First shot at a Bucky build... now the second

Distilling what little we know.

By: George Argyropoulos

a/k/a Dragon_Bane   

As many know, there was a Preview Server this evening. It was interesting. I'll freely admit, I did not like the Hydra targets. I'm not sure what, exactly, it was that turned me off to them. I believe that rather than it being one major issue it was just the cumulative affect of several issues that just made it a serious drag to play. From ranges being wonky and 'off' from what I'm used to after 6 years to the extremely punitive nature of the targets to the utter busy-ness of the target... maybe it's the ADD, maybe it's... is that a buckminsterfullerene?!? Cool!!

I don't know that anyone wants me to sit and complain about what I didn't like about the Hydra target so I'm going to jump into what i gleaned for the Bucky. TSM (here) and Price (here) both streamed and played with the Hydra and Ren (here) recorded a bunch of targets with the Bucky. All this can be found on... wait for it... THE YouTube!!

The Bucky. I like this hull so far. It's fun. Even when you auto. So far that we have seen it also lends itself to a few variations on builds. I am going to break this up a bit because we did not see the S target for the Bucky and the targets we did see,

were

not

finalized!

UNTIL NOW - WE HAVE SEEN OUR ENEMY!!

N'est-ce Pas? That said, we can observe certain mechanics and make some educated guesses to try and get ready for the raid. I'm going to show the build I'm gambling on and the theory behind it as well as touch upon an option or two that may lead you to think about future options or other paths as well.

DISCLAIMER: I was primarily testing this hull on auto!!!!!

Why? because I'm a lazy pirate and my time has been rather limited lately. Actually severely limited lately. Did I mention I was lazy yet?

UPDATE: The raid has gone and past. Quite honestly, I am very disappointed in what and how things happened. That said, let's concentrate on the Bucky.

The fleet you are going to build is going to wholly depend on which Tier set you are going to hit. Why this is so, I do not understand, but I have reached out to Kixeye to see if this is going to continue and if not what changes will be made. I hope that after this mess they realize that early disclosure is going to be the only way to not fuck the next raid. Sooo... keep sending those tickets in for the Siege battery glitch costing you damage in every target you used them in and enjoy the article.

THERE IS A VIDEO OF THE S TARGET -ON AUTO- USING A DEMO SQUAD (in place of a 5th Bucky)  AT THE END OF THE ARTICLE

A SET BUILD :

Base Build:

(Huggy Link)

First, there are three different builds on five ships in this fleet. I did this to play with a few mechanics but primarily for the ability to get the Phalanxes and some of the Sprints out front quickly and have a secondary layer behind to add depth to the CM design. Since they shoot at two disparate projectiles, there is no 'blocking' one another thus negating the possibility of the one interfering in the delivery of the other.

The A set seemed to offer a well balanced damage portfolio. Fairly eve in it's distribution, there was no readily apparent damage bias in the target.

The Boon is built to fit and be the lead. The next three are the same and are your DPS ships which have some CM scattered throughout, and the last one is your CM ship. The reason for this addition was that upon review the bunched lobbed rockets number 8 at launch. The reload of the turret was greater than 4 seconds. With lots of Sprint CMs we can cover the entirety of one launch and if the targets change in the future, we have a reload of under a second so that with the 4 we could handle a stacked set of these turrets. Of note however, when testing I had tested with one Sprint. It shot down 2-3 rockets. This means that the projectile speed of the rockets was slow enough to allow the one single Sprint to fire both salvos, reload and fire off another one (maybe 2). Given that, we may be able to get away with only using 2-3, but the paranoid pirate in me is going to shy away from that for now.

This is the build I think would excel in the A sets. Boon or not. With that in mind, let us look at the S target and see how exactly this build was different.

S set:
(Huggy Link)

I am not convinced that this will not need a refit. I believe that given what we saw in these targets and that they were tuned down, this build may need in fact a second Charged R armor. since i do not have more than 5, we are at this settlement of a build. high ballistic resistances should compositely ignore turret fire of that type. This should be interesting.

Will we need that extra resistance? Or will we need more damage dealing ability? Unknown at this time. These builds are based on what we saw thus far. Given the throttling of the charged armors, it may be that this is a good stop-gap measure until we get more armors and can tune the builds a bit more. Good luck!!!

Questions edit: So I got a few questions, the main one being about the Morts. They have a great repair coefficient and since we are being kept in the dark about the targets, I opted for more resist since I'm adding a 5th boat. If it turns out that I don't need the resists that high or that I need more damage output, they aren't horrendous to swap out. Also, given the throttling of availability of the charged armors, it is an easy way to play with the resists until I can get more Rad charged if I need that resist that high. If it turns out that the Balli is more important and my damage output is good, I can swap the pando out for B's.

The last Bucky is built like this:

For why? To get the Phalanx range out beyond that of the Sprints so they fire first and give us a better chance of shooting the missile(s) down. With the slow projectile speed of the lobbed rockets in conjunction with the HVR on the build, we really don't need (at this time) any extra range on the Sprints. This works out well because we can then have a single hull with FLCM equipped so that the Phalanx has a range buff as well as an accuracy buff allowing us to maximize our countering ability against the radioactive missile in the target. Only time and testing will tell if this is worth losing the extra building damage. It may be that the loss ultimately hurts us if the buildings don't die quick enough to justify the change in special. If that turns out to be the case, this hull will then be changed to a copy of the first two.

Did I mention that these targets weren't final and we hadn't seen the S target for the Bucky yet?

