[fredd]

Hey folks

I played FS 1 many years ago when it was new and it's only now I finally got time to get my hands on a copy of FS 2, courtesy of Ebay.  I thought all the Freespace websites were long dead now, I'm delighted to find that there's a thriving community going on!

I don't know if it's ok to ask questions about the original FS 2 single player game, sorry if this is the wrong place.

Basically, I found this chart for weapon damage here at VolitionWatch.  I want to work out which are the best guns.  Damage per shot multiplyed by firing rate etc.  What puzzles me is that there are the expected damage figures for HULL and SHIELD damage but there's also a simple DAMAGE column as well that seems unrelated to the other two.  Anyone know what that is and how that figures into how good the guns are?  Could HULL be for fighters only and DAMAGE be for damage against capital ships perhaps?

If anyone knows, thank you for your help!

[Setekh]

Firstly fredd, welcome to HLP. Good to see people still discovering the old girl - just wait till you finish the main campaign and then play FreeSpace Open.

Secondly, I'm a bit rusty on this, but IIRC those values are multiplicative. That is, 'Damage' is how much power the weapon has generally; that power is moderated by how much it affects shields and hull. The Circe, for instance, has a zero rating for hull damage; even though its Damage is 45, none of that power brings about hull damage. Make sense? If you really wanted to, you just could fool around with the tables (from which that weapon information comes) and see what effect it had.

[TrashMan]

I once did a damage per second calculation and power consumption per second calculation for alll FS2 weapons.

Keyser is the high king of overall damage per second (116 i belive it was), maxim is the hull killer.
Can't remeber the rest..

[pyro-manic]

Yeah, in the weapons table, there are multipliers for shield and hull damage. For example, the Prometheus S (best weapon, by the way ) has a damage value of 30, with an armour factor of 0.90 and a shiled value of 1.00. So each shot will do 0.9*30 hull damage, and 1.0*30 shield damage. It's also worth taking into account the "fire wait" value, ie the delay between shots. So a Prometheus S with a fire wait of 0.35 will fire two and a bit times a second (for a rate of fire of 171 shots per minute), whereas a Subach HL-7 has a fire wait of only 0.15 seconds, and so will fire nearly 7 times per second (or 400spm). This means that a fast-firing weak weapon may perform as well as a more powerful but slower-firing weapon in many situations.

I have a spreadsheet thingy with all the damages worked out as well. I'll see if I can find it...

[Galemp]

It also depends on your difficulty level. On higher levels you'll find that energy drains much faster, so your double Kayser combo won't take you as far as a Kayser and a Subach will.

Generally, though, the Kayser is really powerful but with short range and high energy usage; the Prom S is a good, well balanced weapon; and the Subach is a light but decent weapon if you want to divert energy to shields or engines. Stay away from the Prometheus R, it's not worth it.
The rest of the cannons are best for tactical use: Maxims are perfect for picking off turrets, the Morning Star is a good bomb/bomber interceptor for slower fighters, and giving your covering fighters a Lamprey occasionally will keep the enemy off your back.

[Black Wolf]

Ok to ask newb question here?

No. You must be cleansed.

Dun dun dun.........