Beam Damage Quirks (EVO)

I've noticed that when I'm shooting sustained beams (with count values in the range of 30-60) that the weapon damage is rather high; one shot, which is what is fired during the entire count duration,doesn't do the amount of damage that it says it does.

Does anyone have a good idea about how the damage is calculated for these? Thanks in advance.

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Mike Lee (Firebird)

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Originally posted by Firebird:
**I've noticed that when I'm shooting sustained beams (with count values in the range of 30-60) that the weapon damage is rather high; one shot, which is what is fired during the entire count duration,doesn't do the amount of damage that it says it does.
**

Damage is applied once per frame.

mcb

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"If it's not on fire, it's a software problem."

Out of curiosity, what is the reload value for those beam weapons? I was under the impression that if the reload is less than the count for a beam weapon, the damage "stacks" from the multiple beams firing on top of each other. Not sure though.

Thanks Matt (hmm, every frame, that's a heck of a lot of damage there...).

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Originally posted by Starfish:
Out of curiosity, what is the reload value for those beam weapons? I was under the impression that if the reload is less than the count for a beam weapon, the damage "stacks" from the multiple beams firing on top of each other. Not sure though.

No, I'm not doing this (remember, EV and EVO only allow 8 beams on the screen, and I don't want to make it so AI ships can't shoot back). But, since you asked, I made it a reload of 50 and a count of 40.

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Mike Lee (Firebird)

Quote

Originally posted by mburch:
**Damage is applied once per frame.

mcb

**

Hmm...isn't it supposed to be 30 seconds per frame? My calculations don't seem to agree with that; I have a ship's shields damaged about 5% experimentally, but when I calculate the expected damage it comes out to somewhere around 10%.

Here's the details on my weapon:

Reload: 50
Count: 40
MassDmg: 4
EnergyDmg: 13
Type: Guided Beam

I'm firing this at a ship with 5400 shields for the results I mentioned above (those figures are rough estimates from visual observation, but there is enough of a discreptancy for me to be confused).

Although this isn't a factor, EVO corrects the damage formula and makes shield damage ED+MD/4 instead of ED+MD/2, right? I just want to make sure.

Thanks for the help.

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Mike Lee (Firebird)

Skyhawk speculated back in '99 that EV thinks there are 60 frames in a second due to a coding error.

-reg

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"Oh crap. I'm going to hell - I put the Bible next to Mein Kampf again."
-Her Holiness, Pope Jenne "Kirby" Hubbs

Quote

Originally posted by Regulus:
**Skyhawk speculated back in '99 that EV thinks there are 60 frames in a second due to a coding error.

-reg

**

Hmm, then my calculations would be even further off from what I seem to be observing...

Well, I'll try to run some tests and see what the real case is, derived experimentally.

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Mike Lee (Firebird)

Quote

Originally posted by Firebird:
**Hmm, then my calculations would be even further off from what I seem to be observing...

Well, I'll try to run some tests and see what the real case is, derived experimentally.

**

Well, after some testing, I'm still confused, though I can at least formulate some kind of guess as to how it's working. I fired a beam with 20 count, 5 energydam and 2 massdam at a ship with 110 shields, and it dropped the ship's shields down to 10%. That means that the amount of damage inflicted was about 100. However, according to the formula, the amount of damage should've been (5+2/4)20 = 110, meaning the ship should've been very nearly destroyed, if not fully.

The amount of deviation from the expected value was little, so the frame rate doesn't seem to be the problem here. I would postulize that the formula is indeed correct, but since the beam isn't calculated as hitting the ship every single frame (the beams sometimes goes wild anyway), the resulting damage is slightly less. I guess I'll have to live with this, and I'll just resort to real testing instead of trying to calculate my weapon damage values.

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Mike Lee (Firebird)