Trying to make sense of weapon system linking

[aRottenKomquat]

I was reading http://starmadepedia.net/wiki/Weapon_Systems and got confused by this section:

The amount of change provided by the slaved system is proportional to the number of modules in the master and slave. For example, if the master has 10 modules and the slave has 5, only 50% of the slave's effect will be applied and this will be the percentage which shows in the Weapons Tab. If there are 10 modules in each, the maximum effect of the slaved system is applied and the weapons panel will show 100%. Support and effect ratios are independent of each other; therefore, if you have 10 master modules, you may have up to 10 support modules and up to 10 effect modules to achieve the maximum effect, for a total of 30 modules (10 master, 10 support and 10 effect).
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The wiki talks about mechanics for having modules, but doesn't explain why you need more than one. Does a system work better if it has 10 cannon modules instead of 5? There's no mention of the reasoning behind this.

 

[jayman38]

It's a matter of customizing the behavior of your weapons. On a side note, the block counts do not include the control computer.

Example 1:
A damage beam with 20 blocks. It fires once for about 500 points of damage, and recharges for 5 seconds (I forget the recharge time for standard un-altered beam weapons, so I'm going with 5 seconds of recharge after a single shot). (100 dps)

Example 2:
A damage beam with 10 blocks, with a slaved cannon array of 10 blocks to match. It first continuously for 10 points of damage every 1/10th of a second, no recharge needed. (Again, 100 dps) (using a cannon system as a slave system adds rapid-fire capability)

Example 3:
A damage beam with 10 blocks, with a slaved cannon array of 5 blocks, and a slaved punch-through effect of 5 blocks. It fires once for 250 points of damage, passing along any extra damage to second block, if the first block gets destroyed, and then recharges for 2.5 seconds. (100 dps) (In this example, since the cannon slave system is only half the size of the master system, it's only 50% rapid-fire. In other words, half the recharge time.)

Each weapon block (except under certain circumstances) adds 5 dps (damage-per-second) to the shot, regardless of whether that block belongs to the master system, slave system, or effect system.

Why wouldn't you add 100% cannon slave? Most people do, but sometimes, you don't need a completely rapid-fire gun. Maybe you ran out of space to add more cannon blocks and can't reach 100% block match with your design. Maybe you want to replace some cannon blocks with main-weapon blocks for a more powerful single shot. Maybe you want to replace some of the cannon blocks with shield blocks for better defense. Maybe you want to simulate a certain piece of fiction and want a precise recharge rate to match. (E.g. 1 second between shots)

 

[aRottenKomquat]

That doesn't help much.

Perhaps my problem is that I've never actually used any weapon systems yet, and I need to experiment some.

 

[Criss]

Alright. So think of it like this. And this will be an example, not actual values. But I will demonstrate how it works.

You have 10 weapon barrels connected to their computer. Let's say it's the cannon. Lets also say these ten weapon blocks do ten damage. If you add another ten blocks to the system, it will do 20 damage. Makes sense right?

Let's say you have an exact copy of this weapon system, barrels and computer right next to it. 2 weapon systems that both do 20 damage each. If you take the second computer, and slave it to the first computer, then it will alter how the first computer behaves. The combined system now does 40 damage, but it has made the gun a rapid fire cannon because using a cannon system as a secondary increase the rate of fire for the primary. Over the same course of time you will do the same amount of damage.

Effect blocks change how damage is applied. Overdrive increase the damage. Ion makes the damage hit harder on shields. Explosive spreads out damage. A single weapon computer can have a secondary weapon computer attached to it and a single effect attached to it. Different combos lend themselves to different situations.

It should be noted, if you don't know how, that slaving the computers to each other works with the C and V buttons. Look at the primary computer, and attach whatever blocks you want by looking at those blocks and pressing V. You can attach an entire group by holding shift and pressing V, so long as that group is touching each other.

 

[aRottenKomquat]

Oh, so they're talking about the weapon modules themselves. For some reason I thought the wiki was discussing only computers, and I couldn't figure out why you'd have a weapon with 30 cannon computers hooked up.