Impacts of Miniaturization: EA4 Edition
Short version: Still not much, but better. More to come.
Long version:
This is actually not as straightforward anymore, since the decreased base damage of weapons increased damage reduction of shields increased the Damage/DR interplay significantly from EA3 (where it was negligible). I'll try to do a bit of a write-up on this later, including some of the interesting results from it. Weapon damage falloff with range may also impact things in ways not represented by the raw numbers herein.
That said, isolating the impacts of miniaturization alone, things are similar to EA3 in that the new weapon system in a category tends to have stronger raw DPSPS than the previous weapon system in that category. That is to say that the Mass Driver is an upgrade over the Neutron Blaster; Ion Pulse Beams are an upgrade over Fusion Beams, etc. However, the new weapon system don't have the modifications the previous system had, meaning you sacrifice utility for raw output. The important change now is that most of the weapon modifications are functioning (many thanks to kwm1800 for testing them!), meaning that the new weapon system can be functionally worse than the modified variants of the previous weapon system! That is to say, your new Merculite Missiles are actually not going to be as potent as MIRV Nuclear Missiles your ships could be packing.
Math:
MIRV increases DPSPS by 33% [+100% damage, +50% Size: 2.00x DPS / 1.50x Size = 1.33x DPSPS]
Nuclear missiles have 0.20 DPSPS after 1 level of miniaturization (happens in same tech as Merculite), meaning MIRV Nuclear Missiles have 0.20 * 1.33 = 0.26 DPSPS
Merculite Missiles start with 0.25 DPSPS
An expensive (+100% cost to MIRV the missiles, also more vulnerable to point defense), if slight, improvement.
There are a few other examples of this being the case in the table, essentially anywhere the new weapon system is less than ~20% more powerful than the previous. This doesn't apply for some upgrades such as the Fusion Beam to Ion Pulse Beam transition (~60% higher DPSPS).
Finally, a word about miniaturization rates: since the miniaturization upgrades mostly happen with newer weapon systems unlocking, Cannons get 5 levels of miniaturization, Beams and Missiles get 3, and Torpedoes a mere 2 levels. Since all of these are the same -10%, this means earlier cannons 'keep pace' with newer systems better than the other weapon types. I expect the miniaturization effects themselves could be change to improve the system for weapons other than cannons. at a guess -15% per level for beams/missiles, and -20% per level for torpedoes would work better than the current 10%. Further, it could also possibly be tuned within a category so that cannon miniaturization levels gave (as and example) -10%, -5%, -10%, -15%, -10%, rather than straight 10% all the time.
Without further ado:
Tech tiers start numbered at zero for the core warp tech. Shields row indicates the best shields at that tech level; Armor Resilience row lists the best armor resilience at that tech level. Mod codes in these rows: MPS = Multi-Phased Shields; HS = Hard Shields; RH = Reinforced Hull; HA = Heavy Armor.
Values in bold are best in tier for raw DPSPS; Values in italics indicate weapon modifications becoming available in that tier.
DPSPS in Tech Tier |
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Tier 0 |
Tier 1 |
Tier 2 |
Tier 3 |
Tier 4 |
Tier 5 |
Tier 6 |
Tier 7 |
Tier 8 |
Tier 9 |
Tier 10 |
Tier 11 |
Tier 12 |
Research/Tech |
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35 |
40 |
80 |
160 |
320 |
600 |
1000 |
1500 |
2250 |
3000 |
4500 |
6000 |
9000 |
Shields |
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C1 |
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C3 |
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C5/MPS |
HS |
C7 |
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C10 |
Armor Resilience |
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5 |
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10 |
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HA/RH |
15 |
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20 |
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25 |
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Cannons |
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Laser Cannon |
0.28 |
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0.28 |
0.31 |
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0.35 |
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0.40 |
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0.46 |
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0.56 |
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Neutron Blaster |
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0.25 |
0.25 |
0.28 |
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0.31 |
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0.36 |
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0.42 |
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0.50 |
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Mass Driver |
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0.38 |
0.38 |
0.42 |
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0.47 |
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0.54 |
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0.63 |
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Graviton Cannon |
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0.42 |
0.42 |
0.46 |
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0.52 |
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0.60 |
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Phasors |
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1.09 |
1.09 |
1.22 |
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1.37 |
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Gauss Cannon |
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0.94 |
0.94 |
1.04 |
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Disruptor Cannon |
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0.75 |
0.75 |
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Mauler Device |
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0.60 |
0.60 |
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Beams |
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Fusion Beam |
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0.50 |
0.56 |
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0.63 |
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0.71 |
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Ion Pulse Beam |
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0.89 |
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0.89 |
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0.99 |
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1.11 |
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Plasma Beam |
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1.33 |
1.33 |
1.48 |
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Death Ray |
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1.75 |
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Missiles |
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Nuclear Missile |
0.18 |
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0.20 |
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0.23 |
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0.26 |
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Merculite Missile |
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0.25 |
0.25 |
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0.28 |
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0.31 |
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Pulson Missile |
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0.56 |
0.56 |
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0.62 |
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Zeon Missile |
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0.88 |
0.88 |
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Torpedoes |
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Proton Torpedoes |
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0.42 |
0.42 |
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0.46 |
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0.52 |
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Anti-Matter Torpedoes |
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0.71 |
0.71 |
0.79 |
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Plasma Torpedoes |
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1.17 |
1.17 |
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Now to hope I haven't made typos
Edit: Column alignment
Edited by Mathias_Zealot, 28 May 2016 - 07:17 PM.