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Rounds per minute

6 (35.3%)

Firing cycle in seconds

7 (41.2%)

Hybrid (60+RPM, show as RPM. >60RPM, show as seconds/shot)

3 (17.6%)

Other (answer below)

1 (5.9%)

Total Members Voted: 17

[Midnight Kitsune]

So I was reading Alex's twitter and I noticed in his revamped weapons tooltip card pictures here:

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that he has changed rate of fire from the old system of rounds per minute to a firing cycle in seconds. Now this might be more useful when you have less than 60 shots per second with slow firing weapons like the hellbore or gauss cannon. However, I feel like it can get quite confusing with fast firing weapons, such as the vulcan or ion pulsar due to the tiny, fractional refire delays. Also, modern militaries, along with many games, measure rate of fire, no matter how slow or fast, as rounds per minute.
Some examples:
Fast firing machine gun (like the vulcan)

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Slow firing ship cannon (like the gauss cannon)

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I feel like keeping the old RPM system is much better and more readable (IE High RPM? High fire rate. Low RPM? Low fire rate.) than the newer firing cycle system but I wanted others to be able to chime in and post their opinions as well.
Also, if RPM is added back in, could we get a sustained RPM as well?

[Goumindong]

RPM/cycle time doesn’t matter so long as it accurately describes the weapon.

The new one seems better because it tells you how fast the weapon is firing when it fires rather than averaging its damage over time. Such separating cycle time and burst size and reporting it as such seems ideal.

[Alex]

Hmm - so this is interesting to me. Here's what my thought process was -

What's the main thing that gives you a feel for the weapon's rate of fire? It's how long you've got to wait until you can shoot it again, right. That just seems like a very fundamental thing, and something people would intuitively understand. Shots/minute is also a way to convey that number, but it's indirect - you've got to do a bit of math. It's not *hard* math, by any stretch, but I've always found it gives me a bit of mental pause to do.

So, for slower weapons, we're already in agreement, it looks like.

I do agree that you get less of a feel for the weapon from the firing cycle duration when it's something like 0.1 or 0.05. But, a shots/minute of 600 or 1200 is not exactly something you get a better feel from - at some point, your (or at least my) eyes just glaze over and it's, just, alright, this thing is fast.

If anything, for fast-firing weapons, I think the number of shots *per second* would be more useful than shots per minute, since that again is something you can get a solid feel from. 1200/minute is just "fast". 20/second, that you can really picture.

I think the math to get to that is easier from "fire cycle" (how many times does the number fit into 1?) vs from shots/minute (have to divide a larger number by 60). Neither is hard, of course, but - at least for me - the former happens subconsciously, while I have to actually do the latter. That could just be a me-specific thing, though. But in any case, I'm not sure whether the slight complication of showing a different value for faster weapons is worth the slight improvement that showing shots/second for them gives.

In addition, "firing cycle" works for burst weapons like the Locust, Needler, Thumper, and so on. It tells us how long their time to fire a burst and recover from the cooldown to be ready to fire again is. That's an important bit of information, and would be entirely lost if it was expressed in shots/second. (Or, rather, it would probably require an additional value to be shown.)

For something like the Locust, "you can fire a burst every 9 seconds" seems like much more important info than "it fires off X missiles per second/minute/whatever". In fact, the latter isn't even shown because it doesn't seem that important. So, "firing cycle" is a more abstracted value that tells one how it feels to use the weapon, where shots/minute is too detail-focused and loses some meaning in that.

[MesoTroniK]

At the least it would be very nice to know what the delay between shots in a burst is and also the sustained fire rate (which without RPM seems problematic). Those are both extremely important info, if a weapon fires a burst does it take 3 seconds or 0.3 seconds to do it? Who knows!

Anyways, I see this overall argument from a different angle. No military, no weapons manufacturer / designer and virtually no games list fire rate like the change you made in 0.9x. So the system being different here relative to basically everything else out there is its own kind of counter intuitive. I understand why you made this change, but when I look at the Vulcan as it is now? I can go in my head, oh its firing cadence is like X real life machine gun that also is in hundreds of games as just one example. While with the change you made? There are no points of reference at all except within Starsector itself, unless of course math is done.

