Building on lessons learned from my previous attempt at testing weapon (see:
Thumper experiment), I have done an evaluation of medium energy guns on Wolf. Specifically I tested: Pulse Laser, Heavy Blaster, Mining Blaster and Phase Lance.
I used a heavily min-maxed Wolf loadout as a platform: 2 LRPD, the medium energy gun, 10 capacitors, 10 vents, Flux Distributor, Flux Coil, Reinforced Bulkhead, 2 unused OP except in the Heavy Blaster version.
Notes:
the Wolf loadout and fleet encounter simulated here may of may not be relevant to you
you can’t reasonably translate the results obtained on Wolf to other ships
Part 1 - attackingThe test fleet has 3 Wolves with steady personality.
There are 3 opposing fleets fought separately, providing a total of 12 matchups. I ran 12 repetitions of each matchups (not counting the rare ship escape) using the same method as in my previous attempt (3 concurrent Starsector instances, manual timers outside the game).
Opposing fleet 1: one Enforcer (same loadout as in my previous attempt), steady personality, this variant has 750 armor and 7000 hull
Opposing fleet 2: two Wayfarer, Standard variant, steady personality
Opposing fleet 3: two civilian Buffalo, Standard variant, steady personality
Adding the time to destroy the enemy fleet of all repetitions and of all enemy fleets together gives the following global ranking from best to worse:
- (#1) 3 Wolves with Phase Lance, with a total of 2945 seconds, where the fastest
- (#2) 3 Wolves with Heavy Blaster, with 218 additional seconds compared to #1, were so not too far from #1
- (#3) the Mining Blaster version (814 additional seconds compared to #1) and the Pulse Laser version (835 additional seconds compared to #1) were slowest
I am surprised to see Phase Lance at the top, I almost never use it so I forgot about it’s damage potential. Heavy Blaster being in a good position is the expected result AFAIC.
Breakdown per opposing fleet:
Spoiler
1 Enforcer- 3 Wolves with Phase Lance, 1285 seconds, median time is 108, average is 107, very low dispersion
- 3 Wolves with Heavy Blaster, 1413 seconds, median time is 108, average is 118
- 3 Wolves with Mining Blaster, 1755 seconds, median time is 125, average is 146, high dispersion
- 3 Wolves with Pulse Laser, 2054 seconds, median time is 167, average is 171
2 Wayfarer- 3 Wolves with Phase Lance, 1098 seconds, median time is 86
- 3 Wolves with Pulse Laser, 1142 seconds, median time is 92
- 3 Wolves with Heavy Blaster, 1158 seconds, median time is 95, very close to #2
- 3 Wolves with Mining Blaster, 1413 seconds, median time is 95, high dispersion
2 Buffalo- 3 Wolves with Phase Lance, 562 seconds, median time is 47
- 3 Wolves with Pulse Laser, 584 seconds, median time is 49, not too far from #1
- 3 Wolves with Mining Blaster, 591 seconds, median time is 50, so close to #2
- 3 Wolves with Heavy Blaster, 592 seconds, median time is 48, very very close to #2 and #3
The test fleet has 1 Wolf with cautious personality. I used the same loadouts as above, plus a special one with no medium gun.
There is one opposing fleet, providing 5 matchups. I ran 48 repetitions of each matchups. I used a simpler method with 6 concurrent Starsector instances, manually writing down the in game timer displayed in the bottom left corner, at the end of each battle when the timer stopped.
Opposing fleet: 1 Drover with 2 Gladius wings, with steady personality.
Adding the survival time of all repetitions for the no medium weapon version (reference) together gives a total of 2744 seconds. In the ranking below, from best to worse, there are two main data points in curly brackets: {additional time compared to reference version, and percentage of samples surviving longer than 90 seconds}.
- (#1) 1 Wolf with Pulse Laser, {1585 seconds, 33%}, survived for the longest time, median time is 77
- (#2) the Heavy Blaster version {981 seconds, 21%} and Mining Blaster version {925 seconds, 21%}, survived measurably worse than #1, but interestingly enough both versions had very close performance, median time is respectively 66 and 67
- (#3) 1 Wolf with Phase Lance, {642 seconds, 17%}, was measurably worse than #1 and #2, median time is 60, so half-way between #2 and #4
- (#4) 1 Wolf with no medium gun, {0 seconds, 0%}, median time is 56, longest surviving time is 76, it was a slaughter
I find the percentage used above meaningful: a ship that last longer will help your fleet some way or another. In order to further illustrate that #3 is not close to #2, I should add that with both Heavy Blaster and Mining Blaster around 75% samples survived longer than 60 seconds, but with Phase Lance only around 50% did.
CommentsAgain, beware, the Wolf loadout used for this evaluation is relevant to me, but may not be relevant to you. Also those test battles certainly don’t recreate all situations that Wolves might encounter in a real campaign. And… what matter is real gameplay you have and value, not those numbers or rankings.
Here the attacking battles had the Wolves in numerical superiority. Which provided good flanking opportunities. If the test fleet had 2 Wolves instead of 3, it would have been much different.
Having said that,
What an interesting situation we have here: the best tested attacking weapon is the worse tested defending weapon at the same time. That’s probably why, I guess, a long time ago I stopped using Phase Lance. Because I like having my AI Wolves survive tough fights. Though I should probably use it on other ships. To its credit, in all attacking matchups it has the lowest median time and lowest minimum time of all. And the time dispersion is always in a good spot, which means it was consistent, reliable in all those attacking contexts.
Heavy Blaster looks like a good compromise, for most situations, including when you expect your Wolves to deal damage to ships with respectable armor. Which is exactly how I have used it since a long time, mainly on player-piloted Wolf.
Pulse Laser is a reliable all purpose weapon that won’t endanger Wolf too much, compared to all other options tested here. It is effective against ships with lowish armor and fighters: it scored second place against Wayfarer and Buffalo, after Phase Lance and before Heavy Blaster and Mining Blaster. Once armor gets thick, Pulse Laser struggles to pierce. All of this reflects my real campaign experience with Pulse Laser on AI Wolves.
Mining Blaster is not a bad option damage-wise. In the Enforcer and Wayfarer matchups it proved less reliable than Heavy Blaster: much higher dispersion of samples. Specifically in the Wayfarer matchup, the median time is identical to Heavy Blaster, but its samples are spread out… which translate in a worse total time. Interpretation: in similar matchups you may expect identical overall performance as Heavy Blaster, but when it misses its target or when damage is absorbed by shield, there are real consequences on Wolf. In other words, Mining Blaster may be used when it has a really high chance to hit armor/hull, and should not be used on Wolf if you value reliability.
(I will provide full raw data and statistical analysis CSVs if people are interested)
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Topic: 0.9.1a weapon testing - medium gun on Wolf (Read 3930 times)