot of ship mass by pairing up beam or pulse weapon slaves (pulse for instance reaches max effect with just 16 salvage modules and 16 pulse, but it uses a lot more power).

No, you can't. While getting the same number of blocks mined with less weapon blocks, the reload is longer. You cannot increase the average salvage damage per block per second by adding slaves.

I beg to differ. On a regular miner you would need an array 91 blocks deep to get a beam at full power that only is on half the time. To be mining constantly, you would need twice that, for a total of 182 modules per beam (alternating between the two while the other recycles). On the miner I am using currently, I use a pulse slave which requires 16 salvage and 16 pulse modules per beam for maximum strength. I double that up so I can alternate between beams, so I get the same effect using only 64 modules instead of 182. Yes, the reload is longer, but the beam duration is the same as the reload time. With two such arrays, I am able to mine constantly by alternating between them. The downside is that it uses a LOT more power. However given that my battleminer is not fighting while it is mining, it has energy to spare. What it does not have, as it is also a 'battle'miner, is module mass to spare.