Okay, so a little discussion about liners left me wondering, so I put together a formula to evaluate overall survivability of different transports.
The basic idea is, how far can a transport get while under fire, based on armor, bots/bats, and thrust speed.
This doesn't factor in the shield at all, so obviously it doesn't represent actual distance, but merely provides a representative number that expresses survivability.
It also does not factor in shield batteries at all - as it turns out, even giving shield batteries the same effectiveness as nanobots (so basically, doubling the bot/bat count factor), which is obviously a gross exaggeration, makes next to no difference.
This means it gives very, very slightly worse results for ships with high botcounts (less than 1%) than it should.
Armor Upgrade is a constant 3 (HauIV), but as it doesn't change the relative effectiveness, percentage-wise, of one transport compared to another, it could be anything.
The result is therefor the distance in meters a given ship could thrust, with shields deactivated, while enduring 25 000 damage per second.
Of course, this is only a small selection. I left out stuff like the Stork, as it would be a rather pointless measurement in such a case, giving a deceivingly small result.
It also doesn't include any smaller transports, as their survivability has far less to do with armor and bots.
And of course, this doesn't fully reflect a ship's real-world survivability, since it ignores shape, maneuverability, armament, etc. But I think it's still interesting to look at.
(10-21-2014, 06:10 PM)Snak3 Wrote: I'd rather see calculation with AU8 and Heavy Shields, which I believe should be the benchmark for survivabily distance.
Well, you've got the formula, you can simply change 3 to 2.5.
And I don't see any way that shields could be realistically accounted for. They make everything much more complicated, but wouldn't actually change the ranking if all transports used the same shield.
And why heavy shield? Only idiots use heavy shields.
To have less error for SNAC/Nova blocking effect. Light shield can be Nova'd with one or two hits, Medium with 2/3. Heavy on the other hand rarely blows up before using up all shield batteries.
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I'm a bit curious about the 25k dps figure. How does this translate to reality, let's say solo piracy in a bomber or gunboat? bloop
What kind of DPS can certain ship classes realistically / ideally dish out? That way we can compare 'true' figured to 'true' tradelane lengths, for example.
(10-21-2014, 06:22 PM)Snak3 Wrote: To have less error for SNAC/Nova blocking effect. Light shield can be Nova'd with one or two hits, Medium with 2/3. Heavy on the other hand rarely blows up before using up all shield batteries.
I've never ever lost a shield to Novas.
The heavy shield has the slowest recharge, longest restore delay, lowest recharge count, highest cargo requirement, and is the only one that uses power.
There are scenarios in which the medium shield is useful (if you're not planning on getting SNAC'd), but there's no excuse for using the large one.
Using a large shield instead of a small one is the difference between eating successive SNACs to the hull and forcing a bomber to use guns.
But all that aside, like I said, there's no real way to account for shields, as it would depend massively on what the target is, how good they are, and how good you are. If you can think of a way to put that into a number, be my guest.
In any case, it won't affect the survivability of one transport relative to another, which is what this list is all about.
(10-21-2014, 06:39 PM)Haste Wrote: I'm a bit curious about the 25k dps figure. How does this translate to reality, let's say solo piracy in a bomber or gunboat?
What kind of DPS can certain ship classes realistically / ideally dish out? That way we can compare 'true' figured to 'true' tradelane lengths, for example.
25k is an arbitrary, but very high figure. A Pirate Transport deals around 21 500 on recharge alone (but more before it runs out of core, obviously).
A Waran using only energy cannons deals about 13 000.
Yep. Salvager and Raba OP.
And as Karst said, this is them being unarmoured and running away in a straight line to a base without shooting. Imagine having to fight against one of those, but they have an armour upgrade and they're firing Solars/GB Turrets at you.
(10-21-2014, 07:20 PM)Lythrilux Wrote: Yep. Salvager and Raba OP.
And as Karst said, this is them being unarmoured and running away in a straight line to a base without shooting. Imagine having to fight against one of those, but they have an armour upgrade and they're firing Solars/GB Turrets at you.
Well actually, it's with HauIV, but as this doesn't account for shields and therefor doesn't give a "real-world number" anyway, but merely a comparative one, that doesn't really matter.
Just for fun, how about:
Salvager with 149 thrust speed - 10 907
Salvager with 139 thrust speed - 10 175
Salvager with 100 000 base armor - 10 494
Salvager with 500 bb - 8 777
Salvager with 650 bb, 149 thrust speed - 9 834
Salvager with 600 bb, 120 000 base armor - 9 158
As you can see, even with some seemingly fairly major nerfs, the Salvager would still rank near the top when pure survivability is concerned.
The weakest possible freighter/transport shield is superior, popping up every, what 7(?) seconds. About the time it takes most bombers to have energy for a SNAC, a little more.
Use energy to down their shield, accidentally mistime your SNAC and you fire it a half second too early, woops, gotta wait the recharge time again.
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