Options? Of course. As Ren pointed out, well I think he pointed out.. I haven't seen the vid yet, but he mentioned it while chatting so I presume he made a point of it... anyway... as he mentioned, the fire field can be mitigated with Shielded Tactical System 4. Makes sense. They are nothing new. It's a fire field and does a lot of damage if you sit in them. The caveat to this option may be, of course, charged armor. We do expect the Charged R to make an appearance and if so, I think we'll find that it may mitigate a goodly amount of the damage. I also believe, based on testing, that this hull may be a repeat of the Hunter in that the concentration of damage mitigation will be lop-sided and make the use of 4 Charged R's a possibility. Why do i say this?

Testing with the HLNC used as a blank flag cut damage SIGNIFICANTLY. To the tune of almost half in some instances. Granted, in many tests I did not run a Sprint at all or I ran only 1 Sprint so this may or may not be an issue depending on how the Sprint ultimately functions in the final targets.

Did I mention that these targets weren't final and we hadn't seen the S target for the Bucky yet?

If you have an HLNC you may be able to eek out a bit better damage wise in the A sets, however, expect the same limitations in the S targets, i.e. don't expect to be able to use this hull in the S target. 

The armor selected, well, I loathe to put any more D5-R on because we all know I'm going to have to f*#$ing refit it off. I only put one Charged B... I mean C. Why is it C again? Yea, Charged C. I'm not sold on the need for more just yet. It seemed as though the damage for the most part was AoE type so evade did not seem a viable alternative. I'm sure over the next few days we will see some consolidation of information from the testing but I think the ultimate clarity will come with the first raid. I wish we had a little more insight given the time frame and the utter lack of shipyard time, but we do what we can, yea? Good luck Captains! 

Oh yea... Did I mention that these targets weren't final and we hadn't seen the S target for the Bucky yet? So, lots of guesses, no S target to test and less than a week to the raid. Who's got the rum?

One of the 85's I ran.I don't know if I have any more full runs of other targets. I'll look in the AM.

UPDATE : Running the S set in the raid, I found that the build needed tweaking. It worked well in the A set, however, the S set required a different build. I DO NOT know if this is final as there is so much insanity going on with this raid. I mention the changes in this video, but I am not 100% on a build until we get some info out of Kixeye.

Final run in the S target on Sunday. Not too shabby and the build wasn't close to done. Hope it helps y'all!!

When is a Turret not a Turret...

...and when  exactly IS it a Turret?

By: George Argyropoulos

a/k/a Dragon_Bane   

With the introduction of the new Wave Motion Gun, a/k/a Kinetic Motion Cannon, an old question arose once again. If the Omega Turret is a Turret, or isn't it?

The question arises from real in-game observations that seemingly contradict what we are told with regard to the mechanics. What we are told is that the Omega Turret is not a Turret and that neither bonuses nor turret defenses apply:

Not the first time we have seen this answer, however, the release notes for OP10 specifically stated that this was a turret:

So which is it? Is it a turret or not? No one knows for 100% certainty because this very basic information has not been officially released other than to state that it is a turret. That's all we officially know at the moment- it IS a turret, but... an Omega turret, not a 'defensive' turret, yea? Where does it say this is an important distinction? Where in the prints does it say it is immune to turret defense specials? No one knows.

Furthering the confusion about the issue is in game observations and players not following through on all the complexities of battle, because... well, because it's a bloody game, not math class. The over-riding argument I hear is that if turret defense did not affect the Omega Turret, the Writ would never get through.

This is false, and here is why:

Omega Gatling Concussive Damage : 800,000 / 15 salvos = 53,333.33 damage per salvo
King's Writ Splash Damage Reduction : 60% (53,333 * .4 = 21,333)
King's Writ Concussive Deflection : 18,000 (21,333 - 18,000 = 3,333 damage)
BUS Boosted Concussive Deflection : 11,004 (3,333 - 11,004 = minimum pass-through damage)

This matches what we observe in-game

Clear as mud? You bet! I partly blame this on the apparent lack of transparency with regard to the mechanics of the game. These are things that we should not be puzzling over, but rather, be told explicitly their function upon release. That would work out far better for everyone. We would know how the function is intended and if there is an issue we would find it far sooner and with more understanding having known the intended function of the item/mechanic rather than puzzle this out and have wildly conflicting information flying about.

The above math also illustrates that the Omega Turret is not affected by any turret boosting building or special as well. I'd show it all worked out, but I'm all math-ed out at the moment.

I am NOT thrilled about a turret being 'immune' to a turret defense specials. We have complained in the past about consistency and it seems that we are constantly having to learn and remember more and more 'exceptions'. It doesn't give me warm fuzzy feelings, it annoys me.

That all said, I have not played with the Boulderfist numbers as yet and I'm hearing conflicting reports already. Given the way so many things interact in this game, I really need to do some testing before drawing any conclusions about the Boulderfist or the Wave Motion Gun... er... I mean Kinetic Motion Cannon. For another time. For now, the jury is out because, well, we just don't know.


LIVE EDIT: Spack took the time and coin to test out a Boulder with specificity to the KMG with and without a turret defense special. Testing proved that in this instance, turret defense DID WORK against an Omega Turret placement. Curioser and curioser... stay tuned for more!

So you wanted to PvP Math, Huh?

