Questions from a new player

[kaistern1]

I just DL'd the demo a couple of days ago (loving it so far planning on buying it on pay day{BTW good way to demo, I would not have paid for the game if I hadn't been addicted to it first, now I HAVE to fit it inot my budget }. I have a few questions though.

I know that cannons now have the punch-through effect by default, and that beams have the peirce effect by default. What happens if I slave an explosive comp to it? Does it then have explosive AND the other trait or does Explosive REPLACE the other trait. How about for overdrive?

If I have a BOBBY AI and it has a defensive effect module (say Ion) will it use it? How about cloaking and jamming?

Thanks in advanc for your help!!!

 

[AtraUnam]

1. Explosive effect (and presumably others) does indeed stack with cannons innate punch and beams innate pierce.
2. AI cannot use any kind of defensive effect, though non-constant ones (such as push and pull effect) can be triggered by logic.

 

[kaistern1]

AWESOME!!! And that leads to my next question.

Lets say I take my new shinny explosive cannon and shoot a armor block with another armor block behind it and surrounded by modules. I do 1000 damage (for example) since the armor block has a 50% DR only 500 get through, since the armor block has 350 hp it is destoryed and 250 hp is taken off the ships HP and 100 off its armor HP. 86 damage is done to every block touching it ignoring armor. Then the 150 damage continues on to the next block (armor again) 75 gets past the DR doing 33 damage to the armors armor hp and 33 to its hp. Then 12 damage is done to every block that touches it ignoring armor.

Is that correct?

 

[CyberTao]

When you hit a block with a weapon, 50% of it's damage is removed right off the bat, and applied to the ship's Armour HP. The remaining damage is then applied to the block, with the amount of damage negated due to the block's own armour value being removed entirely.

So if you shot a Advanced armour block with a cannon that did 1000 originally, the ship's Armour HP would absorb 500 damage, leaving 500 to hit the block. The Block's own armour then nullifies 75% of that, dealing only 125 damage to the Block's own HP. The block is not destroyed (since it has 250 hp) and no HP is removed from the ship's HP gauge.

If you hit the block with 2000 damage, 1000 is adsorb by armour, and 250 damage is dealt to the main block in the end, destroying the Advanced armour. However that hull is only worth 5 Structure HP (Hulls in general do not give much HP), so the total damage dealt was 1000 Armour damage, 5 Structure damage, and 1 block was destroyed.

I'm not 100% sure on how explosive works, it's one of those systems that I never learnt really, just wanted to correct the numbers for Armour and Structure damage.

 

[kaistern1]

Thanks for the correction on armor values. With all the old information floating around it can be really hard to theory craft . So let me try this again under my new theory.

I fire 800 explosive cannons dealing 4000 damage and hit an armor block. 2000 damage is absorbed by the ships armor HP. 2000 then effects the block. 1500 damage is negated by the block's DR and the remaining 500 destroys the block. 86 damage is then applied to each block that touches the original block ignoring armor. Then the 250 that was left over after destroying the armor block continues to the next armor block. 125 of it is applied to the armor HP. 75% of the remaining damage is negated, 80 damage is then applied to the armor block and 13 damage is applied to every block that touches it.

Is THIS correct? lol

If the armor HP is depleted then it is ignored?

Does armor HP apply if I hit a non-armor block?

 

[Winterhome]

Yes, Armor HP does apply if it hits non-armor blocks.

By the way, Explosive effect makes you do 50% block damage

 

[MeRobo]

Armor HP only block damage applied to blocks which give a ship armor HP (Core, Hull, Standard and Advanced Armor)
Edit2: Maybe I am right, maybe not, who knows?

 

[Winterhome]

Armor HP only block damage applied to blocks which give a ship armor HP (Core, Hull, Standard and Advanced Armor)

Oh. Well, if that's the case, I've been designing my guns wrong. Oops \o/

 

[MeRobo]

At least that's what it said in the update video.
Edit: And I editted my post because I thought I was wrong

 

[kaistern1]

With this information I have devised the following theory of capital class weapon systems

Primary weapons
Alpha class weapons are great for removal of shields and armor HP as well as non-armor blocks, however they waste to much DPS and energy when hitting armor blocks. (2 advanced armor blocks will reduce the damage of an alpha class cannon by 93.75%)

Secondary weapons
Small turrets designed to remove armor blocks after shield and armor HP is depleted. While the shields/armor is still up they will still be used for added dps. I believe a 3 missile modules with 3 slave beam modules will completely remove the armor block it hits and damage any block touching that block if the shield and armor HP are already depleted, with little to no wasted DPS or energy. (6 module smart missle deals 1350 damage. 337 get past DR, destroying armor block, 56 damage to each surrounding block ignoring armor) and a 6 missle + 6 beam + 2 overdrive missile should completely destroy all affected blocks (assuming no shields or armor hp left) (14 module overdrive smart missile deals 6300 damage, 1575 gets past DR destroying armor block, 262 damage is applied to each connecting block ignoring DR to destroy each affected block.)

