I got frustrated with the wiki's list of damage by range so I made my own chart in Google Docs.
Dunno how to make it more pretty here in the forums, it appears as either tiny or huge in my browser.
Happy to share the Google Doc. It imports the chart from the Wiki page so should auto-update when the Wiki pages does.
(EDIT: this post now has the latest chart)
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Pretty sweet. I thought bows hit much harder.
Per shot, the bows hit hard. But the huge warmup time makes them low hitters over time.
What surprised the heck out of me was the charge rifle. It's twice the DPS of almost all the other weapons within its range.
My chart's relying on the Wiki page's DPS (optimal) calculation which might be wrong. I'm going to refactor this with my own DPS (max) calculations.
I'm surprised minigun is as low as it is, and also surprised that charge rifle is as high as it is.
Nice graph. Most interesting to me is how closely the survival rifle matches the sniper rifle. If you're not using the sniper at max range, survival is almost strictly better. From a pure DPS per cost standpoint anyway.
On the subject, I found this video very informative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brFG-N2bpyo
Edited Chart.
I calculated my own DPS maximums and got slightly different results from the Wikipage. Charge rifle was slightly lowered and Assault Rifle significantly raised.
http://i.imgur.com/EaZXwAs.png (http://i.imgur.com/EaZXwAs.png)
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Quote from: Sola on January 21, 2017, 03:48:27 PM
I'm surprised minigun is as low as it is, and also surprised that charge rifle is as high as it is.
The minigun is top of this chart. Sorry the colors resemble the Heavy SMG.
Quote from: slamo on January 21, 2017, 04:27:01 PM
Quote from: Sola on January 21, 2017, 03:48:27 PM
I'm surprised minigun is as low as it is, and also surprised that charge rifle is as high as it is.
The minigun is top of this chart. Sorry the colors resemble the Heavy SMG.
Indeed it is at the top of the chart. The concern is that it's only marginally better than a charge rifle. I imagined that a point blank spinning barrel would unload much more damage than the energy cannon.
Third version, improved line styles and added labels.
X = tribal
▲ = modern single-shot
● = modern burst-shot
◆ = energy weapons
Heavy charge blaster is off the top of the chart around 30 DPS at most distances.
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Quote from: Sola on January 21, 2017, 04:46:40 PM
Indeed it is at the top of the chart. The concern is that it's only marginally better than a charge rifle. I imagined that a point blank spinning barrel would unload much more damage than the energy cannon.
Burst for burst, the Minigun theoretically does tons more damage than the Charge Rifle. If every burst of each weapon were to hit, the Minigun would be over 8x as powerful.
The problem is that the Minigun takes over twice as long to fire off a second burst and each shot is wildly inaccurate, so over time it's only 1.6x as damaging as the Charge Rifle at very close range.
Some other interesting take-aways:
The pump shotgun, assault rifle, and LMG are all essentially the same performance except for differences in range.
The survival rifle and sniper rifle are essentially the same performance except for range.
Tribal weapons are all crap.
An improvised turret gun is essentially a machine pistol on a stick and generally suck at targets unless they are under 10 range.
The heavy machine gun is a surprisingly good short range weapon when under 15 range.
The charge rifle is pretty awesome across its entire range.
There's no point in picking an assault rifle over a charge rifle unless you need to outrange an enemy.
The charge lance looks wimpy on this chart because of its really low fire rate. But when it finally does fire it can take off a limb or single-shot kill a colonist. But overall it performs exactly like a survival rifle over time.
Of course the charge rifle is so high. It's the most modern weapon a human can carry and its range sucks. The sniper and survival rifles performing equally in terms of DPS makes the survival rifle better not only in terms of cost. High fire rate, low damage is generally better. If a shot downs a pawn, you get a second shot off before the sniper rifle is reloaded. Also helps with recruiting pawns, because sniper victims often lack limbs. I usually go with a mix, because range.
@slamo: Might want to change your last sentence. The charge lance has insane damage per hit, like the sniper rifle ;)
Quote from: Thyme on January 22, 2017, 02:01:07 AM
@slamo: Might want to change your last sentence. The charge lance has insane damage per hit, like the sniper rifle ;)
That's what I said; the charge lance packs enough punch to take off a limb or make a one-shot kill. :)
But because of the low fire rate the CL delivers close to the same DPS as the survival rifle. CL can deliver 27 damage every 4.8 seconds. SR can deliver 18 damage every 3.2 seconds. Once accuracy is factored in they both deliver about 5±0.2 damage per second at ranges 25-37.
There might be tactical reasons to prefer one over the other in various circumstances, but DPS performance is basically the same.
It would be even better if weapon names were on the left, at the start of each line. Or at least list the weapons in the order they appear from top to bottom.
When DPS is the same, high damage weapons are better for mutilating, while low damage are better for incapacitating and causing bleeding.
Sadly it's a limit of Google Sheets that I can't attach labels to the lines.
The other suggestions were great, I updated the chart as best I could.
1. Charge rifle rules supreme, except against swarms where Minigun is good.
2. Heavy SMG, Machine Pistol and Pump Shogun *are* really good in their ranges, and deal noticably higher damage at closer ranges. Effective range is about 10.
