Minimum Effective DPS on Avarage Ships?

[Sgtwisky]

It's been quite some time since I have fired up Starmade and really built anything. I have a few design ideas I want to try out. But... I have no idea how much sustained DPS Cannons/Beams need to be reasonably used in combat any more.

So, With the current configs (ether 0.202.87 or any newer quickfire updates) what is the minimum effective DPS for weapons, designed to fight your average medium mass player ship? I realize this differs between servers, but I just care about a rough idea of what I should aim for at the least.

Thanks In Advance :D

 

[Agame3]

Because the server I am on use custom pirates (though nobody is into forced PvP here) I needed to use like 8k shield caps with 4k shield regen and 2k weapon modules (1k missile +1k beam modules in 2 groups MB) just to be able to beat the pirates without loosing blocks every fight. I'm not sure that means a medium ship at all. Just to feed the shields and MB you need a 4k power blocks reactor. Add thrusters and you need probably a 6k power blocks reactor. With stab and chambers, you will probably look at 40k blocks just systems. (12k shield + 2k weapons + about 18k reactor + 8k thrust or something like it.)

Whatever, wait for someone else to answer, don't take my values for an universal guide.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

My take based on my participation/observation of QF threads and their discord in the past.

- Average player ship mass was (at the time) 40,000.
- The average PVP player (supposedly) builds their ships with a 33%, thrust 33%, shield 33% weapon setup.
- As such, it is a lot harder to shield tank since they made shields and engines power hungry as hell.
- Armor is ridiculously strong now (if you make it thick) and essentially requires (at least at the time) Alpha weapons (not DPS) to defeat.
- Likewise, super thick armor is essentially required to stop alpha weapons.
- There were (at the time) only three weapons that can defeat thick armor: Missiles, (ignores armor) and CM and BM (just stupidly powerful compared to all other weapons
- Snipers (at the time) now have the lowest DPS. Fast firing weapons actually had (at the time) lower DPS than the CM and BM alpha weapons, which led to CM/BM-powered ships being the main choice for many players.

Please take this info with a grain of salt, as I haven't been following QFs efforts as closely for several months due to their rebalance process beginning to encourage and ultimately force one build style/play style over all others. Whether or not this has changed sine my last interaction with them is anyone's guess.

This assessment was based on the build in use over winter of 2019 to Jan. 2020. Changes have been made since then, as I outline below.

I hope this helps.

 

[Agame3]

Man, if you win but you lost blocks (armor protection instead of shield protection) that means you will have to repair your ship after every battle. And this sucked in Pow 1 when armor was nothing compared to shields, this sucked in "Vanilla" Pow 2 when shields got a bit nerfed and armor was massively improved becoming for the first time more capable than shields, this still sucks in QF, when shields got nerfed once again, armor did not, weapons got nerfed too and yet nobody wants to tell the exact numbers and Wiki does not know anything anymore.

It sucks so much having a 3 layered spaced armor and having to repair it after every lucky shot that I keep on telling if you win like that you actually lost, but your opponent lost more. There are no longer winners, just big loosers and small loosers in a fight without shields. But maybe that's my own exaggerated opinion.

I don't say a PvP duel must reward the winner with everything the looser had, like in MC. This was exaggerated and cruel in MC too. But I say if you are rewarded with a (small) loss and nothing else after a victory, that is not a victory.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Man, if you win but you lost blocks (armor protection instead of shield protection) that means you will have to repair your ship after every battle. And this sucked in Pow 1 when armor was nothing compared to shields, this sucked in "Vanilla" Pow 2 when shields got a bit nerfed and armor was massively improved becoming for the first time more capable than shields, this still sucks in QF, when shields got nerfed once again, armor did not, weapons got nerfed too and yet nobody wants to tell the exact numbers and Wiki does not know anything anymore.

It sucks so much having a 3 layered spaced armor and having to repair it after every lucky shot that I keep on telling if you win like that you actually lost, but your opponent lost more. There are no longer winners, just big loosers and small loosers in a fight without shields. But maybe that's my own exaggerated opinion.

I don't say a PvP duel must reward the winner with everything the looser had, like in MC. This was exaggerated and cruel in MC too. But I say if you are rewarded with a (small) loss and nothing else after a victory, that is not a victory.

You've just identified a key reason I've not been a big fan of this experiment of theirs.

The system essentially forces you to build and play in only one way; lest you get wrecked by the META. The funny thing is; (as you've pointed out) even if you build/play according to their prescribed META and win, you'll probably still look wrecked anyway.

Cue the Battle Scars Porn thread...

Spoiler

Anyone running a decent PVE server these days?

UPDATE: As per the newest QF build, the other weapon combos seem a lot more viable. Summary below.

 

[Agame3]

Cake build is recruiting and there are only builders there. Zetareticuli is an Australian server with 2 excelent builders and a few good ones and no forced PvP just because it happens there are only nice people there. But on Zetareticuli pirates are Ravagers. MrGrey is a rezident there, so... Anyway, they made sure only one pirate spawns at a time in any situation, not 4-8 like usual. I'm doing my ugly ships on Zetareticuli right now because I like the people there, though we usually play at different hours. I live in Eastern Europe.

On Zetareticuli the limits are officially 3M blocks for ships, 4M blocks for stations (I think this includes turrets). But I guess if you really really need to break them a little, ask the owner and it will probably be approved.

 

[Sgtwisky]

Thanks for the info guys. Especially the part about Alpha damage being more important then DPS. I'm not really worried about forced pvp or non forced pvp. I am more interested in making sure my projects don't just end up having such low damage that they were just a waste.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

UPDATE:

I took the liberty of reloading the game with the latest QF config. I'll admit, I was pretty hard on them in my above post due to what I had been seeing on the discord and their thread. With that said I'm pleasantly surprised by their current build; as the weapons do seem a lot more balanced balanced this time. I'm a bit disappointed that shield tanking is no longer viable but at least armor is a bit easier to counter.

Here's what I see so far.

Spoiler

Cannons:
- All cannon variants are mid-ranged now and have had their firepower increased.
- CC is still weak-sauce vs armor (I'm getting weird results on this) but seems to do a lot better vs shields.
- CB now makes a decent alpha weapon; albeit slow firing. It's projectile flight speed is also significantly faster.
- CM is still powerful but not as God-like powerful (compared to everything else) as before.

Missiles:
- Missiles are the new sniper; sporting a minimum of 50% more range than cannons and up to double the range of beams.
- MB: Range, fire power, flight speed and reload time scale according to how much beam secondary you add.
- I've heard they nerfed MM bombs but haven't tested that yet.
- Swarmers are gone? The MC combo seems to be another lock-on type but much faster firing.

Beams:
- Basic beam is actually a nice intermediate shield buster; ineffective vs armor.
- BB is longer ranged than other beams but inefficient and slow to charge.
- BM does absolute monster damage against shields but limited ticks make it much less effective vs armor than before.
- BC... Frighteningly effective shield breaker. THIS is DPS.

In any case, given what I'm seeing in my tests, DPS doesn't seem as relevant as it once was. My recommendation would be to equip a blend of modular weapons based on the kind of spacecraft you encounter most frequently.

- Small fighters? Fast firing cannons and guided missiles.
- High cap/low regen shield tankers? Hose em down and suppress their regen with DPS.
- High regen/low cap shield tankers? Slap em silly with a well placed Alpha shot.
- Armor tankers? Missiles... LOTS of missiles.
- Stations/planets? Sit back and seige them with MB from outside their weapon's range or get in close and bomb em to pieces.