Do weapons have any noteworth special properties that aren't listed on their entries? About the only one that I can think if that is obvious is projectile velocity. Are damage types a thing? Are certain weapons more effective against shields? I recently put together a spreadsheet that calculated weapon DPS. I don't keep weapon limits turned on with my server, because honestly I feel like it's just going to result in every ship designed for combat having the same set of weapons and I'd like to do what I can to encourage creativity and analysis. When I sat down myself and started doing this kind of analysis, some weapons seem clearly to outclass others, even later-tier more expensive ones. Probably the most notable example of this is that rail guns seem to be functionally superior to pulse lasers in every way. They have more DPS, more DPS/point of CPU, and more range. If, however, the pulse lasers did more damage vs. shields or had some other advantage such as a massively faster projectile speed... (which they don't seem to have even though their projectiles by logic should be functionally instantaneous) but this one in particular stuck out because the rail guns are lower level... but seem to outclass the pulse laser in every way. Edit: Ohh! If anybody is interested, here's the google sheet.
Weapons like miniguns and cannons are hit scan, meaning they pretty much are always causing that minimal damage. Missiles/Artillery/Plasma/Lasers(I think) have a projectile travel time which means they can be dodged/outrun. So the DPS is only really valid for if they actually hit. Just speaking from personal experience fighting dreads and legacy ships, weapons like plasma/artillery are minimally effective at range as the enemy just moves. Which is also why these massive ships are able to be fought, we can outrun their projectiles or simply move out of the way. So a DPS chart, while interesting, doesnt take into consideration that for that damage to apply, the projectile has to hit, and not all weapons/turrets are equal. I wont speak to the damage effectiveness against shields/armor, as I play in a RE server and I may be confusing modded game play for vanilla.
To add to what Chumsickle just mentioned, we also have to take into account the materials used in the crafting template. If a weapon does more damage but requires rare materials for its ammo (not saying it's the case) then players have to "pay" for the damage bonus in resource gathering time. Little caveat here : this same idea applies to all the discussions regarding "balance" where time required to get materials is completely ignored in the equation. For hand weapons we can add buffs/ debuffs, and I guess we can add these to ship weapons also, but since these apply to the player and not to blocks it's not very useful. For very small ships used to go inside structures ( POI busters) it can be used in PvP I guess... For "damage types" you can also include the various damage multipliers found at the end of each weapon's definition block in the .ecf file. These include the different block's materials and also shields, head (!), dirt, etc.
Is there a damage fall-off over range? I don't recall this being the case, so assuming until corrected no fall-off over range. Range is affected by the atmosphere density value for playfield though, so that is a factor you want in there.
I have never noticed damage from weapons dropping over distance. What I have noticed is that your range will impact your ability to hit an enemy. For example, an artillery cannon at 1km will generally not ever hit a mobile enemy CV. However if you rush in to 100m then it will. So it is less a "damage goes down" and "hit probablity goes up" situation. Missiles are the same way. Missiles at 1km >may< hit...or they may fizzle out. Missiles at 100m will track and nail baddies. However...same goes for what they are throwing at you. Get in close, they hit more, stay far back, you hit less. So its a balance.
The interesting thing is that, per point of CPU, the hitscan gattling guns have the highest single-target DPS. If you're willing to build a larger craft and weight it down with lots of gatling guns... it's actually the best way to deal with single targets. Now of course, the ignores the capability for exlosive damage at plasma cannons or missiles dish out. Similarly, CV and HV minigun turrets have the highest single-target damage, and they have it by a fair margin. And they're cheap to make. There's a lot to be said about laying a ship with all of the minigun turrets and just letting them chew through targets. They're another one of the reasons that I'm curious. If different styles of weapons do additional block damage vs. damage living enemies, then there's a good reason to build a mix. But right now... that single-target damage on minigun turrets is looking real tempting. And, IMO, the 'cost difference' in materials for these really should be ignored. None of them is all that expensive. Also, per CPU point, artillery turrets are absolute garbage. They have a really impressive damage number... but they use up so much CPU that there's a lot to be said about not worrying about them if block limits are disabled. All of this kind of goes back to 'what is the limiter on your ship?'. If you've built it in such a fashion that you've got a limited number of mounting points then there's a lot to be said about miniguns, artilleries, or plasmas. They're all in a similar ballpark. If you've got a CPU bottleneck or are free to build the ship in a fashion to maximize the number of turrets... I'd probably go miniguns. Maybe flak. Their damage/cpu is much higher and miniguns have the benefit of being hit scan, though the drawback of having no explosive damage which the flak cannons do at least get some of. If block limits are enabled and you're building a craft for maximum damage... you of course put the maximum amount of every gun.
