OverviewRecently I was attempting to balance a modded-in Bomber type fighter wing based on its apparent damage and effectiveness in combat. The fighter in question (the Firebird from Disassemble Reassemble) is designed primarily to hunt frigates and light destroyers, and carries an MIRV torpedo that splits into half a dozen very fast – but low damage – missiles.
In testing it seemed to be far more effective than it was worth, so, prior to giving it a cost increase, I decided to calculate some approximate damage values in comparison to a selection of stock bomber wings.
The results were quite surprising. Compared purely the total potential damage from a single attack run against the Piranha, Khopesh, and Flash bomber wings, the Firebird actually came out with the lowest total potential damage out of the lot, by a long shot.
Suspecting sortie damage was not enough, I then did an extremely rough calculation for the same wings, working out how much time it takes them to do this damage at a target an arbitrary distance from their carrier (ie. Fly to target, unload ordnance, fly back to carrier and re-arm). And, once again, the Firebird came out at the bottom of the pack.
Following this I decided to put my mathematical brain – desperately in need of exercise – to work, with a proper theoretical context and hard stock numbers to work from.
DISCLAIMER: This is not to say any one bomber wing is more powerful than any other, and no balance concerns are being pointed at here. It is simply something I wanted to calculate and look at the results of to fulfill my own curiosity.Without further ado, here is the situation.
ContextLet us say we have a stationary carrier at a given position in the battlefield, and a stationary target some 4000 units away (the peak operating range for almost all stock fighters). The carrier is fielding one bomber wing from the stock selection I have made. At some point, the carrier orders the bombers to engage the target. The bombers proceed at their maximum speed until they reach their Attack Run Range (a unique distance specified in the files for each fighter wing) from the target. They then begin unloading ordnance as fast as they can, continuing to approach the target until they run out of ammunition.
Once depleted, the bombers turn and head straight back to the carrier at best possible speed, land, and re-arm before launching again.What I want to figure out, is how much damage each bomber wing can possibly do in a single sortie; how long that sortie takes; and therefore, what each bomber's average – and very approximate – damage per second actually is.
Foolish assumptions to make the calculations easier:- Allowing 2 seconds for re-arming of fighters
- Ignoring all other external factors that could affect the bomber's sortie times and effectiveness (eg. Other ships, point defence, interceptors, etc.)
- Ignoring damage types of bombers. Purely focused on base numbers.
The NumbersOf stock Starsector's seventeen modular fighter wings, I will be running numbers for all six of it's “Bomber” wings:
- Piranha
- Khopesh
- Dagger
- Trident
- Longbow
- Flash
Each have their own strengths and weaknesses, but all we're worried about right now is raw damage output, and how long they take to do it.
Here are the base values I've gathered from the game files to utilize in the calculations:
Bomber Type | Wing Size | Top Speed | Attack Run Range | Ammunition | Shot Damage | Shot Cooldown |
Piranha | 3 | 150 | 2,500 | 10 | 400 | 1 |
Khopesh | 2 | 180 | 2,000 | 14 | 200 | 0.05* |
Dagger | 3 | 175 | 2,000 | 1 | 1,000 | 0 |
Trident | 2 | 130 | 2,000 | 2 | 1,000 | 0 |
Longbow | 3 | 200 | 2,000 | 1 | 1,000** | 0 |
Flash | 4 | 170 | 2,500 | 6 | 500 | 1.5 |
* Note that I have given the Khopesh a 0.05 second shot cooldown, when in actual fact it has 0.1 seconds. This is due to the fact it has 14 missiles across two separate launchers, which I didn't want to make an exception for in the spreadsheet I did these calculations in.
** Note also that I am not bothering about damage types. All except for the Longbow do HE damage, but that isn't relevant to the calculation.
CalculationsThe first number to extrapolate is the total damage of the sortie. This is found by simply multiplying together the wing size, per shot damage, and ammunition of the bomber wing. The results are as follows:
Bomber Type | TOTAL SORTIE DAMAGE |
Piranha | 400 x 10 x 3 = 12,000 |
Khopesh | 200 x 14 x 2 = 5,600 |
Dagger | 1,000 x 1 x 3 = 3,000 |
Trident | 1,000 x 2 x 2 = 4,000 |
Longbow | 1,000 x 1 x 2 = 2,000 |
Flash | 500 x 6 x 4 = 12,000 |
As you can see, the damage numbers here vary wildly. But don't fret! There are still plenty of other things to factor in.
