Weapons Testing Results

[Kingofanime]

I've built up a collection of ship shells over a long period of time, and now that the weapons update is out I've been filling them in. I've been testing these new ships and weapons and figured I might as well post my results, for whoever the heck cares to know.

DEFENSE...

Beam Weapons Isanths... They always seem to bring my shields down fast. All beam weapon combinations quickly drop my shields and do fairly heavy ship damage. It probably doesn't help that the enemy ship always spawns close to me.

Beam/Missile isanth(arc beam)... can kill my ship that's 1.4k mass(4 times it's mass). It drops my 123,000 shields like it's nothing. The only counter I can think of is to use my own arc beam weapon, which feels wrong. I also tried using heat resistance defense chambers, still took tons of damage. I'm not sure if the heat resist chambers helped?

Cannon Isanths... I can shield tank their damage all day.

Cannon/Beam(artillery cannon)... It does respectable damage, but my shields are fully restored by the time it fires again.

Missiles Isanths... they seem to do decent damage

OFFENSE...

Beam (no slave)... The beam graphic doesn't always stay in sync with the blocks that I'm looking at and killing. The visual graphic of the beam is the only thing that latches on to anything, the actual damage beam only hurts what I point at, while holding the mouse button down.

Beam/Missile.... (100% beam, 0% missile) This is my current favorite weapon. I have the stats of a long range beam weapon, and the latch on ability of an arc beam. I'm not able to right-click zoom, but I don't really need to.

Beam/Missile (arc beam)(100% beam, 100% missile)... I don't use them on my own ships, I'm not sure why. I feel like I don't want to have anything to do with them.

Missile/Beam(homing missiles)(100% missile, 100% beam)... They miss, a lot. I believe Isanths only have a 135 top speed, and I can only hit them 1 out of every 4 to 5 shots, as they constantly accelerate and decelerate while orbiting me. I don't remember homing missiles missing this much. I tried reducing the beam slave to 50% to increase the missile speed, but the lock on became painfully slow, and it still missed often. It may be worth trying 75% slave? But even then I'm not sure that a faster missile would be any more accurate?

Cannons... (all cannons combinations)... I didn't feel like I was doing much damage with them, so I switched over to all beam weapons. Maybe there's some value in them, I dunno? I should probably get out my cloak ship someday and test some ai isanths against each other.

OTHER...

I use to be able to watch the structure and armor hp's on a target slowly drop as I shot different weapons at it. And it was a very satisfying source of feedback in the middle of combat. I no longer have that anymore, and I frequently find myself wondering if my weapons are doing anything while I'm fighting. If I'm fighting at a medium to far distance, I have no idea if I'm doing anything to him, until his reactor is hit. It feels like I'm poking around in the dark.

 

[Briaireous]

Kinda like Minecraft combat with tnt cannons

 

[MacThule]

Thanks for the share.

When beta weapons initial hit dev build, missiles were super OP. Now they do ship damage comparable to beams, inferior shield damage, and yet have all the drawbacks of munition counts, vulnerability to point defense, and frequent misses.

Personally, I like all the drawbacks to missiles, I like that they miss a lot now, but they need their overall damage improved substantially to balance that. And I think beams absolutely need either a minor reduction of overall damage or at least a substantial nerf to their block damage leaving them a bit more specialized for assaulting shields.

 

[Captain Fortius]

Beam (no slave)... The beam graphic doesn't always stay in sync with the blocks that I'm looking at and killing. The visual graphic of the beam is the only thing that latches on to anything, the actual damage beam only hurts what I point at, while holding the mouse button down.

Confirmed.

Missile/Beam(homing missiles)(100% missile, 100% beam)... They miss, a lot. I believe Isanths only have a 135 top speed, and I can only hit them 1 out of every 4 to 5 shots, as they constantly accelerate and decelerate while orbiting me.

And just the other day we talked about how huge missile HP pools would start a trend of humongous PD turrets, so you can defend against them. At this rate, why bother?

Cannons... (all cannons combinations)... I didn't feel like I was doing much damage with them, so I switched over to all beam weapons. Maybe there's some value in them, I dunno?

... I mean, they break more blocks than they used to? Right? Only when you build them really big though. Killing things still takes an eternity and a half.

I use to be able to watch the structure and armor hp's on a target slowly drop as I shot different weapons at it. And it was a very satisfying source of feedback in the middle of combat. I no longer have that anymore, and I frequently find myself wondering if my weapons are doing anything while I'm fighting. If I'm fighting at a medium to far distance, I have no idea if I'm doing anything to him, until his reactor is hit. It feels like I'm poking around in the dark.

This.

Right now, we see Shields and Reactor HP; Does it mean a ship can only be killed by breaking it's reactor apart? After watching a flock of my fighters duke it out with their pirate counterparts, I'm inclined to think yes; So many holes in all craft involved, yet they still fly.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

Ah, weapons testing. Let's see what my test platforms do in 201.129... CompuPrise test target has 309k shields, and I added some stuff to it (most notably, that gray ring is actual armor). All done at point-blank range with 4x 3x5x10+1 weapon groups, slaved weapons systems being 2 of the 4 groups when in use.

