EXAMPLE EVALUATION OF ROOM DPS
Are you ready to be bored to death by math? For maximum effect, imagine you’re back in high school and your teacher is droning on about trigonometry and how it will be useful in the real world.
This is an analysis I did for a fleetmate who asked whether there were alternatives to hangar he should consider. He has everything maxed and was rushing five defenders out. He was also not shooting AA, choosing to target other rooms – so my analysis assumes no damage or emp to the AA over the course of the battle. The numbers here are accurate as of the time I did this (5/2019).
Note: The most important part of a game is having fun! If this is not fun for you, please ignore it. I like to min/max all my builds.
Defenders without AA
Defender level 8 has 2.5s reload and 6 HP. Damage is .5 system. I’ll be comparing defenders to MLZ for simplicity since that’s the most basic gun. MLZ has 4.25s reload but does 1 system damage. So each defender is 85% as good as an mlz. Suffice it to say, if there are no AA, then defenders are insanely good. For the price of 5 rushers, you get 5 pretty good lasers for the whole battle that can’t be damaged and take no power. At mlz efficiency, you should have to pay .85 mlz damage*5 craft*2 power per MLZ=8.5 power to run those five defenders. Each defender does 18 damage over the course of a 90s battle.
Defenders with AA
AA max level shoots every .95 seconds for .6 damage, and let’s assume for now there are two on ships that run AA. I’m also going to assume there is one crew member in each with 20 weapon, so it is sped up 17%. Reload is .79s, and it will take .79*10 shots/2 aa=3.95s to kill one defender. I’ll round that to 4.
So lifetime and damage of each defender is
4s, .5 dmg
8s, 1.5 dmg
12s, 2 dmg
16s, 3 dmg
20s, 4 dmg
That’s only 11 damage total, and I think this is overestimating since when I friendlied you, the defenders were staggered over 12 seconds. AA with good crew could nearly destroy each defender as it arrived.
If you do emp or damage an AA, then the lifetimes of the defenders doubles which makes a big difference.
8s, 1.5 Dmg
16s, 3 dmg
24s, 4.5 dmg
32s, 6 dmg
40s, 8 dmg
For 23 damage total. It will take our MLZ 98s to do that much damage. That’s about the length of a battle, so the damage we’re getting is worth about two power in MLZ terms if there is one AA, and one power if there are two AA. Just comparing to the first analysis, we see defenders are roughly four times better when the enemy has no AA (no AA means 8.5 power equivalent for you. AA means only 1 power for you, but enemy has to use 4 power on AA for 20s out of 90s, so 1 power).
Alternatives to Hangar
So we have to look at the next best alternative to hangar. You seem to have extra power without hangar, using 30/33. So we can consider alternatives that use up to three power, and fit in the space hangar was.
First option: moar guns! MG and BT
Mg would be rushed by one of your five crew, so damage over 90s would be
12 dmg in 30s, 15s reload, 12 dmg, reload = 24 damage (nearly identical to mlz).
Bt would be manned by a gunning crew, so reload reduction of 17%. 90 s /3.5s /.83 /2 (damage is .5)= 16 damage. You can see this is not even as good as an unmanned mlz, and has the drawback of being a one health room.
That used two crew, so for the three other crew:
Two should rush ion, if it’s possible to fit them in with other people rushing ion. Rushing your ion once would be 6.6 damage and twice would be 13.2 damage.
The last crew should stand in your mlz that currently has no one in it. They would improve the damage by 23 damage *.17 reload reduction improvement = 4 damage, along with helping defend the ship with critical strike or gas.
Option one total is 24 mg + 16 bt + 13.2 ion + 4 mlz = 57.2 damage, compared to 11 damage for defenders with AA and 5*18=90 without AA.
So when is hangar better? Call x the percentage of time the enemy has AA.
11*x + 90*(1-x) > 57.2
90 – 79x > 57.2
X = 42%
So if the enemy has AA more than 42 percent of the time, it’s better to be using option one. You can already beat nearly everyone below you, so look through the top 100 ships. If roughly half or more have AA, drop that hangar. If you don’t want to use BT, you can redo the calculation to see what AA percentage is acceptable.
Second option: emp cannon pew pew pew
This would be underpowered, but hear me out.
Triple rush emp cannon at the battle start, for an insane 6.3 shield damage ( I’m counting this as 12.6 damage since shield damage has a 50% reduction). Along with the opening salvo from your guns, the enemy would have no shield in under five seconds, and you would have emped their teleport, even if they have an engine. Your missiles could be switched to shooting both scarlet from the start of battle.
Let’s say it take six seconds to execute the triple rush. You have 84 seconds at 3/5 power to do damage. Each volley does 1.5 damage (.9 system and .6 hull) with a reload of 8.25s, and volley time of 1 s. I’m assuming you have three Gunner crew stay there, with combined weapon of 60, for reload reduction of 38%. So damage is 86s / (8.25s * .62 reload reduction + 1 s volley) * (1.5 damage + .4 damage assuming one in three shots hits the shield as it pops back up) * 3/5 since it’s underpowered = 16 damage.
However, it does mean you don’t have to shoot any emp missiles, which means more damage, and more consistency in emp since the emp cannon is not dodgeable. In your replay, you shot 5 emp missiles. You could have shot five fire missiles instead, for damage of 11.25s * .5 dmg/s*5 missiles= 28 dmg assuming no sprinklers. Crew putting out fires would also lower this number.
Last, you still have two crew so you can double rush ion, for 13.2 damage.
Total, that makes 12.6 initial volley + 16 sustained shooting + 28 fire + 13.2 ion = 70! This is a little inflated because the sustained system damage shooting of the emp will not reach the hull (hitting the teleport while all other weapons shoot elsewhere), so it’s wasted. Also, the fire damage will sometimes overlap, or be put out – though it will do crew damage while the emp missile will not. I would say a realistic estimate is more like 60 damage.
This is very similar to above. If the enemy has AA less than half the time, use hangar. Option two has the benefit of being a high power, easily defendable room. And if one of your rooms is focused, the emp can pick up the extra power. I’ve become a fan of being slightly over on power, so that none is wasted if a room is damaged.
Option two would be my recommendation. I checked the top 20 ships and 70% have AA (despite a much lower percentage running hangar). The alpha strike power of this build can’t be overestimated either, the second shot from your lasers will be landing in rooms instead of hitting their shield.