Shipwright Archive
Thread: Shipwright Crafting Tip #1: Weapon Experimentation
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idolatry
Thu May 26, 2005 3:33 pm
#1
So, I'm going to be presumptuous and hand out some advice to new shipwrights. Flame shield on 
First, an explanation of how I craft weapons, and this is based on the way I fly.
First, an explanation of how I craft weapons, and this is based on the way I fly.I feel that weapons are in the Big 3 of starship components (along with shields and engines) as far as performance goes. I'm willing to sacrifice armour, capacitor energy, even droid speed, to fit in a weapon that does more damage. If you do more damage, on paper at least, the engagement is going to be shorter, so things like reset rates on droid commands matter less. Reactor drain and energy/shot stats on weapons don't really factor into my decision to bolt on a new weapon; droid commands take care of those pretty well.
That being said, I did some experimentation yesterday to see how my experimentation was affecting damage output, and I was pretty surprised at how things turned out.
I see a lot of people maxing out min and max damage stats with experimentation points, and I found that's the single worst way to go. I've always had a sneaking suspicion that ROF was the key stat in crafted guns.
So, on to the table:
http://www.idolatry.org/swg/shipwright_calc.html
These guns are all Mid-grade blasters, crafted from identical resources, using identical factory-created Quick Shot Upgrades.
What I found was that the best combination was to max outRefire Rateand then split the remaining experimentation points between vs. Armour and vs. Shields. This gives better than a 5% boost to Damage Per Second over maxing out max and min damage.
That may not sound like much, but it looks like that's not a linear progression as you go up to higher level guns. Preliminary results show an almost 15% increase in DPS for Mark V blasters. That works out to be better than 500 Damage Per Second, which is a big margin.
Now, this is obviously not going to help mass or energy consumption at all. But I've found that most customers, like me, will sacrifice those stats in order to get better damage output.
If anyone wants the excel spreadsheet I used to calculate this, shoot me a PM with your email address.
Any thoughts? Comments?
Fishbreath
Thu May 26, 2005 4:28 pm
#2
Whenever a Veteran, Elite, Ace pilot asks me to craft them a new gun, they ALWAYS ask for a re-fire less than 0.3.....they seem to like rapid fire over Min-Max damage also.......Iwould thinkthey know what they are are asking for.......so I will concur with your assessement.
S-1-l2-H-C
Thu May 26, 2005 5:01 pm
#4
you got it figured out, thats exactly what i look for when buying guns for new players im helping out (i use re myself). unfortunatly, most noobs just look at the max damage. i got into a conv with a really good SW on my server and told him that i thought his guns would be much better with a fast refire. his reply was he knew that guns were better that way but no one bought them, so he went back to buildingthe max damage guns.
all of the subcomponents for weapons add to one stat while making another worse. the refire rate subcomp raises the energy per shot as its negative point, but can take .5 to .68 or so off the refire rate, which lets you disk out ALOT more damage per shot
the min-max subcomp that most people uses adds to the max damage, but takes away from the min damage, so you end up with only slightly more AVERAGE damage per shot.
also i agree completely about the sacrifcing on other components to mount the big guns. what i like to tell people is to fit the engine, guns, and shield they want, and then work everything else around that.
MrHawat
Thu May 26, 2005 5:18 pm
#5
For custom jobs, this holds to be pretty true but depends on the ship and pilot's style of fighting. If it is too heavy, there is no mass overload command. lol If the pilot's hit rate is 50 to 70% then he is more interested in hitting harder than missing faster. For most people buying weapons, they look at two things, mass and max damage. For pilots that know what they are doing, they tend to place custom orders and specify what they want experimented and what results they are after. I am one of those that fire three weapons when I know I will hit. I prefer three hard hitting weapons that do consistent damage, close min/max. I run a decent equipped Krayt and my guns allways fire when I pull the trigger. I do not subscribe to the hold the fire key down while targeting the ship. It depends on style and and adversary.
Loki_Ashaman
Thu May 26, 2005 5:43 pm
#6
S-1-l2-H-C wrote:
you got it figured out, thats exactly what i look for when buying guns for new players im helping out (i use re myself). unfortunatly, most noobs just look at the max damage. i got into a conv with a really good SW on my server and told him that i thought his guns would be much better with a fast refire. his reply was he knew that guns were better that way but no one bought them, so he went back to buildingthe max damage guns.
Exactly, I build fast guns for myself, friends, and custom builds when I can. I put a few on my vendor, even naming them Spd Specials, but they always sell slower then the max-min weapons.
idolatry
Thu May 26, 2005 6:01 pm
#7
Loki_Ashaman wrote:
S-1-l2-H-C wrote:
his reply was he knew that guns were better that way but no one bought them, so he went back to buildingthe max damage guns.
Exactly, I build fast guns for myself, friends, and custom builds when I can. I put a few on my vendor, even naming them Spd Specials, but they always sell slower then the max-min weapons.