Test target unscathed:

Cannon-missile test platform:

Beam: 8 shots (~30 seconds).
Beam-beam: 3/4 shot (~30 seconds including chargeup) by sweeping side to side. Damage result:

Beam-cannon: 26 shots (~26 seconds). Damage result (pretty much the same as everything but missiles and the more powerful beams):

Beam-missile: 3/4 shot (~30 seconds). Damage result:

Cannon: ~2 minutes of volley fire.
Cannon-beam: Glitched. Shots wouldn't connect, and target eventually flew towards me randomly. However, the very first shot took out shields and some armor, so I think about 4 shouts would do it (~1 minute).
Cannon-cannon: ~4 minutes of fire.
Cannon-missile: 11 shots (~2.5 minutes including full chargeups), notably, the last few kept missing the reactor blocks.
Missile: 40 missiles (capacity 21, so had to wait through one recharge. The capacity blocks basically surround the weapon groups and are about the same in total block number). ~1 minute. Note that the first 21 only took the shields down to about 22%. Damage result:

Basically, the powerful cannon variants tend to not hit things due to the game forgetting where things actually are. The weaker cannon variants meanwhile take forever to take out shields (as do missiles, sort of). Beams utterly crush anything you can get close too, especially the more powerful variants.

 

[MrGrey1]

Cannons... (all cannons combinations)... I didn't feel like I was doing much damage with them, so I switched over to all beam weapons. Maybe there's some value in them, I dunno? I should probably get out my cloak ship someday and test some ai isanths against each other..

I've been testing 199 reactor drones against each other. 1 main weapon and 2 small turrets each. Turrets were pretty useless except for b/b (18/18) which destroyed shields so I've kinda set on them and been doing most testing with them. I have tested all the main weapons as single type and pitted them against each other, cannon definitely beat beam for me. Beam would strip away layer by layer where cannon was putting holes deep into the drone. Total damage was comparative I suppose but as the front of my drones was layered with basic and advanced armour the actual damage to systems was much greater from cannon. I found that everything changed as soon as I(we) started flying in them as well though. Building for a drone is vastly different from building for a piloted ship... Cannon was 550 in size, beam was 440, the rest of the ships were basically identical, I was not able to make the weapons the same module size due to their differing power requirements.
On a different note, I tried splitting the main cannon and putting one either side of the ship, they basically stopped hitting anything. If the cannon is not lined up with the core/main axiss of the ship it's accuracy is dramatically reduced. I still need to test and see if this applies to beams and missiles as well.

My test ships. My kids love testing them for me so I've themed them so we know who's blowing away who.

 

[Kingofanime]

On a different note, I tried splitting the main cannon and putting one either side of the ship, they basically stopped hitting anything. If the cannon is not lined up with the core/main axiss of the ship it's accuracy is dramatically reduced. I still need to test and see if this applies to beams and missiles as well.

I hope you're on to something because when firing homing missiles at stationary targets with no ai, my accuracy was not 100%. roughly 5% to 10% of the missiles would wildly swerve off to the side right before impact. It was confusing and it left me looking around to try to figure out where my missile went.

And when I was fighting the isanths that were moving I checked it to make sure it did not have any stealth missile jamming chambers.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

I've been testing 199 reactor drones against each other. 1 main weapon and 2 small turrets each. Turrets were pretty useless except for b/b (18/18) which destroyed shields so I've kinda set on them and been doing most testing with them. I have tested all the main weapons as single type and pitted them against each other, cannon definitely beat beam for me. Beam would strip away layer by layer where cannon was putting holes deep into the drone. Total damage was comparative I suppose but as the front of my drones was layered with basic and advanced armour the actual damage to systems was much greater from cannon. I found that everything changed as soon as I(we) started flying in them as well though. Building for a drone is vastly different from building for a piloted ship... Cannon was 550 in size, beam was 440, the rest of the ships were basically identical, I was not able to make the weapons the same module size due to their differing power requirements.
On a different note, I tried splitting the main cannon and putting one either side of the ship, they basically stopped hitting anything. If the cannon is not lined up with the core/main axiss of the ship it's accuracy is dramatically reduced. I still need to test and see if this applies to beams and missiles as well.

My test ships. My kids love testing them for me so I've themed them so we know who's blowing away who.

You should test beam-cannon to see if its more frequent firing alleviates the layer-stripping issue. Something to note is that AI doesn't use beam very well because it won't, as far as I know, retarget; an actual player can click again to tell beams to stop making lines on the hull and start again on the reactor etc..

 

[Kingofanime]

Here are some more weapons testing results from today. This time I spawned an old timey cross-shaped cloak stick, and used it's perma-cloaking abilities to observe the ai ships fighting each other.



B/- ISANTH vs C/- ISANTH

-cannon ship overheated. It lost a lot of armor too.
-beam ship had 3 small holes in the front, but looked pretty good.
-ai controlled beam weapons seemed to have trouble locking onto the moving target. Or maybe it was just the visual/graphic of the beam being off, I'm not sure. It seemed to be keeping the shields of the target ship down, so I think it was hitting fairly good.