PvP Mathing with Two Doors

by: Brian Randich

a/k/a Brian_R

I’ve already done an article about calculating DPS (damage per second), but that was made for PVE.  People have been asking for one about PVP, as the two systems function very differently.  They are so far separated that you can’t take conqueror hulls into PVE targets (except VXP weekend and very particular targets in TLC, remember to read the popup telling you what fleet to use in a TLC).  Even in those VXP targets, your conqueror fleets with 100,000+ armor will die in one shot.  There is a reason for this, and it follows in caps for emphasis:  ANY DAMAGE-TYPE-SPECIFIC DEFLECTION HAS NO EFFECT IN PVE.  STOP PUTTING RADIOACTIVE PLATES ON YOUR SIEGE HULLS, THEY ARE USELESS.  

So, I have 110,000 ballistic deflection on my King’s Writ.  What does that mean?  It means that any single instance of ballistic damage is reduced by 110,000.  This effect is applied last, after things such as splash damage reduction and turret defense.

Splash damage reduction applies first.  It reduces any splash damage.  Any weapon fired that has a splash statistic is considered splash damage.  We think of this as mortars or depth charges doing splash damage, but some cannons also do that, and missiles with a Proto-Nemesis.  This is important to consider when building to defeat a certain conqueror.  Sometimes, “smart-fire” weapons with no splash would do better than “dumb-fire” weapons with splash, even if the deflection is higher against the smart-fire weapon type.  This is pretty simple to figure out. 

Initial damage * (1-splash damage reduction %) = damage that carries through

In addition to this, splash damage decays the further the target is away from the center of the blast.  This is frequently seen in the FM, where turrets far away from the target survive an extra salvo.  It’s important to take into account the projectile speed of your splash-based turrets, as well as the turret’s splash and the attacker’s speed.  Too slow or too little splash and your shot may do far less damage than anticipated or miss entirely.

Turret defense applies next.  This is where you cackle manically if your attacker failed to put siege battery, resonance capacitor, etc. on their hull.  The attacker will almost always have 50% turret defense, further reducing your damage by half.  The omega weapons on an outpost are considered turrets, even though they are not buffed by fire support and the like that affect turrets. 

Then, deflection applies.  Whatever damage is left has the deflection amount on the hull subtracted from it.  If there’s 150,000 ballistic damage after splash damage reduction and turret defense, and the hull has 110,000 ballistic deflection, the hull takes 40,000 damage.

Adding all of that together, we get the following:

(Damage per salvo [note the type] * (1-splash damage reduction %) * 50% turret defense) – damage type’s deflection) = Damage to hull’s armor

The simple answer to people asking “how do I kill X hull” is usually to find whatever they’re weakest to using the above formula (although you usually won’t have to, their deflections make it clear) and make the strongest turret of that type that you can.  The attacker can have armor for nearly any damage-specific-type deflection and/or splash damage reduction, so keep that in mind if your super-awesome turret doesn’t melt the attacker like you thought it would.  People will try to put armor on to cover a hull’s weaknesses, and certain hulls can give boosts to certain deflections.  The Sloth is a prime example, giving concussive deflection to any other conqueror hull in the fleet, which is one reason why two King’s Writs and 3 Sloths (often one of these being the Sloth flagship) are popular:  the Sloth helps cover the Writ’s weakness of concussive deflection.

When attacking a conqueror hull, the most important number is damage per salvo.  Take the total damage number on the weapon and divide it by the salvo number to get damage per salvo.  For example, the new chaos chaingun has 150,000 damage of several types, but a salvo of 15, so each salvo only deals 150,000/15 = 10,000 damage before adding any bonuses.  You can figure out the damage per salvo and then add bonuses or do it the other way around.

Turrets, however, are very different.  They work like nothing else in the game does, and I had Renato explain it to me.  Bonuses to turret damage work in layers, even if they increase the same stat, as opposed to ships, who gather things from the same stat (ballistic damage, etc.) all together and have one bonus to apply.  First, turret damage is boosted by the specials.  Then, that total is boosted by transformers.  Then, that total is boosted by your faction.  Then, that total is boosted by fire support and other tactical mods.  Because I like equations, I’ll put a series of them below, with D0 being the starting damage, and D4 being the final damage that needs to be divided by salvos.

D0 * (1+% from specials) = D1
D1 * (1+% from transformers) = D2
D2 * (1+% from faction) = D3
D3 * (1+% from fire support) = D4

Now, let’s take all this and use it in an example.  How strong would an Epic Cataclysm Mortar (Epic Cat Mort) have to be in order to break the deflection of a King’s Writ?  We will assume there is no armor or additional splash damage reduction on the Writ (So 60% splash damage reduction, 50% turret defense, and 110,000 explosive deflection).  We will also assume an r15 Epic Cat Mort (37,146 damage and 3 salvos), 75% explosive damage from specials (Fuel Tank 01-X), a standard A-T Transformer (35% transformer), Draconian faction (20% from faction), with an unknown at the last equation being the fire support %, but we’ll be able to solve for that.

From the Writ’s point of view, a shot has to overcome 110,000 deflection after getting through 60% splash damage reduction followed by 50% turret defense.  “Breaking the deflection” will be defined as getting a damage high enough so that the end result after all the defenses is greater than 0. 

From earlier:

(Damage per salvo [note the type] * (1-splash damage reduction %) * 50% turret defense) – damage type’s deflection) = Damage to hull’s armor

Filling in what we know and putting in the favorite variable-representing-letter of X, we get:
(X * (1-60%) * (50%)) – 110,000 = 0

A bit of multiplication and algebra leads to needing 550,000 damage per salvo to break it.  That sounds like a lot, and it is.  Let’s set our D4 to 550,000, add in everything from the assumptions, and see what comes out.

