weapon reload

(particularly 0)

So I'm very curious about weapon reload rates, since they have quite a bit to do with how effective a particular weapon is. In particular, does anyone know how fast a cannon-style weapon with a reload of 0 actually fires (e.g. Hail Chaingun)? I assume that the engine doesn't allow the weapon to fire more than once each frame, so it would be essentially the same as a reload of 1.

Next, reload for beams - the Bible doesn't specifically comment on reload as it affects beams, at least not that I've found. How fast does the engine make the beam do damage to a ship? Does it do the beam's damage to the opponent once for every frame they sit getting hit by it? If so, does the reload number affect that at all? For example, the CPL has a reload of 15, but I don't think that means it only does its damage to an opponent once every 15 frames. Anyone know the details on this?

Thanks to anyone who might be able to answer these for me.

Reload reffers to how many frames the weapon pauses before firing again. A reload of "0" means the weapon fires every frame. A reload of "1" means it waits one frame between shots.

Okay, that does make sense. Any ideas on how quickly damage is added up for beams and how that relates to the reload setting?

Thanks very much, Eugene Chin.

I believe the damage is taken as damage per frame -- so it's that many shield or armor units that are destroyed per frame.

Depends on the reload time also, I think. Don't quote me on that.

Thanks, both. I think that it must be damage/frame as Firebird suggested - I feel like reload must do something different than change the number of frames.

By way of example, a BRL has a reload of 0 and energy damage of 4, which should mean that it does 4 damage in each frame. As contrast, a CPL does energy damage of 8 and has a reload of 15. If the reload affects how often beams cause damage to an opponent, then you would expect this to mean that the CPL would do 8 damage once every 15 frames. Since the BRL would be doing 4 damage during each of those 15 frames, a BRL would do a total of 60 damage during the time it took the CPL to do 8 damage.

Because the BRL is clearly not doing 7.5 times the damage that a CPL does in the same amount of time (as we have probably all subjectively experienced while playing), it appears to me that reload can't affect beams the same way that it affects projectiles. See my dilemma?

Well, if anyone else has any thoughts on this, please feel free to weigh in - I expect to keep checking back on this until there's some consensus on beam damage. Thanks again.

Reload affects how often a beam can fire. Beams can have a lifespan greater than 1 frame. Beams deal their damage each frame that they are visible. A beam with count of 5 and reload of 10 would be visible for 5 frames, then not for 5 frames, I believe.

Decay and some other fields can affect how long a beam stays on screen. There recently was a topic in this forum exploring just how, exactly, beams work.

The BRL stays on-screen for some time after each time it fires, once every 15 frames, dealing its damage every frame it's visible, unless decay also affects beam damage.

Thanks, Weepul 884. I did search to see if I could find anything, but I didn't have luck - I'll look again. In any case, thanks for clearing it up.

Beams seem to deal their damage for each frame that a beam is touching a ship, regardless of the reload rate. Note, however, that this is per beam that is on the screen. For example, if a reload 0 beam does not have the fire simultaniously flag checked, there will only be one beam on-screen at a time (in 1.0.8. I just found out the hard way that 14 ion cannons does the same damage as 1 ion cannon. 3.5 million credits down the drain...).

I think I'll check on how decay affects beams.

Really? So if a beam has 5 damage, 1 count, and 2 reload, it does 5 damage per frame rather than 10 damage every other frame? Interesting.

This is illustrated with the Multi-beam in PlugPack. Also, I was going to post what Weepul said, but I couldn't articulate my thoughts. Yeah, I'm cool.

orcaloverbri9, on Feb 1 2005, 08:52 PM, said:

Really? So if a beam has 5 damage, 1 count, and 2 reload, it does 5 damage per frame rather than 10 damage every other frame? Interesting.
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Uh...neither. It'll deal 5 damage for every frame it's visible. It'll be visible for 1 frame every time it fires, and it fires every 3rd frame (since reload is the time between firings).

...In theory.

