Meaning of Stats

posted on April 30th, 2009, 10:01 pm

This question may be more geared to the mods, but feel free to contribute if you have something to share.

On comparing various vessel stats and seeing the end effect I am a bit confused as to what the stats actually represent. The objective of this thread is (for me) to get a better understanding of how the stats are calculated so as to better be able to compose a fleet. I apologize in advance if some find this thread to be obtrusive.

to exemplify:

1. Offense:

    a. Vessel Weapon Attack Strength: Ive noticed that the stats on vessels like fed Sovs, or borg cubes reflect a particular total offense total. however, we see different damage inflicted when a fed phaser hits a target compared to when a fed torp hits that target.
the same can be said for a bop disruptor at 15 offense vs a rhienn disruptor at 14... the disparity against the same target is seen but not in proportion to a mere 1 point difference.
Is there any specific pattern or logic that is applied here?

     b. Weapon Rate of Fire: When we declare the offense strength, does the numeric stat include the rate of fire? For example, I have a Sov @ 38 offense. However, the fed ship fires much more frequently than a borg sphere of say 75 offense.
In effect we may have a sov during an attack of 1 minute firing 10 times, while a sphere will fire 5 times.
In such a case while the stats relay one set of numeric strenght, the actual resulting damage from an attack in a specific timeframe say 10 secs would be different still.
Do stats reflect this rate as well, or are they only representative of rate of fire? also, does balancing take this rate into account?

     c. Hit Success Rate: While playing as Feds, Borg, rom, and klingon I noticed that the borg torps tend to miss targets if the borg vessel or the target vessel are in motion. kling Bop torps too tend to misfire even if the miner or enemy vessel is stationary. Conversely, rhienn torp refits or fed sov torps hit the mark even if a Bop is turning a nebula corner.
I was curious as to what causes this misfire on certain races, while not on others. Is this accounted for in the stats and balancing?


2. Defense:
   
    a. Shield/Hull strength: Is the defense stat indicative of just shield durability or is it a measure of shield regenerative strength as well? For example the borg. they have repair modules which add to defense and system. If I were to install a defense module, is the new defense stat representing the repair recovery factor as well or just tolerance against hits (it is bit confusing here as in the case of the borg, the repair is done by the ship itself... is there some time gap between hit and repair or is each hit automatically negated by a factor of repair ability as well)

    b. System for defense: In cases of repairs, the system stat seems to be more relevant as repair on borg ships etc seem to be more a passive microtech or active regeneration style ability that when active consumes special energy. Ive also noticed that outfitting a borg vessel with more system enhancing modules increases the special energy on the vessels, and also the special abilities on those vessels.
consequently, i have seen my borg ships regen faster if higher system abilities are available.

What extent of benefit is derived from system stats? Does it extend to repair as well as shield regeneration?
If repair and shield regen are a factor of system, how do we demarcate between defense and system stats in regards to determining a ship's durability?

I look forward to your answers, as I could not find this in any of the player guides, and I find that this information will be able to help (me at least) in determining how to allocate resources and properly configure my ships.
 
Thank you.

posted on April 30th, 2009, 10:11 pm

The Offensive Value messures the offensive capabilities of a unit, but many factors are taken into account, like the rate of fire or special weapon characteristics (Torpedo Weapons for example have a chance to miss). Generaly speaking, if you look at it from an abstract view, the Offensive Value defines the damage per second a unit deals with all its weapons.

Its quite similar with the Defensive Value. As Fleet Operations balancing is relatively complex, its hard to get easy formulas, but you can say that Defensive Value adds additional shield and hull hitpoints and also has some basic influence on shield and hull regeneration rates. Defensive Value will also make a vessels subsystems more resistant to being damaged by weaponfire.

System Value increases the maximum special energy a vessel may have and also has a large influence on special weapon regeneration rate, shield regeneration rate and hull regeneration rate. Higher System Values will make a vessel a bit more durable to and allows it to recover faster after combat, still Defensive Value will have the largest influence on durability. In the 3.0.6 patch System Value will also grant resistances against subsystem-disabling weaponry, like many special weapons.

posted on April 30th, 2009, 11:27 pm

This is something i was very interested in, including the break down of stats. 

You have phrased the question better than mine was though so kudos to doing that.

[Anonymous]

posted on April 30th, 2009, 11:35 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on May 1st, 2009, 12:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

understood.

thanks for the explanation Optec.

one more question in regards to offense:

when u mention offense defines the damage per second that a unit deals, am i correct in my understanding that 38 means that so many torps and so many beams fired per seond are low enough that their cumulative hits equate to 38?
or is it 38 per hit per second.

meaning - does a quicker rate of fire give it hit 38, hit 38, hit 38 offense strength per hit per second, or if it is hit, hit, hit per second totaling 38 offense damage in that span of time?

Also, i have noticed that the borg and klings tend to miss quite a lot with the torps much more than the roms or feds. dom are average marksmen.
do the stats account for that race specific hit/miss or are the stats assuming a general algorithm for miss, regardless of whether the borg and lklings are more susceptible than the feds and roms.

thanks again.

