Understanding the weapons and balance

[Suicide Junkie]

RonGianti;

Be sure not to fall into the trap others have, when trying to make a formula for weapon value.

Damage/kt/s is a good statistic to look at, but range, damage type, ammo use, resource costs and more are all important in different situations. These are things you can't evaluate automatically, but must weigh in context to the game situation and enemy strategies.

[Captain Kwok]

For the Balance Mod I used a spreadsheet that factor in damage at point blank, optimal, and max range in addition to the usual size, reload rate, and damage amount. I also added factors to account for damage, seeker stats, and accuracy modifiers. I think for the most part it has worked out ok although I've had to make some little changes here and there.

[AngleWyrm]

What unit of measure is the speed of missiles/bullets? It's usually a decimal fraction around 0.04 ~ 0.06

[Captain Kwok]

In game, the seeker speed is multiplied by 1000 to give a speed in km/s - ie. 0.06 = 60 km/s and so on

[Kana]

Captain Kwok said:
For the Balance Mod I used a spreadsheet that factor in damage at point blank, optimal, and max range in addition to the usual size, reload rate, and damage amount. I also added factors to account for damage, seeker stats, and accuracy modifiers. I think for the most part it has worked out ok although I've had to make some little changes here and there.

You might want to post this useful tool for people to use.

[RonGianti]

Any ideas on what

"Weapon Seeker Turn Rate"

is all about? Most missles have that line, but the torpedos do not.

I also would like to request Mr. Kwoks spreadsheet. Might save me a bit of time, if you don't mind sharing it.

And another question: When the weapon values are changed, how well does the AI react? If you make a weapon smaller, can it add more to its ship designs, or are the AI ship designs fixed?

[Phoenix-D]

It means just what it says- that's how fast the seeker can turn. Torpedos don't have that line because..they can't turn.

[AngleWyrm]

One way to meausure a weapon's effectiveness is to estimate it's average damage output per minute at a given range.

Let's say we have a target at 30km. If a laser fires every six seconds, it can put ten shots on that target every sixty seconds.

But if we have a missile with the same rate of fire, that takes two seconds to get there, then only nine of those missiles will reach the target in a minute. It will take an additional two seconds for the tenth missile to reach the target.

So what flight time is modifying is the perMinute; instead of ten shots/60 seconds at range 30 km, it's doing ten shots/62 seconds at range 30 km.

range/(1000 * speed) = extra seconds
30/(1000 * .06) = 30/60 = 0.5 additional seconds
Put another way, speed .04 gives 1-second added time every 40km, .05 adds 1 second in 50km, .06 in 60km, etc.

It's not exactly right; the additional time should be an added constant, because once they start arriving, they will arrive at 10/minute. But changing targets (or stepping out of range for a moment) will reset the clock. So it's a fairly good estimate of the difference between weapons that travel at different speeds.

[RonGianti]

@phoenix - Torps can't turn? So, if they miss the target they don't loop back? Come to think of it, I don't remember a missle "missing" its target either. How does this work out in practice?

@AngleWyrm - That is a good way to measure effectiveness, and it doesn't show up in the manual either. On paper, some weapons look to do more damage than others, but the charts don't tell nearly the whole story.

Weapon A does slightly less damage than Weapon B, BUT, Weapon B costs 3 times as much, takes up 3 times as much space and only fires half as often.

[RonGianti]

Suicide Junkie said:
RonGianti;

Damage/kt/s is a good statistic to look at, but range, damage type, ammo use, resource costs and more are all important in different situations. These are things you can't evaluate automatically, but must weigh in context to the game situation and enemy strategies.

Good point. On the surface, it may appear that the Capital Ship Missle is the end all and be all of missle weapons. But I noticed there is a torpedo (Quantum, iirc) that does the same damage and costs 1/5 in resources. The CSM has a greater range, true, but in some cases you might want 5 Quantum torpedos instead