SE4 weapon index

[Urendi Maleldil]

Does anyone here use an index to rate the effectiveness of weapons in SE4?

For example:

Weapon Index = Damage / Reload / Tonnage * Range

Probably not the most effective since it doesn't take into account to-hit bonuses, weapon cost, damage decay, supply usage, or durability.

[Slick]

The most common I've seen is damage/(turn * kt).

In unmodded SE4, there are only a few weapons that have bonuses so that isn't normally used.

Throwing range in there would kinda work too but there is lots of variability in how damage changes with range so this somewhat muddies the waters.

There is no real "best" weapon. Favorites are:

Phased Poloron Beams - skips normal shields, relatively cheap to research, relatively good range.

Anti Proton Beam - longer range advantage reaches out and touches enemy earlier, usually.

Depleted Uranium Cannon - can't beat them for early firepower.

Shield Depleter - add to later designs, add them before other weapons so they fire first. Extends the life and effectiveness of other weapons.

Ionic Dispersers - leave your enemy immobile. No longer skips shields, but one of these on a ship will usually imobilize an enemy once shields are down.

A favorite research path for non-racials is to go with DUC in early game, PPB in mid game and SD/PPB or SD/APB in late game. At worst, you'd be average with this plan.



There are some good racial weapons and combos too:

Talisman with anything.

Crystal: Shield Depleters then Shard Cannon - removes shields quickly then skips armor. Deadly to organic enemies.

You get the idea; mix and match to get the best you can out of your racial weapons.

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However if you get fixated on any combo, your opponents can design ships that specifically attack your weaknesses and are resistant to your strengths. Best bet is to stay flexible and adapt to your enemies. Taking Religious is a sure way to get ganged up on by everyone before you can research the talisman, which many consider greatly unbalancing.

[Fyron]

There are not necessarily "best" weapons in stock, but there are a ton of useless ones.

If its a never-ending barrage of stats you desire, check out SJ's Weapon Stats app. It needs data files to work with, but you can quickly throw together a skeleton set: just write out the max level version of each weapon and tweak them til satisfied.

[Urendi Maleldil]

I was hoping someone would have a formula that could boil down weapon stats to a single number. I'm trying to make all the weapons in SE4 Advanced useful, so I need to be able to compare them all on the same level.

The formula I mentioned before seems to be working, but it's not perfect. (And since I'm no math whiz, I'm not even sure its accurate.)

[Urendi Maleldil]

I don't know how to express this mathematically, but maybe a Weapon Index (WI) number of 1 could equal a weapon with these characteristics:

10kT space
10kT structure
10 Normal damage at range 1
1 max range
.1 decay
10% to-hit bonus
1 reload rate
10 supply usage
10 each cost min, rad, and org

Using this hypothetical weapon as a base and some mathematical formula to boil it down to one number, you could then use it to rate the effectiveness of all other direct fire weapons.

[Glyn]

I have an excel work sheet that has all the weapons, components, ship type data. It come in handy. I downloaded it from somewhere, but I can's seem to find where. It's name is SE4G.XLS


Unless you have a great to-hit advantage, for me it comes down to cost per point of damage. shield depleter and ripper beams.

( damage at range:0 / rof ) / total cost.


Also, Design your ships to be built in 3, 6, or 9 turns by your shipyards. That way you get the maximum build efficacy when you use emergency build.

[Fyron]

damage / size / rate

is the main formula for comparisons. You can't really factor range into it mathematically, because the effects of different ranges are very complex. They vary based on ship speeds, your to hit bonuses, the enemy's defense bonuses, etc. The same applies to factors like raw to hit bonus of the weapon. A weapon with a 10% bonus to hit isn't really 10% more powerful; in cases where you have higher hit rates, 10% bonus is very small. In cases where you have low hit rates, 10% can make a difference. Supply usage is a nice balancing factor (have heavy supply usage, strong weapons for system defense, and lighter weapons for long range tactics), but it doesn't factor into damage ratios mathematically. Same with cost; its a factor in economics, certainly, but weapons usually aren't the vast majority of the cost of ships. You can't really factor such things into one single formula.

This is why SJ's weapon stats program uses a bunch of different formulas to generate a wide array of stats; different formulas are useful for comparing relative strengths different situations. There is no single formula to rule them all. Balancing weapons is a complex affair that requires much play testing. Math can get you a good baseline, but it won't do everything for you.

[Kana]

I'm sure Fyron, AT, or SJ have some program or something that lets you plug in numbers, and spits out more numbers or something for you to compare weapons and such. Useful if you are going to balance stuff for you uber-mod.

[PvK]

I have some formulae for balancing for my Proportions mod.

Range and hit bonus and special abilities are important, but subjective and depend on conditions. Contrary to Fyron's thinking, I think a +10% to-hit bonus is usually worth MORE than a 10% increase in damage, because it is only when the chance is otherwise over 90% that it becomes useless. At lower to-hit chances (which is very common, especially at range), the percent increase is actually greater than the bonus %, because it is relative to the chance to hit that would otherwise apply. E.g. If you'd otherwise have a 20% chance to hit, a +10% will on average give you 50% more damage than without it. If the chance would be 80%, +10 increases damage by an average of 10/80 = 12.5%.

[Suicide Junkie]

It is also a good idea to reduce the to-hit modifiers across the game.
Base accuracy, range penalty, racial modifiers, weapon bonuses, mount bonuses, component bonuses.

I try to keep accuracy in the range of 50% +/- 25%...
That way, while damage is crippling, you do not have to give up hope of hitting until all your weapons are destroyed.