All Weapon Stats in Actual Values Test Results (Stage 1 – Shield DPS)

[soma]

I had some thoughts along similar lines, however, turret accuracy becomes awful after a few seconds if it keeps firing. Actually, can only confirm that for Beam turrets; maybe Pulse turrets are different.

True, thats what I meant with "With the current turret mechanic it is pretty easy to ensure continous hits with the pulse turrets". Turret accuracy goes down after a few seconds because they have some "confusion factor" built in (there was a dev post a while ago but I cant find it anymore). BUT if you unlock and relock your target then the confusion factor gets reset and the turrets are perfectly accurate again. So: unlock/relock your target every 5 seconds or so, and your turrets will never miss


I suspect they might change that in the future, but for now it seems to work fine (at least it did on my Python last time I was in combat) .

 

[StarLightBreaker]

Maybe a better way to chart this would be "burst DPS" and "sustained DPS" where a typical weapon energy recharge rate is factored in and for kinetic weapons the reload time.

I actually thought about that. It may be helpful to compare Kinetic weapons like Multi-Cannon because usually doesn't need to use a whole clip. I will need to compile the data differently.

 

[StarLightBreaker]

On the other hand, Pulse seems to be quite strong against hull (or at least subsystems). I am wondering if they might be too good at this, where by dual Pulse might have an equal or even greater sustained (when reloading is taken into account) DPS on the hull compared to that of a Beam+Cannon. The WEP capacitor of the dual Pulse setup will only empty a little faster than that of the single Beam; I imagine once the WEP capacitor is empty the Beam+Cannon would definitely put out more DPS than the dual Pulse. However, when there is still WEP capacitor energy left...?

2 Pulses provides much greater DPS compare to single beam (for Gimballed, 36.56 vs 24.00) and therefore quicker stripping down shields. And Pulses aren't that bad with hulls (especially Vulture Class 3 pulses won't be penalized).

Can't wait to see the hull DPS and DPE figures. Don't suppose you could do DPE for the non-energy weapons* (the ones with ammo) on the shield as well?

DPE for non-energy weapons will need to be done with smaller capacitors, which is doable but will take another time to do.

*[Technically, I think only the Cannon, Fragment Cannon, and Multi-Cannon are full kinetic - the rest of the weapons that use ammo are partially thermal and kinetic, especially the PA, so perhaps non-thermic is not quite the right word to use - I prefer energy weapons and non-energy weapons to differentiate between the two (officially I think the energy weapons would be referred to as Directed Energy Weapons, or DEWs), although non-ammo and ammo weapons works too].

Officially there are 4 kinds of weapon types listed in outfitting menus:
Explosive
Kinetic
Thermic
Thermic Kinetic
Yes probably I should put PA and Railgun these two Thermic Kinetic weapons to the Thermic chart... I didn't do it simply because it broke the beauty of the label width on the left side lol

Awesome. By the way, did you not do Cannons because the energy use is so minor?

Yes. Those kinetic weapons just didn't consume much power in WEP cap when I used 8A Power Distributor on Anaconda.

 

[StarLightBreaker]

Railguns are much better against CMDRs, but against big AI ships, there is a good argument for the huge PA.

I wonder how the heat comparison is for PA and Railguns, especially when you have multiple of them. When it comes to hulls, Railgun is only class 2 and will have penalty, but c3 and c4 PA will not.

Personally, I just can't hit anything with slow moving PAs. It indeed need good practices and probably don't trust the leading circle too much and use judgement based on predicting moves.

Why not? In a set up with (say) gimballed pulses and plasma, there is a serious alpha involved when applying both simultaneously only to chip away sub-systems with gimbals after the shield is down. I think that while PA is actually intended for sub-system damaging, it's out of the question when fighting commanders, hence the next best use is stripping shields for a fear factor.

Talking about fear factor, I thought in FD videos (i.e. Wing trailer) those PAs had very nice exploding sound when hit, and that's so satisfying from the attacking perspective. Can I ask why we don't have that in game?

 

[Poseidal]

I wonder how the heat comparison is for PA and Railguns, especially when you have multiple of them. When it comes to hulls, Railgun is only class 2 and will have penalty, but c3 and c4 PA will not.

Personally, I just can't hit anything with slow moving PAs. It indeed need good practices and probably don't trust the leading circle too much and use judgement based on predicting moves.