3. LMG, Assault Rifle have an optimal range of about 15, then gradually lose oomph.
4. Survival Rifle, Sniper Rifle, Charge Lance suffer up close and need ranges of at least 20 to shine. Yet at ranges 20-30, assault rifle is the most effective except for Charge RIfle which is king up to about 23.
Now the last layers of obfuscation are weapon quality and hitpoints. What's better at range 25, a good assault rifle (79%), or a normal survival rifle (96%) ?
We need some kind of tool which can compare weapons in such scenarios.
Quote from: slamo on January 21, 2017, 05:13:44 PM
But overall it performs exactly like a survival rifle over time.
nope x)
I think weapon hit rates get multiplied with hitpoints. Anyway, it's always good to have higher quality and better condition. When equiping guns, I always manually check the hitrates (not only because I'm too dumb to remember which one is better: good/supr, poor/shoody).
If someone can post the formula for quality and hitpoint effects on weapon accuracy, I can chart a grid of DPS by quality and hitpoints at, say, range 15 for select weapons.
I'm gonna guess that every 10%-15% of health damage roughly equates one quality level but I could easily be wrong.
Quote from: Thyme on January 22, 2017, 10:31:53 AM
Quote from: slamo on January 21, 2017, 05:13:44 PM
But overall it performs exactly like a survival rifle over time.
nope x)
Yep, as far as DPS is concerned, but nope as far as removing limbs is concerned. Is that more accurate?
The following values were taken from the ingame description. lots of short bows/knives were spawned with devtool. Left is guns, right is clubs:
70% - awful - 40%
80% - shoddy - 70%
93% - poor - 85%
100% - normal - 100%
105% - good - 110%
110% - superior - 120%
120% - excellent - 135%
135% - masterwork - 145%
150% - legendary - 155%
I advise against ploting all of that. You'd have to make a three-dimensional plot (excluding condition) which might be misleading. As these values are static among all guns (range is dynamic), it is eventually better to make a separate plot condition/quality where lines of equal hitrate lines are shown. (Guns are choosen by range requirements, individual guns by hitrate - at least, that's how I do it) Melee material also affects cooldown and damage.
Anything regarding weapon health effects on weapons? I don't have the time to try to decipher it from in-game tests.
EDIT: found it. 100 points of damage multiplies accuracy time .6, so 25 pts of damage multiplies accuracy by .9.
and now add in the spray pattern of the weapons
and Charge rifles are even FAR more superior to assault rifles in dps.
Here's Accuracy as a function of Quality vs Weapon Health for a Pistol at range 15.
Rule of Thumb: on average it takes 25 points of damage to a weapon to drop its accuracy by one quality level (a 0.9 accuracy multiplier).
But this is just an average; the actual quality levels are not equal steps. From Normal to Good and Good to Superior is only half the average quality jump; and from Excellent to Masterwork and Masterwork to Legendary is 1.5x the average quality jump.
So actual damage needed to reduce one quality level:
- Shoddy -25 pts = Awful
- Poor -32.5 pts = Shoddy
- Normal -17.5 pts = Poor
- Good -12.5 pts = Normal
- Superior -12.5 pts = Good
- Excellent -25 pts = Superior
- Masterwork -37.5 pts = Excellent
- Legendary -37.5 pts = Masterwork
However, the maximum accuracy is 100%, so weapons that have high accuracy (Sniper Rifle at Medium and longer) quickly max out when quality goes up. That means at range 15 there's no difference between an Excellent, Masterwork, or Legendary Sniper Rifle — they are all 100% accurate when at full health. But the Legendary Sniper Rifle could take an astounding 50 pts of damage before its accuracy begins to decline below 100%.
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I'm not sure if weapon accuracy really caps at 100%. In A15, the hitrate tooltip got weird with excellent sniper rifles and decent skilled colonists. Some effects weren't shown anymore, I think only shooter, but I didn't pay that much attention at this point of the game.
My rule of thumb:
a weapon of quality ONE level lower needs to have at least 12 more hit points to be more accurate.
It doesn't align perfectly, but it's a good estimate. Awful weapons need even more than 12 HP, masterwork and legendery even less. Fortunately this kind of thing can be checked easily in-game.
Quote from: Thyme on January 23, 2017, 02:39:13 AM
I'm not sure if weapon accuracy really caps at 100%. In A15, the hitrate tooltip got weird with excellent sniper rifles and decent skilled colonists. Some effects weren't shown anymore, I think only shooter, but I didn't pay that much attention at this point of the game.
Huh. The weapons' info screen shows the accuracy is capped at 100%. But the hit tooltip only displays weapon accuracy when the number is under 100%. Otherwise weapon accuracy just disappears from the tooltip (and maybe from the calculation), but the effective cap still seems to be 100%.
Maybe I was lucky to check the tooltip only with nice wheather.
How did you calculate DPS of burst weapons ? It's a simple matter with single shot weapons, but with burst weapon you can't just add warmup and cooldown times, you also need time between shots.