I am not saying the change you made is all bad, it does have its own merits but also its own problems. If you at the least added delay within the burst and some sort of sustained fire rate figure as well? I could not pokes holes in it since at the least it would be a flat upgrade over what we have now in every single way.

[Grievous69]

Honestly you all make fair points but we already have dmg per second, we have flux per second, then why not have shots per second? It makes much more sense than using a term I'm betting some people won't understand. Because seing a number saying how much your guns pew pew in a certain time frame is super easy to understand than looking at a ''firing cycle'' and going wtf does this mean. And yes burst weapons are complicated to accurately show how they actually perform but it the end everyone is just gonna go to a simulation and see what does x thing do himself. Sure displaying information in a game like this is very important but I don't think having every single stat for a gun crammed into UI is really necessary. We don't wanna give new players heart attacks now do we?

[Goumindong]

Because “cycle time” is less confusing than RPM when you’re dealing with non fix rate systems. Because “militaries do it” isn’t a justification, it’s a convention.

Having a cyclic rate rather than a measured rate is pretty ideal. And putting it in similar contexts to the other measurements we expect to use is ideal.

[MesoTroniK]

Because “cycle time” is less confusing than RPM when you’re dealing with non fix rate systems. Because “militaries do it” isn’t a justification, it’s a convention.

I think you mean everything ever does it. So doing something different from what is the norm regarding weapons in real life and pretty much every video game? It is in fact a justification, sometimes being different is worse even if it is better.

Anyways, I made my other points in my first post in this thread.

[TheWetFish]

Different approaches are better for different weapons but also subjectively better & worse for different players.  A more pertinent question might be how easily can the player find the information meaningful;

Is it at all possible to have weapons animate their firing rate in the codex and/or refit screen weapon selection, say on a mouse hover delay?  

The visuals would provide much more accessible context for whichever information stream is in use.

[ClassicAngus]

why not both?
add a setting that changes between them
the firing cycle is extremely useful for slow weapons but is near useless on comparing firerate of multiple rapid fire weapons
if i had too pick one i would go with the old one

[AxleMC131]

This is a surprisingly interesting topic.

Personally, I've never had an issue with the classic "Rounds per minute" value and if I had to pick one to use, it'd be the old (current) one. As has been said, it's conventional, self-explanatory, easily referenced to reality, and IMHO easier to understand at a glance for the majority of scenarios.

That being said, I'm not against the concept of changing it to "Firing cycle". But I agree that this applies best to slow-firing weapons. The suggestion that weapons that fire more than 60 shots per minute go by RPM and those that fire less than 60/min go by FC is perfectly reasonable, but I am concerned it could be highly confusing to early players who aren't expecting the same "category" in a weapon's stat card to change between weapons. If I look at the Gauss Cannon and see it has a [fire rate] value of 2, and then look at the Vulcan Cannon and see it has a [fire rate] value of 1200, I think it's safe to say a less experienced player would be a little confused by what those values were without taking a close look. BUT as was also said, burst fire weapons make much more sense with a Firing Cycle than a Rounds Per Minute value, and I very much agree on this.

As much as I love the new weapon tooltip setup and all the new features/interactions it supports, a weapon's stats should be able to be ascertained at a glance, so having the format change between weapons, and potentially missing that change, is a risk. So I personally think it best if just one form of [fire rate] reigns supreme.

... A final thought though, as suggested by Angus above, why not use both but toggle with a setting? Now that's an idea I can get behind. An option in the config file - or, hell, a toggle right on the refit screen! - to choose how you want your weapon stats to be displayed would be the best option overall I feel, as it (hopefully) keeps everyone happy. Well. Maybe not everyone, since this is the internet, but the vast and sensible majority, surely.   Regardless, I'd still prefer the current Rounds Per Minute stat be the default option.

[Deshara]

what I like about RPM is that it makes the math for different weapons easier. Divide by 60 and you have your DPS

[Grievous69]

what I like about RPM is that it makes the math for different weapons easier. Divide by 60 and you have your DPS

You mean rounds per second? We already have DPS on every weapon.

