DPS Advice for a newbie?

[Edymnion]

This should help:


Basically the DPS of your weapons overall is less important than their DPP (Damage Per Projectile).

You want your DPP to be high enough to break a target type of block in one hit, because essentially any shot that hits armor and doesn't break it is mostly a wasted shot. Worse than just being a wasted shot, in actual combat its unlikely you're going to get two hits on the exact same block in rapid succession, even a cannon/cannon is going to spend a lot of time strafing across the hull instead of drilling the exact same block over and over again, so you're going to be wasting a LOT of shots.

So decide what you want the weapon to be able to do, then find how much DPP you need for that on the chart above, and then build your turret/whatever to be able to do that much damage.

Other things that will help? Make a Creative Mode game, load your turret into it, and then build target armor dummies. Basically just big blobs of armor, shields, whatever, and test fire into them.

Like make a big 10x10x20 rectangle of advanced armor, position your turret in front of it, and fire a single shot into the middle. Hop out of turret, hop into the armor dummy, and then go in and count how many blocks it destroyed. Then you can adjust the DPP of your turret up or down so that it takes out an exact number of blocks per shot so that you aren't wasting power.

 

[Scratchmort]

This should help:
View attachment 45027

Basically the DPS of your weapons overall is less important than their DPP (Damage Per Projectile).

You want your DPP to be high enough to break a target type of block in one hit, because essentially any shot that hits armor and doesn't break it is mostly a wasted shot. Worse than just being a wasted shot, in actual combat its unlikely you're going to get two hits on the exact same block in rapid succession, even a cannon/cannon is going to spend a lot of time strafing across the hull instead of drilling the exact same block over and over again.

So decide what you want the weapon to be able to do, then find how much DPP you need for that on the chart above, and then build your turret/whatever to be able to do that much damage.

Other things that will help? Make a Creative Mode game, load your turret into it, and then build target armor dummies. Basically just big blobs of armor, shields, whatever, and test fire into them.

Like make a big 10x10x20 rectangle of advanced armor, position your turret in front of it, and fire a single shot into the middle. Hop out of turret, hop into the armor dummy, and then go in and count how many blocks it destroyed. Then you can adjust the DPP of your turret up or down so that it takes out an exact number of blocks per shot so that you aren't wasting power.

Thanks! That chart definitely looks like it'll come in handy! I didn't think about setting up shielded target dummies either, good shout!

 

[AtraUnam]

As the maker of that chart I'd like to point out that while the adv-armor section is still valid data, the actual damage required is actually going to be a little lower than that due to a change to adv armor after that chart was made. I do intend to update the chart at some point but am waiting on an armor system change thats presently in limbo.

 

[Scratchmort]

As the maker of that chart I'd like to point out that while the adv-armor section is still valid data, the actual damage required is actually going to be a little lower than that due to a change to adv armor after that chart was made. I do intend to update the chart at some point but am waiting on an armor system change thats presently in limbo.

Ok - thanks for the heads up! Either way I think the chart will definitely help me out - especially when it comes to turret building!

 

[Panpiper]

Sadly much of what we can tell you is soon to be obsolete with the new power system being worked on. In the old system (that is still being used for now), I could tell you that any ship I built at that size would without question have two million power per second generation from power module lines alone. That is without recourse to docked power, aux power or anything else. Moreover, I would tend to make at least half the firepower of the ship with self powered turrets on top of that. Between hull mounted weapons and self powered turret weapons, my ship would probably be doing on the order of 200K dps, firing around 30, 4K+ damage bullets per second and a salvo of numerous 400K damage missiles plus decoys every 45 seconds. It would have a two to one thrust to mass ratio and well over a million full ion effect shields (I actually don't remember what the shielding was of the last ship I built in that mass range, but it was definitely well past the million mark).

I am indeed a more advanced builder than most (not in terms of looks), but the ship I described would likely not stand a chance in front of something of equivalent mass that AtraUnam built, as a for instance. That described ship is simply the result of knowing that power is life, how to get power, how to build good nested, self powered turrets, how to configure good weapons, etc..