Quote from: b0rsuk on January 23, 2017, 01:24:14 PM
How did you calculate DPS of burst weapons ? It's a simple matter with single shot weapons, but with burst weapon you can't just add warmup and cooldown times, you also need time between shots.
I added the burst time — once per burst count.
Burst time doesn't appear to between shots it appears to be at the end of shots.
I thought your chart was with accuracy... Just raw dps isnt useful at all.
About the values, AFAIK the wiki was outdated in A16, which changed a lot of things, mostly ALL of the dps. You should get your data from the game.
Also accuracy between the values given (short-medium-long) is calculated with a basic interpolation. I just emphasize this but its also explained in the wiki.
I used FORECAST() for the accuracy interpolation between S-M-L. It's a straight line interpolation.
I can do a separate chart for accuracy instead of DPS. I wouldn't find that as useful but maybe other people will.
Raw DPS is plenty useful in certain circumstances.
I currently don't use killboxes but do use a "fire and retreat" method of taking out raids. If I want to know what the optimal weapon for popping out of a door, firing off a burst at range 12, and retreating, then the DPS is what I want.
Similarly if I want to know how a Survival Rifle performs at range 35 compared to a Sniper Rifle then this chart is useful. Same with answering the question of who would win in a range 25 firefight, Sniper Rifle or Assault Rifle? DPS at Range helps to answer that.
Quote from: Alenerel on January 23, 2017, 07:10:41 PM
About the values, AFAIK the wiki was outdated in A16, which changed a lot of things, mostly ALL of the dps. You should get your data from the game.
Got a method of extracting the data from the game in tabular form? I don't have a clue.
Or update the Wiki. My Google Sheet automatically updates when the wiki does.
Accuracy over Range Chart:
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I thought you were using only the dps over range, which would make no sense because it would be just one value... So I had a brain fart.
So then you used the accuracy*dps in each distance?
About extracting the values from the game, dev mode and check every weapon xD
Quote from: Alenerel on January 23, 2017, 10:34:10 PM
I thought you were using only the dps over range, which would make no sense because it would be just one value... So I had a brain fart.
So then you used the accuracy*dps in each distance?
About extracting the values from the game, dev mode and check every weapon xD
Sorry about your fart! Yes, it's accuracy*damage/time over range. Damage is max damage (if 100% hit rate), divided by time (warmup+(burstcount*bursttime)+cooldown) gives max DPS, accuracy is the interpolated accuracy at the given range.
Technically I guess I could have called it DPS by Accuracy at each Range.
If YOU want to extract all that data go ahead and then send it to me. Too much work for me, I'm lazy. =)
Quote from: Grishnerf on January 22, 2017, 11:08:53 PM
and now add in the spray pattern of the weapons
and Charge rifles are even FAR more superior to assault rifles in dps.
They are easily superior in DPS. ARs win out in range and also in windup/cooldown. The latter is pretty important for popping out of doors to take potshots on manhunters or raiders attacking walls/doors. AR can actually peak out, fire, and duck before a sniper can fire whatsoever, and if the enemy isn't "waiting" for you then it can trivially free-fire on almost any weapon and duck in time.
The machine pistol is even better in the free pot shots role but it doesn't have the range.
Quote from: slamo on January 23, 2017, 10:49:23 PM
Yes, it's accuracy*damage/time over range. Damage is max damage (if 100% hit rate), divided by time (warmup+(burstcount*bursttime)+cooldown) gives max DPS, accuracy is the interpolated accuracy at the given range.
Why warmup? That value only counts for the first shot after moving. If the pawn is static he doesnt need to warmup, just cooldown.
Quote from: TheMeInTeam on January 25, 2017, 11:39:44 AM
Quote from: Grishnerf on January 22, 2017, 11:08:53 PM
and now add in the spray pattern of the weapons
and Charge rifles are even FAR more superior to assault rifles in dps.
They are easily superior in DPS. ARs win out in range and also in windup/cooldown. The latter is pretty important for popping out of doors to take potshots on manhunters or raiders attacking walls/doors. AR can actually peak out, fire, and duck before a sniper can fire whatsoever, and if the enemy isn't "waiting" for you then it can trivially free-fire on almost any weapon and duck in time.
The machine pistol is even better in the free pot shots role but it doesn't have the range.
yeah all weapons have their use.
killing a mechapede with 1 guy and a machine gun/pistol is possible.
hopping in and out behind a Corner between the warmupp times of the centipede.
I've done the pop-out on centipedes with inferno cannon using an AR. It's not fun times though, takes forever. If you pause buffer like crazy you can use this technique for mech drops in-base. It's a bit thankless but it gets the job done.
yeah it takes a while, those tanky basterds. :D
Quote from: Alenerel on January 25, 2017, 02:20:42 PM
Why warmup? That value only counts for the first shot after moving. If the pawn is static he doesnt need to warmup, just cooldown.
Warm-up is the same as aiming time and applies to every shot. The white decreasing cone is the visual of the warm-up counter.
Cool-down is the time after a shot before the colonist can do any other action (another shot or move). Cooldown is what keeps your grenade throwers so vulnerable after a toss.