Guns Of Icarus Online
Main => The Classroom => Q&A => Topic started by: popsicleman on May 30, 2015, 05:13:45 pm
-
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.
-
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!
-
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?
-
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.
-
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
-
Thank you for the replies!
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
-
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?
-
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. :)
-
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.
-
Minotaur Artemis Spire is an excellent support ship, but not great for killing.
-
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.
-
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.
-
On a tangential question, is charged mercury sufficient for armor stripping?
Hell yes it is. If you'll go with the best combo, which is mercury + charged + gunengineer with buff kit, the accurate one, it would be a terrible thing for engies on the other side. And gunners. And everyone.
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.
Go with mercury on the left upper deck, artemis right upper deck, heavy flak for main gun and gatling left lower deck.
Merc for long and mid range armor stripping and disabling.
Artemis for mid to long range disabling and killing with hull down.
Gatling for close-very close range armor stripping.
Heavy flak for close to long range killing the bugger.
Mercury - charged rounds
Artemis - burst rounds
Gatling - greased, for the sake of higher DPS - you want to destroy enemy hull ASAP.
Heavy Flak - lesmoks (auxiliary ammo if the gunner have problem with arcs), charged (should be used as "default"), lochnagars (because fuck you and your pesky ship - for close range certain shots with enemy's armor down will kill most unscathed ships one shot).
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?
Mercury and artemis placed well is one of so-called meta combinations, with added disability potential. Though it's flaw are narrow arcs (every single for merc making it next to useless for close range, upper arcs for artemis).
Minotaur... after the nerf it's not very useful, and thank God for it was damn annoying to fight against.
For Spire I'd take any heavy gun depending on situaions, excluding heavy carronade (because most the time you want to stay at distance, what's more the position of heavy gun on spire discourages it's use) and minotaur (it's practically a loss of heavy gun slot)
If you are taking hwacha I believe it's a good idea to take hades, banshee and artemis as well (though my memory about my personal setup might be failing). Hades as a hull breaker and chaos spreader, banshee as a chaos spreader and lesser ship killer, artemis as disabler and a little better ship killer, and hwacha certainly as a ship killer rather than disabler, if artemis and hades do their jobs (hwacha deals explosive damage, deadly for exposed hull if well timed); even if the first barrage will not sweep enemy ship off, you'll destroy more components, thus making their engineers to choose between repairing vital components, shooting and repairing anything else.
Haven't tried lumberspire yet though.
So, Flak spire as described is for long and mid range with say-your-prayers option for closer ranges.
Hwacha spire - medium range, and you still want everyone aboard to pray if something gets close.
Edit: I'd forgot. Great thing about spire is that if well positioned, it's possible to shoot all FOUR guns at the very same moment - it requires some training from the captain though.