Missile blast radius/power calculation

[Panpiper]

Is there a detailed description anywhere as to how the explosive blast of missiles is calculated?

Certainly there must be a point at which stacking more modules onto a missile system serves only to help taking down shields, as maximum damage effect is assured (all blocks in the outer radius of the blast are destroyed, irrespective of the type of blocks). However without knowing the formulas involved, what that point is, is pure guesswork.

 

[Winterhome]

Is there a detailed description anywhere as to how the explosive blast of missiles is calculated?

Certainly there must be a point at which stacking more modules onto a missile system serves only to help taking down shields, as maximum damage effect is assured (all blocks in the outer radius of the blast are destroyed, irrespective of the type of blocks). However without knowing the formulas involved, what that point is, is pure guesswork.

Missile explosive radii are done in steps for some weird reason. I can't remember what the damage requirement for moving up from one size to the next is, though, sadly.

 

[CyberTao]

Stages are the fancy and correct term I think. I don't think Starmade is capable of doing proper damage reduction and spread/etc, instead, it does X damage to all blocks within a certain radius, if all blocks are destroyed, it moves to the next ring with a calculated percent of damage. I think each stage is also divided into smaller rings as well. Think of it as a slowly increasing Pulse.

A random guess of numbers would say that
Stage 1 = 100% to all blocks withing 3 radius
Stage 2 = 90% to those within 5
Stage 3 = 75%, etc.
Not the exact numbers (or anywhere close no doubt), but it should help to show what it does. The type of block destroyed does not matter at all, all that matters is whether all blocks withing the radius was destroyed or not. As such, missiles also behave differently towards hulls and armour, I remember hearing that armour values towards missiles are different to try and compensate.

I believe it was said that the damage stages were fairly accurate though, but the rings/steps within a stage needed more tweaking.

The best way to figure out optimal missile damage is to fire into a block of hulls until you get maximum damage, counting the blocks, and then doing math based on that. Shield damage is the same as any other weapon though. I tend to aim around 400 blocks for missile/beams to get maximum damage versus hull.