D0 = 37,146/3 = 12,382
12,382 * (1+75%) = 21,669
21,669 * (1+35%) = 29,253
29,253 * (1+20%) = 35,104
35,104 * (1+X%) = 550,000

A bit more algebra gives us a fire support percent needed of 1,466%, which is clearly impossible.  There is a minimum damage that the turret will apply, so that’s good news, at least.  Even if you can’t stop a particular hull, maximizing damage is still a good idea, as the turret that fails against one hull could perform fantastically against another.  Even with the above numbers, people are claiming that King’s Writs will die to a well-placed Epic Cat Mort setup.  How is this possible?  IT IS RUMORED that critical hits ignore a target’s deflection.  At that point, your damage would merely be reduced by 80%, and considering you would deal at least 70,000 damage in the above scenario (remember, your crits deal double damage), you’d certainly hurt the attacker.  Also, critical hits could potentially have a higher minimum damage value than regular hits.  A while back, it was rumored that minimum damage was based on a percentage of the deflection of the ship being hit, so a higher deflection actually meant more minimum damage taken.  No one is really sure at this point, but with Bounty 5 going on now and some of the new hulls having over 400,000 explosive deflection, we might have a clearer picture of what’s going on, even if we don’t have all the numbers. 

While PVP math is simpler than PVE math due to taking it one step at a time and (mostly) clear numbers to work with, PVE math’s advantage is that the game gives you all the tools to solve it, as long as you look up some numbers.  I haven’t found anything on the game or in the forums that explains how the turret damage calculation works, and the equations above don’t make logical sense, but I trust Ren over Kixeye after mathematically proving how bad Kixeye are at their own math. 

Hopefully this helps when building certain turrets, but I don’t think this article changes much of the prevailing wisdom when it comes to turrets specifically designed and placed in the center to do damage, which is damage above all else.  But now that you have more knowledge, so go crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.

I. Am. Not. Amused.

Repeating past mistakes... where will that lead?

By: George Argyropoulos

a/k/a Dragon_Bane   

I'm not exactly sure who the brain-trust is at the moment, but bloody hell, it's just after Christmas. It's time for good cheer, not smacking your customers upside the head. I don't even feel like making a funny from that, I'm just going to hop right in.

TLCs :

If I were running a business, at least one that wanted people to give me money, I would make sure I gave them every opportunity to do so. Why you would want to lock customers out of a possible revenue generating avenue (TLC's, FM, Events due to hull choice/limitation), I can't fathom. It is business suicide. Death by a thousand cuts. I would absolutely LOVE someone to explain to me the thought process behind all of these decisions that essentially limit access to players, thereby limiting the company's potential access to said player's wallets.

The Raid - Part I :

I have to admit, I loved the first two raids. In the first raid could do the Fang targets well and the players that got the Hunter fleets out were reaping the benefits. At this point I and many other players began asking what the repercussions would be of a target specifically designed around a particular hull. We were ignored.

In the second, the Hunters took over and performed exceptionally well in their target in the intended fashion in which the hull was designed- autoing. Again, the questions about targets designed with such specificity transitioning to the map and TLCs arose and was heartily ignored. The Hunter though, performed impeccably. I loved the hull, I loved the option, I loved that it worked as intended - at least as we had been led to believe was intended!!

In the final raid of the set, I was less than amused. The 'auto' target was tuned such that last minute changes to the builds were necessitated (huge thanks to THOR again for testing so much out!), not by the requirement for escalation weapons (they were pretty much needed as well), but in the mechanics that we dealt with in the targets. This is NOT how this is supposed to go.

This is not a raid set anymore, it has become individual raids with an enormous amount of pressure put on the players to 'keep up' month-to-month rather than allowing them to concentrate on, you know, playing the f***ing game. I really worry about how this is going to play out with a 4 month raid set while there is a concurrent FM change going on that the players are going to have to adjust to. This is a path of folly that is going to end up alienating even your most carefree spenders in the game.

The Raid - Part II :

Hope Release : This was a mistake. I understand that the company wanted to get these in people's hands before the ominous T7 hulls made their appearance, however, if you stop and think about this a moment, you'll realize that the reasoning behind that is self-defeating. The company knew the hull would have a limited shelf-life- why in the hell would you release it: 1. That late into its projected life-span; 2. Release it in a specialized PvP event that caters to PvP thereby devaluing that event and; 3. Why even create the need for the hull in the first place if the transition was immenently forthcoming? Is it truly that hard to balance PvP month-to-month? Try reading this and understanding the actual meaning of the word: READ ME

Trident? : This was a clusterf***. Again, changes to the FM necessitated the need for an anti-rocket countermeasure. There are two in the game. Why-o-why would you want to purposefully lock players out of an avenue of revenue generation?!? Particularly one that is universally perceived as a necessity of the game, AND, of which players essentially believe if you can not advance, you shouldn't even play. GIVE THEM THE MOTHER******* TRIDENT! Why is this so hard to understand? If you frustrate players, they DON'T WANT TO PLAY. You run a business based on players wanting to play your game, yet it seems you take every opportunity to push them out of the game. Why?!?