I heard that the developers said that railguns (and a couple of others) suffer less of an attenuation than other weapons of the same class, in general.

 

[Aimeryan]

2 Pulses provides much greater DPS compare to single beam (for Gimballed, 36.56 vs 24.00) and therefore quicker stripping down shields. And Pulses aren't that bad with hulls (especially Vulture Class 3 pulses won't be penalized).

Yeah, the shields will definitely go down faster. The question is more regarding destroying a ship quickly after the shields have dropped, since this is when wise (cough*cowardly*cough) commanders decide to retreat. If the goal is to make them retreat, well then dual energy weapons will make quick work of the shields to force that. If the goal is to take them out before they manage to retreat, then the hull or vital subsystems needs to be taken out fast (or at least the thrusters).

So, given the Vulture's two slots; does a Beam+Cannon make sufficiently quicker work (if at all) of the enemy's hull/subsystems to give it an edge over dual Pulse for taking out a ship once the shields have dropped? You would think the answer is surely yes, however, the cannon in my experience isn't as amazing at taking out hull as you would think if you have to reload (especially is you miss...), while Beams are said by many to be less effective against the hull/subsystems than Pulse. If a Beam+Cannon is only a little better at taking out the hull/subsystem, might as well stick with the dual Pulse out of convenience and for stripping the shield faster.

Basically, need the hull DPS figures. Not been considering the PA due to the WEP energy demands; two of those would almost certainly (if you hit with them) be better at taking out the hull/subsystem if WEP energy isn't an issue (and wouldn't be bad against shields either), but by the time you come to hitting the hull WEP energy usually is an issue.

Yes probably I should put PA and Railgun these two Thermic Kinetic weapons to the Thermic chart... I didn't do it simply because it broke the beauty of the label width on the left side lol

Hah!

 

[StarLightBreaker]

True, thats what I meant with "With the current turret mechanic it is pretty easy to ensure continous hits with the pulse turrets". Turret accuracy goes down after a few seconds because they have some "confusion factor" built in (there was a dev post a while ago but I cant find it anymore). BUT if you unlock and relock your target then the confusion factor gets reset and the turrets are perfectly accurate again. So: unlock/relock your target every 5 seconds or so, and your turrets will never miss

Even with high DPE on Turrets, Pulse turrets are still too weak. Most times you don't want to wait forever to kill an enemy or scare them away. DPS+DPE should give us a good balance.

I remember that post but I thought the Dev said there's no special "confusion factor" built in turrets, it's just their onboard computer used to track targets gets accumulative effect after a while and can't properly predict target movement anymore.

Instead of unlock/relock your target, I wonder if simply doing a barrel roll when target is on top or bottom of you will work. Maybe not because even they couldn't shoot, they still tracking and calculating target moves.

 

[DrakeAurum]

Vulture C3 weapons damage-over-time

(Same data but only to 40-seconds instead of 60 (as nothing changes) and only for C3 fireable weapons, just to help the visibility.)

View attachment 31661

Illustrates quite nicely that there is no practical benefit of the C3 G Burst what-so-ever other than running out of steam faster than the C3 G Pulse.

N.B. This also assumes that the weapon is bearing on the target 100% of the time. We'd have to pop in some "fiddle factor" to scale down for fixed weapon aiming, which would vary on a per-pilot basis I guess.

Very nice work - rep to both you and the OP.

I'd be interested to see how these stack up for other vessels. For instance, I went with pulse lasers on my Vulture because Bursts and Beams would always drain energy too fast - but I've gone with beams in the C3 slots on my Clipper because it seems to be able to sustain them for significantly longer compared to the same weapons on the Vulture.

 

[Poseidal]

Clipper has a more powerful power distributor.

If the PD overpowers the weapons and can fire them continuously for enough time (with for example 2 pips), it may be where you switch to a higher DPS laser (i.e. beam). Or if the capacitor is bigger.

Having different PDs will make the game more interesting, rather than the linear way we have them now. Like having a high capacitance, lower regen one, and the opposite and so on.

 

[StarLightBreaker]

I heard that the developers said that railguns (and a couple of others) suffer less of an attenuation than other weapons of the same class, in general.

