Turret damage: Difference between revisions

As mentioned above, target size only influence tracking penalties, never range penalties. It may seem counter intuitive, but that is the way the game works. The overview has a column for ship sizes, but those values are not related to a ships signature size.

The trickiest part with sizes is that you must account for this yourself, the game doesn't help you. The table below is not exact, but give an idea of how much the size differance will impact the tracking ability of small, medium and large guns.

Adjust your own tracking with these multiples to compensate for size differance

No. Even if the guns are grouped on your screen, they are still treated separately. This can be seen by collecting damage data and comparing that with the normal expected damage distribution, its very clear that its a combination of several seperate turret shots instead of a single one. It can also be deduced by looking at the turret group's damage output when shooting at hard to hit objects, like things deep into falloff, it's possible to tell when one, two or more guns hit the target.

*Turret tracking = Found on the attributes tab of a turret. Measured in rad/second (one rad is equal to 57 degrees, 360 degress is equal to 6.28 rad)

*Target signature radius = The size of the target, or more precisly the radius of an imagined circle that represents the target's sensor footprint. Measured in meters.

*Turret optimal range = Found on the attributes tab of a turret. Inside this range no range penalites from distance are applied. Measured in meters.

Why is this interesting? From this we can see that tracking and range are actually calculated seperately, then the results from each are multiplied. This shows that Range and Tracking are indeed two different and independant things, and both will be used to score a hit.

There is also one more thing we can find out by just looking at the equation. This is however a little tricker to follow, but the conclusion is easy. The aim is to compare the tracking term and the range term for similarities in how they behave. Do they have anything in common? To do this, we will freeze all values in those respective terms except for one variable in each, that will be 'turret tracking' and 'falloff' respectively. Then we can look at how that single variable effects the outcome in each case and see if there is any similarities between them.

All turrets have a base damage, this is a fixed number. The volley damage that your turrets do will be spread around this number. The higher the number the more damage the turret will do when it hits. It is calculated from the turrets Damage Multiplier attribute and the ammo's damage values. This is before any resistances is taken into consideration. A high base damage means that your guns hit hard (but do not mistake this for DPS (damage per second) since that also depends on how often the guns may fire). The base damage is always a bit below the average damage (about 1.5% lower) when there is a 100% hit chance -- the reason for this are those rare but highly damaging perfect hits.

The table below shows how damage and DPS goes down as a result of lower hit chance. The decrease is identical for tracking and falloff so either one can be used.  If you wish to combine the effects of tracking and falloff, look them up individualy and then multiply them (note: this only works for the columns Hit Chance and Relative DPS; the column Reduction in DPS by % can not be used for this).

The effect from a web is hard to predict, since its use can change both the transversal speed and the range between the ships. Experience and practice will be your best guide here. The drawback with webs is that they can help your opponants tracking as well as your own. The web is more often used for its tactical benefits, such as giving control over the range. But it is also the best tool to reduce the need for tracking when large guns are used against small targets.

'''Example:''' ''This is a comparison of when the lighter type overtakes the heavier type against a target with high angular velocity. For this example it is assumed that that the targets signature radius is identical to the guns signature size, the range is also assumed to be the same in both cases so that the angular velocity will be identical.'' A pilot is using the heavier autocannons (for example small 200mm, but this comparison is true for medium and large as well) and is fighting at 0.333 parts into falloff (corresponds to about 2200m with hard hitting ammo and T2 guns (for T1 it would be 2100m, so no real differance)), this corresponds to a -10% DPS loss from range, tracking isn't considered yet. If the pilot instead had been using the lighter autocannons (small 125mm) the range is the same (2200m for T2 guns) but this time it corresponds to 0.4 parts into falloff where the DPS loss from falloff is -15%. Now we will compare the guns damage output, we must remember that the lighter version does -23% damage as well. So in this range case the relative DPS from the heavier one is 0.90 and for the lighter it is (0.85 x 0x77) 0.655, we can divide them (0.9 / 0.655) to find out that the heavier ones do +37% more DPS over the lighter ones. Now the question is, at how many parts into tracking will these guns do the same damage? Since the lighter ones track better, the heavier ones will lose DPS faster and we are looking for the point where they do the same damage. It turns out that when the heavier type is at 0.9 parts into tracking, they lose -53% DPS, at the same time the lighter version is only 0.68 parts into tracking (0.9 / 1.32, +32% faster tracking), where it loses -36% DPS. Comparing the relative DPS we get that the lighter do 0.64 and the heavier 0.47, we divide them (0.64 / 0.47) and see that the lighter ones do +36% more DPS (from just tracking) at this point. This is close to the +37% advantage that the heavier had from before.  

Of the 10,656 shots the lowest recorded damage was 11.4 (recorded 15 times) and the highest non-perfect was 34.0 (recorded 33 times), perfect hits dealt 68.5 damage (recorded 101 times). On average, each damage number (anything between 11.5 to 33.9) was recorded 46.7 times (standard deviation = 7.02). The reason for the lower occurences of the min and max results on normal hits comes from rounding effects. Any damage in-between has an interval of 0.1 units (22.2500 to 22.3499 both produce the 22.3 in the log). However the min and max values do not have that span. The lowest theoretical number is Base Damage x 0.5 = 11.415, hence the interval to get 11.4 in the log is between 11.415 and 11.4499, that is only 0.0345 differance. So the expected number of occurances of the value 11.4 is only 34.6% of the average number, 15 recorded values / 34.6% = 43.4, close to average and inside the standard deviation. The upper interval is 67.8%, 33 times / 67.8% = 48.7, also close to average and inside the standard deviation. (Note: 34.6%+67.8%=102.4%, which is of course impossible -- the error comes from rounding errors in the 4th decimal of the base damage, awesome precision isn't needed for this comparative calculation since the natural random deviation is much larger anyhow, so this is good enough, the objective was to explain the lower frequencies of the end points which now has been done).