MOW and Ancillaries : Seriously? You haven't nickel and dimed us to death yet so you decided to kick us square in the balls and not only pull the MOWs, but then crudely (I mean CRUDELY) attempt to monetize Uranium, Titanium and Base Parts? Get the hell out of here with that crap. Players are refusing to buy the crapola 70 gold for $4.99 deal because they feel gypped and you think they're going to do this? I flatly refuse to do any of those. I will not buy the 70 gold bullshit offer and I will not buy uranium or titanium or base parts during a raid. You have absolutely CONVINCED me to either make sure I'm loaded up with crews and resources before a raid or just suffer through a couple days without. If that means that I get frustrated and don't want to play? I guess you won't be getting any more money from me either. See how that works?

Charged Armor : 12 Million points per. Because you obviously heard how much the community was begging to be shackled to a computer for 6 days. Because you clearly heard the community outcry that there needed to be an increase in total overall points for a fulfilling experience. Because you clearly heard the community begging you to increase the cost of a now-needed component in the game. Might I suggest: These Guys

Agility 4 : Sweet and short. Heavy PvP presence in the prize list. Very much used in PvP and an apparently required special for TLCs in some instances. Where the hell was it?!?

Generic Tokens : Remember when players would complain about build and refit times and the company would respond 'But... Tokens!'? Yea, well, where the hell did they go. Hull/Store raids used to have 10 days of tokens. Given the averaged loss in the FM and the averaged loss in the raids, you'd think they'd have done this because the builds times were reduced or something, right?

Other Tokens : Speaking of Tokens, those hull specific tokens? Cannoneer, a now tier B hull -maybe, 1 day token at 3 million points, the exact same amount per token as that JUST released Hope?!? Da fuq? Yet the King's Writ token is only 2 million points? Do you not see the apparent repercussions of shitty game balance sitting right in front of you as you write these numbers?!? Seriously - you may want to re-think Toking Tuesday going forward.

Build and Repair time on Auto Hull :

I think this is self explanatory. Sure, it's about the same build time as past hulls... except... less tokens... except... the necessitating of two fleets per cycle... except... concurrent refit/build requirements to the FM fleets. See where this is headed? And you thought I was flipping my **** above for no reason, yea?

Oh! Lest I forget- because of the ever increasing amount of health these ships continue to have (because, you know, designing balance within the confines of the mechanics of the game is apparently too ****ing difficult) there is an annoying little niggle of math that is starting to rear its ugly little head. (Thanks to Rooster of SDS7 for helping me test this out.) You know that little .5% disparity between Siege Battery and Front Line CM and Garrison Battery in the Turret Defense statistic... it makes a difference now. Given the absolute bollocks of a repair efficiency ratio on this hull, and watching this trend continue, I foresee this becoming a serious decision in special choice going forward.

Auto-Hull Offered First :  

Didn't we try this before? How'd that work out again? Is there a reason this company insists on repeating decisions that failed before rather than repeat those decisions that actually produced success? Clearly someone needs to look at 2016 and then 2017 and then go look at the P&L statements. Even a 12 year old could deduce the apparent trends and draw a decent conclusive analysis.

Clear as Mud : 

Communication is at about an all-time at-the-bottom-of-the-sty-covered-in-shit low. References to things that are non-existent persist. See that raid briefing? Recommended level to hit in raid? Where the hell do I find that? I mean, seriously, if I don't know what the hell the level is, nor where to find that information, do you really think a casual player is going to be able to find that information out? And why the hell do we still have level limits on raid targets? Where is the info for the level references? Given the enormity of players that you have driven out of the game, you'd think you would incorporate some options for those players to come back without being utterly and completely boned and lost.

What about the next raid? Do we presume we are seeing the raid targets as part of the 120's currently on the map? Do we presume that the VXP weekend was foreshadowing Zoe and that fat glowing moldy bastard having some illigitimate devil spawn and we'll see Reaver targets that are 'Legion Controlled'? Wtf is up with the weird ass missiles you can't shoot down in the 120? And what's with the flying red-nosed penis in there?

Speaking of questionable communication... what about that POS special you pushed out for the Bucc? Still zero clarity why we had such a (on its face) POS special pushed. Anyone have some dice to throw? You'll probably have as much of a chance of pulling a good answer out of the air as getting any direction from these guys.

The FM : 

Are.
You.
*******.
Kidding.
Me.

Seriously, you've botched this thing so many times this year now I'm beginning to think you're doing it on purpose to **** with the players. WHY do I need 2 zelos to walk through those targets? WHY are they changing again? WHY are you making the 'fun' option in the FM punitive to do? WHY are you hamstringing the 'fun' options in the game for every damn thing? And why in the hell wasn't this communicated BEFORE it happened? Hell, WHY hasn't it been communicated YET?!?! We don't know if this is intended, a bug or some super secret plan to re-tune the FM early. C'mon!

Let's just gloss over the fact that just two weeks ago the IB fleets that are currently getting pummeled were offered in game for purchase for about $90 US. That isn't chump change for most people. We don't want to mention that point, yea?

Bounty : 

Has anyone in the company tried to actually hit a base during this bounty? I mean a decent base? with the venerable Bus/Writ fleet? Yea, great "PvP" event. And the plethora of Jackpots on day one and next to nothing since? What about all those players that have to work and start the Bounty later? If anyone thinks that the first huge big batch of jackpots is somehow going to 'trickle down' they clearly do not understand the mechanics of the bounty function, nor the current status of PvP. That we have explained it ad nauseum on the shows and the company still doesn't understand... Smh. I don't want to hear statistics like 'we saw a X% win rate blah, blah, blah.'. Go out into the game and WATCH what is actually going on. You have the power and ability. Use them properly.

