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[Grievous69]

Ok ok ok I get that the weapon info card already has tons of stuff to process BUT, to me, shot speed kinda seems more important than some of the stats we have now. Having started playing with mods as of late it's a royal pain having to test every single weapon to see if it's ''worth *** vs smaller targets''. Descriptions rarely mention this and it makes a huge difference to what role the weapon can be used for. It doesn't have to be anything super complex or with numbers. Just the classic slow > average > fast or something idk.

[Alex]

Just wanted to say I'll keep this in mind for when I'm in that code neighborhood again. Does seem like this should be called out in the weapon description, though, generally those should aim to give you a rough feel for the weapon.

[bobucles]

Honestly, you can just check out every single aspect of a weapon in the sim. Why worry about the technical description, just watch it in action. Although I wonder if it'd be cool to show cute little videos of weapon testing, like the ones from the wiki.

[MesoTroniK]

A weapon firing "preview" would be amazing, but would be tricky to do since it would require actually running the combat engine and then only rendering a small viewport showing the weapon firing and then ideally having the camera follow the projectile / beam until it hits a sim target heh.

Would be amazing indeed! But very non-trivial to do as it either has to be done *right* or not at all. Little videos are not tenable for all sorts of reasons, it would have to be simulated and ran for real to keep things lightweight enough (and to prevent it from becoming Asset Hell). And also to ensure scripted weapons and every frame combat plugins that Do Stuff to weapons work properly as well vs some theoretical lesser complex ways to approach this problem.

While it would be very cool and useful, it seems... Not likely it would ever happen. We of those that dare to dream are doomed to be disappointed.

[Alex]

Yeah, I looked into it at one point! That's pretty much spot on; IIRC the potential for custom scripts was one of the bigger problems, though even if those weren't a concern, it'd still be troublesome.

[Serenitis]

A possibility is to 'invent' a new stat using the data which is already stored in the weapon csv.
Time To Strike (TTS) = <arbitrary distance> / <projectile/beam speed>

Lets say that our arbitrary distance is 1000 units.
An Arbalest has a shot speed of 800; 1000/800 = 1.25
A Needler has a shot speed of 1200; 1000/1200 = 0.83
Beams have a speed of 2400; 1000/2400 = 0.42
Burst PD have a speed of 10K; 1000/10K = 0.1
Paladin has a speed of 1M; 1000/1M = 0.001
So smaller numbers mean quicker shots which are better suited for hitting fast moving things.

Using a smaller arbitrary distance would result in 'rounder' numbers (in most cases) if that's something you'd prefer. But I kind of like 1000 as it makes a value of 1 to be average which appeals to me.

[Grievous69]

While that sounds interesting I don't think that's the way to go. It needs to be immediately understandable. If I was looking at stats and I come across ''Time to strike'' saying 0.83 I would just think to myself ''what in the blazes does that mean?''. Same with accuracy and turn rate, while you could put numbers there it's more elegant to put a single descriptive word that still gets the job done. As Alex said, it's meant to show key things so the player can know what to expect. I don't think anyone would care to know if something is only 1% faster or slower than the other thing. Too complex imo.

[bobucles]

Generally, you don't want smaller numbers to be better. It messes with the player's psyche. Shield ratio is already confusing enough as is, when it could be much more clearly expressed as the inverse.

[Grievous69]

Generally, you don't want smaller numbers to be better. It messes with the player's psyche.

So true, imagine if people didn't use kmh or mph for vehicles but ''time required for it to pass 1 kilometer or mile''. That would be silly. Now for some stats I understand why the low number = better is used, like reload speed, or resource/time like flux/second, but speed should never look like that.

[Plantissue]

A "time to strike" stat doesn't make sense in the same manner that a speed stat does. "Time to strike" value of two different weapons can be the exact same value, but if range is double of the other, then the speed, which is a more useful value of accuracy is doubled despite the same value of "time to strike". The distance to the target also changes the time to strike in game as well. Speed is a characteristic that never changes, and is always a useful stat as well.

On another note, I would prefer a damage/flux stat instead of flux/damage, as the number displayed will correlate to the flux efficiency of the weapon.