[Megas]

I am used to rate-per-second (as done in Transcendence), although I am indifferent to firing cycle due to not giving it much thought.  Firing cycle could be useful for missiles with low ammo count, like Harpoons.

In Starsector, you do not fire weapons minutes at a time (except maybe beam boats).  It is not possible for most optimal weapon loadouts, due to flux use or target dying (or your ship dying).  Even if you could, you do not want to due to peak performance death clock.  You want enemies to die, and they usually die in seconds once both sides exchange fire (instead of dancing and fleeing like cowards).

If rate should be displayed over a period of time, per second would be more useful for Starsector than per minute used by real-life references.

[Alex]

At the least it would be very nice to know what the delay between shots in a burst is and also the sustained fire rate (which without RPM seems problematic). Those are both extremely important info, if a weapon fires a burst does it take 3 seconds or 0.3 seconds to do it? Who knows!

Is it that important, though? I mean, it's not useless information, for sure, but balanced against reducing information overload. There's certainly more stats that could be added - burst delay, cooldown, chargeup time, etc - but more becomes less quickly, and the tooltip is already... let's be kind and say "information rich".

At some point, the player has to use the weapon to get a feel for it. Once they do that, they know, alright, the burst is fired off pretty quickly (e.g. Locust) or pretty slowly (e.g. Squall). How long it takes between bursts is still relevant information, though, especially when comparing different weapons to see how they pair up.

For example, I don't know off the top of my head what the in-burst refire delay of the Locust is, but 1) it doesn't matter, because I know it's "fast", and 2) the exact number would not be useful information to me in almost any scenario I can envision, given that I've already seen it fire.

I did have the cycle time show <total time> (<cooldown>) at one point, so you could see how long the burst vs the idle time was, but that also didn't seem to be worth the added difficulty of figuring out.

Anyways, I see this overall argument from a different angle. No military, no weapons manufacturer / designer and virtually no games list fire rate like the change you made in 0.9x. So the system being different here relative to basically everything else out there is its own kind of counter intuitive.

I think it might be done that way because that's a useful number in the context where it's used, but I don't think that translates to Starsector or, most likely, to many games. I could see using it as a way to make things sound more "real-world military", though, so there's a flavor-based argument there.

... but when I look at the Vulcan as it is now? I can go in my head, oh its firing cadence is like X real life machine gun that also is in hundreds of games as just one example. While with the change you made? There are no points of reference at all except within Starsector itself, unless of course math is done.

It's cool you can do that! I can't. I think that's coloring both of our perceptions of the usefulness of shots/minute.

I do think that it's fairly safe to assume most players won't instantly relate a wide range of spm values to military hardware (that they have a feel for) with the same stats, though

Honestly you all make fair points but we already have dmg per second, we have flux per second, then why not have shots per second? It makes much more sense than using a term I'm betting some people won't understand. Because seing a number saying how much your guns pew pew in a certain time frame is super easy to understand than looking at a ''firing cycle'' and going wtf does this mean. And yes burst weapons are complicated to accurately show how they actually perform but it the end everyone is just gonna go to a simulation and see what does x thing do himself. Sure displaying information in a game like this is very important but I don't think having every single stat for a gun crammed into UI is really necessary. We don't wanna give new players heart attacks now do we?

Fair point about the "firing cycle" term; I'm hopefuly the (seconds) will help make what it means more clear, but, yeah.

As far as shots/second - well, you already said it doesn't really cover burst weapons, where - to me, at least - "firing cycle" is an actually useful stat that I think I'll be looking at even once I'm familiar with a weapon. Still, shots/second is to me an easier sell than shots/minute; but it gets awkward with slower-firing weapons. Hellbore would have like 0.25 shots/second and so on. So we'd be taking the situation where the time-between-shots is more important - because it's longer and makes more of a difference - and making that harder to pick out.