*edit - thanks Anthony *

posted on May 1st, 2009, 5:56 am

Everyone above has stated what those values mean far better than i could, however i could answer that last question for you: an offensive value of 38 means that it will have an adjusted DPS rating that translates to 38 on the offensive value scale (we dont know the equations they use to calculate the adjusted DPS nor the ones used to translate that to an offensive value). Also, there is a "hit rate " defined for each torpedo weapon. so that means that (as i understand it) when a torpedo is fired a random number generator makes a number between 0 and 1 and if it falls below the specified hit rate it will hit. Also one other thing that i wanted to straighten out, torpedoes do not deal more damage to hull than shields compared to phasers. At least, unless the FO team worked their magic there!

posted on May 1st, 2009, 9:56 am

yep, all basic weapons deal equal damage to shields and hull since 3.0.5. However you will find quite a few weapons in 3.0.6 that deal shield or hull damage or causes more damage to shields or hulls, or you might find vessels that gain veteran abilities that reduce damage taken to shields or hull. However most basic weapons (like torpedoes and phasers) remain untouched. We are evaluating if we should make some adjustments here, but that has time

posted on May 1st, 2009, 11:38 am

Okay, here's my question - why do the offensive values not rise when you research the tech such as "Increases firepower on all your ships by x%"? Just seems a bit confusing that their firepower's increasing, yet the offensive values stay the same...

[Anonymous]

posted on May 1st, 2009, 2:33 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on May 1st, 2009, 2:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Everyone above has stated what those values mean far better than i could, however i could answer that last question for you: an offensive value of 38 means that it will have an adjusted DPS rating that translates to 38 on the offensive value scale (we dont know the equations they use to calculate the adjusted DPS nor the ones used to translate that to an offensive value). Also, there is a "hit rate " defined for each torpedo weapon. so that means that (as i understand it) when a torpedo is fired a random number generator makes a number between 0 and 1 and if it falls below the specified hit rate it will hit. Also one other thing that i wanted to straighten out, torpedoes do not deal more damage to hull than shields compared to phasers. At least, unless the FO team worked their magic there!

Im not sure i understand what you mean by DPS. sorry about that.
I did get the part about the hit/miss so thanks for answering that.

In that regard Im curious to understand why some race's torps are easier to evade than others, even when cloaking out of combat?



As regards yy question which was more related to rate of fire.

To clarify -

A borg assimilator fires a torp at about one every 2 secs.
A fed sov on the other hand fires continuously.

the fed sov offense is set at 38. The borg assim offnese is set at 60.

I do see a dispartiy between the damage caused by a beam r phaser vs a torp.

Now when the fed is firing more rapidly, my question was aimed at gauging whether the rapidity of rate of fire of the sov is in anyway giving it an edge - meaning although it is slated at 38 offense.
If it is able to get off 5 shots of 38 each in 4 seconds we have 5*38 = 190 offense dealt in 4 secs.
However, the borg assim hopwever is able to fire 2 shots in 4 seconds making it able to deal 2*60 = 120 offense.
This si what I was trying to understand.
Does 38 mean offense in 1 volley (phasers and torps fired in a span of time- if so what is that span of time)?
Or does it mean 38 offense dealt in 1 phser+torp combo hit?

Hope this helped clear up what was being asked.

posted on May 1st, 2009, 2:50 pm

i think its more of a rating like banks and insurances use to value their customers it doesn't reflect the values that are calculated in it directly. hope that makes sense

posted on May 1st, 2009, 8:04 pm

The offensive values have a relation to the underlying dps, its just we don't know the exact specifics for them. Basically, think of borg torpedoes being more like artillery in, say, supreme commander; they take a long time to fire, but do high damage. Thus, they get a reasonable DPS rating, and adjusted for usefulness and whatever else the FO teams equations do, it comes out to a 60 offensive value. See, DPS is damage per shot * number of shots per second. This means that if you have 1 weapon with 1000 damage but 0.1 shots/sec (10 second reload), and another with 10 damage and 10 shots/sec (0.1 sec reload), they both will have the same DPS (100). however; the FO team was kind enough to try and differentiate between those types of weapons by including a "dps adjustment" based on the type of weapon.

posted on May 2nd, 2009, 12:14 am

cool. thanks.

when you say we dont the exact specifics for them, what are the ramifications then?

cos you've provided a calculation of 60 for example being arrived at by taking into account rate per second.

So if the assimilator fires every 2 seconds, it's actual hit strength per torp is 120, but since the shot is 1 shot every 2 secs meaning half a shot every sec, you end up with 60 offense.


What is the impact of "we dont knwo the exact specifics" on this calculation?

posted on May 2nd, 2009, 12:18 am

We have to trust that the FO team knows what they're doing when they calculate their stats... I do trust them as they take all sorts of things into account, or so they say.

posted on May 2nd, 2009, 12:21 am

of course

cool. thnks for your patient answers m8. 

posted on May 2nd, 2009, 12:42 am

You're welcome! i'm always willing to help people with questions.

posted on May 2nd, 2009, 12:48 am

I've been meaning to reply to this, but I keep getting interrupted.

Everything you need to at least get a partial understanding of how damage works is by looking at the odf files.  It lists all the damage that ships will do and their firing rates, etc.

Because you want to know about assimilators specifically, I found the damage for one.  Here I take a Torp, Torp, Nanite Assimilator.  The torpedo has a damage of 94.785.  It has a shot delay of 3.  Now, I've done this with about fifteen vessels now, and from every race, and everytime it works out pretty close to the stated value.  If we find out what the damage would be for a shot delay of 2, you'll get a number pretty close the the stated offensive value.  So for our assimilator, mulitplying its damage by two-thirds gets us 63.189993, which is close to 60.  Obviously, their calculations are taking a lot more into account, like weapon range and a multitude of other aspects.  But this the poor man's way of figuring out how it works.

Also, what's nice is you can see which vessels are exceptions to your base damage.  Certain vessels take reduced damage from torpedos.  For example, when the Sov gets its officer ability, the assimilator torpedo damage drops by 16/32% respectively. 

Also, you'll see in the odfs that the torpedo miss chance for the Borg and the Klingons are the same as everyone else.  It'll hit destroyers 60% of the time, 80% of the time for cruisers, and 100% of the time for battleships.