Ship Weapon Damage

good question. im assuming per salvo.

It is per salvo

Thanks for the info my GearHead brain is very happy.

On the topic of weapon damage, how rock/paper/scissors is Sins?

For instance, I see plenty of fighters, flak frigates, and siege frigates mixing it up in combat. Is damage from these guys calculated normally, or are there special multipliers for their attacks against fighters and planets? Should I not bother building fighters from my carriers if the other guy doesn't have any bombers or fighters to be countered? Are flak frigates useless -- or just a little useless -- against other frigates? Should I not bother focus firing against siege frigates until the "conventional" ships are already destroyed? How rigid and how under-the-hood is Sins' paper/rock/scissors structure?

-Tom

It's not very rock/paper/scissors. Ships have different armor types and different weapons do bonus damage to some types and less to others (prime example, flaks. They do a lot of damage to fighters and bombers, but less to other ships even though they have a high damage output listed), but there really is no such thing as a unit being completely ineffective against another.

Flaks/fighters are kind of special cases because fighters and bombers are simply can't be targeted by other ships, so because of that their counters are somewhat more pronounced.

Difference racial ships vary for their analogs as well. The TEC's LRM frigate for example has a very long range but doesn't do very good anti-capital ship damage, while the Vasari's Assailants have much shorter range but are very good anti-capital ships.

Sins is designed in such a way that pretty much all the ships are useful in a combat scenario (save colony ships, but that's understandable). Naturally, the ships wouldn't have any individuality to them if they all worked the same against everything, but it's really hard to find an example in Sins where you're completely screwed if you don't have an x number of one ship to counter y number of the enemy's.

Annatar is correct, there is a file in the game directory that shows the damage probability of each ships weapons.

Ugh, this is what I was worried about. How is a player supposed to know this? There's nothing in the tooltips about it, and no indication on the damage listing. I hate this sort of stuff being kept under the hood. Games like Age of Empires III and the Rise of... RTSs have an option for detailed ingame unit info that explains exactly what kind of damage a unit does, what units it's good against. Heck, I think even C&C3 does this! Without this info, a lot of the functionality (and personality!) these ships should have is hidden.

-Tom

well a lot of people are planinng manuals for post release\ which shold be pretty in depth

I thought the fact that Assailants are better vs capital ships stems from their shield penetrating researchable missile technology, not any innate hidden modifier. Which if so would fall more under the category of thinking about tactical uses for upgrades (a good thing) more than simply knowing obscure facts.

Maybe you are right though, and it is a hidden modifier, in which case yuck

Given the size of the manual in the release pics (have you seen that thing!) I'd imagine these kind of thing get a mention at least there. I'm in the same boat, though, hoping these kind of mechanics are more transparent in the final.

It may well be explained in the manual, I don't know. I know what you mean, though, and there's probably room on the infocard to include a "Good against: " and "Bad against: ", although that's a bit too absolute for Sins in a way.

That info, if true, is not in the manual. If the Vasari's missile frigates are strong vs. cap ships and the TEC's missile frigates are weak vs. cap ships, AFAICT, Ironclad isn't sharing this information with players. What's this file that lists damage values? I'd be curious to have a peek in there and see what I've been missing.

-Tom

I'll give you the example with the TEC and Vasari missile frigates. The files are in your Sins install/GameInfo folders. I think I heard that they were converted to binary in your build? Beta 4 build files are normal text, making it easy for reading.

From FrigatePhaseLongRange.entity (Vasari Assailant)

armorType "Light"
WeaponType "Missile"
damageEnums
AttackType "CAPITALSHIP"

From FrigateTechLongRange.entity (TEC LRM)

armorType "Light"
WeaponType "Missile"
damageEnums
AttackType "ANTIMEDIUM"

So basically, the Vasari frigate has light armor and deals anti-capital damage, and the TEC has light armor and deals anti-medium armor damage. I'm haven't dabbled in the files enough, but there should be a file for the different armor types also.

Just to fix this "issue", I hereby nominate one of my team members (you know who you are, oh hated one...) to work up a printable list of such info.

That said, I fully intend to include such information on the "main pages" themselves, even though it may be a little scattered around.

