this time about beam DPS

It's me again. I might just start updating this topic instead of creating a new one every time I have another question. Ha.

Beam weapons are confusing to me. For example, I create a pulse beam that does 30 damage per strike, with a count of 1 (one frame, because when I set it to 0, it didn't appear at all), and a reload of 15 (frames to reload, where 1 second = 30 frames). So, to figure out the Damage Per Second (DPS), I do 30 / 15 = 2, or 2 shots per second, then 2 x 30 = 60, so my weapon should be 60 DPS. This is compared to the Phase Turret which has 56.25 DPS.

BUT, when I implemented this, the ships I put it on seemed to do fantastically well... TOO well. I made a test, pitting two ships against each other: one with 6 Phase turrets, their values adjusted so that each turret is exactly 60 DPS (as a control), and the other with 6 of my turrets at what should be 60 each. The beam test annihilated the other test ship, by almost double the margin. I thought that, perhaps, the beams DPS was somehow doubled due to the way that beams work (I was guessing), so I do another test, 6 Phase vs 3 Beams. And now the beams get beaten by the control, not as badly, but more than simply random chance.

So, please, tell me. How the hell is beam damage calculated? Because it doesn't make any sense to me, lol.

(EDIT) Speaking of other questions:

1) does burst reload time decrease the more weapons you have? For example, does having two of the weapon reduce a burst reload of 30 down to 15 in addition to decreasing normal fire reload time?
2) Anyone have an idea on how jamming vulnerabilities work? Never seems to work as I expect it to

3. When I set a pers ship to appear in system 15000, for example, does that ONLY include allies of govt 128 or does it include allies AND govt 128?

4) What's up with reinforcement fleets? They were working for me, but now they won't pop up anymore.

5. What's up with system murkiness? I can't replicate the colored cloudy murkiness in EV Nova (lets say, in the Alphara system, I believe). Using EVNEW, I can only make it murky using black, and if I try to use a color, it looks bizarre and nothing like it did in EV Nova. What gives?

6. Here's a new one. I have two governments, A and B. They are supposed to be allies, and are supposed to be able to dock/land at each others facilities. However, I can't get them to do that. Government A's ships land and hang out in Government A's systems, but Government B's warships won't. The weird thing is, Government B TRADERS will, but their WARSHIPS won't. Will they just not do that?

7. How is inherent jamming applied? Is that if the ship belongs to that government? Or is it the inherent government of that ship? For example, Ship X has inherent Government B, but is actually controlled in the dude/fleet/pers by Government A, does it get B's jamming or A's jamming?

This post has been edited by Captain Carnotaur : 24 March 2013 - 12:52 PM

Well, since no one else is answering your question I'll try my best to explain my theory. Basically when Nova creates a beam, it draws a straight line and determines how long it needs to be draw (if it 'hits' anything). This is done over the course of as many frames as the beam is supposed to exist for (a single frame in your case). I had always assumed that when the beam hit something, that it would apply the damage just the same as if it were a projectile (and that the absurdly short amount of exposure time it takes to kill something was a result of it hitting the target every single frame). Obviously this either not true, or Nova just has some flawed collision data. I'm going to assume that part of your DPS oddity has to do with Nova's not actually running at 30 frames per second (it really tries to draw as many frames as it can, usually around 47), but I'm not sure. Perhaps there is a bug where beams 'hit' multiple times in a single frame... :huh:

Thanks. Makes about as much sense as this is going to lol. Maybe someone else has an idea.

Speaking of other questions:

1. does burst reload time decrease the more weapons you have? For example, does having two of the weapon reduce a burst reload of 30 down to 15 in addition to decreasing normal fire reload time?

2. Anyone have an idea on how jamming vulnerabilities work? Never seems to work as I expect it to

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1. does burst reload time decrease the more weapons you have? For example, does having two of the weapon reduce a burst reload of 30 down to 15 in addition to decreasing normal fire reload time?

What I've noticed is that having multiple burst fire weapons just causes the weapon to fire longer (two 20 burst count weapons would be the same as a 40 count burst weapon).

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2. Anyone have an idea on how jamming vulnerabilities work? Never seems to work as I expect it to

I always assumed that jamming was a percent chance thing, and by that I mean the jammer's power is a percent chance that the jammer will attempt to jam and a guided weapon's vulnerability is a percent chance that the 'jam' will work. I'm also going to assume that all of this is calculated every frame.

@captain-carnotaur, on 03 March 2013 - 11:52 AM, said in Time for another question!:

Thanks. Makes about as much sense as this is going to lol. Maybe someone else has an idea.

I didn't have any ideas when I first read your post, but Reclusive's theory seems sound. Granted, I haven't played around with beams much, however. However, Qaanol has, so hopefully he'll stop by soon.

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1. does burst reload time decrease the more weapons you have? For example, does having two of the weapon reduce a burst reload of 30 down to 15 in addition to decreasing normal fire reload time?

Again, Reclusive is right. When additional burst-reload weapons are added on, they simply fire all their shots one after the other and then go into burst reload. If you want it to lower the burst-reload, you need to set them to fire simultaneously. Odd, yes, but that's how it works.