The first part of the total time calculation is the time it takes the bombers to reach their Attack Run Range. Since the ARR is a distance from the target, we calculate the distance they must travel by subtracting the bombers' ARR values from 4000 (the range from the carrier to the target). Then we divide that value by the bomber's top speed, and voila, we get the time it takes to reach “firing range”.
Thanks to the wonders of maths, the results here start to get a little... hairy.
Bomber Type | Time to reach ARR from 4k range (seconds) |
Piranha | 10 |
Khopesh | 11.1111111111 |
Dagger | 11.4285714286 |
Trident | 15.3846153846 |
Longbow | 10 |
Flash | 8.8235294118 |
Next up, for those bombers with multiple shots and a cooldown time for their weapons, there must also be a total time it takes for them to unload that ordnance. If we assume the bomber continues flying towards the target during this time, then they must gain extra distance from the carrier while firing, which will play into the sortie time.
The equation here is in two parts. First we figure out how long the bombers take to fire all their ordnance in seconds, by multiplying their
ammunition value minus one (since the last shot doesn't need a cooldown after it) by their shot cooldown. Then we multiply that time by the bomber's top speed, which gives us the extra distance they cover while firing.
At the same time, we also add that extra distance to the original “distance to firing range” value, to get the total distance from the bomber to its carrier once it has expended its ordnance and heads back home.
Bomber Type | Extra distance gained during fire | Total return distance to carrier |
Piranha | 1,350 | 2,850 |
Khopesh | 117 | 2,117 |
Dagger | 0* | 2,000 |
Trident | 0* | 2,000 |
Longbow | 0* | 2,000 |
Flash | 1,275 | 2,775 |
* Note that the Dagger, Trident and Longbow all have 0 extra distance gained due to them having single shot weapons (or in the case of the Trident, a pair that fire in sync) and therefore don't have to worry about weapon cooldowns.
Now we have the total distance from the target back to the carrier, we can calculate how long it now takes the fighter to return. For the record, this is exactly the same as the “time to firing range” and the “time to fire ordnance” values added together, but I've calculated it out anyway. Then we add 2 seconds – a completely guessed value for how long it takes the bomber to land, re-arm and launch again – and add up all the time values to get the total sortie time.
Bomber Type | Time to return to carrier | Approximate time to re-arm | TOTAL SORTIE TIME (seconds) |
Piranha | 19 | 2 | 31 |
Khopesh | 11.7611111111 | 2 | 24.8722222222 |
Dagger | 11.4285714286 | 2 | 24.8571428571 |
Trident | 15.3846153846 | 2 | 32.7692307692 |
Longbow | 10 | 2 | 22 |
Flash | 16.3235294118 | 2 | 27.1470588235 |
Interesting! So while the Piranha and Flash previously held the records for total potential sortie damage by a huge margin, they're also some of the worst in the realms of sortie time.
Last but not least is to divide the total sortie damage by the total sortie time, to get the calculated damage per second for each bomber wing. To display more easily, I've rounded these all down to the nearest whole number.
Bomber Type | CALCULATED DAMAGE PER SECOND |
Piranha | 387 |
Khopesh | 225 |
Dagger | 120 |
Trident | 122 |
Longbow | 90 |
Flash | 442 |
The Piranha is still very high on this list, but interestingly we can now see part of why the Flash is such an effective bomber!
At this point it's worth pointing out again that this does not account for other factors, such as damage type, effectiveness against different targets, PD saturation, and per-shot damage, the latter being important for armour penetration.
All practical purposes aside, this was fun to calculate out, and I find these numbers really quite interesting to look at, and compare to what I know as these bombers' various other strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps you have learnt something, or perhaps you have have found this utterly pointless, but all the same, I hope you have enjoyed.
- AxleMC131