Nova Class - some questions.

posted on July 6th, 2011, 2:21 am

So, let'S go:

- Mayson Nova vs. Mayson Intrepid: what usually gets targeted first? Am i correct with Intrepid here? (both have the same defensive value, but the nova has smaller offensive) If not, how does the auto targeting work with vessels that have the same defensive value.
- Fleet Supply: up to 4 friendly Federation vessels nearby to fire additional photon torpedoes
  So, how much torpedos does it add per vessel / launcher?
  Does it add +x for up to 4 vessels, or +x divided by up to y (y <= 4) vessels?
  Does the special stack? Like i've got 2 Novas and 1 Intrepid - as an example.
 

Thanks in advance, and i hope i'm not in the wrong forum with this (:

posted on July 6th, 2011, 2:37 am

Auto-targeting is not an exact science in terms of gameplay as far as I know - the AI takes into consideration defense of the vessel, the offense, and remaining hitpoints at least.

In this case, the Intrepid will be auto-targeted first due to its increased attack power.

Fleet Supply does not stack and adds a set bonus to each ship.

It lasts 10 seconds, and the torpedoes that are added have a shotdelay of 1 - so a maximum of 10 torpedoes per ship may be gained .

posted on July 6th, 2011, 3:07 am

Like Dominus said.  The Nova effect doesn't pump out more normal torpedoes, it actually adds an extra temporary launcher to those 4 ships that will fire until the effect wears off.  I think this launcher's damage is the same no matter what kind of ship it is applied to, but I could be wrong on that.

2 novas will spread their effect to 8 ships, but they won't stack.  If you only have a few ships, wait for the first effect to end before you trigger the second.

posted on July 6th, 2011, 10:40 am

So if you have 8 ships in range of 2 novas, it will activate on all 8?

posted on July 6th, 2011, 11:27 am

I'm pretty sure the game counts one effect immediately followed by the other, which means the 4 ships that are hit by the first one won't get hit by the second one, and it will target the remaining 4 ships.  I could be wrong but this fits my limited experience with the ship.

posted on July 6th, 2011, 12:27 pm

The torpedoes fired by the affected vessels also receive damage buffs/decreases where acceptable

posted on July 6th, 2011, 1:30 pm

I just tested the Nova a bit, and it seems like the Fleet Supply is kinda irratic. Sometimes it supplied 4 other vessels PLUS itself, sometimes just 4 other, sometimes 3, then just itself. Is it supposed to be like this?

@ Dominus: the Intrepid gets another 13 dmg torpedo per second, its main torpedo laucnher has 20 - thats the decrease you're talking about?

[Dominus_Noctis]

posted on July 6th, 2011, 1:42 pm

Last edited by Dominus_Noctis on July 6th, 2011, 5:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hm, I'll look into the former once I get back to my FO computer   :sweatdrop:

Nope, I mean a reduction where applicable based on passives . I.E. The Intrepid's normal torpedo deals less damage to support vessels, as does the extra buff weapon.

EDIT: Not a bug; as effects up to 4 other units 

[beserene]

posted on July 7th, 2011, 4:39 am

Last edited by beserene on July 7th, 2011, 10:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

Edit:
Sooo... every torpedo based unit gets another launcher with 13 dmg and 1 shot per second. No matter how strong the real launcher is. Even if its weaker like the centaur one.
I've tested it with every Mayson unit that had a torp launcher, including the warpins.

What i don't get: the fleet supply is quite irratic. As mentioned above it'random how many units the advantage get, and sometimes it's even 5, not 4, with an extra launcher.


Off topic: most fed units got torpedos with 13 dmg, centaur 12, galaxy 15, but why the hell is the intrepid something special with 20 dmg, and even stronger than the akira? (torpedo wise) Wouldn't it make a bit more sense if it had a lower dmg output per torpedo, with a higher firing rate? Or is the tooltip wrong and it really does 13 dmg per torpedo, not 20? (Was firing on my own starbase with one Intrepid, and it kinda did around 20 dmg per phaser / torpedo combo)


Just wondering *g*

posted on July 7th, 2011, 2:16 pm

Five including the original Nova you mean?

Torpedo/beam/pulse damages aren't standardized for any faction, as they are based on balance calculations which also consider the firing rates etc . Changing firing rates to increase/decrease weapon strength isn't usually a simple solution as it can lead to a number of balancing issues - DPS isn't the end all

The 'real damage' dealt by the Intrepid is 23.934 per torpedo for Risner and 20.549 for Mayson

posted on July 7th, 2011, 4:06 pm

Five including the original Nova you mean?

Yes. Oh wait... nvm 

The 'real damage' dealt by the Intrepid is 23.934 per torpedo for Risner and 20.549 for Mayson

You are kiddin, aren't you?

posted on July 7th, 2011, 4:31 pm

hehe

Nope, not kidding - the tooltips describe the general, rounded characteristics. The ODFs (the files that define the values in game) describe the actual values. Since all tooltip values are rounded using the same mechanism, it doesn't matter for simple comparison purposes, but the real values being used obviously matter for balancing purposes . This is the same reason why you don't get a read out of how much less or more damage those torpedoes do to a Cube with Tactical Armor for instance - the string would be many hundreds of entries long  .

posted on July 7th, 2011, 9:12 pm

Try not to look too hard at Fleet Ops stats unless you're willing to go crazy and then get better along the way.

The numbers are all calculated using Matlab, which means they are all complex and all rounded.  Also they use floats, which means they're full of inconsequentially small math errors.

The Devs decide the offensive value of a ship and the rate of fire for each of its weapons.  Then they set up a general ratio of damage for the different weapons and let Matlab crank out the numbers, which is why everything is decimals.

Intrepids deal about 2/3 of their damage as torps, while S2 cruisers deal about half-and-half.  I'm working on an Excel spreadsheet that will make it easy to check just how a ship's DPS is allocated, if I ever finish it I'll make it available to the community.  And then with the next patch it will be obsolete 

posted on August 15th, 2011, 8:56 pm

Try not to look too hard at Fleet Ops stats unless you're willing to go crazy and then get better along the way.

And dont forget that certain fanboys like to flame any attempt to discuss fixing it :p


But yeah,

The Devs decide the offensive value of a ship and the rate of fire for each of its weapons.  Then they set up a general ratio of damage for the different weapons and let Matlab crank out the numbers, which is why everything is decimals.

Personally I think this is the main balance problem with the game, the mathlab creates funny issues on occasion (as well as odd results, like some ship pairs having photons/quantums with equal stats)

posted on August 16th, 2011, 7:02 am

another point to one of the initial questions of this post: Yep, which ship "tanks" is quite intransparent at the moment. We are currently working on making that more fun and challanging to use