Does charged round actually increase dps?

[popsicleman]

From everything from the wiki to newbie guides, I see charged round as ammo of choice for small clip size weapons such as mercury field gun. However from the information on wiki, the math doesn't seem to work out.
The wiki states charged round increases damage per shot by 30% and decreases rate of fire by 25% and clipsize by 20%. For mercury, it does 75 piercing per shot (we will ignore shattered as result is same), has 2 shots in clip, and fires .5 shots per second.
So, with regular ammo, the dps per clip (as clipsize and reload speed are equal) is 75 dmg/shot * .5 shot/sec = 37.5 dmg/sec
With charged, (75*1.3) damage/shot * (.5*.75) shot/sec = 36.5625 damage/sec

Am I just messing up the math? Is charged worth using for mercury? It just seems odd because greased ammo works properly.

[Koali]

Well, rather than increasing damage per second like Greased, Charged actually increases damage per shot. That's why it's used on slow-firing weapons with small clips. Hope this helps!

[popsicleman]

Ah I see. So if you're trying to use the gun for armor breaking, normal would be better but since you also want to break guns, charged is used so you can hurt components better per shot?

[Koali]

Well... Yes, actually. You're more likely to knock out a gun's entire health than you are to destroy an entire hull before someone fixes it.

Charged is like Lochnagar's little brother, if you will.

Lochnagar reduces clip size to 1 and destroys the gun while granting a massive damage boost.

Charged reduces clip size to a lesser degree and doesn't damage the gun, although it does reduce fire rate for a smaller damage boost.

[DJ Logicalia]

Charged is best on guns with smaller clips, like the Heavy Flak, Heavy Carronade, Mercury, etc. With guns with higher clips, such as gatling, you lose a considerable amount of damage per clip

[popsicleman]

Thank you for the replies!

[BlackenedPies]

http://ducksoficarus.servegame.com/
You're welcome

Use charged on guns with 2 shots per clip. Due to rounding it does higher dps on some guns with lower clip size like lumberjack or light carronade, but with high clip guns like the gat it does identical dps to regular.

[Daft Loon]

The main thing to consider is the damage in the full - fire clip + reload - cycle, on guns with too few shots for the clip size reduction to have any effect (1 or 2 shots) charged adds 30% damage to this cycle. The -25% rate of fire applys only to the time between shots which is maybe 1/3 of the cycle so overall its +30% damage and only -8% or so rate of fire when firing multiple clips. As mentioned the damage per shot increase also has its benefits by itself.

[ZnC]

Daft Loon has the right idea.

It is worth noting that the first shot does not take time, which is why Charged Rounds have minimal drawback on 2 shot weapons. Even with that, you are right that it still has a lower DPS while firing. However, when you take into account reload time, Charged Rounds has the highest DPS.

Some numbers from my sheets for comparison:

Normal Ammo
Total Armor Damage = 345
DPS = 173
DPS with reload = 43.77

Charged Rounds
Total Armor Damage = 449
DPS = 168
DPS with reload = 52

[popsicleman]

Ah, I knew I was doing something wrong with my math. Yes, I should've accounted for total time including reload as it cannot break armor within the clip.

On a tangential question, is charged mercury sufficient for armor stripping? I'm a casual player who wants to try out some long ranged spire, but I feel that the time to kill might be too high in my normal setup. I like to go mercury, artemis, artemis and lumberjack or minotaur.

Personally, I like using mercury, artemis and minotaur as they are easy weapons for anyone to hit with compared to the alternatives. But assuming competency, what heavy weapon should I go for? or is my light weapon setup already flawed?

[Kamoba]

Sounds like a pretty good loadout with mino or Lumberjack, though keep in mind the Lumberjack is much more effective, harder to shoot but much more effective for kills.

For long range, heavy ammo on a Hwacha will perform, and if you have a gunner who understands armour breaks, take heavy flak.

Charged buffed merc is wonderfully effective at stripping most ships of their armour, as is any buffed merc.
Buff hammer engineer with lochnager shooting the merc can give armour break on some ships (pyramidion and goldfish as examples) in one shot, something to keep in mind as you find yourself with a more.regular crew who you can trust to shoot lochnager.

[BlackenedPies]

Charged merc deals 70% of the dps of gat and is the longest range armor strip gun. Hades deals 90% of gat dps (78% with lesmok) and is great with a good gunner. Merc is much easier to shoot at long range than hades.


Merc artemis is a solid combo and good at disabling. The issue with minotaur is that it deals little damage and will take too long to kill a ship because the artemis is your only explosive damage gun. Merc artemis heavy flak is a classic spire loadout, but is somewhat risky because the heavy flak is solely for killing. Pairing minotaur with light flak can work great. Minotaur is best with heavy clip, and lesmok and greased can be used for other ranges.

I usually don't recommend merc lumberjack because merc can't shoot down and lumberjack pops balloon. I prefer hades flak lumberjack and hades artemis lumberjack is common. Alternatively you could have the merc guy switch to a top right gun when the merc is out of arc. The lumberjack should bring lesmok and closer range ammo like heatsink, greased, incendiary, and lochnagar.

Burst hwatcha is great for mid range and heavy clip can be used for longer range against spires and galleons. For longer range you're probably better off with other guns.

[Richard LeMoon]

Minotaur Artemis Spire is an excellent support ship, but not great for killing.

[Daft Loon]

To put it explicity charged merc is definitely enough to strip armor by itself, i believe even merc with the inferior ammo choices (or most, the ones that reduce to 1 shot maybe not) can cause hull damage faster than maximum repair, charged should allow for some misses without completely losing progress though.

Keep in mind with the minotaur that even though it is point and shoot with no shot drop the slow, invisible projectile can make it hard to hit ships that are distant and/or moving accross your field of view.

[BlackenedPies]

I don't recommend minotaur for over 1000m. At that point you may need lesmok and it's not very effective with 3 shots and 9 second reload. It's great with heavy clip under 800m as a support weapon, but at that point you may be better off with a burst hwatcha. Flak can be similarly difficult to hit at longer range and lumberjack is the longest range heavy weapon.


A spire I enjoy is merc double artemis and heavy carronade. The main engi brings burst for top artemis, bottom engi brings buff burst for bottom artemis, and the merc brings spanner mallet buff charged. For close range the merc jumps down to the carronade and uses buff charged.

For lumber spire I have the lumber bring spanner mallet buff lesmok with a wrench buff burst on light flak. Lesmok is preloaded in light flak and burst is used under 1000m. It's much more effective than having a gunner. Every ship I use besides mines and meta galleon have a spanner mallet buff instead of a gunner liability.

A good mid range spire is hwatcha gat artemis with burst art on top. Hwatcha has spanner mallet buff burst and gat has wrench buff lesmok or heavy clip. Heavy clip can be preloaded in hwatcha but since the hwatcha buff it's no longer necessary except possibly against heavy weapons. Buff burst hwatcha is now effective at lesmok gat range.