Some laser/blaster questions if you please

[homeloard]

Gentle Persons....

I have looked but cannot get the search to locate any previous discussions and I am probably missing the obvious but I think these choices need better explanations.

 

First there seem to be three levels of protection, shields, hull and health or is it just shields and hull? The terms seem to be used interchangeably in some areas and not others. Do they relate in some way to each other?

 

On the Quad Laser Cannon, T5 choice: Hull damage @ 16% or Shield damage @ 18% As I understand it, you do not do hull damage until shields are down so choosing hull damage would need to be a follow on to a rotation that used something else to reduce shields like a rocket/missile hit. So if things work this way would it make more sense to choose shield damage over hull damage.

 

On the Heavy Laser Cannon there are two levels, in T4: Ignore 100% armor or Crit +3% & Tracking Penalty -5%. I would guess that the 100% Ignore is the best choice due to bypassing shields. If you take out the hull does that not kill the ship? Then in T5: Shield piercing +15% or Damage to Shield 18%. Would not shield piercing go hand in hand with the 100% armor ignore choice?

 

There are others but I believe clarification here would answer the theory, Thanks all for any time and effort.

[Drakkolich]

There is only 2 categories of "health" shields and hull. Once you kill all the hull points the ship explodes.

The Quads upgrade you asked about makes your lasers do more damage when attacking that type of "health", for example if you are shooting at someone with full shields and have the extra shield damage version, you will do more damage, but once they run out of shields and you are attacking their hull you will no longer receive that bonus.

 

The armor penetration on heavys relates to the damage reduction stat, which is considered the armor, basically that upgrade makes it so you ignore all of the opponents damage reduction. The shield penetration makes that % of your damage ignore shields and go straight for hull.

 

I hope that clears everything up and if not I have a thread called ask me anything up, feel free to just post tons of questions and I'll get to them all.

[Altheran]

Gentle Persons....

I have looked but cannot get the search to locate any previous discussions and I am probably missing the obvious but I think these choices need better explanations.

 

First there seem to be three levels of protection, shields, hull and health or is it just shields and hull? The terms seem to be used interchangeably in some areas and not others. Do they relate in some way to each other?

 

On the Quad Laser Cannon, T5 choice: Hull damage @ 16% or Shield damage @ 18% As I understand it, you do not do hull damage until shields are down so choosing hull damage would need to be a follow on to a rotation that used something else to reduce shields like a rocket/missile hit. So if things work this way would it make more sense to choose shield damage over hull damage.

 

On the Heavy Laser Cannon there are two levels, in T4: Ignore 100% armor or Crit +3% & Tracking Penalty -5%. I would guess that the 100% Ignore is the best choice due to bypassing shields. If you take out the hull does that not kill the ship? Then in T5: Shield piercing +15% or Damage to Shield 18%. Would not shield piercing go hand in hand with the 100% armor ignore choice?

 

There are others but I believe clarification here would answer the theory, Thanks all for any time and effort.

 

Since you have to hit shields before the hull, choosing shield damage is often considered as a better choice on weapons like Quad. However in theory hull damage is as viable as a choice. It depends mostly on like whether your targets often have full shields, or they regen shields easily, or if you rely on missile with a relatively long lock-on.

 

For Heavy, the armor ingore is not much better than the tracking penalty upgrade as for this weapon, tracking penalties add pretty fast.

For T5 upgrade, none of them is better with armor ignore than the other. Thematically, it makes sense for piercing shields and armor at once for "heavy" shots, but that's it. The left one will help you to save time and kill quicker if the target have been heavy damaged before and intiate and maybe win attrition wars. However if you plan to taking down a relatively fresh ship from high hull to zero, in one run (as opposed to attrition wars in multiple runs) it won't help.

At the same time, the right one will help you kill faster as long the targets has shields, regardless the hull is already heavy damaged or not, but obvioulsy, the gain disminises as the shields are already damaged when initiating your assault.

 

If I'd were to put it simply, take what you want. It's maybe slightly safer to take shield damage for Quad, but for Heavy, really take what you want.

Edited May 30, 2014 by Altheran

[Ramalina]

Gentle Persons....

I have looked but cannot get the search to locate any previous discussions and I am probably missing the obvious but I think these choices need better explanations.

 

First there seem to be three levels of protection, shields, hull and health or is it just shields and hull? The terms seem to be used interchangeably in some areas and not others. Do they relate in some way to each other?

 

On the Quad Laser Cannon, T5 choice: Hull damage @ 16% or Shield damage @ 18% As I understand it, you do not do hull damage until shields are down so choosing hull damage would need to be a follow on to a rotation that used something else to reduce shields like a rocket/missile hit. So if things work this way would it make more sense to choose shield damage over hull damage.

 

On the Heavy Laser Cannon there are two levels, in T4: Ignore 100% armor or Crit +3% & Tracking Penalty -5%. I would guess that the 100% Ignore is the best choice due to bypassing shields. If you take out the hull does that not kill the ship? Then in T5: Shield piercing +15% or Damage to Shield 18%. Would not shield piercing go hand in hand with the 100% armor ignore choice?

 

There are others but I believe clarification here would answer the theory, Thanks all for any time and effort.

 

I'll structure my answer a bit differently, though the underlying info is the same as Drakkolich's.

 

Hull, is the actual ship. If it goes to zero, your ship blows up and you have to respawn in a new ship.

 

Shields are your standard sci-fi force field that protect your hull from getting damaged. They recharge fairly quickly. When your shields are gone, all damage done goes directly to your hull.