Oh nice to have Dev word on this. With hull testing we found Railguns, being a thermic+kinetic weapon, indeed suffer less penalty compare to either thermic or kinetic weapons in the same class.

I know, most people don't know thermic and kinetic weapon have different hull penalties. This whole penalty thing is so complicated and that's the reason why we still haven't finished our hull testing and verification - but we are close.

So, given the Vulture's two slots; does a Beam+Cannon make sufficiently quicker work (if at all) of the enemy's hull/subsystems to give it an edge over dual Pulse for taking out a ship once the shields have dropped? You would think the answer is surely yes, however, the cannon in my experience isn't as amazing at taking out hull as you would think if you have to reload (especially is you miss...), while Beams are said by many to be less effective against the hull/subsystems than Pulse. If a Beam+Cannon is only a little better at taking out the hull/subsystem, might as well stick with the dual Pulse out of convenience and for stripping the shield faster.

Basically, need the hull DPS figures. Not been considering the PA due to the WEP energy demands; two of those would almost certainly (if you hit with them) be better at taking out the hull/subsystem if WEP energy isn't an issue (and wouldn't be bad against shields either), but by the time you come to hitting the hull WEP energy usually is an issue.

Cannon is not having too much advantages especially when they are hard to hit (not only ship hull in general, but sub-system as well). Pulse can easily locked on to sub-systems and shot on it all the time. But for cannon, even for big ship targets, if the speed changes a little bit, you will miss the sub-target.

PA and Railgun's requirement of large amount of WEP energy to fire is indeed a problem in the latter stage of fighting. That's also a good reason to have MC after stripping down shields - you don't need much WEP to fire them.

 

[Aimeryan]

I'd be interested to see how these stack up for other vessels. For instance, I went with pulse lasers on my Vulture because Bursts and Beams would always drain energy too fast - but I've gone with beams in the C3 slots on my Clipper because it seems to be able to sustain them for significantly longer compared to the same weapons on the Vulture.

When it comes to having many hardpoints, if you can fire all of these at the same time (like the Asp can, somewhat), the more energy/thermal weapons (including PA and Rail Guns) you have the faster you'll burn through your WEP capacitor and the higher burst DPS you'll have. However, once you run out of WEP capacitor you are basically on the DPE of whatever energy/thermal weapon gets to fire (the one with the lowest energy requirement to shoot? slot order? who knows). Hence, the additional hardpoints tend to get wasted once you run out of WEP capacitor.

One thing that you could do if you expect to run out of WEP capacitor is to have at least one Pulse and have only it fire when you run out of capacitor, as the Pulse has high DPE. Not sure if there is a way to make sure it is the Pulse that is firing, other than to switch fire groups and have only it bound to a fire key. I expect this is why some people like the Beam+Pulse setup on the Vulture; higher burst than Pulse+Pulse, same DPE (if only the Pulse fires) when you run out of WEP capacitor. The lack of symmetry though...

Regarding the weapons that require little energy to shoot (i.e., the Cannon variants), with these instead being more limited by rate of fire, reloading, and ammo; the more of these you have, the more DPS, up to a point. This is even true if only some of those hardpoints can only fire at a time (due to positions), as you can switch between which ones can fire when needing to reload some of them. However, they tend to do poorly against shields.

~~

My general loadout with ships with more hardpoints is to use the medium slots for Multi-Cannons (they only go up to Class 2, sadly), and then use the other slots (small, large) for Pulse. If I have few non-medium slots to medium slots then I tend to use Beam(s) instead of Pulse, as the capacitor can usually handle it.

I haven't got an Anaconda or Clipper yet, so not sure whether the pattern will follow through there.

 

[QorbeQ]

Very nice work - rep to both you and the OP.

I'd be interested to see how these stack up for other vessels. For instance, I went with pulse lasers on my Vulture because Bursts and Beams would always drain energy too fast - but I've gone with beams in the C3 slots on my Clipper because it seems to be able to sustain them for significantly longer compared to the same weapons on the Vulture.

Trivial for me to swap the Vulture PD figures for other ones (just two numbers to change - the max WEP cap level and the charge rate). I'll try and make you a Clipper chart tomorrow when I'm actually awake instead of a zombie. Anyone have the two numbers handy to save me finding them?

 

[QorbeQ]

Here you go - before I fall asleep at the keyboard - here's the same dual C3 fixed and gimballed setup as the Vulture out to 40 seconds using top-rated Clipper distributor.

