Bounty Hunter Archive

Would like to add my appreciation for the work Raphyal & Volsted have done, although I did wince at the title when I saw it

Keep up the good work, and T-900 Do you live on a fault line by any chance? Taunting volcanoes must be fun.

That same Advanced Gad baton at 2.7 speed would be much > the curved sword you mentioned

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jeffinthebox wrote:
Also, I'd love for you to visit my thread on polearm DPS calculations and add your comments.

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Assuming that your data is accurate, then your basic reasoning in that post is sound, from a pure damage perspective.

One thing to consider, though, is how they stack up from an "efficiency" perspective. A special attack that has a low DPS may make up for that by being more efficient in terms of HAM costs, thus letting you perform more of them before running out of juice.

This is sorta what the Volsted Rating very broadly attempts to do. If you know the Damage, Speed, and HAM modifiers for a given special attack, you can make the following calculation:
[(Volsted Rating) * (Special Damage Modifier)]/{[1 - (Weapon Speed Skill)] * (Special Speed Modifier) * (Special HAM Modifier)}

This will give you an overall efficiency rating for that particular special attack for a specific weapon.

Also, as long as I'm at it, I thought I'd provide a generic note of caution to everybody:

My original post is not meant to be the Ultimate Weapon Comparison Bible(tm), with the list of ratings inscribed in stone as some sort of holy writ. The list of weapons I presented was done solely to illustrate how the Effectiveness Ratings formula worked in practice. I think most people understand this, but I've gotten a few /tells and a few private messages from folks which suggest that some people are taking that list and assuming that it's the Absolute Last Word on Weapon Comparisons. And it's not.

All of those weapons are stock weapons from ONE weaponsmith out of dozens (if not hundreds) on ONE server out of 20. And the quality of those weapons will be naturally different from the quality of weapons you get from your favorite weaponsmith on your particular server. A Scout Blaster may be better than a DX2 on Tempest, due to the resources, but may be worse on Gorath, for example, due to the differentiation between resources on the various servers.

Different weaponsmiths on the same server may produce different quality weapons, either because they experiment differently, or because some have stockpiles of better quality material that others don't have access to.

And, of course, slicing your weapons makes a huge difference as well, and will change their rating considerably.

So don't look at my list of weapon ratings and say "Ah HAH! The FWGS is always superior to the Scout Blaster!" Because it may not be true on your server. I realize that I am mostly to blame for this confusion, due to the way I wrote my original post. So I'm taking this opportunity to clarify the issue.

The most important part of that message is the formula for the Effectiveness Rating itself.

Effectiveness Rating = {[(Min + Max)/2] * (1.5) * (1.25)^N}/Base Weapon Speed

With that formula, you can rate any weapon you have, regardless of the quality of materials on your server (which may be, on average, better or worse than the materials on my server), regardless of the expertise used to create it, and regardless of whether or not it's sliced.

And if you don't want to do the math yourself, there are at least two places on the web now where you can get tools to do the calculations for you. All you have to do is plug in the numbers:

http://rothwellhome.org/SWGWeaponEvaluator.htm
http://users.adelphia.net/~dmccollum/files/WeaponEffect.xls

You will need a specific plug in to use the first URL, and you will need MS Excel (or a viewer of some kind) to use the second. But both will do all the calculations for you.

one point here is that when you get a mod over and beyond the weapons need such as speed...then its true effects r seen when doing the many needed special attacks that cause the delay onto the next attack.....to have a huge speed bonus can cancel out the speed reduction of an attack. thus making one weapon still better then another without the assumption that the speed mod is lost.....for it is only lost to "normal" attack

Anyone notice the base weapon skill for master marksman is 30 not 35?

this needs a bump

great post! wow!

Does anyone know how the HAM costs work?

For example, I want to know how to figure out how much good raising my strength or quickness would do me.

Volsted, great post!

But let me say this post does not motivate me to master the Marksman tree as well as Carbineer. It motivates me to leave Carbine behind. The calculations of weapons and weapons at a Master level, seem to prove that due to speed bonuses Carbineers are far inferior to the competition. Obviously this doesn't take into accout the use of specials and there effectiveness, but with the knowledge that are HAM cost are greater than our counterparts too, I almost regret choosing Carbine. Throw in the fact that we are still waiting to get things fixed since release...

We got hosed Tommy, we got hosed.

if the elite carbine was AP:2 then it might have been worth it ....

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Zerona wrote:
As with any comparison, the only weak point is that it is very dependent on the time and place of the weapon sampling. A bad turn of the resources can reduce a superb T-21 to an underperformer.

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But on a per-server basis, this shouldn't be an issue. How T21s on Tempest stack up to Laser Carbines on Shadowfire (or T21s on Shadowfire) is pretty much irrelevant (unless you're a weaponsmith, I suppose).

Which leads me to the following warning:

My original post is not meant to be the Ultimate Weapon Comparison Bible(tm), with the list of ratings inscribed in stone as some sort of holy writ. The list of weapons I presented was done solely to illustrate how the Effectiveness Ratings formula worked in practice.

I realize that I am mostly to blame for this confusion, due to the way I wrote my original post. So this isn't a direct response to anybody in particular, least of all Zerona. I'm basically just using Zerona's post as an opportunity to clarify the issue.

All of those weapons are stock weapons from ONE weaponsmith out of dozens (if not hundreds) on ONE server out of 20. And the quality of those weapons will be naturally different from the quality of weapons you get from your favorite weaponsmith on your particular server. A Scout Blaster may be better than a DX2 on Tempest, due to the resources, but may be worse on Gorath, for example, due to the differentiation between resources on the various servers.