Flak cannons
Self explainitory.

2 questions.

1. Can anyone poke holes in this theory? Improve it in anyway? Are there any errors in my math for damages?

2.Is one cannon module slaved to one cannon module on a turret an effective flak cannon?

 

[kaistern1]

More questions

3. If I have a turret base (that moves x,y) can I put 2 different bobby AI (and 2 cores) on 2 different barrels (that move y,z) attached to the base, will the base still move? In effect making a single turret with 2 independent barrels capable of tracking 2 target that are on the same plane(x,y)? Or will the two bobbies fight over the base and in effect not work? (ADDED: Think about WW2 style battleships, they had 1 turret but could change the elevation of each individual barrel to fire at different targets)

well I forgot the other one... totes.... ill think of it

 

[iceman6491]

More questions

3. If I have a turret base (that moves x,y) can I put 2 different bobby AI (and 2 cores) on 2 different barrels (that move y,z) attached to the base, will the base still move? In effect making a single turret with 2 independent barrels capable of tracking 2 target that are on the same plane(x,y)? Or will the two bobbies fight over the base and in effect not work? (ADDED: Think about WW2 style battleships, they had 1 turret but could change the elevation of each individual barrel to fire at different targets)

well I forgot the other one... totes.... ill think of it

The bobbies fight and the turret derps AFAIK. ofc, if both target the same thing it could work quite well.

 

[kaistern1]

I might try it and see if they would just be nice and always target the same ship

 

[kaistern1]

Next question...

How is pierce calculated exactly? Say I have 1000 damage worth of beams and I hit a block.... how much damage does it do? How far past that block does it go?

 

[kaistern1]

Right now I think I saw somewhere that the damage is divided by number of blocks affected, where as affected blocks are every block there beam goes through until it hits an armor block or runs out of ship. So if I deal 1000 damage, hit 9 blocks before I run into an armor block, then all 10 blocks (9 + armor block) take 100 damage.

Is that correct?

Sorry for all the questions, I LOVE theory crafting and the amount of misinformation/old information drives me bonkers

ADDED: While we are at it can anyone verify my theory of how missile impacts work?
Missile damage is determined like normal for the first block and then 1/6 of the damage applied to the first block (after armor) is applied to each block that touches the original block ignoring armor (for missiles with a max block count of 6, I guess it goes one further for blocks with a max block count of 12 and from what I understand nukes are broken at this time?)

Or is that completely wrong?

 

[Adonis0]

More questions

3. If I have a turret base (that moves x,y) can I put 2 different bobby AI (and 2 cores) on 2 different barrels (that move y,z) attached to the base, will the base still move? In effect making a single turret with 2 independent barrels capable of tracking 2 target that are on the same plane(x,y)? Or will the two bobbies fight over the base and in effect not work? (ADDED: Think about WW2 style battleships, they had 1 turret but could change the elevation of each individual barrel to fire at different targets)

well I forgot the other one... totes.... ill think of it

You can dislocate one barrel, so only have one AI, but it controls two barrels (this is mainly for looks, as it will use both barrels to target the same target). This is due to the fact that things "Attached" to the ship don't actually have to be connected with blocks in the middle. Put them there originally and remove.

 

[AtraUnam]

ADDED: While we are at it can anyone verify my theory of how missile impacts work?
Missile damage is determined like normal for the first block and then 1/6 of the damage applied to the first block (after armor) is applied to each block that touches the original block ignoring armor (for missiles with a max block count of 6, I guess it goes one further for blocks with a max block count of 12 and from what I understand nukes are broken at this time?)

Or is that completely wrong?

Currently missiles do full damage to all blocks within a fairly small radius, this is their first 'stage'. This damage is then removed from the total amount of damage the missile can do. If there is damage left over the missile moves onto a larger seconds stage which applies full damage to all blocks in a larger radius than before. This continues until the missile runs out of damage or reaches the radius cap for the explosion.

Nukes mechanically are no more broken than current missiles though they differ in two important ways. Firstly they have a much larger radius and secondly they have much lower dps/block than other weapons. This makes them terrible against shields however for block destruction purposes their dps/block is surprisingly close to that of other weapons, if I remember correctly they work out at 5.2-5.3 dps/block against a target without shields.

EDIT: Apparently nukes got buffed from 48 radius to 72 which makes that last paragraph false as a radius of 72 would give them roughly 16 dps/block against blocks.

 

[CyberTao]

Nukes mechanically are no more broken than current missiles though they differ in two important ways. Firstly they have a much larger radius and secondly they have much lower dps/block than other weapons. This makes them terrible against shields however for block destruction purposes their dps/block is surprisingly close to that of other weapons, if I remember correctly they work out at 5.2-5.3 dps/block against a target without shields.

Yes and no, that is due to a broken part of the Missile staging system, but that is being replaced next update so I wont go too far into it. Basically large radius means a larger margin of error, you dont notice it on smaller missiles due to their smaller stages.