At some point, really fast rates of fire get pretty similar feel-wise and functionally. Probably past like 5 shots a second or thereabouts. Sure, going from 5 to 20 will affect DPS, but we already *have* a DPS stat, and it won't affect the feel of the weapon as much as going from say a 4 to a 1 second delay.

Is it at all possible to have weapons animate their firing rate in the codex and/or refit screen weapon selection, say on a mouse hover delay?  

The visuals would provide much more accessible context for whichever information stream is in use.

That'd be amazing, but, right, pulling it off would be... complicated. Hmm. Let me take a quick look, though, just to make sure it's not easier than it seems. If I find any success I'll report back

That being said, I'm not against the concept of changing it to "Firing cycle". But I agree that this applies best to slow-firing weapons. The suggestion that weapons that fire more than 60 shots per minute go by RPM and those that fire less than 60/min go by FC is perfectly reasonable, but I am concerned it could be highly confusing to early players who aren't expecting the same "category" in a weapon's stat card to change between weapons. If I look at the Gauss Cannon and see it has a [fire rate] value of 2, and then look at the Vulcan Cannon and see it has a [fire rate] value of 1200, I think it's safe to say a less experienced player would be a little confused by what those values were without taking a close look. BUT as was also said, burst fire weapons make much more sense with a Firing Cycle than a Rounds Per Minute value, and I very much agree on this.

As much as I love the new weapon tooltip setup and all the new features/interactions it supports, a weapon's stats should be able to be ascertained at a glance, so having the format change between weapons, and potentially missing that change, is a risk. So I personally think it best if just one form of [fire rate] reigns supreme.

Yeah, that makes sense.

... A final thought though, as suggested by Angus above, why not use both but toggle with a setting? Now that's an idea I can get behind. An option in the config file - or, hell, a toggle right on the refit screen! - to choose how you want your weapon stats to be displayed would be the best option overall I feel, as it (hopefully) keeps everyone happy. Well. Maybe not everyone, since this is the internet, but the vast and sensible majority, surely.   Regardless, I'd still prefer the current Rounds Per Minute stat be the default option.

why not both?
add a setting that changes between them
the firing cycle is extremely useful for slow weapons but is near useless on comparing firerate of multiple rapid fire weapons
if i had too pick one i would go with the old one

I don't want to go on a general rant about settings, so let's just say that while some settings are essential, they also have a dev cost that goes well beyond the initial implementation. (And, also, a game shouldn't ask the player to design the UI. There's a fine line between "customizable" and "we had no idea what would work well, so here you go, settings!", though.)

[Wyvern]

At some point, really fast rates of fire get pretty similar feel-wise and functionally. Probably past like 5 shots a second or thereabouts. Sure, going from 5 to 20 will affect DPS, but we already *have* a DPS stat, and it won't affect the feel of the weapon as much as going from say a 4 to a 1 second delay.

This is an excellent point.  If the fire rate is more than a few shots a second, I care about DPS and armor penetration and flux per second, not whether the literal rate of fire is 300 shots per minute or 1200 or using shotgun bursts to go up to 3000 or more.

Is it at all possible to have weapons animate their firing rate in the codex and/or refit screen weapon selection, say on a mouse hover delay? 

The visuals would provide much more accessible context for whichever information stream is in use.

That'd be amazing, but, right, pulling it off would be... complicated. Hmm. Let me take a quick look, though, just to make sure it's not easier than it seems. If I find any success I'll report back

Agree, this would be amazing.  Would be great for burst-firing weapons like the plasma cannon.

...Which reminds me: might be worth having an ancillary data section, just under burst size, for flux cost per burst.  Not a big deal for vanilla weapons, but it's one of two vital stats for answering the question "can I use a plasma cannon?", and it might be more relevant for modded weapons that could have, say, a burst size of 13 and a flux per shot of 375, or something else that's terribly clumsy to multiply in your head.*

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* ...And of course I then start trying to do that math in my head.  375 times ten is simple; that's 3750.  Times thirteen would mean a bit under a third more than that, so... roughly 5000-ish?  Calculator says 4850, so, close enough.  Still.  Just because I can do the math doesn't mean it's not terribly clumsy.