PvP : 

I can't even. There is so much screwed up in PvP that I don't really know where to start. The abhorrent extreme swings in balance suck. The basic ideas inherent in PvP are boned because FvF is completely botched. You have required such specialization that you can't even have a fleet capable of stemming off a snipe. Something needs to be done to bring the WHOLE back into balance. Players that coined up fleets get LIVID getting sniped by some dweeb hiding under a bubble. Their very niche fleets are absolutely vulnerable because you can't have a 'sub-hunter' taking up a slot. Sniping has become a bane in the game and the 'adjustment' to the sub repair requirement was crap. It does nothing but hurt players trying to complete TLCs or targets now. Bases, hulls and defenses have become so complex and complicated players spend hours trying to puzzle through everything which is exacerbated by the company's insistence on obfuscation and information suppression. We won't even touch upon the fact that the company releases new content faster then Trump jumps onto twitter when upset. This is the TL/DNR version btw.

Here is a CHALLENGE to Kixeye: Get PvP base attack/defense somewhat balanced in the next few weeks. Idgaf how, just make SURE it works. Then have a PvP weekend event with these stipulations:

1. 2 coin on the map repair of any Baser fleet. Let the dead fleet sit on map in case of lag or disconnection or allow the same in base.
2. Instant repair of base and defending fleet when a player is online or logs in.
3. Suspend Medals. This is for fun. Make it so there is no ancillary 'loss' tied to this.
4. Block sniping of fleets.

Run it. Watch the numbers. Look at the participation. Look at the profit. Thank me by sending me gobs and gobs of gold. THAT will get players PLAYING FOR FUN again. Learn from Black Tuesday (or was it Wednesday?). Learn from the complaints. Learn from the loss of players. But for the love of all that is holy, LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES! Stop repeating them!!!

PvE :

Similarly to the PvP bit, this is the ultra fast version. PvE is completely and utterly screwed. Worse than PvP if that can be believed. Balance is out the window and replaced by specific niche requirements. Previous class builds are negated at the outset. They are relegated to grind options only. You know how fun that is during a raid that requires hundreds of millions of points to 'keep up'?? The addition of escalation weapons and specials was stupid and unnecessary. The requirement of building both fleets of a cycle is insane. WE WANT TO PLAY THE GAME. The way PvE is going is abhorrent. I want tokens. I want old fleet TLCs. I want free time in my shipyard to do FUN things like play with those old hulls to experiment and puzzle out options for all the f'n CHORES I have to do. (I do have an article started about Expeditions - and it's actually a positive one, but I have a little bit of a different take on them than others). In the old days one of the most fun things that we as players would do is come up with these odd and fringe builds and have some fun whacking each other and the random target or three. FvF is dead outside of sniping because both PvP and PvE are completely and utterly fucked.

-----------

Yea, I can't even continue this. I hate writing these types of articles and unfortunately it seems that I am doing so more and more often. This article came out 6 months ago... and so many issues are still applicable. Not a good trend. Is this a bit rough and blunt? Yea. Partly because I'm really, really annoyed at what is continuing to happen and partly because I'm still recovering from having to fully strip this lappy down and replace mb, cpu, memory, hdd, etc., etc. It may have spilled over a little.

Happy new year everyone!

Buccaneer and Pac-Man Combo

Blame Robyn for the title!

By: George Argyropoulos

a/k/a Dragon_Bane   

It's been an interesting Raid. I'll admit, I have found some annoying things and some disturbing things in testing this raid. It certainly isn't as consistent and relaxing as the previous two were. If I can, I'll try and write up an over-view of the Raid this week should some free time show up.

That said, I'm here to discuss the Buccaneer and the Pac-Man combo. I'm not sure who first noticed the carry-over acronym of the weapon/special combo, but I do know the first person that pointed it out to me was Roo, so blame her.

Brian took a lot of time analyzing the math behind the new special as compared to what we currently have and wrote it all out and explained it all in this article. Thing is, as I was contemplating the article and looking over the results of the ACP vs. Strike Warhead testing (ACP lost hard), I realized that all that we covered was the mathematical analysis. We need to take that analysis and apply some game theory and BP sense to it now. Is the MAN really that bad? Should you skip getting it?

The primary issue we came across when analyzing the new weapon and special is that we kept seeing similar results to this:

As you can see, the AL2 build is absolutely killing it on DPS - and that's before rank! Why in the WORLD would you want to build using the MAN special?!? That DPS on the AL2 build is more than DOUBLE the MAN equipped hull.

Wellllllll... funny you should ask. I mentioned earlier that I had done some testing of the ACP vs. the Strike Warhead special. (Big thanks to THOR-1SP again!) What I found was that, with both builds being identical but for the special, even with the perceptually and numerically small increase in damage, the time to kill the enemy was shorter with the SW special than the ACP. This led to less damage. To the tune of an average 1h 1m to the SW equipped fleet vs. 2h 20m to the ACP fleet on auto.

This got me thinking of the new MAN special and Brian's article, and here's the thing - I think I'm going to heartily advise everyone to get the special - even for your Cannoneers or Ironclads, possibly, especially for them, because given the abhorrent discrepancy between the DPS numbers on those builds, I can only conclude one of two things happening here.

1. It was an oversight and the special will get seriously buffed.

or

2. There is going to be a mechanic in the targets that will mitigate pure DPS making 'cumulative damage' far more important (changing time to kill as seen in this raid with ACP vs SW).