With the upcoming changes to power, everything is soon to change. How power works with weapons will soon change. Indeed shortly after that, the weapons themselves will change and we will again be back to the drawing boards, again to relearn everything. What I would recommend for now would be to spend time learning how to make nested turrets, what I call ball turrets. The mechanics of doing that, nesting them deep inside a hull, is not likely to change and will still be useful to you after the power and weapon updates.

For a start, here's an article I wrote a little while back on ball turrets. Ignore any references to adding power, except for powering thrusters.

 

[Edymnion]

we will again be back to the drawing boards, again to relearn everything.

Good

Keep things fresh!

But he's right, everything is about to change in the next probably 6 months. This is prime time to work on perfecting your ability to build cool looking shells, but trying to perfect systems and the like right now is likely just going to be a... less than efficient use of your time.

But, we don't really know how long all of this will take. Power could be out next week, or it could be out several months from now. Weapon overhaul is definitely months away at least.

So yeah, at this point I'd recommend practicing on how to make good looking turrets with lots of space in them for weapons modules, and saving those empty shells out for use later.

 

[Scratchmort]

Sadly much of what we can tell you is soon to be obsolete with the new power system being worked on. In the old system (that is still being used for now), I could tell you that any ship I built at that size would without question have two million power per second generation from power module lines alone. That is without recourse to docked power, aux power or anything else. Moreover, I would tend to make at least half the firepower of the ship with self powered turrets on top of that. Between hull mounted weapons and self powered turret weapons, my ship would probably be doing on the order of 200K dps, firing around 30, 4K+ damage bullets per second and a salvo of numerous 400K damage missiles plus decoys every 45 seconds. It would have a two to one thrust to mass ratio and well over a million full ion effect shields (I actually don't remember what the shielding was of the last ship I built in that mass range, but it was definitely well past the million mark).

I am indeed a more advanced builder than most (not in terms of looks), but the ship I described would likely not stand a chance in front of something of equivalent mass that AtraUnam built, as a for instance. That described ship is simply the result of knowing that power is life, how to get power, how to build good nested, self powered turrets, how to configure good weapons, etc..

With the upcoming changes to power, everything is soon to change. How power works with weapons will soon change. Indeed shortly after that, the weapons themselves will change and we will again be back to the drawing boards, again to relearn everything. What I would recommend for now would be to spend time learning how to make nested turrets, what I call ball turrets. The mechanics of doing that, nesting them deep inside a hull, is not likely to change and will still be useful to you after the power and weapon updates.

For a start, here's an article I wrote a little while back on ball turrets. Ignore any references to adding power, except for powering thrusters.

Thanks for the info! Currently going over the ball turret article...very interesting stuff! I've just started work on my second cruiser and your info will really come in handy

Good

Keep things fresh!

But he's right, everything is about to change in the next probably 6 months. This is prime time to work on perfecting your ability to build cool looking shells, but trying to perfect systems and the like right now is likely just going to be a... less than efficient use of your time.

But, we don't really know how long all of this will take. Power could be out next week, or it could be out several months from now. Weapon overhaul is definitely months away at least.

So yeah, at this point I'd recommend practicing on how to make good looking turrets with lots of space in them for weapons modules, and saving those empty shells out for use later.

Glad you mentioned that! I've been on something of a ship building spree and I feel like you've just saved me a lot of time in regards to placing systems...I'll stick to building shells until the power update comes out!

 

[El_Shanta]

#Teamdps, we are the chosen of schema('s cat)

also why do people confuse "dps" with "delta damage", there is no such thing as "alpha vs dps" balance, some of your dps should be alpha, some of it should be delta.

 

[GDPR 302420]

there is no such thing as "alpha vs dps" balance

 

[Mork2]

Since the announcement about the new power system I haven't designed anything for months. I've just started again now. I have a bit of an idea from the dev videos about the new power system so its possible to work on turrets since they don't have reactors in them at all. You won't need capacitors either with the new power system as well. So its just the weapon, shield and armour blocks mostly. Maybe light weight filler block as well.

You should also be able to build stations with shipyards with the new power system in mind. Its simple enough to plan to place reactors on one side of the shipyard and the stabilisers on the other. Leave some room near the reactor to make the linked chambers, maybe in silos. The dev video talked about upgrading the warp gate to increase range or target a set of co-ordinates rather than a gate. There are other possibilities they mentioned like mining bonus's and other station specific bonuses....