Edwards, on Feb 1 2005, 04:21 PM, said:

Note, however, that this is per beam that is on the screen. For example, if a reload 0 beam does not have the fire simultaniously flag checked, there will only be one beam on-screen at a time (in 1.0.8. I just found out the hard way that 14 ion cannons does the same damage as 1 ion cannon. 3.5 million credits down the drain...).
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Yes. And having 8 beams on screen at once runs a bit choppily. Argh. How hard would it be to affect the damage a beam does based on how many times per frame it ought to be firing?

Then again, I shouldn't even pretend to understand programming; how having multiple beams could lead to an exponential damage bug escapes me...

This post has been edited by Weepul 884 : 02 February 2005 - 05:32 AM

Edwards, on Feb 1 2005, 11:21 PM, said:

Beams seem to deal their damage for each frame that a beam is touching a ship, regardless of the reload rate. Note, however, that this is per beam that is on the screen. For example, if a reload 0 beam does not have the fire simultaniously flag checked, there will only be one beam on-screen at a time (in 1.0.8. I just found out the hard way that 14 ion cannons does the same damage as 1 ion cannon. 3.5 million credits down the drain...).

I think I'll check on how decay affects beams.
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That doesn't seem to make sense. Are saying you'd get more damage if you changed the reload to 1?

Thank you for mercilessly shattering everything I thought I knew about beams. I think I'll have to test this myself. And to begin with, this will mean downloading the 1.0.8 update (yes, I know, I'm late...)

Guy, to answer your question, no, but if you make the Lifecount greater than one, you will get LifeCount beams on the screen.

Now, to explain what's going on in more general terms:
The only effect of having multiple non-simultanious weapons is that the reload time is divided by the number of weapons and the BurstCount is multiplied by the same. This means that if you have a single weapon with a reload of 20, two will have a reload rate of 10, four will have a reload rate of 5, etc. However, a non-simultanious weapon cannot fire more than one shot per frame.
The result is that once you have enough weapons to have an effective reload of 0 (or 1, depending on how the game rounds), getting more merely increases the time between burst reloads (if applicable).

A note on burst reloads:
If you have one weapon with a burst reload, and it has the "Uses Ammunition on Burst Reload" flag set, it will use one unit of ammunition every time it fires BurstCount shots.
If you have more than one, it will multiply the number of shots between reloads by the number of weapons you have, but it will still use one unit of ammunition every time you fire BurstCount shots.

And Weepul, you mentioned that 8 beams runs choppily. Try 14 .

This post has been edited by Edwards : 02 February 2005 - 09:06 PM

Ah, I see. So the way to make multiple non-simultaneous beams effective is to increase both the reload and the count so that one beam will still do the same amount of damage but multiple beams will be able to add together.

Edwards, on Feb 2 2005, 06:32 PM, said:

However, a non-simultanious weapon cannot fire more than one shot per frame.

Is this true for projectile weapons, as well? I suppose it is, considering having multiple hail chainguns makes you fire for a longer period of time, whereas if it fired faster (ie. more than one projectile per frame) as well, it'd have the same time taken per burst but more shots within it.

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And Weepul, you mentioned that 8 beams runs choppily. Try 14 .
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I've tried many more.

Yes, it is true for projectiles (I found that out with the tracking turret; it didn't show up as solid when I didn't have the "Simultanious Fire" flag checked, and I had more than one exit point).

Also, you do not need to increase the reload rate to increase the power of the beams (actually, that will end up decreasing the total damage output, as it will reduce the number of times the beam will fire again while it is still on-screen).

So in 1.0.8 there's effectively no difference between 1 ion cannon and the 8 ion cannons mounted on the Manticore, because the reload rate is already 0? Suddenly the "Crown of Thorns" is much less impressive. I wonder whether ATMOS intended this, or whether they were just accustomed to the additional damage of multiple beams (which was being caused by a bug)?

Weepul 884, on Feb 2 2005, 06:30 AM, said:

Uh...neither. It'll deal 5 damage for every frame it's visible. It'll be visible for 1 frame every time it fires, and it fires every 3rd frame (since reload is the time between firings).

Sorry I didn't make this clear - I meant having two beams like that.