Given that there has been ample discussion about the special and comparisons to the old available tech and the raw numbers produced therein... I'm really leaning towards the latter. I think the special came out just as intended and that there was no error. In which case, I can only conclude that there will be some mechanic in the target that is going to dampen pure DPS builds. The only thing I can conclude at the moment only having seen the PAC2 is either deflection armor for buildings/turrets, or, splash damage reduction equipped buildings next to turrets, or some combination thereof mitigating the 'base' damage of any build and making the critical hit (and it's doubling), well... critical.

Think of it like this- if your weapon did 100 damage but the splash or deflection mechanic cut it down to just 10. You could have a hull that did double the DPS, that would be 10 v. 20. Your crits though, would get you 110 damage 12% of your shots, or you had another hull that was doing more crits (say 12% vs. 22%) at less DPS your actual cumulative damage is likely much higher and thus time to kill the target becomes much shorter likely mitigating your damage in the process. Maybe Brian can do more math...

If that is the case, this special then becomes very much more important than we have made it out to be- especially for the lower level hulls IF the mechanic is present throughout the whole of the targets in the next raid.

The final caveat? Dude, the raid isn't even over. My tinfoil hat could be on too tight and I could be completely off base. It could be a completely worthless special, however... I'm not going to pass on the special. Just food for thought.

A grenade by any other name...

The Scientific Method of BP

By: Brian Randich

a/k/a Brian_R

PAC2: We’re Running Out of Names for Weapons

So, there’s a new ballistic weapon out on the market, a new siege hull, a new special, and our first tier 7 hull. Most of these new items don’t stray too far from the norm. The new hull weighs enough that you’ll need the most recent dock upgrade, the new weapon is better than the old ones, and the special. . . wait. We have a lot of good siege specials, between siege battery, siege targeting, other building damage things (high velocity rounds, etc.), and reload specials. Once we get a few basic assumptions out of the way, things get. . . interesting. I’ll be doing some math on the PAC2 with a couple of simple layouts, then go deep on the math of the new special, the mass augmentation nexus. By the end, I will tell you to get the special and to NOT get the special. It’s Schrodinger’s special. (Hey, I used its/it’s properly!) But what we go through along the way will reveal quite a bit about how one can truly maximize damage in practice.

PAC2: PAC Harder

The new cannon works similar to the first PAC. Good damage, good reload, everything looks fine. The big change is the probability of secondary fire, the big blue blast that destroys a bunch of buildings (which I will call the hadouken). People tend to avoid questions about the dps and instead ask “How long will it take to get a hadouken?” While people will say to wait two minutes for a guaranteed blast, I’d rather not do that, and no one is sure if that will work with this current gun yet. Besides, we can figure out about how long it would take to get a hadouken with binomals!

You might remember from a previous article, but binomals are a way to tell the chance of a certain number of successes (x) happening in a certain number of trials (n) with a given probability of success (p). We’ll use another neat trick of probability here, and say that 100% - chance of failure = chance of success. Here, failure means we won’t get any hadoukens in one salvo. First, we can assume 8 guns per ship and a full fleet for 40 guns. So, 40 trials (40 shots), a 0.8% chance of success, and no successes. Next, we’ll try 35 trials for 7 guns per ship, and 21 trials for 7 guns and 3 ships, which seems like the most practical amount for raid one of the new cycle in January.

1-(binompdf(40,0.008,0))=0.275, which means a 27.5% chance to get a hadouken in any salvo.

1-(binompdf(35,0.008,0))=0.245 (24.5%)

1-(binompdf(21,0.008,0))=0.155 (15.5%)

Now, take 100% and divide that by 27.5% (or 24.5% or 15.5%) to determine the number of salvos you would need to get a hadouken on average. That ends up being about 4 salvos for 40 and 35 shots, and 6 salvos for 21 shots. If you start the clock on your first shot (one salvo is used), multiply your reload time by 3 or 5 as appropriate to get the time needed for a hadouken.

I NEED ALL THE GUNS!!!

While I certainly would not try to some specific build advice before we have seen any targets (we don’t know about how much ballistic vs. radioactive damage you need, for example), there is one question that came up. Autoloader 3 is heavy, and it’s not likely to have all 8 PAC2 cannons on the ship with all the other best specials, so here’s the math for 7 guns with Autoloader 3 vs 8 guns with Autoloader 4:

	7 guns and AL3	8 guns and AL4
Avg damage/shot after crits	97363	111272
Reload bonus	110%	66%
Reload time	0.32	0.39
DPS	306030	285671

MAN, This Special is Lackluster

Now for the actual target of my well-calculated ire: the mass augmentation nexus. With 10% ballistic critical chance, 100% ballstic critical damage, and 40% splash, this looks good, right? Not quite, when compared to the other specials you already have (remember to check your Forsaken research tech for the best autoloader). Now, here’s a few assumptions that I will use for the remainder of this article, which I think are reasonable if you can get all the new stuff right now (maybe not for raid one, but probably for raids two and beyond):

• Your ship is skull rank, and the player has R+D 30 for 12% critical chance
• Your special is at r15 (get on that, you can get two done in a month)
• Four specials are already used for speed system whatever, a turret defense special, a defensive special (LA3, CL-3, etc.), and a range-enhancing special (Cannon System 4, Nuclear Accelerator,etc.)

This leaves two specials for offense, and I’m holding the other four constant, so I don’t have to worry about them now. I’ll be focusing on specials that increase building and/or ballistic damage, specials that increase ballistic reload, and other specials (where the nexus will go). I’ll be listing each special, what it does, and its effect on dps.

