Shields and collision damage

[MattG]

So there was a question recently on here about whether collision damage was affected by the number of pips to SYS. Anecdotally it feels to me like my shields are stronger on rough (or impatient) landings when I put 4 pips in SYS, but I couldn't find anything anywhere confirming whether collision damage is modified the same way as weapon damage based on number of pips in SYS.

So I tested it.

I took a sidewinder to a medium gravity planet, took it to 300m above the surface, disabled the thrusters and watched what happened. I then repeated for different amounts of pips. Recent patch notes said that (as far as weapons are concerned) 4 pips confers a 60% damage reduction whilst 2 pips gives 33% (raised from 15% pre-2.3). Previous research has shown that 1 pip in SYS gives 0% reduction.
My sidewinder had a shield strength of 52 and a hull strength of 108.

With 4 pips, the "landing" caused 2 rings of shield to be lost and just a scratch on the inner ring. I'd say ~69% of the shields were lost. If we assume to 60% damage reduction is correct then the damage taken is equivalent to shields of 90MJ ((90 * 0.4) / 52 =~ 69%)
With 2 pips, the shields were knocked out completely and the initial hit caused 3% hull damage too. If we assume the 90 damage is correct, the 33% damage reduction caused by 2 pips to SYS would cause ~60.3 damage. This would knock out the shields and pass on ~8.3 damage to the hull (which caused 3% hull damage - so it takes ~2.75 "damage" to reduce the hull by 1%)
With 1 pip, the shields were knocked out and 14% hull damage was taken on the initial hit. As we expect no damage reduction, the full 90 damage is taken and 38 of that passes to the hull. This caused 14% damage, which matches with our expectation (38 / 2.75 =~ 14% damage)

So it looks like 1/2/4 pips to SYS do give a 0%/33%/60% damage reduction to collisions as well as weapon damage.

TLDR; put 4 pips in shields when landing.

 

[goemon]

thanks for testing and sharing!

would be interesting whether similar applies to hull resirances...

 

[marx]

tl;dr missing from front, instructions unclear, ship stuck in planet

Jokes aside, that looks solid. I tried to test this out myself, in a Courier (on second thought, not a good idea because of the strong shields), trying to hit the ground from the same altitude, at the same speed and same angle. My results were fairly inconclusive then, so I didn't post anything. I have no idea why I didn't think of just turning the thrusters off and falling down, it's much simpler that way. Thanks for the info!


@ goemon: the devs said a while back that collisions count as a separate, fourth type of damage, resistance againt which can't be raised. However, I guess they meant this for equipment only, in that you can neither buy collision-resistant shields or armour, nor engineer them for such. I wonder if putting more pips in shields raising collision resistance is intentional or not - but it's good either way.

 

[Aura Lorell]

Brilliant, thank you so much for testing!

 

[Major Klutz]

Thanks for that MattG.
I blame myself for your efforts. I think I was the one that questioned it. I learned something important though. Previously I just though the pips to shields only affected recharge rate.

I normally put four pips to engines when landing and two in shields. Especially in high gravity. I like having the extra headroom on thruster performance for deceleration.
AFAIK, pips to engines improves not only top speed but also acceleration.
Does pips to engines have any effect in SC?

Does pips to weapons affect single shot damage output? Or is it just recharge rate?

 

[duckofdeath]

Pips to engines does indeed also have an effect on their strength and your manoeuvrability. So, it's a choice you'll have to make. Controlled landing or less damage on impact.
You can easily test the effect difference on the thrusters by going to full cruise speed and then alter the pips.

 

[Major Klutz]

Pips to engines does indeed also have an effect on their strength and your manoeuvrability. So, it's a choice you'll have to make. Controlled landing or less damage on impact.
...

Even in 9.9G I can easily touch down at <1m/s so I don't even really need the shields.
BUT, accidents happen sometimes. Better to have them and not need them, than to need 'em and not have 'em.

I'll try altering my normal landing procedure with this new information.
Moving power to shields when I'm descending vertically below 150m shouldn't have any noticeable effect on my landing process.

I normally leave the PD powered off but with this new knowledge I will be turning it on during landings so I can divert power to shields in a hurry if I find myself in an uncontrolled descent.

 

[MattG]

Thanks for that MattG.
I blame myself for your efforts. I think I was the one that questioned it. I learned something important though. Previously I just though the pips to shields only affected recharge rate.

That previous thread made me question myself though, especially as collision damage could well have been handled differently to weapon damage. Plus I wanted a reason to throw a ship at a planet "for science"

I normally put four pips to engines when landing and two in shields. Especially in high gravity. I like having the extra headroom on thruster performance for deceleration.
AFAIK, pips to engines improves not only top speed but also acceleration.
Does pips to engines have any effect in SC?

Does pips to weapons affect single shot damage output? Or is it just recharge rate?

AIUI, it does not affect single shot damage by having pips in WEP - but it increases overall DPS by making recharge quicker. Again, AIUI, pips to engines have no effect in SC - in fact I'm not sure anything can affect SC handling.