There have been solid ship designs that rely on minigun/cannon turrets, but they always have the shortest range. So, while your weapons are enjoying the "hit scan" goodness you are also placing yourself closer to the bad guy which means you yourself will have a harder time avoiding damage. There is also little we can do to ensure these cannons/miniguns are directing their fire properly, so even though they may be awesome, they may be spreading that damage out over multiple targets. That coupled with the speed and maneuvering you will need to be doing somewhat mitigates this benefit. Artillery does have its places. Its massive damage, when up close, can take out enemy turrets or devices in short order and they are devastating against fixed targets like space stations. I like having at least a few artillery turrets on my legacy hunting ships for drilling their cores (though that may be mitigated by the new explosion changes).
And to expound a bit on price: Unless someone comes up with a super efficient way of fighting some of the end game CVs, such as Dreads, cost >does< factor in. In some of those battles I used millions of credits worth of missiles/artillery/laster charges/plasma rounds/flak shells. Fortunately, the salvage >used< to compensate a bit with being able to farm matrix/bridges. But when filling 640k worth of ammo, cost most certainly is a concern.
Missiles and cannon turrets are best for general use. Cheap, low cost, low CPU, etc. Cannon turrets can be used by CVs on planets and use super cheap ammo and can take out drones as well. Missiles are the best in space against patrol vessels or POIs. Other weapon types aren't as effective for the cost or CPU.
I have a related question. Was the rail gun's damage ever fixed? It used to be it was way lower than the tool tip indicated.
It used to have blast damage in the past (prior to v1.0), and they removed it, so it may have lowered the total damage output. Knowledge and statistics regarding weapons are quite volatile, as they can vary greatly from one scenario to another, so I guess this discussion here concerns the "vanilla" game although it has not been mentioned.
It was an issue since at least Alpha 10 so removing blast may have actually increased or "fixed" it. I'll have to do some testing. I actually stopped using railguns because of this.
My railguns shoot 2 very slow rockets at 3 km after which they're dead, so I have to exit the cockpit to rejuvenate them to be able to shoot 2 more rockets. Now with better explosions I can finish the mod...
I've done a limited test. Railgun with a listed tool tip damage of 2780 vs rocket launcher with a tooltip damage of 1425. I tested the weapons against BA blocks HS, CS and AC. Utilized the same SV with a twin set up of both weapons. The Railguns did 370 and the rockets did 544 block HP damage. I assume BA/CV blocks take reduced damage from HV/SV weapons? but why do the tooltip damage numbers indicate the railguns should do more damage but in reality they deal less? What are the other factors I'm missing?
Tooltips only show base damage and don't take damage modifiers and material hardness into account. No damage value on a weapon will output what it says against blocks. In almost all cases, weapons will deal 1/15 damage against blocks due to almost every block having a hardness of 15, which replaced the armor value around A7.
I understand why missile turrets might be best vs. fast moving targets as homing missiles have a much-improved chance to hit. But why cannon turrets over miniguns? Ammunitions costs are in the probably pretty comperable per point of damage, but miniguns have about 50% more dps?
Miniguns do a lot more to entities such as drones, but drones are barely any threat even in space. Cannons do more base damage per second than minigun turrets (550 damage per shot versus 425 per shot) and also have a much higher damage modifier versus hard targets (1.15 versus 0.85). So against enemy turrets, devices, and armor, cannon turrets do 1265 DPS, versus miniguns which do only 722.5 DPS. (stats for CV turrets) The higher RoF of the minigun turrets only counts when you're manually controlling them. Otherwise AI controlled turrets are capped at a 0.5 or slower RoF so both minigun turrets and cannon turrets have the same rate of fire while controlled by the AI.
@Vermillion Thanks, that clarification is appreciated. Is it possible the explosion damage from the missiles is hitting multiple faces of a block and thus dealing more damage?
Thank you immensely! This is exactly the kind of information that's important! Thank you! It always seemed to me like these turrets fired much slowed than their advertised rate, but I never knew the specifics of it or if it was just graphical. When you say 0.5, is that a 0.5 RoundsPerSecond (30 RPM) or SecondsPerRound (120 RPM)? That makes a HUGE amount of difference. I also need to go into the file to pull out their modifiers vs. different types of targets. I wish this information was displayed on the tool tips. The information about damage vs. hard targets was something that I'm happy about and it makes sense and I was kinda hoping was a thing... but without information on the tool tips to confirm it... there's no way for a typical player to know.