Hum I wonder if there will be UI only mods for SoaSE that way someone could make a UI mod that added in the Extra Information. Then again I have no idea if this is possible with SoaSE current mod system. But it would be cool to be able to make UI only mods like you can in Supreme Commander.

I personaly reckon its good the way it is with reseach and 'hidden' facts, its more to find out for yourself, and learn from
Example, went the Vasari once, and noticed that my Capital ship was winning against 2 TEC capitals (which were their best combat capitals). IM not gonna say that mine won, cause that'd be a lie, but it did take 1 out and did 70% damage to the other one, with only 2 supporting frigates, before I retreated my Capital and frigates
With that I then knew that the Vasari had heaps better combat capitals over the TEC

You also have to understand the vasari are supposed to have fewer but more powerful, and expensive ships than TEC. So i can see why the assailant was given anti cap missiles. I do agree however this info should be on the info cards, and/or build menu's.

Actually, yes it is.

Obviously we didn't want Sins to come across as a spreadsheet and things were still in flux, so we didn't use specific numbers. However, you can interpret ship strengths and weaknesses from the ship listings in the back of the manual - it's not just fluff text, I wrote out the various weapon info that way for a reason (and it's all based from the ship files mentioned above).

For a TEC Scout -

Armor Level: Very Low - that refers to the actual armor rating (i.e., TEC Scouts have a 2 I believe - this is shown on the InfoCard).

Armor Type - Light. That means the TEC Scout's armor class is light. It will take more damage from Heavy and Regular weapon types, less against Light weapons (since it's got Light armor).

Primary Weapon - Forward Pulse Laser.  If there's no Light or Heavy in front of it, this indicates it's a standard "Regular" class weapon. It will do more damage against Light armor types and less against Heavy or Capital Armor. The Type of weapon - Pulse Laser in this case - also indicates the weapon's strength and damage type (plus how it looks on-screen when it fires).

In Empires: Dawn of the Modern world, i know that when you hovered over a unit it would show in the bottom right corner its good versus x and bad versus y. You could really tell because it was pretty much a automatic win for the person who had the units good versus the other one, which made it very bad if someone else found out what was in your army and well, it ruined the fun sometimes. But also added if you had to quickly make new units to counter and so on...

The thing in Sins is that the weapon/armor differences are there, but they're subtle enough so that while that Vasari missile frigate is a bit better against capitals, it doesn't automatically suck at everything else. So putting a "good against" and "bad against" in its info card would be misleading and borderline false.

Most games that go the good against/bad against route make the "counters" much more pronounced than Sins does.

will we be able to download the manual or is it included in the game download?

A pdf will be included.

This all sounds good - a little r/p/s and a lot of emphasis on role-based ships to encourage combined arms, but not so much r/p/s that battles play like, well, r/p/s.

From what I've read, this is about as strong as "r/p/s" gets in the game:

- Strikecraft (Fighters/Bombers) do massive damage to ships with ArmorType:"Very Light"
- LRM frigates (or at least the TEC one) have ArmorType:"Very Light"
- LRM frigates (or any FF/CA/BB other than the flak FF and certain BB special abilities) cannot even shoot at strikecraft .
- Flak frigates tear strikecraft apart, but don't do much (anything?) to other ships, particularly at long range

So:
Paper = Flak frigates
Rock = Strikecraft
Scissors = LRM frigates

Of course, that neglects the many other uses of Strikecraft and LRM frigates, so it's kind of an island of r/p/s in a sea of more complex unit strategy.

Am I understanding things correctly, or am I way off base?

Thanks,
Keith

Actually, I think bombers for different races may do different damage types also, but I don't have access to the files right now to check.

In general, though, Flaks and Fighters/Bombers are sort of the "island", and it's the strongest noticeable counter system in the game. Fighters themselves aren't as effective against bigger ships as they are at shooting up other fighters and bombers, and flaks aren't as effective against similar sized ships as they are against fighters and bombers.

There are several armor types (and damage types) and different ships have different ones, so it's not just the LRM frigate that differs in this regard.

In general, though, you're understanding things pretty correctly - mainly, that the Flak vs Fighters/Bombers; Bombers vs bigger ships/structures; Fighters vs Bombers are the 3 more clear r/p/s aspects.

ohh yes lol thats what i wanted to hear i love reading the manual!