New spreadsheet comparing Mark I ship caps

[Bognor]

Now that all the Ancient Shadows bonus ships are out, I've made a new user-friendly sortable spreadsheet comparing caps of important Mark I player ships, including fleet ships, starships, turrets, and a few others.  This time single- and multi-target DPS values are listed separately.  I've added a few novel analyses, including a crude estimate of overall combat effectiveness for each ship type, and a "glass cannon factor".  Details within.

Older versions are available here.

Edit: Here's a new one for 7.007.  I've added a bunch of extra ships including golems, experimentals, hybrids, Dyson Gatlings, and more.  There are a couple of new columns indicating which expansion a ship comes from and and whether it's considered simple, normal, or complex when starting a campaign.  Please let me know if there's anything you'd like added in future versions.

Edit: New one for 8.004.

Edit: 8.004 version 2 replaces the original (dl'ed 30 times) to fix errors with Zenith Beam Frigate and Spire Starship.

[Bognor]

Some random observations:

• A single Mark I Hunter/Killer has a higher DPS than an entire cap of Mark I Fortresses 
• Spire Starships have an excellent cap DPS... if you can make it all count.
• On paper, Zenith Reprocessors still look far inferior to Acid Sprayers.
• Most turrets (exception: Lazer Turrets) make poor damage soakers, in that their DPS:hitpoint ratio ("glass cannon factor") is quite high.  When trying to survive a difficult wave, by and large you'd rather the enemy attack your Zenith Bombards or your Sentinal Frigates than your turrets, as the fleet ships do less DPS per hit point.  So moving such ships out of range might be counter-productive.
• The glass cannon factor of starships is typically a bit less than half that of fleet ships, consistent with most players' intuition that fleet ships should be targetted first (except for ships with a damage bonus against the starships, or when overkill would be important).
• The DPS values for Plasma Siege Starships (called "Dreadnoughts" in the spreadsheet) and Zenith Siege Engines look anomalously high.  This might be because I miscalculated.  I based the numbers on this quote from the patch notes:
  

  • Plasma Siege Starship
    
  • Shot now has a traditional (lightning-type) aoe that does 6.25% of normal damage to up to 14 extra nearby targets.
    
    • In order for this normal aoe to work, the restriction from firing upon fleet ships has been removed. Previously it was there primarily to keep the autotargeting from "wasting" shots on small stuff, but this has become less important. It still prefers targeting starships, etc.
      
    • Still has the "siege" effect when hitting a forcefield, but that's been changed from 1% of the damage done to up to 200 ships to 6.25% to up to 25. That's less total, adjusting somewhat for the addition of the traditional aoe and the greater ease of getting the whole bonus.
      
    • For reference, the Siege's dps (per unit, not per cap) against a single target is about 71% that of the Bomber Starship (previous version notes said 1/3rd, that was actually inaccurate). If the traditional aoe hits the full 14 targets, that brings it up to about 133% that of the Bomber Starship. If the shot also hit a forcefield that's protecting other units, that extra "siege" damage is just gravy on top (potentially up to a total of 245% or so).
      

  "TargetsHitPerShot" for Plasma Siege Starships was listed as 15, so I assumed the listed BaseDPS referred to the case where a shot hits its target and 14 nearby ships.  If the listed DPS is actually the maximum possible when hitting a forcefield, plus 14 nearby ships, plus 25 ships under the forcefield, then my numbers are wrong.  For the Zenith Siege Engines the only information I had was the "TargetsHitPerShot" number of 15, so I assumed they worked in the same way as Plasma Siege Starships.
  
  ***
  
  Come to think of it, I think something is wrong with either the Plasma Siege Starships' damage or the way it appears in the exported data.  Just compare the listed "MaxDPS" values for the following starships: LightStarship 200,000; ZenithStarshipI 200,000; BomberStarship 140,000; Dreadnought 1,500,000.  The Dreadnought DPS seems inconsistent with common sense and with the quote above.

[keith.lamothe]

The plasma-siege-shot (which both the starship and the siege engine fleetship use) does hit up to 15 targets, but the calculation there isn't accounting for the fact that each of the 14 "secondary hits" is only for 1/16th (6.25%) of normal damage.

It's not factoring the "hits extra stuff under forcefields" splash damage at all.

[Bognor]

Ahhh.... So the true SingleTargetDPS values should be 1/15th the numbers in the exported data, and the true MultiTargetDPS values (ignoring forcefield hits) should be the SingleTargetDPS values times (1 + .0625*14).  Thanks Keith!  Will upload a corrected version shortly...

[TechSY730]

The fact that turrets are rather fragile is a little concerning. If the turret cap DPS is balance target to be 2x (or was it 3x?) of the balance target of a cap of the corresponding fleet ship mark, shouldn't their balance target for cap health be >1x of the balance target for fleet ship cap health? It doesn't have to be the same magnitude, but turrets being glass cannons is a bit of an oddity.

[chemical_art]

The fact that turrets are rather fragile is a little concerning. If the turret cap DPS is balance target to be 2x (or was it 3x?) of the balance target of a cap of the corresponding fleet ship mark, shouldn't their balance target for cap health be >1x of the balance target for fleet ship cap health? It doesn't have to be the same magnitude, but turrets being glass cannons is a bit of an oddity.

I think it depends somewhat on the turret.

Some turrets for sure need more health. The flak turret is meant to be a brawler turret meant to camp at a wormhole and give and take a licking in return for low caps and range. However, it has less cap hp then a laser turret which is effective against more things, has no negative multipliers, and much larger range. To conclude, the flak turret is suprisingly squishy.