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2. Anyone have an idea on how jamming vulnerabilities work? Never seems to work as I expect it to

Qaanol mentioned the exact equations used for jamming once, though I don't remember them nor where he mentioned them. As I recall, though, the equation would come up with a number and, if that number fell into the jammer's power and the missiles vulnerability, the missile would be jammed. Say you have a jammer with a power of 50 and a missile with a vulnerability of 40. If the number that comes out is 40 or higher, the missile will not be jammed. Even if the numbers were switched (missile/50 jammer/40) the missile still wouldn't be jammed.

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Say you have a jammer with a power of 50 and a missile with a vulnerability of 40. If the number that comes out is 40 or higher, the missile will not be jammed. Even if the numbers were switched (missile/50 jammer/40) the missile still wouldn't be jammed.

That's sort of what I was thinking; the game picks a number between 0 and your current jammer strength, and if it comes out less than the missile's vulnerability, it's jammed.

Do any of you know how a missile decides to fly into an asteroid (assuming the flag for it is set). Also, sorry for hijacking this topic...

A weapon takes 1 frame to fire and Reload frames to reload before firing again, so a weapon with Reload=15 will fire once every 16 frames.

A beam deals damage each frame it is on screen, including the frame it fire, each frame of its Count, and the duration it fades out. So a beam with Count=1 that has no fadeout, will deal damage for 2 frames each time it fires.

So each of your beams deals 30DMG(1+Count)/(1+Reload) damage per second, in this case 3030*2/16 = 112.5 dps.

Your projectiles, if they all hit their targets, deal 30DMG/(1+Reload) = 3030/16 = 56.25 dps.

A missile has only one chance to be jammed. The game picks a number at random from 0 to the JamVuln of the missile. It adds that to the corresponding Jamming of the target, and if the result exceeds 100 the missile is jammed. Repeat for each jamming type. There might be some edge cases: try testing a 100 jammer against 1-vuln missiles, and the same for 99-2.

Burst reload is independent of number of launchers owned.

This post has been edited by Qaanol : 06 March 2013 - 02:11 PM

Thanks for the insight! I'll have to see if I can get it to work correctly now.

also, more questions

3. When I set a pers ship to appear in system 15000, for example, does that ONLY include allies of govt 128 or does it include allies AND govt 128?
   4) What's up with reinforcement fleets? They were working for me, but now they won't pop up anymore. Figured it out. Reinforcements are called when ships calculate that the odds are against them, and the EVO TC had the max odds for all governments set high enough they would never consider it (because EVO behaviors didn't include this), so I figured that.
4. What's up with system murkiness? I can't replicate the colored cloudy murkiness in EV Nova (lets say, in the Alphara system, I believe). Using EVNEW, I can only make it murky using black, and if I try to use a color, it looks bizarre and nothing like it did in EV Nova. What gives?

This post has been edited by Captain Carnotaur : 21 March 2013 - 07:33 AM

6. Here's a new one. I have two governments, A and B. They are supposed to be allies, and are supposed to be able to dock/land at each others facilities. However, I can't get them to do that. Government A's ships land and hang out in Government A's systems, but Government B's warships won't. The weird thing is, Government B TRADERS will, but their WARSHIPS won't. Will they just not do that?

7. How is inherent jamming applied? Is that if the ship belongs to that government? Or is it the inherent government of that ship? For example, Ship X has inherent Government B, but is actually controlled in the dude/fleet/pers by Government A, does it get B's jamming or A's jamming?

@qaanol, on 06 March 2013 - 02:10 PM, said in Time for another question!:

A weapon takes 1 frame to fire and Reload frames to reload before firing again, so a weapon with Reload=15 will fire once every 16 frames.

A beam deals damage each frame it is on screen, including the frame it fire, each frame of its Count, and the duration it fades out. So a beam with Count=1 that has no fadeout, will deal damage for 2 frames each time it fires.

So each of your beams deals 30DMG(1+Count)/(1+Reload) damage per second, in this case 3030*2/16 = 112.5 dps.

Your projectiles, if they all hit their targets, deal 30DMG/(1+Reload) = 3030/16 = 56.25 dps.

Alright, gave it a try again, this time using your formulas. Unfortunately, I was unable to produce the intended result.

Beam Test Weapon has 21 (shield) damage per hit, a count of 1, and a reload of 20. By your formula, it should be 30212/21 = 60 DPS.

Projectile Test Weapon (based on phase turret) has 30 damage per hit, and a reload of 14. By your formula, it should be 30*30/(14+1) = 60 DPS.

Both weapons were set to identical ranges.

I tested Ship A with 5 beam turrets and Ship B with 5 projectile turrets, each with identical stats. The test platform was based on the Igazra, so it's fairly slow and a big target. I expected the Beam Test ship might outperform the Phase/Projectile test ship because some of the phase bursts might miss. However, each time, Ship A is destroyed while Ship B has roughly 50% shields left. In other words, the Beam turret has closer to 30 DPS and not 60.

Any ideas? I thought it might be because there's multiple turrets, so i tested it again with 1 turret vs 1 turret, and same result, almost exactly, every time. The beam weapon has no fadeout.

(Edit) Even more confusingly, I set a beam weapon to have a really long reload and a damage of 100, with a count of 1. It created an opposing ship with 400 shields. It took exactly 4 shots to destroy the shields of the opposing ship, with shield levels at almost exactly 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, 0%... But shouldn't it be doing 200 damage per shot, as it should be on screen for 2 seconds?

This post has been edited by Captain Carnotaur : 24 March 2013 - 01:29 PM