View attachment 32019

 

[StarLightBreaker]

I'd be interested to see how these stack up for other vessels. For instance, I went with pulse lasers on my Vulture because Bursts and Beams would always drain energy too fast - but I've gone with beams in the C3 slots on my Clipper because it seems to be able to sustain them for significantly longer compared to the same weapons on the Vulture.

You can use the EPS (Energy per second) number with your Power Distributor spec to estimate how long each one or each combination of weapons can fire (and how much damage). That's the beauty of it.

 

[Aussiedroid]

Thanks for the charts! Most helpful!

Just wondering if anyone would know, does the distance from your target vary the DPS output? ie could there be some weapons that offer more DPS at short range vs others that might be better suited to a long range setup?

 

[Morbad]

I heard that the developers said that railguns (and a couple of others) suffer less of an attenuation than other weapons of the same class, in general.

Yep.

Some of these were listed for a while in Beta. I wish I had saved some screen shots for when the ship size effectiveness figures were shown.

Yeah, the shields will definitely go down faster. The question is more regarding destroying a ship quickly after the shields have dropped, since this is when wise (cough*cowardly*cough) commanders decide to retreat. If the goal is to make them retreat, well then dual energy weapons will make quick work of the shields to force that. If the goal is to take them out before they manage to retreat, then the hull or vital subsystems needs to be taken out fast (or at least the thrusters).

So, given the Vulture's two slots; does a Beam+Cannon make sufficiently quicker work (if at all) of the enemy's hull/subsystems to give it an edge over dual Pulse for taking out a ship once the shields have dropped? You would think the answer is surely yes, however, the cannon in my experience isn't as amazing at taking out hull as you would think if you have to reload (especially is you miss...), while Beams are said by many to be less effective against the hull/subsystems than Pulse. If a Beam+Cannon is only a little better at taking out the hull/subsystem, might as well stick with the dual Pulse out of convenience and for stripping the shield faster.

I don't find cannon remotely useful against most CMDRs. You will only consistently land shots against large ships or unaware targets. Against a competent pilot in a fighter, cannon are almost the same as no weapon at all.

 

[StarLightBreaker]

Just wondering if anyone would know, does the distance from your target vary the DPS output? ie could there be some weapons that offer more DPS at short range vs others that might be better suited to a long range setup?

Haven't tested distance but from what I read before (from other CMDR's testing) I know different weapons will have different rates of attenuation with distance, so the DPS will be different in longer distance. For example, railgun seems to attenuate less than lasers.

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

Would be interesting to see if the poor cannon vs shields damage compared to lasers is reversed when applied to hull.

Could be tested in exactly the same way (depleted SYS capacitor and shields) and takedown to 90% hull (at least you get a numerical counter for hull!).

 

[Aimeryan]

I don't find cannon remotely useful against most CMDRs. You will only consistently land shots against large ships or unaware targets. Against a competent pilot in a fighter, cannon are almost the same as no weapon at all.

It would be more so for the large ships, than for the fighters, so that isn't a problem. Having no (additional) weapon at all doesn't actually sound as bad as you think; once the WEP capacitor has emptied this is pretty much the result anyway (with the exception of the Cannon-variants). For fighters, it comes down to whether emptying the capacitor is likely or not before/around-about the shields going down. For large ships, this is quite likely.

Maybe a Multi-Cannon instead of a Cannon would be superior here... kinda sad that it would be only a Class 2, but what can you do?

Sort of reluctant to ask, since I am fairly sure I know the answer, but how do you feel about Fragment Cannons? Besides having to get close. And the ammo.

- - - Updated - - -

...(at least you get a numerical counter for hull!).

You do for shields as well; it is shown in Contacts.

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

...I can't come up with an easy way to deal with variable loadouts as it's hard to know which weapon would steal the power first.

- - - Updated - - -

Run a symmetric setup with both weapons (2x beams or 2x cannons for example), then halve each damage/power or dpe setting, then add the two disparate halve to give a total for a hybrid weapon setup (like a beam and a cannon).

Note the time at WEP depletion - noting the differences between beam and cannon should show you which weapon will actually 'drain' the WEP capacitor first (thereby switching to the lower power recharge-only damage regime).
(Just using beam and cannon here as an example).