Do you not make up for the decrease in the damage per shot in the amount of shots per second? Does it not all balance out DPS-wise?
All cannon weapons have the same DPS, just with different rates of fire and damage per shot. However, it is more likely to penetrate armor with with a single large shot than hoping multiple smaller shots will hit the same exact spot. That is why it is generally better to use high damage, low rof weapon types for small module count weapons.
So, just to clarify, diagonal blocks aren't affected? So, rather than dealing damage to the 26 (3^3 -1) potentially surrounding blocks, it's just those that have direct contact to a face of the block?
Explosive only effects the blocks directly touching the initial block hit, and will not touch diagonal blocks.
Also, say there's less than 6 total blocks directly contacting the faces of the hit block; do you lose damage, or is the explosive half divided evenly among the blocks that are present?
The damage is lost if there isn't a block. It is not redirected. This is actually a point of balance consideration, and it may end up being changed to 5 instead of 6 in the future, seeing as how there's no way for 6 blocks to actually be effected by the explosion.
Again, I'm having a hard time understanding how it doesn't proportion itself out. With two barrels, are you not just applying a proportional explosive effect to each? And again with the rate of fire, won't the shots per second, multiplied by the (reduced) damage per shot, equal the same damage per second? Or does it not work like that?
DPS of all cannon combinations is identical, with only rate of fire and individual damage changing. With two barrels, you are even less likely to penetrate armor, as you now need roughly twice as many shots to destroy an armor block. That is why I recommended a single barrel with higher damage instead of dual rapid barrels. Multiple barrels should not be used unless you would otherwise have overpenetration. For example, a 100,000 damage cannon would likely work better as a 5x5 cluster of 4000 damage cannons for block destruction.
If it's logic OR AI, then that means the effect can be achieved without logic? How do you go about having the AI fire like this?
AI is essentially a player that has the mouse button permanently held down on every single weapon, only releasing if the power of the vessel is too low. AI will fire all weapons simultaneously, which allows for easy creation of meta weapons in the same way logic allows for it.
Also, I forgot to ask, why beam exactly? Why not, say, Damage Pulse, for the purpose of increasing the damage per shot?
Lower range, lower velocity, significantly longer reload time, and overpenetration. This turret is designed for shooting fighters, and cannon/pulse will punch clean through it, wasting tons of damage.
Furthermore, cannon/pulse is pretty much a complete dead end of a weapon. Cannons typically have a range and rate of fire advantage over their clearest competitor, beams.
- Cannon/Cannon vs
Cannon/Beam BEAM/CANNON [RoF + Damage Analogues]- Cannon/Cannon has superior range and RoF.
- Cannon/Beam vs Beam [RoF + Damage Analogues]- Cannon/Beam has slightly faster RoF and massively superior range.
- Cannon/Beam vs Beam/Beam [Range Analogues]- Cannon/Beam has superior range and much higher RoF.
- Cannon/Pulse vs Beam/Beam [RoF + Damage Analogues]- Beam/Beam has superior range combined with hitscan, and a slightly faster RoF.
There is no real reason to take Cannon/Pulse over Cannon/Beam or Beam/Beam. It is outclassed in range and rate of fire by both, and its slight damage advantage over Beam/Beam is nullified by its projectile nature and, again, relatively short range.