Maybe we should educate the pilots then How about I cross-post this on the Pilot/JTL forums?
How about I cross-post this on the Pilot/JTL forums?
IL-Vec
Thu May 26, 2005 8:24 pm
#8
Fishbreath wrote:
Whenever a Veteran, Elite, Ace pilot asks me to craft them a new gun, they ALWAYS ask for a re-fire less than 0.3.....they seem to like rapid fire over Min-Max damage also.......Iwould thinkthey know what they are are asking for.......so I will concur with your assessement.
so true picture 3 .27-.29 refire guns it's a hail of blaster fire hard to not connect with no gap in fire when finding sweet spot
scooterjes
Thu May 26, 2005 11:46 pm
#9
I like a mix 1 hard hitting slow gun and 1 fast lower dam gun on my opresser I have a nice 41k mass 4500 dam re10 gun a a crafted 3k dam .260 gun and that seems to work pretty well. I call the fast guns I craft gattling blasters and unofficially a-wing killers. Those t5 a-wings are a royal pain to kill not hard just a pain.
Those t5 a-wings are a royal pain to kill not hard just a pain.
Drakkosith
Fri May 27, 2005 5:57 am
#10
Very Interesting, wouldn't it make more sense though to go with Energy per Shot vs. the shield/armor effectiveness? Might get those few precious extra shots squeezed from the capacitor. Have you tried going with a Max Damage Upgrade and then all experimentation in ROF and EPS?
I see a lot of people maxing out min and max damage stats with experimentation points, and I found that's the single worst way to go. I've always had a sneaking suspicion that ROF was the key stat in crafted guns.
These guns are all Mid-grade blasters, crafted from identical resources, using identical factory-created Quick Shot Upgrades.
What I found was that the best combination was to max outRefire Rateand then split the remaining experimentation points between vs. Armour and vs. Shields. This gives better than a 5% boost to Damage Per Second over maxing out max and min damage.
That may not sound like much, but it looks like that's not a linear progression as you go up to higher level guns. Preliminary results show an almost 15% increase in DPS for Mark V blasters. That works out to be better than 500 Damage Per Second, which is a big margin.
Now, this is obviously not going to help mass or energy consumption at all. But I've found that most customers, like me, will sacrifice those stats in order to get better damage output.
Any thoughts? Comments?
Reek12
Fri May 27, 2005 12:35 pm
#11
Another problem with this is a lot of pilots don't know about the different programs they can use, or know that they can even use chips that other alignments program for them. So when you give them a nice fast gun, they drop their capacitor down to 0 in a few seconds, heh.
Personally I will be offering probably 2/3rds of my weapons min/max'd and 1/3rd of them with speed.
idolatry
Fri May 27, 2005 2:03 pm
#12
Drakkosith wrote:
Very Interesting, wouldn't it make more sense though to go with Energy per Shot vs. the shield/armor effectiveness? Might get those few precious extra shots squeezed from the capacitor. Have you tried going with a Max Damage Upgrade and then all experimentation in ROF and EPS?
Now, this is obviously not going to help mass or energy consumption at all. But I've found that most customers, like me, will sacrifice those stats in order to get better damage output.
Not for my goal. I wanted to see if I could increase the DPS beyond what I was currently acheiving. Experimenting on EPS isn't going to change that, and with droid programs the way they are currently, you're never going to bleed your capacitor dry anyway.
I'd say that the Max Damage Upgrade would hurt the overall DPS, because it'll lower the Min Damage at the same time, leaving the overall average pretty much the same.
vs. Armour and vs. Shields are much more important, I think, because they determine what % of your damage does anything at all. Having 0.45 vs. means that 55% of your damage isn't doing anything. I haven't tested it, but I'd guess that experimenting on vs. would raise your damage per shot more than upping min/max damage.
idolatry
Fri May 27, 2005 2:13 pm
#13
idolatry wrote:
vs. Armour and vs. Shields are much more important, I think, because they determine what % of your damage does anything at all. Having 0.45 vs. means that 55% of your damage isn't doing anything. I haven't tested it, but I'd guess that experimenting on vs. would raise your damage per shot more than upping min/max damage.
Quoting myself again, what does that say about my mental state?
So just re-ran the numbers, with interesting results. Now, this is all Damage Per Shot, not damage per second (which is what I was looking at originally).
Maxing out vs Armour and Shield and maxing out min/max damage has the same effect on Damager Per Shot. Which, I guess, proves again that ROF is more important than anything for damage per second.
Those same mid-grade blasters as above, just calculated damage per shot as well.
Blaster #2 (maxed vs and rest into ROF): 360.629 damage per shot
Blaster #7 (maxed Max/Min Damage): 360.866 damage per shot
Blaster #4 (my pick for highest per Second): 345.924
It'd be interesting to see what the Max Damage Upgrade does to these numbers, but I'm still not convinced it wouldn't hurt things by leaving the average damage the same.
Message Edited by idolatry on 05-28-2005 10:16 AM
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