Secondary (calculated) weapon stats

[TBeholder]

From primary weapon_list.xml or displayed stats, sometimes it's not obvious which weapon is better for you. I use secondary parameters to choose weapons for ship.
1) average firepower: how much damage weapon causes per second in long run (considering off-duty factor), (in 5.4 MJ/s units);
2) average power drain: Energy rate, considering off-duty factor;
3) efficiency: damage per energy spent (in 5.4 MJ/s / 100 MJ/s = 0.054 units);
efficiency = Damage rate / Energy rate
Beam:
avg. firepower = (Damage rate+phasedamage) * Stability/(Stability+Refire)
avg.power drain = Energy rate * Stability/(Stability+Refire)
Bolt/Ball:
avg. firepower = Damage rate / refire
avg. power drain = Energy rate

Of course, range dissipation (longrange) value should also be considered, but how much depends on planned tactics (that is, if you want play turret-bashing on Dos anyway, just disregard it) and avg. power drain is considered when power really becomes problem (i.e. ship is limited to weak reactors).

Example:
Microwave Laser (FS_MW_Laser) has peak damage 64+96 VDU/s and Jackhammer has 50+160 (or 345+518.4 and 270+864 MJ/s).
But FS_MW_Laser works 4/(4+4) = 1/2 of time while Jackhammer only .125/(.375+.125) = 1/4, so in average it's 32+48 vs 12.5+40 VDU/s, that is FS_MW_Laser is stronger 1.2 times even in phasedamage ! Of course, Jackhammer still has both greater range and lesser dissipation...

[Breakable]

Would be nice to have this calculation in-game.
Maybe even a small chart for avg. damage/range, where scale always is the same to help compare different weapons.

[safemode]

the damage depends on what you're firing at. so that's out.

how much energy it drains and how much energy it transports are two different values for some weapons and are already shown.

How fast it refires is displayed.

I really dont see anything you listed that's not already taken care of in the game when you go and buy your stuff.


Energy use
Range
Damage potential
Refire rate


One of the main issues with weapon selection is that it's too easy to just put the biggest baddest one on the ship and use it for everything and it performs better than anything weaker. This isn't how the real world works. You shouldn't be able to mount what amounts to a tank cannon on a mini-cooper and use it in dog-fights with great efficiency.

We need to make energy drain much more demanding on powerful weapons, and decrease refire rate on such weapons to make them impractical for all but attacks on other ships large enough to have the same weapons.

[mortaneous]

Sure, the actual damage does depend on target and range, that's not what Turbo's equations suggested calculating. Sure, he mentioned it at the end, but I'd say that it's not as important. Engagement range is a ship-dictated or personal preference, if you want weapon damage at a particular range, estimate it yourself. The base output and power consumption do not change based on range to target.

I think the general idea is that it would be nice to have per-gun stats for the average-per-second values of those things. The energy usage and energy transmitted are given in MJ/s, as defined in the weapon_list.xml, but those figures as shown do not account for the weapon's duty-cycle, which is what the calculations Turbo has given are for (his calculations have no mention of range, they're not for computing target damage, just raw output).

It's actually just a breakdown of a stat already calculated for your ship as a whole anyway. On the ship stats screen there is a "Combined non-missile weapon output" in MJ/s, which happens to be an average-per-second value as calculated by Turbo's equations... it just happens to sum the values for all gun and beam weapons instead of giving per-weapon numbers. (and both fail to inform you what the phase/normal damage ratio is, so that's entirely moot)

Same for the energy consumption, though that's listed in an even more obtuse measure... seconds until weapon capacitor depletion under continuous fire. It still uses the average-per-second energy consumption as well as the reactor recharge rate to give an estimate of the maximum sustainable time for a full cycle-speed all-weapons salvo your ship can perform.

I like the idea of being able to see these averages before mounting the gun to my ship... currently I do some quick-n-dirty math in my head to estimate it anyway, but the convenience would be nice.

Also, I do agree that there needs to be greater consequence to mounting an uber-heavy arsenal on light craft.. a combination of mass and power consumption increases should be able to enforce an adequate penalty on most civvie vessels. That, however, has little to do with displaying the per-second average energy consumption and per-second average output of weapons in the shop screen.

[safemode]

sounds simple enough.