As for acceleration... that's an interesting one. I'm actually not convinced on this. It obviously affects top speed, and boost recharge - and I suppose you could say "well 0-100 with 4 pips is quicker than 2 pips", but as a percentage of the speed I wonder if it might be the same. i.e. If your top speed is 220 with 4 pips in ENG but only 160 with 2 - does it take the same time to accelerate to top speed? More importantly, if you stay "in the blue", do you actually get better handling with more pips? I don't feel it, but I can't say for sure. That, added with the minimum thrust performance on planet landings makes me feel any benefit isn't worth the sacrifice to shields for 4 vs 2 in SYS. I guess this might need further testing too though

 

[Kenneth McGrew]

tl;dr missing from front, instructions unclear, ship stuck in planet
.

hmmm I seem to be in a spot of bother...

 

[MattG]

As for acceleration... that's an interesting one. I'm actually not convinced on this. It obviously affects top speed, and boost recharge - and I suppose you could say "well 0-100 with 4 pips is quicker than 2 pips", but as a percentage of the speed I wonder if it might be the same. i.e. If your top speed is 220 with 4 pips in ENG but only 160 with 2 - does it take the same time to accelerate to top speed? More importantly, if you stay "in the blue", do you actually get better handling with more pips? I don't feel it, but I can't say for sure. That, added with the minimum thrust performance on planet landings makes me feel any benefit isn't worth the sacrifice to shields for 4 vs 2 in SYS. I guess this might need further testing too though

OK, I did some more reading on this. I found the thread that mentions the 5m/s^2 minimum thrust speed for landings here. I also found a somewhat old table of stats for each ship which assumes A-rated thrusters, 4 pips to shields, and running at optimal mass for the thrusters here. The field we care about is the "Accel Lat (MS-2)" as this is what will affect descent speed. From this, we can work out the point where gravity reduces the lateral thrusters to 5 m/s^2 with:
((a-5) / 2) / 9.8
Where a is Accel Lat, and this will give us the maximum G of a planet where 4 pips to thrusters ceases to be useful. It's an eye opener, for sure (assuming I've not mis-calculated this)

Spoiler

Ship	Max G
iCutter	0.05
F.Corvette	0.26
CONDA	0.25
PYTHON	0.55
FDL	0.81
ORCA	0.74
CLIPPER	0.25
FGS	0.28
FAS	0.54
FDS	0.26
ASP	0.51
Vulture	0.81
Asp Scout	0.88
Keelback	0.56
Courier	1.02
DBE	0.81
Cobra M4	0.53
DBS	1.11
Viper Mk4	0.92
Cobra	0.81
VIPER	1.05
iEagle	1.22
EAGLE	1.43
T9	0.26
T7	0.58
T6	0.54

Again, the data assumes A-rated thrusters at optimum mass with 4 pips to ENG. You can make some gains to this by engineering the thrusters, and by reducing to 50% of optimum mass. But even then, you'd need to make some incredible(impossible?) gains. For thrusters on an Anaconda to be better than the minimum 5m/s^2 on a 2G planet, you need lateral thrust equivalent to exceed 24.6m/s^2, which equates to 49.2m/s^2 forward thrust. For a conda on a 9G planet, you'd need to exceed forward thrust of 186.4m/s^2 for 4 pips to thrusters to make a difference.

Have I worked this out wrong ?



Edit: And LOL @ Kenneth, that's not my fault!

 

[marx]

AIUI, it does not affect single shot damage by having pips in WEP - but it increases overall DPS by making recharge quicker. Again, AIUI, pips to engines have no effect in SC - in fact I'm not sure anything can affect SC handling.

Yep, can confirm both. Except the one that more pips increases DPS: it increases the time it takes to drain your capacitor, not how much damage you do while you still can fire all your weapons. Well, unless your PD is so bad that at two pips, you can't even sustain fire for one second

As for acceleration... that's an interesting one. I'm actually not convinced on this. It obviously affects top speed, and boost recharge - and I suppose you could say "well 0-100 with 4 pips is quicker than 2 pips", but as a percentage of the speed I wonder if it might be the same. i.e. If your top speed is 220 with 4 pips in ENG but only 160 with 2 - does it take the same time to accelerate to top speed? More importantly, if you stay "in the blue", do you actually get better handling with more pips? I don't feel it, but I can't say for sure. That, added with the minimum thrust performance on planet landings makes me feel any benefit isn't worth the sacrifice to shields for 4 vs 2 in SYS. I guess this might need further testing too though

Quick testing on my Courier showed that pips don't appear to have any effect on acceleration, be it forward, retro or lateral. Pitch, roll and yaw appear to be more interesting: you do get better pitch and roll with more pips, but it appears there's a cap on the benefit. I didn't see any effect on yaw, although maybe the cap would have just been too low there. In any case, it's not like yaw would be terribly important in avoiding collision.
I guess whether it's worth sacrificing damage resistance depends on your ship, and the angle you're approaching the ground. The strength of your shields, too. If you only have a vapour shield of 90 strength, you're probably better off desperately trying to avoid collision instead, because it'll barely protect your ship before it's blown away.