 

Health is usually the combination of your hull and shields, but depending on the context may only mean one or the other. In some cases there are situations where people talk about effective health which usually means that you're in the realm of advanced theorycrafting, where it's handy to have a graphing calculator and math textbooks close at hand.

 

Shield piercing weapons do some damage to the shield and some to the hull, shield ignoring weapons do all of their damage to the hull. The percentage on a shield piercing weapon is the percent that goes through the shield to damage the hull.

 

Armor reduces the amount of damage done to the hull by a percentage. The exception is if weapons have armor piercing or armor ignore (which are the same thing). Armor piercing completely negates the damage reduction of armor, there is no partial piercing like there is for shields. One thing about armor that confuses some people at first is that of the components in the armor component slot, only Deflection Armor gives the hull damage reductions. The other armor components don't give hull damage reduction, and so are not affected by armor piercing.

 

Evasion is a percentage chance that a weapon that has an accuracy rating will miss if fired at the target with evasion. Missiles and mines ignore evasion. Evasion is a powerful defense, and is best at relatively high levels that are easiest to get on scouts and some kinds of gunships.

 

When selecting ship components upgrades to defenses come out of a budget that is shared between Shields, Evasion, and Armor. Meaning that if you get a lot of one, you'll have less of the others. There are hull strength upgrades giving increased hull points that also come out of this budget, but for some math related reasons, usually aren't a very good choice.

 

The general rule is that evasion is good for scouts, the Quarrel and Mangler gunships, and ok for strikes. Shields are good for strikes, gunships and bombers. Armor is good for a specific bomber build, and strikes specially built to counter that bomber build.

 

Most of this is covered at length in Statsie's guide to GSF thread here on the forums. It's a lot to read, but well worth it if you're just starting out.

 

As far as the blaster questions go, it depends to a great deal on what build of ship you're flying, what you're shooting at, and what your flying style is. Answers may change depending on those factors.

 

Personally I tend to run armor ignore and shield piercing on heavies, and shield damage on quads.

Edited June 1, 2014 by Ramalina

[homeloard]

To all, thank you, it does make sense and clears up some ambiguity.

C

[mr_sim]

Ok so you have a 3 tier defense and certain classes have greater or lesser amounts of each.

 

First defense tier is Evasion which is basically miss chance. Evasion is an RNG(random number) based and is a debuff stat vs your opponents accuracy. So most weapons have 90% accuracy meaning they miss 10% of the time. Your evasion rating further increases the percent chance of a miss.

 

Evasion is the primary defense of the scout. Also weapons such as burst laser cannon(BLC) have 125% accuracy so only very high evasion can make them miss, fortunately they have shorter range.

 

Next we have Shields. Shields are not RNG based either and are conventionally impenetrable until they are depleted. However there is shield pierce, shield bleed through, and shield penatrators.

 

Shield penatrators are fairly simple the torpedos in GSF do zero shield damage and do direct damage to hull. I frequently destroy ships with ~75% hull and full shields with protons.

 

Shield pierce and shield bleed through are essentially the same thing a percentage of damage is not absorbed by the shields and does hull damage. Shield pierce is an attack buff and bleed through is a consequence you get with equiping defection armor.

 

Your last tier is your Hull. Here you have 2 factors, damage reduction (armor) and HP (health). Damage reduction is simple reduce hull damage by so much percent, This is what armor bypass is used on.

 

Hope this clears up your defense question I'll tackle weapons choice next.

[mr_sim]

Ok the good news and bad news is there are no right choices in GSF there are a few choices many will argue are wrong however.

 

I keep many things in mind when choosing which buff and which weapon, the most important is what 2 weapons are you combining. The second rule I follow is when in doubt always choose Crit. Lastly I ask myself how am I using this weapon.

 

Here's an example: I arm a scout with cluster missiles so I should expect my clusters to be doing the bulk of the shield damage I'm dealing. Therfore I should want my lasers to focus on hull damage as shield damage buffs would be wasted if the shields are already mostly depleted. However maybe I spend all day circling nodes trying to kill Bombers and I never get a lot of missile locks in such a case maybe I chose armor bypass with shield attack and only use lasers to get my bomber kill.

 

Here's another example: my proton torpedo reduces my target to 25% hull but they still have full shield so I know I'm not likely going to get another torpedo off so I choose a different weapon. However all other weapons must get past the shields, if they have full shields but low health after torpedo hits then I must focus on doing shield damage.

 

Generally I would want to go with hull damage as missiles are more likely to hit shields leaving the hull for the lasers.

 

Now we get to the special case heavy laser cannons (HLC). The logical build is pick tracking + Crit "when in doubt chose Crit". The reason for that rule is unlike the ground game most weapons have 0% Crit chance by default, so you cannot Crit unless you equip Crit. Therefore if you are using HLC against other players then Crit is more globaly effective.

 

There is however an exception, turrets. Turrets have massive amounts of damage reduction in fact they are quite soft HP wise. If you primarily use HLC to kill turrets or Bombers then you absolutly want armor bypass.

 

One last bit of wisdom. Scouts have very weak shields but the other 3 classes have basically the same amount of shields, however strike fighters are built to regenerate shields while Bombers and GS are more build to make what shields they have last longer. So against strikes rapid shield destruction is a must but against Bombers and GS shield collapse is inevitable but hull defeat is the challenge.

Edited May 31, 2014 by mr_sim