M/B ISANTH vs C/C ISANTH

-I terminated battle before anyone overheated, because it was dragging on too long. When I stopped the battle the M/B Isanth was at 83% reactor health, and the C/C Isanth had no damage.
-this is the hits and misses of the ai homing missiles...

volley 1: miss
volley 2: hit (target reduces to ~10% shields)
volley 3: miss (target is back to 100% shields)
volley 4: miss
volley 5: miss
volley 6: miss
homing missile slave computer destroyed
the ship begins to spam dumbfire missiles, they also miss
I stop the battle

-The C/C Isanth didn't seem like it was firing quite as fast as it could be. It acted like it was carefully aiming each shot. (that's not how I use a machine gun) If I was personally firing the C/C, I feel like I could have gotten a smidge more fire rate out of it. But I'm not sure what my accuracy would have been.



x1 B/M ISANTH vs x4 C/- ISANTHS

-the B/M Isanth managed to kill one target, it was then unable to get within range to fire at anything else, and slowly died. Very slowly.
-halfway through the battle I started having a weird issue with the ship positions moving every time I crossed a sector border.

I have tested all the main weapons as single type and pitted them against each other, cannon definitely beat beam for me. Beam would strip away layer by layer where cannon was putting holes deep into the drone. Total damage was comparative I suppose but as the front of my drones was layered with basic and advanced armour the actual damage to systems was much greater from cannon.

I'm starting to wonder if cannons are more effective when they're huge, and not very good when they're small. Because most of my testing is with small ships.

 

[MacThule]

I'm starting to wonder if cannons are more effective when they're huge, and not very good when they're small. Because most of my testing is with small ships.

I think this comes down to armor changes. Armor is more effective now, and I feel like it works pretty well against lighter cannon. Cannon heavy enough to penetrate with power left do excellent damage to internal organs.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

Here are some more weapons testing results from today. This time I spawned an old timey cross-shaped cloak stick, and used it's perma-cloaking abilities to observe the ai ships fighting each other.



B/- ISANTH vs C/- ISANTH

-cannon ship overheated. It lost a lot of armor too.
-beam ship had 3 small holes in the front, but looked pretty good.
-ai controlled beam weapons seemed to have trouble locking onto the moving target. Or maybe it was just the visual/graphic of the beam being off, I'm not sure. It seemed to be keeping the shields of the target ship down, so I think it was hitting fairly good.



M/B ISANTH vs C/C ISANTH

-I terminated battle before anyone overheated, because it was dragging on too long. When I stopped the battle the M/B Isanth was at 83% reactor health, and the C/C Isanth had no damage.
-this is the hits and misses of the ai homing missiles...

volley 1: miss
volley 2: hit (target reduces to ~10% shields)
volley 3: miss (target is back to 100% shields)
volley 4: miss
volley 5: miss
volley 6: miss
homing missile slave computer destroyed
the ship begins to spam dumbfire missiles, they also miss
I stop the battle

-The C/C Isanth didn't seem like it was firing quite as fast as it could be. It acted like it was carefully aiming each shot. (that's not how I use a machine gun) If I was personally firing the C/C, I feel like I could have gotten a smidge more fire rate out of it. But I'm not sure what my accuracy would have been.



x1 B/M ISANTH vs x4 C/- ISANTHS

-the B/M Isanth managed to kill one target, it was then unable to get within range to fire at anything else, and slowly died. Very slowly.
-halfway through the battle I started having a weird issue with the ship positions moving every time I crossed a sector border.





I'm starting to wonder if cannons are more effective when they're huge, and not very good when they're small. Because most of my testing is with small ships.

Homing missiles at 1:1 ratio are just way too slow for stopping the sort of maneuverable targets you'd expect to use them on. Meanwhile, homing missiles at 1:0 ratio take forever to lock on, making them useless. I think all ratios should have the lock-on speed of the full ratio for them to be of any serious use.

I don't think it's a matter of absolute size. Cannon is the weakest against shields and armor. Once there's a decent-sized hole, however, cannon has the fire rate to mop up system blocks in seconds, whereas beams and missiles waste damage on other things (unless very, very carefully targeted). It might be worth it to start an engagement with beams and then switch to cannons once the target has holes in their armor.

 

[Kingofanime]

I made a discovery recently. An "Isanth C/-" under AI control does not use all of it's weapons outputs. You can tell by watching it's power consumption. It seems to only fire the weapons on one side of the ship. At first I thought this was because the ship had it's 4 outputs split onto 2 cannon computers, so what I did next was delete one of the cannon computers and put all the outputs on one cannon computer. I then re-spawned the ship as a pirate faction ship and let it shoot at me. The result was that its power consumption was still only half of what the weapon was supposed to use. It didn't seem to be using all it's weapon outputs. If you rely on ai battles for any of your testing, this could throw off your results.

I even tried combining the isanth C/- weapons down to 2 outputs... one on each side, and connected to a single computer. The ai still refused to fire them both... I could tell by the fact that it would only use 1/2 of the weapons power consumption when attacking.