It makes it up as it goes!

So I was testing out some PD weapons to make sure they were reasonably balanced and tried to work out how exactly point defense damage works.
I failed miserably. All I managed to work out is that it will always take at least two hits to destroy a missile and that mass damage seems to be twice as effective as energy damage. Here are the results of my testing against a missile with 10 durability.

energy damage	 shots required
	  5				 6
	 6-7				5
	 8-9				4
	10-19			   3
	 20+				2

Can anyone work out some sort of formula to fit those numbers? I had a theory that the first shot does no damage.

@guy, on Nov 16 2007, 04:28 AM, said in Point Defense damage:

All I managed to work out is that it will always take at least two hits to destroy a missile and that mass damage seems to be twice as effective as energy damage.

The EV Bible says "PD damage to guided weapons is calculated as 100% of mass damage plus 50% of energy damage" so that I guess is accurate. Dunno why it seems to not count the first hit...what was the mass damage set at for these shots?

Ah, missed that bit. Helpful, but doesn't explain my test results. The mass damage was zero.

Hmm, if the missile's actual durability were 150% of the input in the 'durability' field the shots required would almost make sense.

If the durability were 15 then 6 shots of 2.5 damage would kill it, or 5 shots of 3-3.5 would do the same.

This theory breaks down at the 10-19 range.

@bootstrap_bill, on Nov 16 2007, 03:00 PM, said in Point Defense damage:

Hmm, if the missile's actual durability were 150% of the input in the 'durability' field the shots required would almost make sense.

If the durability were 15 then 6 shots of 2.5 damage would kill it, or 5 shots of 3-3.5 would do the same.

This theory breaks down at the 10-19 range.

It doesn't say that anywhere... but it's a possibility.

I think personally that it might have to do with human error in the experiments and using integer division instead of floating point.

@bootstrap_bill, on Nov 17 2007, 12:00 PM, said in Point Defense damage:

This theory breaks down at the 10-19 range.

Yeah, I've had numerous theories but they all break down somewhere. I'm confident there was no human error in the results.

Depending on how much time you want to spend on it, it might be worth testing to see if it behaves the same way with only mass damage, and mixed damage. Maybe just do 10e/5m and 0e/10m against a 10 durability missile a few times each. If it takes 2 shots in both cases, at least you know it's consistently wrong.

I am not observing the same behavior, at least with my test file on 1.0.10 running your 1.0.2 port of Override.

I adjusted durability of Needle Missiles to 20 and made a PD weapon with 40 energy damage. The Needle Missiles are destroyed in one hit. When changing to 20 energy damage, two hits. 10 damage, four hits. 5 damage, eight hits. Mass damage works exactly the same except at 100% instead of 50%.

This post has been edited by MadFax7 : 17 November 2007 - 10:12 AM

@madfax7, on Nov 17 2007, 03:11 PM, said in Point Defense damage:

I am not observing the same behavior, at least with my test file on 1.0.10 running your 1.0.2 port of Override.

I adjusted durability of Needle Missiles to 20 and made a PD weapon with 40 energy damage. The Needle Missiles are destroyed in one hit. When changing to 20 energy damage, two hits. 10 damage, four hits. 5 damage, eight hits. Mass damage works exactly the same except at 100% instead of 50%.

Sounds like the durability is being counted as double its assigned value.

@-visitor-, on Nov 17 2007, 07:19 PM, said in Point Defense damage:

Sounds like the durability is being counted as double its assigned value.

They said earlier in the topic that EV Bible states that Energy Damage counts at only 50% against seeker weapons. Since MadFax7 stated that he was working with Energy Damage, this is the expected result.

Mass Damage still counts at 100% against seeker weapons.

@madfax7, on Nov 18 2007, 04:11 AM, said in Point Defense damage:

I am not observing the same behavior, at least with my test file on 1.0.10 running your 1.0.2 port of Override.

I adjusted durability of Needle Missiles to 20 and made a PD weapon with 40 energy damage. The Needle Missiles are destroyed in one hit. When changing to 20 energy damage, two hits. 10 damage, four hits. 5 damage, eight hits. Mass damage works exactly the same except at 100% instead of 50%.

Hmph, so it's just me, is it? I tried out this test file and got two hits with 40 and 3 with 20. Even 400 damage requires two hits!
What's your system? I'm 10.5.1 on Intel. Can other people check this out and see what they get?

Hey, one other thing I noticed is that "Weapon can't be targeted by point defense systems" does not mean "Weapon is invulnerable to point defense systems".

This post has been edited by Guy : 18 November 2007 - 12:43 AM

@guy, on Nov 17 2007, 08:43 PM, said in Point Defense damage:

Hmph, so it's just me, is it? I tried out this test file and got two hits with 40 and 3 with 20. Even 400 damage requires two hits!
What's your system? I'm 10.5.1 on Intel. Can other people check this out and see what they get?

That is extremely odd. I'm running 10.5.1 on a G5. Perhaps it has something to do with Rosetta's emulation of PPC code?