Weapon penetration values?

[StiTch]

Okay, let's start by accepting that some of the figures/stats provided in ED by FD are bloody awful.

So on to the main point - it's probably been brought up before and probably has some data around somewhere, but I can't find it. Are there any penetration values around for weapons?

Yes, they have a rating in game, but the rating is bloody pants and means naff all. A bit like the damage rating really, where most weapons of the same class apparently have the same damage...

 

[Crimson Kaim]

Railguns penetrate everything. Lasers usually 75% of a ship's height. Dunno about plasmas and kinetic weaponary. Missiles and mines don't really penetrate anything. Mining lasers penetrate 2% of an asterorids radius.

But the 75% height rule is pretty accurate for basically anything. Plus you have a higher chance damaging a module when the hull HP are low.
Starting from like 20% I think and ending at 80%.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

This guy is your friend: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_8QbBLzUa9ceFNvEAuO7iw

 

[CMDR LACEWING]

"The exact values vary per weapon though a typical example is 40% chance when you have full health, 80% when close to death."
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=170205

 

[StiTch]

Railguns penetrate everything. Lasers usually 75% of a ship's height. Dunno about plasmas and kinetic weaponary. Missiles and mines don't really penetrate anything. Mining lasers penetrate 2% of an asterorids radius.

But the 75% height rule is pretty accurate for basically anything. Plus you have a higher chance damaging a module when the hull HP are low.
Starting from like 20% I think and ending at 80%.

Thanks for the info, but I'm looking for actual penetration values. They're used in conjunction with a hardness statistic to determine damage and damage to subsystems.

This guy is your friend: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_8QbBLzUa9ceFNvEAuO7iw

Thanks bud I'll have a look when I can watch a vid (read: when I am out of work)

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"The exact values vary per weapon though a typical example is 40% chance when you have full health, 80% when close to death."
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=170205

That mirrors something I read earlier. it's not the percentage change to penetrate I am looking at, but instead this bit:

2) There's a second step in damage reduction that's used only for hulls - Hardness. Each armour has a Hardness value and each weapon has a Piercing value, all damage is multiplied by:
Min(1.0 , Piercing / Hardness)
So a small pulse laser (20) would deal full damage to a sidewinder (also 20), but less than a third damage to an anaconda (65). The main intent of this mechanic is not to penalise small ships, but to make large weapons effective against large ships without one-shotting smaller vessels - they don't actually do that much more flat damage than a small weapon but by piercing much better are far more effective against the harder target.

 

[CMDR LACEWING]

Thanks for the info, but I'm looking for actual penetration values. They're used in conjunction with a hardness statistic to determine damage and damage to subsystems.

Someone tested the hardness of ship hulls and posted it here on the forums, but i don't know if someone tested the weapon values.

 

[Crimson Kaim]

If you are looking for actual dev statements: forget it. FD wants us to experiment rather than creating a math calculation game.

 

[StiTch]

If you are looking for actual dev statements: forget it. FD wants us to experiment rather than creating a math calculation game.

It's a good point, and actually I'm 100% for people getting out there and getting experimental.

Unfortunately when there's an absolute sea of this ambiguity, there are a few areas that stop making sense. I'm actually happy to let weapon damage remain ambiguous, or thermal production. But when there's a total lack of meaningful stats in the game, just a couple of heads up moments would mean things actually make sense

 

[goemon]

It's a good point, and actually I'm 100% for people getting out there and getting experimental.

Unfortunately when there's an absolute sea of this ambiguity, there are a few areas that stop making sense. I'm actually happy to let weapon damage remain ambiguous, or thermal production. But when there's a total lack of meaningful stats in the game, just a couple of heads up moments would mean things actually make sense

simply set up a test, like those guys did with shields: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=140240, or this guy did with thrusters: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=164931

?

 

[StiTch]

simply set up a test, like those guys did with shields: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=140240, or this guy did with thrusters: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=164931

?

I could give it a go, but this is where the ambiguity kicks in. For the DPS values for instance we already know variables such as shield strengths, time etc. For penetration values I don't know the various weapon damages, ship hardnesses etc. (and don't have the money for the conda we have a hardness value for). And given the rest of the overall calculation, it's a fairly big backwards working to get a penetration value, compounded by the fact there's a random variable in there.

Edit: It's really not a massive thing, but would - for me - be the one useful stat for comparing weapons across different classes.

 

[goemon]

I could give it a go, but this is where the ambiguity kicks in. For the DPS values for instance we already know variables such as shield strengths, time etc. For penetration values I don't know the various weapon damages, ship hardnesses etc. (and don't have the money for the conda we have a hardness value for). And given the rest of the overall calculation, it's a fairly big backwards working to get a penetration value, compounded by the fact there's a random variable in there.

