Shipwright Archive

what is the exact calculation for DPS anyway?

As a Novice SW and a 4444 pilot (Just killed my 30 in Kessel) Weapon choice has been a big issue. I've only been in the game about 2 months and am still learning a lot. I've not had any weapons custom made (didn't ever think of asking) but have used Looted or Purchased weapons (Some at very high prices). I currently run an X-wing with all three weapons filled. I don't recall the exact numbers but they are something like this 14.5 mass, 15k-25k damage, .3 refire. Two of my weapons have .9 vs Shield and One has .9 vs Armor. These have been the best weapons I've used. I've even tried 2 weapons with 20k-35k damage, .62 vs Shield/Armor, .35 refire and didn't like them nearly as much.

What I think I would like best is something with 15-25k damage, .25 refire and .9 vs Shield in one gun and a .9 vs Armor in another. Well, I think.......

My question to all you old timers, how well does the higher vs Shield/Armor rate? Does it help in any way? My logic behind finding guns with this setup is that if I can pound more damage against one or the other the DPS is higher. I don't have the knowledge to know how to crunch the numbers to tell if this is a true theory or not. Can any one elaborate?

Thanks

Sterin Taitwora

Chalistra

Aliance Pilot 4444

Novice SW

MA

Scout 4010 (Mask Scent works so nice when gathering resources)

and a few other meaningless skills....)

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Kaleborn wrote:

My standard formula for weapon performance over time:

1. (Min. Dmg + Max Dmg) / 2
2. Multiply the resultby your average armor/shield penetration
3. Divide that result by your refire rate to get the DPS (assuming the refire rate is a percentage, ie: 0.28 = 28% of 1.0 second?)

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That's the correct formula. Keep in mind that Weapon Overload 3 doubles your gun's damage, so you can multiply your result by 2 if you want to figure that it. Also, there's a 25% damage reduction in PvP.

Why not add a DPS stats on weapons to help us to choose between few guns ?

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Nvim wrote:

If you push fast guns you need an amazingcapacitor to go with it. Good DPE guns are not as capacitor dependant. If your market is ace pilots that can't hit the side of a small planet then that is a pretty small market.

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Have a look at the crafted capacitor thread that's been going parallel to this. Crafted capacitors are now significantly better.

Using Capacitor Overcharge 4, we can now get Mark I crafted capacitors to 1700+ energy and 60+ recharge. That's just Mark I; it goes up from there. It's going to take a long, long time to bleed that capacitor dry, even with a couple of rapid firing guns. You add Weapon Overcharge 3 into the mix, and you literally cannot run out of capacitor energy.

Lithium totally and completely ate my post. and it was long.

/cry

I'll sum up:

DPS doesn't mean everything. The key question to ask in determining "best" experimentation on a given weapon is this:

Can I sustain damage on the target over time?

If not, you probably want the higher damage per shot. If so, then DPS is your friend. The reason being, that a High DPS becomes more and more meaningless the longer you spend firing without applying it. There's sustained damage, and then there's burst damage. People who are good shots against a target sustain their damage over time, poor shots do damage in bursts. there are many factors determining who is a poor shot and who is a good shot, and it's not really important. It's important when choosing experimentation that one knows the answer to the above question.

this is rarely of particular use in general business. People buy what they buy and order what they order. However, we all have special cases, where we know a pilot well... a pilot that's willing to discuss what they need. In these instances, all this becomes invaluable. (Hint: for us Pilot/Shipwrights, this applies MOST profoundly to your best customer: yourself.)

What you need to know from the pilot is a simple estimate, though the more accurate(ironically) it is, the better. You need to know what kind of accuracy they average. IMPORTANT!!!: This is NOT a shot percentage. "I miss 4 out of five shots" is WORTHLESS for these purposes(excepting in that you can calculate what you really want to know, if you know their current gun's speed). What you need to know is a stastistic that more accurately reflects the reality of piloting: Time-based accuracy. Don't ask what the person's estimated percentage of hits is. Ask them instead "Of the time you spend firing, roughly how long on average so you spend hitting?" This is an important distinction, as I'll get into. An estimate is fine, and suggest they pay attention to hit to get a rough idea if they don't know. Why? Well, let's take a case in point:

Let's say I have a customer that guesstimates that of a five-second window of firing on a target Teir 5 fighter(which is what she usually hunts), she probably spends 1 second of it actually hitting, on average. She's not a bad shot, the darn things are just really fast. So, We're looking at a pair of choices. One is a DPS-experimented gun, with a speed of, say, .3. The other is a Shot Damage gun, speed of .45 or so. In five seconds of fire, the .3 fires 16 shots, and the .45 11. In the one second of time it's actually in a position to hit the target, the .3 scores 3 hits, and the .45 scores two. 3/16 shots is around a 19% accuracy-over-time, and 2/11 is 18%. the practical upshot of this, is that unless the difference in average damage output(NOT damage-per-second!) between the two weapons is less than 1%, then the DPS-experimented gun will not be sustaining damage long enough to outdamage the Damage-experimented gun over the long run. In other words, if you're not getting many shots in, it's best to make them count. As your accuracy goes up and the ability to sustain damage goes up, so does the desirability of a high DPS weapon.

Naturally, None of this is saying "experiment this or that". this is the practical side of experimentation concerns. This helps make a decision between high damage-per-shot or high DPS. It's relatively straightforward to run numbers to determine what lines get you the desired result, once you know what you want. the trick is.. DPS or Damage? It's a real choice, to be honest, because DPS as it's discussed here is only an estimated base, and it's the practical damage ability that a Pilot lives and dies by. As with ALL things in Shipwright(in my opinion)...

It depends.

PS: I'm not a particularly talented statistician, having only taken some college classes many years ago. So my logic behind these calculations may be wildly erroneous. Hoever, my experience in dealing with my regular customers and my own experience piloting craft has supported the belief that it works-- of the 20 or so people that have taken the time to give me accuracy estimates in seconds as above, only 2 felt their fights weren't noticably shorter with a change of weapon to suit the results, and those two didn't report an increase. Heisenberg might apply here, but that's getting too elaborate for me to care about in a game I play for fun. Point of fact, I've probably made a huge fallacy in reasoning here somewhere, but I suspect I'm just attempting to verify something known to be true-- Sustained damage is necessary for DPS to win out over raw damage output. the less you can sustain, the worse a DPS gun gets.

Once i take ppl up on my YT where i have .260 guns installed. Most ppl order a set right then and there.

On AhaziI've gotten to .25 refire on my lvl 9 guns, and about .256 or so on my lvl 7's. They sell faster than I can make them @ 10ish cpu.

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Nvim wrote:

If you push fast guns you need an amazing capacitor to go with it. Good DPE guns are not as capacitor dependant. If your market is ace pilots that can't hit the side of a small planet then that is a pretty small market.

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I use 3 crafted weapons w/quickshot on my Rhixyrk with an RE'd cap and a crafted reactor. When I use Cap Overload 2 and Weapon Overload 3, I NEVER run out of power. Even when I use Cap-to-Shield shunt, and am holding down the fire button, the cap refills pretty quickly. Is WO3 still bugged?

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Br-10n wrote:

Is WO3 still bugged?

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Yes, WO3 is still bugged. Once it gets fixed the Energy Per Shot stat on guns will become much more important. The capacitor overcharges are also probably bugged. They don't use any extra energy to run, meaning that everyone who's in the know just runs CO4. Even with three level 10 guns in my Krayt I can fire idefinately with an RE'd level 6 cap, WO3, and CO4.