I had long been under the impression that Thargoids did caustic damage with their main cannon. Today, I finally decided to test this out.
First I took out a T10 with 4000 points of armor and 18.5% caustic resistance. I killed the swarm on a cyclops, then lowered my shields and counted the number of strikes. (clarification: when I say shots I mean bursts)
It took 17 shots to lower my hull by 7%. This means the interceptor was dealing 16.5 damage per shot.
I then took out a different T10, with no caustic resistance but 5318 armor.
Following the same procedure, it took 34 shots to lower my hull by 12%. This means the interceptor was dealing approximately 19 damage per shot.
These numbers are relatively imprecise, but it does show a significant enough disparity to demonstrate that the caustic resistance is, in fact, functioning.
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As far as utility goes, this could have some impact on how you build your AX ships. For example, a chieftain with stacked Heavy Duty Hull Reinforcements achieves 4851 caustic hull, https://s.orbis.zone/c5Nt while a build that mixes the two gets 4951 https://s.orbis.zone/c5Nq while saving on some engineering materials. The variant fully using the guardian packages also has more health than the heavy duty variant, but with less total gain, but on the flipside, with much lower absolute health, it would be easier to repair. https://s.orbis.zone/c5Nw
Edit: Oh, an important fringe benefit of this is the fact that resistances effect damage taken by modules, as well; this means that the above build with 26.5% caustic resistance also gains 26.5% effective health on their modules and module reinforcements. This may also motivate usage of guardian hull reinforcements.
Edit2: Whoops, accidentally left out Deep Plating on the third build example. That brings it up to 4999 caustic hull, which is pretty well better overall than the alternatives. Thanks Houligan86 for pointing that out. Corrected version: https://s.orbis.zone/c5Vj
Hopefully this is useful to someone!
Cheers
First I took out a T10 with 4000 points of armor and 18.5% caustic resistance. I killed the swarm on a cyclops, then lowered my shields and counted the number of strikes. (clarification: when I say shots I mean bursts)
It took 17 shots to lower my hull by 7%. This means the interceptor was dealing 16.5 damage per shot.
I then took out a different T10, with no caustic resistance but 5318 armor.
Following the same procedure, it took 34 shots to lower my hull by 12%. This means the interceptor was dealing approximately 19 damage per shot.
These numbers are relatively imprecise, but it does show a significant enough disparity to demonstrate that the caustic resistance is, in fact, functioning.
---
As far as utility goes, this could have some impact on how you build your AX ships. For example, a chieftain with stacked Heavy Duty Hull Reinforcements achieves 4851 caustic hull, https://s.orbis.zone/c5Nt while a build that mixes the two gets 4951 https://s.orbis.zone/c5Nq while saving on some engineering materials. The variant fully using the guardian packages also has more health than the heavy duty variant, but with less total gain, but on the flipside, with much lower absolute health, it would be easier to repair. https://s.orbis.zone/c5Nw
Edit: Oh, an important fringe benefit of this is the fact that resistances effect damage taken by modules, as well; this means that the above build with 26.5% caustic resistance also gains 26.5% effective health on their modules and module reinforcements. This may also motivate usage of guardian hull reinforcements.
Edit2: Whoops, accidentally left out Deep Plating on the third build example. That brings it up to 4999 caustic hull, which is pretty well better overall than the alternatives. Thanks Houligan86 for pointing that out. Corrected version: https://s.orbis.zone/c5Vj
Hopefully this is useful to someone!
Cheers
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