Edit: It's really not a massive thing, but would - for me - be the one useful stat for comparing weapons across different classes.

from the thrusters testing i assume, there are actually much simpler calculations behind it.

probably such a test could be done with a bunch of vipers (small ship where at least you have something to shoot at) and an AspE (lot's of small hardpoints for different weapons) :

- get a viper
- target cargo hatch from a fixed angle and distance.
- turn off shield of viper
- use different small weapons to shoot at cargo hatch. note damage to cargo hatch per shot, numbers of shots, and hull-value.
- use direct line to cargo hatch. next round, use the opposite site.
- extract formula for viper, repeat with a ship of more height, for exampel a DBS.
...


i have just done a week of testing (bounty hunting effects on the backgroundsimulation), I'm out of that business for a while

 

[StiTch]

from the thrusters testing i assume, there are actually much simpler calculations behind it.

The calculation steps were mentioned by Mark Allen...hiding in spoiler below if you're interested

Spoiler

1) The first step is to multiply the damage dealt by the armours' defences as for shields.

2) There's a second step in damage reduction that's used only for hulls - Hardness. Each armour has a Hardness value and each weapon has a Piercing value, all damage is multiplied by:
Min(1.0 , Piercing / Hardness)
So a small pulse laser (20) would deal full damage to a sidewinder (also 20), but less than a third damage to an anaconda (65). The main intent of this mechanic is not to penalise small ships, but to make large weapons effective against large ships without one-shotting smaller vessels - they don't actually do that much more flat damage than a small weapon but by piercing much better are far more effective against the harder target.

3) Next we decide if the shot has penetrated the armour. This is a random chance that scales with current hull health. The exact values vary per weapon though a typical example is 40% chance when you have full health, 80% when close to death. If the penetration roll fails then we deal all damage to the hull and skip to step 8.

4) Every ship has a Hit Layout of internal and external modules:
These spheres are used in two ways, if the point you hit is inside an external (blue) sphere then that module is the one that was hit, skip to step 7. If you missed, then the internal spheres will be used in the next steps.

5) If the shot has penetrated and not hit an external module we need to know how far it went into the guts of the ship. Each ship defines a standard penetration depth (usually 75% of its height), which is then modified up and down by weapons. Aside from the ever-powerful railgun which will go all the way through any ship currently in-game (but still can't hit a second ship!).
In the current live build (1.3.07) there's a bug where this penetration distance is much larger than intended, which has been fixed internally for 1.4.

6) Given where it hit, the shot direction and how far it penetrated we can draw a ray through the ships' internal layout to check what may have been hit. This ray is compared against all the internal (yellow) spheres and any that intersect are candidates - one of which will be picked at random weighted by how dead-on the hit to its sphere was. If nothing was hit, skip to 8.

7) Whether internal or external we now know that you've hit a module. The damage dealt will be split between the hull and this module in a ratio determined by the weapon - most of them deal the majority (80%+) to the module. There are no further defences applied at this point, as the Hull armour has already done its work (even for external modules, they're assumed to have toughened outer surfaces). It's at this point the module may also malfunction if it has taken enough damage.

8) Whatever damage that wasn't dealt to a module is now dealt to the hull.

Thanks for the hard work on background simulation. It's something I find personally quite interesting - the ED background economy. If you have a link to your work, post away!

 

[Ignition]

Numbers and mechanics well explained in-game ARE VERY IMPORTANT, they show the depth and complexity of gameplay.

If you start simplifying everything from numbers to letters you loose precision and makes the game more simplistic.

- "Hey I want to buy a car but they all look similar, can you tell me the difference between them?"

- "Yes, this one is rated A and this one is B"

 

[StiTch]

Numbers and mechanics well explained in-game ARE VERY IMPORTANT, they show the depth and complexity of gameplay.

If you start simplifying everything from numbers to letters you loose precision and makes the game more simplistic.

- "Hey I want to buy a car but they all look similar, can you tell me the difference between them?"

- "Yes, this one is rated A and this one is B"

Hehe. It would be mildly reasonable to stop people calculating everything about their loadout, but makes 0% sense given all values are basically the same.

Seriously. Look up the weapons on the wiki or in game. Almost every weapon there is has a penetration rating of A; the only exceptions I see are explosives.

if you wanna hide stats, that's cool. But what possessed them to implement a visible statistic that mens nothing D:

 

[goemon]

The calculation steps were mentioned by Mark Allen...hiding in spoiler below if you're interested

uh, yes, read it a long time ago. from a very brief look at it, it might be more complicated to test. but basically:

- it should be doable to find the basic piercing value for each weapons type (by targeting the same ship with different weapons of the same size)

- and the piercing modifier for weapon size (small, medium, large...) (by targeting the same ship with same weapons of different size)

- after that you'd need probably quite some tests, to calculate increasing or decreasing chance of modul damage...

___

this is the canonical thread on the BGS: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=193064, you can find a lot of people testing various effects in there - mostly in well organized group events. anyway, testing ED is an amazing activity, but after a week i need a break to do some serious nonsense!