samjones wrote:Someone should go through and calculate ships on damage per second. The red-tail will outpace most everything with its .4. Voltan A, which is a great ship, has only about .23 or so, and it's almost completely sunk by level 2 shields. I think normal with the red tail is easier than easy with the rock, the engi b or a few other of the starting ships.
Damage per second is meaningless. Due to the presence of shields, what's very important is damage per volley. Recharge rate is also important, but you can't straightforwardly compare the effectiveness of two different weapon setups by looking at a single number. Especially when you consider the differing effects of different kinds of weapons.
To go all mathematic on this, you would always equate the weapon speeds to the slowest weapon in a volley.
Also important would be to first consider number of shots(because shields) and damage second.
With decent ion weaponry you could estimate how long it takes to down the shields and then apply dps of the other weapons.
Rockets/Bombs I would only consider in how fast they can damage shields.
Seems a bit complex all in all.
I'm saying there isn't a single number you can calculate and point to as dps as it varies immensely on a number of factors, especially how many shield bars the enemy has. Say you compare the default red tail loadout vs a single burst laser mk III. The more shield bars the enemy has, the better the mk III is in comparison. If you are using mixed weapon types you wouldn't just want to calculate how long it takes to take out the shields first so they can all hit, as you'd likely have other priorities, like hitting the piloting or weapons. Not to mention the enemy dodge chance to complicate things (how do you compare the dps of laser weapons with a 100% accurate glaive beam, especially considering the variable number of rooms hit.)
Some weapon setups are clearly better than others, but you can't clearly quantify by exactly how much, and in some cases it will be debateable and dependent on the enemy ship abilities.
Never said it was definite. Every weapon setup is different and therefore has differing strengths.
That doesn´t mean, however, that you can´t quantify power in an asymmetrical system.
Also the BL3 is more slot efficient, but only marginally better than 4 lasers until you hit enemies with 4 shields, because it is slower.
A Glaive Beam is freaking awesome, yes. It is though, not because of dps or damage per volley, but because it has a less pronounced weakness compared to the other beam weapons: It can penetrate 2 shield layers and is less dependant on other decent weapons to support it.
Anyway, I think it might be better to look at weapons more in terms of weaknesses that stop it from actually dealing damage.
As you said, weapons don´t deal dps in a vacuum. I agree with you there.