Different weaponsmiths on the same server may produce different quality weapons, either because they experiment differently, or because some have stockpiles of better quality material that others don't have access to.

And, of course, slicing your weapons makes a huge difference as well, and will change their rating considerably.

So don't look at my list of weapon ratings and say "Ah HAH! The FWGS is always superior to the Scout Blaster!" Because it may not be true on your server.

The most important part of that message is the formula for the Effectiveness Rating itself.

Effectiveness Rating = {[(Min + Max)/2] * (1.5) * (1.25)^N}/Base Weapon Speed

With that formula, you can rate any weapon you have, regardless of the quality of materials on your server (which may be, on average, better or worse than the materials on my server), regardless of the expertise used to create it, and regardless of whether or not it's sliced.

And if you don't want to do the math yourself, there are at least two places on the web now where you can get tools to do the calculations for you. All you have to do is plug in the numbers:

http://rothwellhome.org/SWGWeaponEvaluator.htm
http://users.adelphia.net/~dmccollum/files/WeaponEffect.xls

You will need a specific plug in to use the first URL, and you will need MS Excel (or a viewer of some kind) to use the second. But both will do all the calculations for you.

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Zerona wrote:
The other thing that messes up the situation is that some weapons are tuned towards specific users.

<snip>

The other missing item, implied by the Volsted rating, but not stated explicitly, is the role specials play in weapon choices.

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Ah, but this is one of the hidden features of the Effectiveness and Volsted Ratings. The formulas are easily customizeable to take into account almost any facet of combat you care to name.

For instance, if someone were to devise a formula that would tell you how often you hit or missed, on average, as a percentage, you could easily incorporate it into the Effectiveness Rating by simply multiplying the base Effectiveness Rating by the hit/miss ratio. So if you have a weapon with a base Effectiveness Rating of, say, 75.3, and you calculate that you hit your opponent 85% of the time, on average, you can factor this into the Effectiveness Rating by:
75.3 * 0.85 = 64.0

And voila, the rating now reflects your accuracy.

This can be done for any aspect of combat.

Want to take into account Actual Fire Rate? Divide the Effectiveness Rating by [1 - (Weapon Speed Skill/100)].

Want to determine the Volsted Ratings for a specific special attack? Multiply the Volsted Ratings by the Special Damage Mod, then divide the resulting number by [1 - (Weapon Speed Skill)/100] * (Special Delay Mod) * (Special HAM Mod).

This latter bit has some very useful applications, as it happens. It's a great way to show which one of your specials gives you the best "bang for your buck," assuming you know the Speed, Damage, and HAM mods. Riflemen on the Riflemen board have already determined that Headshot 2 is superior to both Headshot 1 and Headshot 3 in the "Bang for the buck" department as a consequence of these calculations.

So the fact that the Effectiveness Rating and the Volsted Ratings are simple, rather than complex is (as they say) a "feature" rather than a "bug." It was meant to be that way from the beginning, so that others can add in whatever level of complexity they feel it warrants.

Also, as long as I'm at it, I thought I'd provide a generic note of caution to everybody:

My original post is not meant to be the Ultimate Weapon Comparison Bible(tm), with the list of ratings inscribed in stone as some sort of holy writ. The list of weapons I presented was done solely to illustrate how the Effectiveness Ratings formula worked in practice. I think most people understand this, but I've gotten a few /tells and a few private messages from folks which suggest that some people are taking that list and assuming that it's the Absolute Last Word on Weapon Comparisons. And it's not.

I realize that I am mostly to blame for this confusion, due to the way I wrote my original post. So I'm taking this opportunity to clarify the issue.

All of those weapons are stock weapons from ONE weaponsmith out of dozens (if not hundreds) on ONE server out of 20. And the quality of those weapons will be naturally different from the quality of weapons you get from your favorite weaponsmith on your particular server. A Scout Blaster may be better than a DX2 on Tempest, due to the resources, but may be worse on Gorath, for example, due to the differentiation between resources on the various servers.

Different weaponsmiths on the same server may produce different quality weapons, either because they experiment differently, or because some have stockpiles of better quality material that others don't have access to.

And, of course, slicing your weapons makes a huge difference as well, and will change their rating considerably.

So don't look at my list of weapon ratings and say "Ah HAH! The FWGS is always superior to the Scout Blaster!" Because it may not be true on your server.

The most important part of that message is the formula for the Effectiveness Rating itself.

Effectiveness Rating = {[(Min + Max)/2] * (1.5) * (1.25)^N}/Base Weapon Speed

With that formula, you can rate any weapon you have, regardless of the quality of materials on your server (which may be, on average, better or worse than the materials on my server), regardless of the expertise used to create it, and regardless of whether or not it's sliced.

And if you don't want to do the math yourself, there are at least two places on the web now where you can get tools to do the calculations for you. All you have to do is plug in the numbers:

http://rothwellhome.org/SWGWeaponEvaluator.htm
http://users.adelphia.net/~dmccollum/files/WeaponEffect.xls

You will need a specific plug in to use the first URL, and you will need MS Excel (or a viewer of some kind) to use the second. But both will do all the calculations for you.

Thanks to Gorecki for getting this in front of me...

And many thanks to VolstedGridban for all the hard work!

Now with that being said, Im neither confirming nor denying the accuracy here. I just dont know. Ill ask and if there is an easy answer, Ill try to get it, but it looks like a lot of analysis here...interpreting this much would take time and Im sure everyone here has tons of other stuff that come first...