Help me understand this again: effects for Cannons

[Master_Artificer]

Digging through config to see what does what, cause wiki is out of date, and I have some questions:
>>PunchThrough
<CannonBlockDamageBonus>0.5</CannonBlockDamageBonus>
<CannonArmorHPBonus>0.25</CannonArmorHPBonus>
Does that mean the cannon does 50% more damage to each block, and removes 25% of the armor value?

So, would a 1000 damage shot hitting advanced armor be increased to 1500, and then reduced by armor and armor bar?
And does it cut 75% by 25%, or does it straight up subtract 25% armor. Difference is 56.25% armor and 50% armor.

>>Piercing
<CannonBlockDamageBonus>0.25</CannonBlockDamageBonus>
<CannonShieldDamageBonus>-1</CannonShieldDamageBonus>
<CannonArmorEfficiency>-0.5</CannonArmorEfficiency>
<CannonArmorHPBonus>0.5</CannonArmorHPBonus>
So it does more damage to the block, but not as much as punch? Also seems to negate damage to the shield.
If at 100%, only 25% of the damage is diverted to the armor bar? hmm. But it also cuts armor damage reduction in half. Does it decrease the amount of damage deducted from armor by 50%, or is it a straight up -50% reduction? Aka, does advanced armor have 37.5% armor or 25% armor when shooting at it?

>>ExplosionEffect
<CannonBlockDamageBonus>-0.5</CannonBlockDamageBonus>
<CannonExplosiveRadius>10</CannonExplosiveRadius><!-- currently capped at 1. may be implemented later-->
So it decreases the damage done to blocks? Huh. But at only 10% value, it decreases block damage by only 0.05%, not 50%. Good to know.
I think I did that right.


So, would punch through be the best Cannon Cannon Effect when not using waffleboards, but only 1-5 outputs?

 

[Tunk]

The xml stats work kinda annoying,
positives are generally percentage multipliers, so that 0.25 = 1.25
Same goes for negatives.


Block damage is literally that, damage against a blocks HP.
ArmourHPBonus is bonus damage against the armour HP pool.
Shield damage bonus is bonus against shields.
Negatives reduce effectiveness (eg -1 will make a weapon do zero damage against that target)

Armour Efficiency reduces armour effectiveness, so armour pretty much melts.

On explosive, you'll need to test it as I didn't find it effective and moved on.
If I remember right it reduces the direct damage, and distributes 1/6 of that to each surrounding blocks based off the effect amount.
eg 100 damage, 10% effect = 90 direct damage, 1.6 damage explosion.
50% effect: 50 direct damage, 8.3 explosion.
Someone with more experience with the explosive effect will need to correct me there.

On how damage happens:
Multipliers to damage first, so punch through increases block damage 50% (note: this does not increase shield damage).
Armour cuts that by whatever percent, so 375 for adv armour.
50% of that goes to armour HP pool, 187.5, but its multiplied by 25% so 234.375 damage to armour HP.
187.5 is applied to the block itself (number you see).

 

[MacThule]

Personally I prefer empirical testing to theoretical math. Meaning I think it's more informative to fly out to a 'roid field in a big power core with engines carrying an inventory full of weapons, effects and armor than to crunch numbers and try to imagine how that's going to affect objects in game. I use a build block and slap some fast square sheets of hull, standard and advanced armor on different parts of a 'roid, then return to my ship and start testing weapons in various combinations at various percentages. I just fly back and forth to range-find.

In my testing, Punch feels like the strongest effect cannon effect currently. Even at 75% it really isn't held back much by armor and once it penetrates it just... ruins things. Especially on a weapon like a Cannon-Pulse or Beam-Pulse. On lightly or unarmored targets though I find Explosion effect to be just as destructive; especially on Beams, but less so for Cannons.

The preceding post's assessment of Explosion seems spot on from my testing. High % Explosions effect greatly reduces total DPS and I've moved away from it in everything except missiles and larger beam weapons.

 

[Dire Venom]

Great responses guys!
From my understanding, armour piercing is only useful on small arrays that arent likely to one-hit armour.
Punch through is pretty much my go-to for cannons, and in tests against a giant glass block two arrays (1000 canon- 1000punch, 2000 cannon) the punch through one got and extra couple blocks of penetration (15-20%?).

Its been a while since Ive used beams, but ive found them very nice for beam-pulse-ion turrents.
These turrents also say that my beams have a total penertration of 33 blocks (much greater than my large cannon arrays) allthough ive yet to compare them.

Would a cannon-pulse-ion be more effective than a beam-pulse-ion beam:? what do you guys think?

 

[MrFURB]

Your cannon/cannon/punch is a good all-rounder, and it becomes more useful when you pair it with an alpha damage anti-shield weapon.

Tunk's got it right. Punch increases damage against all blocks and increases how much damage the armor HP pool takes, which both combine to make nice weapons to screw up people with only advanced armor and no supporting hull for buffing up the AHP pool.