Damage-Increasing Specials

Name	Bonus	DPS effect
Siege Targeting 4 (r15)	165% damage	x2.65
Siege Targeting 3 (r15)	93% damage	x1.93
High Velocity Rounds	80+55=135% damage	x2.35

Normally, we can assume 100% damage. With these specials, your damage becomes (100+ bonus damage)%. Take that, divide it by 100, and you get the boost it gives to dps. (100+165=265. Then, 265/100 = 2.65) So, Siege Targeting 4 at r15 multiplies your dps by 2.65, and so on down the line.

Reload-Increasing Specials

Name	Bonus	DPS effect
Autoloader 4	66% reload	x1.66
Autoloader 3 (r15)	136% reload	x2.36
Autoloader 2 (r15)	93% reload	x1.93

Here, it’s important to note that the Buccaneer has no ballistic reload bonus. From the BP Professor’s rank formula (Base weapon reload * ((1-rank)/(1+total reload bonus) = Reload) and holding the rank constant, each of these specials increases the denominator. 100% reload would take the bottom from 1 to 2, halving your reload and thereby doubling your dps. (.75/1)/(.75/2.36) = 2.36, so Autoloader 3 at r15 multiplies your dps by 2.36.

Now, for the other things people might put onto their hulls:

Name	Bonus	DPS effect
Mass Augmentation Nexus	10% crit chance/100% crit damage	x1.29
Countermeasure Loaders 4	25% reload	x1.25
Siege Reloader	75% damage + 10% reload	x1.85

The mass augmentation nexus probably needs some explaining, so here’s another table, with a simple 10,000 damage shot for easy math:

	Normal	With special
Damge	10000	10000
Crit chance	12%	22%
Crit damage	200%	300%
Damage per shot (on average)	11200	14400
Difference		1.29

With critical hits in games, you deal increased damage when you land a critical hit, and normal damage when you don’t. Normally, you crit 12% of the time, and don’t the other 88% of the time. When you crit, your damage is doubled. (12% of the time * double damage + 88% of the time * normal damage = 12% * 2 + 88% * 1 = 112% damage on average * 10,000 = 11,200 damage per shot on average) Run that calculation on both sides, divide 14,400 by 11,200, and you get dps multiplied by 1.29 for the new special. Now that we have those three set up, let me order them all, from best to worst, based on how much they increase dps, with the new special in red.

Name	Bonus	DPS effect
Siege Targeting 4 (r15)	165% damage	x2.65
Autoloader 3 (r15)	136% reload	x2.36
High Velocity Rounds	80+55=135% damage	x2.35
Siege Targeting 3 (r15)	93% damage	x1.93
Autoloader 2 (r15)	93% reload	x1.93
Siege Reloader	75% damage + 10% reload	x1.85
Autoloader 4	66% reload	x1.66
Mass Augmentation Nexus	10% crit chance/100% crit damage	x1.29
Countermeasure Loaders 4	25% reload	x1.25

Second from the bottom. For 15 million points! Your Forsaken researchable tech at the start of the game is better than this! Even if you don’t have a particular item or have weight issues, you can still do better than the Mass Augmentation Nexus. Don’t get the new special, it’s trash, end of story.

“But the new special has splash! You can hit more turrets!”

Well done, and very observant. Sadly, probably not enough. Let’s take this against Autoloader 3 at r15, which you clearly all have, and can get it to r15 in time even if you wait a week. Let’s assume you can hit one more turret with this than normal, doubling your damage output. Two birds, one stone. However, there is a decrease in damage out from the center of the splash radius. It’s why there’s sometimes that swear-inducing turret in the back of a turret cluster in the FM target that barely clings to life after you mortared the rest of them to death. We don’t know how low that goes, but we can calculate what it would need to be to matter. We will assume this is on the edge of the splash range, as the 40%*6 = 2.4 extra splash radius should matter. Take the 1.29x dps from the new special and assume a direct it and an indirect hit for less damage and see how that compares to the 2.36x dps from Autoloader 3. Since we don’t know the percentage damage dropoff at the edge of the splash range, we’ll call it Z. Add 1.29x dps for the direct hit and 1.29x dps times Z and set it equal to 2.36x dps.

(1.29 + (1.29*Z)) = 2.36, Z = 0.83, so minimum splash damage would need to be 83% for this to matter. We don’t know this number, but I don’t think that’s the case. With two more hits, this number would have to be at least 41%, which seems more likely.

As promised, I’m going to tell you to get the new special. Why, when it was just mathematically proven how bad it was? Kix tend to have a history of increasing the power of certain things, especially new weapons and specials, when they just aren’t as good as older tech. Remember the Monolith? I do! If you want splash, think about what you’d put on your mortars and go from there, those specials tend to have much more splash.

So, if it’s so bad, why does it exist? I’m going to go with laziness. This type of special worked for torpedoes (Sealed Fire Charge) and depth charges (PBX Payload) because there was only one offensive special that was any good. The rest wouldn’t stack, and you’d be so much better off with a defensive special rather than the small damage increase from concussive upgrade that it wouldn’t be worth the damage. The designers knew it worked in the past, but didn’t understand why. One concussive-damage increasing special locked you out of the rest, and there wasn’t any one that gave us extra ship damage. Our builds often had a spare slot, but the only other option we had was the PBX Payload or similar for more damage. Since our specials for siege are very focused, very different (most only increase one stat), and very powerful (they do their one job very well), there’s enough room for all the best damage-increasing specials to join in. You get to have speed, good defense, good range, AND good damage, all at once! As shown above, nearly every other special is better than this. I wonder what they’ll learn from this.