Bought this game a few days ago, was having lots of fun but I have a few questions that’s been bugging me. I’m in office now and I keep thinking about them…
Fast Missile
Projectile speed: 0.34 (hope I’m correct)
Damage: 30
Range: 226-900 (hope I’m correct)
Fire interval: 2145
How do I determine the DPS for both weapons?
My understanding of the way to derive DPS is to divide damage by fire interval to obtain damage per second. So question is, for a weapon with 1950 fire interval, how much is 1950 in seconds? I’m thinking 1950 is in milliseconds, so that should be equal to 1.95 seconds, am I right? So 30 / 1.95 = 15.38 DPS?
Projectile speed, what does it mean?
Let’s say for a 0.17 speed weapon, what does that translate into? It travels 0.17 grid per second? 0.17 pixels per second? Or does it even have anything to do with time? How can I measure it? I know for sure that a higher number means the faster the projectile travels, so a 0.34 projectile travels faster than a 0.17 projectile. I’m asking this because I noticed that DPS is not a concrete way to determine how much damage is done per second, projectile speed seems to matter. I observed a situation where my missiles got scrambled and it flew away from the target, and then my missile silo reloaded (full white bar) i.e. ready to fire but it couldn’t fire off because the projectile was still in travel, the silo sort of got ‘clipped’, and while waiting for the missiles to explode, all the precious time waiting to fire the next shot was wasted. I experimented with plasma (3000 fire interval), from what I can see, it travels very fast, possibly the fastest I have seen in the game, and it seems like plasma do not have this ‘clipping’ problem, it can fire off every time the reload is done.
Stalemate, what can I do?
I was playing the andromeda map, the survival map, and I found myself in the mentioned situation. My fleet do not have engines, so basically we can’t move. So there’s this imperial cruiser that luckily got away and hide in one corner. So… what else can I do other than admit defeat? The map simply won’t spawn the next wave, I waited for quite a while, showered, have dinner, came back and I’m still on the same screen, same score.
Should I buy nomad and conquest expansions?
I bought the collector’s edition, original game + tribe + order + swarm for 24.99 (wow!). Nomad is 5.99 and conquest is 6.99. Let’s say I really like this game a lot, and I’m looking for more items to configure, more weapons, more hulls, more whatever, is nomad and conquest worth it?
Welcome aboard the GSB forums, nubbienub. Im rather out of it on account of pain meds at the moment (carpal-tunnel syndrome can burn in hell) but i’ll try to give you some food for thought until another veteran player can chime in.
DUe to lack of numerical prowess right now i’m going to defer to others re: that query. Trust me that’s for the best tonight. BTW yes the “fire interval” is indeed measured in milliseconds.
Speed matters in GSB more than you yet know. The faster a targeted unit (ship, fighter or seeking weapon) flies, the harder it is for a hostile unit to gain an accurate weapons lock-on. Think of it as an indirect form of stealth. It can be surprisingly powerful. Faster missiles are harder for point-defense guns to splash, faster fighters are tougher to swat, etc.
Cliffski has a game-balance feature in force wherein any seeking-weapon launcher; missile, rocket or torpedo; can only have one bird in flight at a time. The next bird can’t launch until the previous has impacted target, been splashed by protective fire or run out of fuel. I disagree with it, but it’s his game.
I cant recall right now if plasmas truly adhere to this, despite your assertion. Worth looking into, though. As regards speed, cruiser plasmas fly at, IIRC, speed 12.0. Contrast that to the missiles in your first example above…that would be 17 or 34 versus 1200. No wonder they look zippy.
I’m afraid you’re well and truly screwed. Instead of coming up heads or tails, the coin landed perfectly on its side. Not sure how to advise you from here, old chap. Considering your opponent ship, and to quote C-3PO out of context most cruelly, “Surrender is a perfectly acceptable option. The Empire may be gracious after our defeat…”
Nomad expansion includes the most beautiful ships in the game. It also has the most amazingly extended-range missile, a new gun for fighters, and a ship-to-ship laser capable of salvo fire. It conspicuously lacks ready-made missions for you to play, but our Gratuitous Modding forum can help you set some up with little effort.
As for Galactic Conquest, it’s still a beta product but shows considerable promise. It’s a strategic-level counterpart to this game, using conventional GSB combat to resolve individual battles in the course of you prosecuting the war. The threat forces you face are also ones that’re submitted by and honed to razor-edged perfection by other GSB players, so the difficulty level is noticeably higher than the fairly powder-puff missions packaged with GSB itself. It’s a real nail-biter at times. Additional campaign maps will be available in the nnear future, so that adds additional interest too.
Oh and re: more future goodies to configue alter or improve…GSB is highly moddable. You’re dealing with simple textfiles and sprites in .dds format. We modders can show you how to non-destructively tune-up that jalopy in your driveway and enter it at Le Mans or the Indy 500. Or simply change the oil, if that’s all you really want. The friendly community mod squad is always available to answer questions.
im pushing my luck with so much typing at one time. Gonna bow out and pass on the baton. Good night!
Your way of calculating DPS is correct, except that it doesn’t work for missiles. The reason for that is that you can’t have 2 missiles in the air at the same time. So if the missile is slow and your target far away, the weapon will be ready to fire before the missile hits.
More details in this great post
As explained above, speed is an important compnent of DPS.
Moreover, it makes the missile less vulnerable to scrambling.
You should really put at least one engine per ship. You’re vulnerable to this kind of annoyances if you don’t do so.
Nomads brings you as much as other DLC’s, there won’t be any surprise there.
GC is a different and interesting beast, adding a strategy game to GSB. It’s still in beta, and imperfect, but it’s still the expansion i would recommend most, as it changes the way you play - rather than just giving new hulls.
BTW yes the “fire interval” is indeed measured in milliseconds.
Additional campaign maps will be available in the nnear future, so that adds additional interest too.