However, most of the time, for me, I'd rather turrets be glass cannons. They have no mobility, so I need them to dish out as much dps as they can before their targets go out of range. Usually they get off two salvos due to their superior range before they start getting hit so it works out, and some like missile turrets almost never get hit.

DPS > Health for turrets then, for turrets can't follow the action and can be set in advantageous locations.

[Bognor]

I've uploaded a new version with corrected stats for Plasma Siege Starships.  I've assumed the same rules apply to Zenith Siege Engines and edited those accordingly.  Compared to ordinary Bombers, Zenith Siege Engines now look... mediocre to poor?  Edit: Keith's already going to un-nerf these a bit... See here.

The fact that turrets are rather fragile is a little concerning. If the turret cap DPS is balance target to be 2x (or was it 3x?) of the balance target of a cap of the corresponding fleet ship mark, shouldn't their balance target for cap health be >1x of the balance target for fleet ship cap health? It doesn't have to be the same magnitude, but turrets being glass cannons is a bit of an oddity.

By and large, the cap health of DPS-dealing turrets is a bit higher than that of a cap of fleet ships of the same mark.  But the turrets' DPS is higher by a greater %, so a sensible AI should target the turrets first if their aim is to win the battle.  Of course, taking down fleet ships first might still hurt the player more all-round by costing more resources to replace, forcing them to wait longer before attacking, and so on.

[chemical_art]

 Of course, taking down fleet ships first might still hurt the player more all-round by costing more resources to replace, forcing them to wait longer before attacking, and so on.

Keep in mind that turrets can be rebulit for half cost. On the other hand, most fleetships cost less then half m + c then turrets....

[chemical_art]

Interesting, combining the m + c costs of all the offensive turrets is about 2/3 of the cost of a single cap of forts...

[Bognor]

Yeah, Forts are crazy expensive in raw materials, yet crazy cheap in knowledge: a cap of Mark I Fortresses has a higher Base DPS than the entire combined caps of Mark II Basic, Lazer, Missile, and MLRS turrets.

[keith.lamothe]

Some turrets for sure need more health. The flak turret is meant to be a brawler turret meant to camp at a wormhole and give and take a licking in return for low caps and range. However, it has less cap hp then a laser turret which is effective against more things, has no negative multipliers, and much larger range. To conclude, the flak turret is suprisingly squishy.

Don't forget that the flak turret (and the lightning turret) only get their damage output reduced by 25% (instead of 75%) when covered by a standard forcefield.  So their squishiness can be massively ameliorated.

Anyway, yea, from a lore perspective stationary defenses generally have to be massive to have the kind of passive defenses necessary to withstand concentrated fire (i.e. fortresses, forcefields) or just accept being kind of squishy compared to their damage output.  On the bright side, all the mass that would have been engines, is guns.

[LordSloth]

Something I'd find handy added in that list is "base time to cap". Unassisted by engineers, how long does it take one stardock to build from zero to max.

One of the things I didn't expect was that a cap of reprocessors takes less time to build than a cap of acid sprayers or even fighters. I wonder if there are more surprises like this, or if the Zenith Reprocessor is just an odd case, on account of being an odd unit.

[KDR_11k]

Anyway, yea, from a lore perspective stationary defenses generally have to be massive to have the kind of passive defenses necessary to withstand concentrated fire (i.e. fortresses, forcefields) or just accept being kind of squishy compared to their damage output.  On the bright side, all the mass that would have been engines, is guns.

With stationary defenses you don't need to worry about weight as there's no engine that has to deal with that weight so you can weld armor plates on there until it's a floating ball of steel with a gun poking out. I know real life shouldn't play into it but even non-fortress gun emplacements can be extremely tough compared to mobile units like tanks. Think of the Normandy shoreline defense bunkers. Those aren't fortresses, the world wars saw explicit fortress structures that were almost impossible to crack (but easy to drive around...), the shoreline defenses were the equivalent of turrets. They're tougher (even airstrikes won't smash them easily) and can be even better armed than the impractical Maus and completely insane Ratte and Monster supertanks yet they can be built rather cheaply because there's no need for a ridiculous engine to get that mass moving.

[Bognor]

Something I'd find handy added in that list is "base time to cap". Unassisted by engineers, how long does it take one stardock to build from zero to max.

One of the things I didn't expect was that a cap of reprocessors takes less time to build than a cap of acid sprayers or even fighters. I wonder if there are more surprises like this, or if the Zenith Reprocessor is just an odd case, on account of being an odd unit.

Glad to get some feedback 

I believe build time is derived directly from total metal + crystal cost, and proportional to that cost.  I think there's also a limit to how many units one Space Dock can churn out per second, but I doubt you'd reach that limit in the scenario you describe.

[keith.lamothe]

With stationary defenses you don't need to worry about weight as there's no engine that has to deal with that weight so you can weld armor plates on there until it's a floating ball of steel with a gun poking out.

Right, mass doesn't really matter in their design, but if the turrets were all armor-balls they'd cost a lot more   Partly because presumably just heaps of bare metal isn't a very effective passive defense against the wide assortment of weapons in the setting: need various forms of rad shielding, deflector screens, damage control, etc.

And even if they were all armor-balls, they can't dodge at all.  We don't model miss-chance in the game (since the unity port, anyhow), but I think it makes sense that it's much easier to make a stationary object really good offensively than it is to make it really good defensively.