Piercing is absolutely bonkers against heavy armor, requiring somewhere around 40% fewer blocks to reach the same effectiveness as punch against advanced armor. It's not going to melt through the AHP pool as fast, but you won't need to.

Would a cannon-pulse-ion be more effective than a beam-pulse-ion beam:? what do you guys think?

C/P/I will have longer range, which helps when a lot of enemies tend towards missile boats with impressive range advantages. B/P/I will have much higher alpha damage at the expense of range.

 

[Master_Artificer]

It seems like if you cannot do enough damage to break the surrounding blocks, even if they are systems, completly, with your gun then don't use explosive effect. I have 4, 400 block cannon cannons and I will be switching them over to punch as it raises their dps by 50% against blocks and increases the amount they pen by from 6 blocks to 9.


Whoah, with peirce I can kill an advanced armor block in 1 shot
Okay, here is a comparison of 4 second bursts with random spread and jittery mouse across advanced armor, with 4, 400 block cannon cannon guns for my heavy fighter: (1600 modules in total before effects). (Used 100% of Explosive and Pierce effects).

Explosive:

3 blocks killed, many damaged


Pierce:

Less of an area damaged, but holy cow more blocks were removed alright!

 

[Panpiper]

Whoah, with peirce I can kill an advanced armor block in 1 shot!

Before you get too excited about pierce, remember that with full pierce effect the weapon will have zero effect versus shields. That means no shield damage, and if the shields aren't down, no block damage either.

Now you might think you could just put in a nice big pulse/ion weapon to knock down shields with and then do the block damage with pierce weapons. Consider however what would happen if you went up against a ship that had a small but constant shield supply beam going from a docked entity. Before you think that unlikely, I do that as a matter of standard in any major ship I construct. My ships effectively always have some shield. It may not be a lot if the shields have been knocked down, but versus a pierce weapon, the tiniest amount of shield is sufficient to completely neutralize the weapon.

 

[Master_Artificer]

Before you get too excited about piece, remember that with full pierce effect the weapon will have zero effect versus shields. That means no shield damage, and if the shields aren't down, no block damage either.

Now you might think you could just put in a nice big pulse/ion weapon to knock down shields with and then do the block damage with pierce weapons. Consider however what would happen if you went up against a ship that had a small but constant shield supply beam going from a docked entity. Before you think that unlikely, I do that as a matter of standard in any major ship I construct. My ships effectively always have some shield. It may not be a lot if the shields have been knocked down, but versus a pierce weapon, the tiniest amount of shield is sufficient to completely neutralize the weapon.

Oh don't worry, I am not incompetent. I actually decided to stick with 100% Punch because of that. Was just remarking the staggering change between the two effects.

 

[Malacodor]

The offensive explosive effect is bugged.

 

[StormWing0]

hmm working on a ship that uses one of each effect mainly for testing purposes. This is handy information since the game likes to bug out on explosive effects and a couple of others.

 

[Dire Venom]

Before you get too excited about pierce, remember that with full pierce effect the weapon will have zero effect versus shields. That means no shield damage, and if the shields aren't down, no block damage either.

Now you might think you could just put in a nice big pulse/ion weapon to knock down shields with and then do the block damage with pierce weapons. Consider however what would happen if you went up against a ship that had a small but constant shield supply beam going from a docked entity. Before you think that unlikely, I do that as a matter of standard in any major ship I construct. My ships effectively always have some shield. It may not be a lot if the shields have been knocked down, but versus a pierce weapon, the tiniest amount of shield is sufficient to completely neutralize the weapon.

I might give that a go.
Any idea how missiles handle small amounts of shields? If a missile hts for 100k and the shield only has 40k will the hull actualy take the other 60k damage?

 

[Panpiper]

I might give that a go.
Any idea how missiles handle small amounts of shields? If a missile hts for 100k and the shield only has 40k will the hull actualy take the other 60k damage?

I am pretty sure that if a missile hits a ship with a partial shield insufficient to absorb the whole of the damage, the shield will absorb whatever it can and the remainder will be resolved as explosion damage versus blocks. If it were otherwise, my tiny shield beam would be way over powered.

By the way, with the teleporter thingy being developed, having such a shield supply beam going would seem to pretty much nullify any sort of boarding action from teleporters.

 

[Dire Venom]

I am pretty sure that if a missile hits a ship with a partial shield insufficient to absorb the whole of the damage, the shield will absorb whatever it can and the remainder will be resolved as explosion damage versus blocks. If it were otherwise, my tiny shield beam would be way over powered.

By the way, with the teleporter thingy being developed, having such a shield supply beam going would seem to pretty much nullify any sort of boarding action from teleporters.

Thanks!
Ive also been working on a multi-layerd shielding system, thus having all of my turrents docked to a secondary shield via replacing the connections on the main hull with connections on the docked entity.
This means my shields can go below 50% and all of my turrents will get a 1-2 mill extra shield buffer which is only depleted when the turrets are hit (thus they stay on a lot longer regardless of my main shield level)