Weaponsmith Archive

Weapon Decay Rate vs Slicing/Powerups

So if powerups do cause weapons to decay faster, the real question is are they worth it?

with a 30% Max Damage / 15% Min Damage powerup, one should be able to kill things with 20% fewer shots, if not 30%. That wouldn't make up for the extra damage the gun takes, but it'd help a bit.

But, if you can kill things quicker, you can make money quicker. And you also take less damage in combat, so you need to tip less at the cantina and medical centre. And you die a little less often too. Powerups have saved my life on several occasions.

And what about the feeling? There's nothing quite like the feeling of taking out a yellow with a single headshot from a Laser Rifle at 63m. The only way I can ever do that is with a powerup on it. (I'm only Marksman 3/3/4/3)

And, BTW, most weaponsmiths repairthe guns they build for free anyway, so unlessthey're using a pre-nerf FWG5 built with krayt tissues (and therefore don't want it do lose a little each time it's repaired) there's no real need for the customer to worry.

Powerups are worth it! Especially for non-elite-class Masters and newbies!

ee-Jaasz Teguu

Master Weaponsmith, Olympus, Corellia, Gorath

I have always understood that weapon decay is based on the damage dealt by the weapon. So a slice will decay the weapon faster in that it's increasing the damage output, as will a powerup (even HAM cost powerups do so by letting you spam specials faster, and range mods cut down on misses). In the above post I think thedata sample size was too small, and too little information was given. Was it a damage boostingpowerup? What was the difference in damage between the sliced and unsliced vibroknuckler? Why did he do 100 hits with the powerup on, but only 20 hits with the powerup off? Did he test with a powerup that boosted damage and one that didn't (maybe one that boosted range, etc)?

Have the decay based on damage dealt by the weapon would make more logical sense to me than what was suggested in that post.Armor decayhas been confirmed to bebased on the damage that gets through the armor, whichI can easily prove by wearing my friend's pair of 100% composite gloves which NEVER loses durability (except of course to the stupid decay rules). I think the best way to test this would be to take a low damage weapon, and a high damage weapon of the same type and do a similar test, doing 100 hits for all situations (sliced/unsliced, with/without powerup). I don't really plan to bother testingmyself though, I'm fairly confident that the test done in the above post doesn't disprove what I've believed all along and will continue telling this to my customers and friendsunless I see some evidence to the contrary.