1 (edited by Container 2010-12-17 08:48:38)

Topic: PERP101: Which Faction should I choose to train?

Lots of players have discussed with me what Faction's Bots to specialize in, so here is a short guide to help people choose.

1. Compare the weapons:
Damage per second: Firearms>Magnetic Weapons>Lasers>Missiles
Range: Lasers>Missiles (No Line of Sight required)>Magnetic Weapons>Firearms
Accumulator thirsty: Lasers>Magnetic Weapons>Missiles/Firearms
Weight (this affects the slowness of your robot): Firearms>Magnetic Weapons/Missiles>Lasers

There is no overall best weapon.  There is a trade-off between the Range, Damage, Accumulator Use, Cycle time(affects crit chance), and need for Line of sight.  It is up to you to choose between relative performance in these areas.
You could try out the 3 starter bots, to see which one you enjoy the most.

Note: While Blue users usually use Magnetics, Yellow Lasers and Green Missiles because of their bot bonuses, sometimes Blue/Yellow bot users use firearms instead of Magnetic weapons/Lasers because they find the tradeoff in DPS/low accumulator usage/fast cycle time(increases critical hit chance) to be worth the lack of range and heavy weight.
Green is pretty much confined to missiles as their bots are mostly with missile slots that only accept missile launchers.

2.  Compare the tanking style:
Green(Pelistal): Shields (can make a bot almost invulnerable when on, but has to be shut off to fire weapons.  Something like an accumulator based temporary invulnerabity.)
Yellow(Thelodica): Resists (buffer tanking?)
Blue(Nuimqol): Armor repair (active tanking)
The main thing is to try on a small shield gen once or twice to see whether shield is your thing or you prefer armor/resists.

3. Compare the E-war:
Green(Pelistal): Energy draining/Energy neutralizing
Yellow(Thelodica): Sensor Dampening (reduces locking range and increases locking time)
Blue(Nuimqol): ECM (chance based lock jamming)

4. Look at the various robot bonuses of each race:
Green(Pelistal): Locking time, Shield Absorption, Missile damage
Yellow(Thelodica): Critical hit chance, Armor Resists, Shield Absorption/Accumulator recharge
Blue(Nuimqol): Armor Repair, Falloff, Magnetic weapons
Green/Yellow if you like shields, Blue for armor, Yellow if you like critical hits.
You can see the bot bonuses on Perpetuum Planner at perpetuum-planner.com or on item info on the market.

After you have compared all four dimensions, it should either be clearer which faction you want to train. [Or you will want to train all of them!!]

Enjoy the game of Perpetuum.

Re: PERP101: Which Faction should I choose to train?

Good post, should be helpful to newer players. 2 points though:

How do missiles have the second greatest range? They have no falloff. A magnetic weapon out ranges missiles easily. They don't even need to go very far into falloff to do so. Even firearms easily out range missiles thanks to their very long falloff range.

And how does cycle time increase your critical hit chance? If you have a 10% crit chance I'd assume that 1 in 10 shots is a crit, regardless whether you fire 1 shot per minute or 1 per second.

*Insert really awesome sig here*

3 (edited by Container 2010-12-17 13:22:26)

Re: PERP101: Which Faction should I choose to train?

Gobla wrote:

How do missiles have the second greatest range? They have no falloff. A magnetic weapon out ranges missiles easily. They don't even need to go very far into falloff to do so. Even firearms easily out range missiles thanks to their very long falloff range.

Second greatest optimal range then.  Yes, one drawback to missiles is no falloff.  You may find some good opportunities through the use of falloff with magnetic weapons and firearms.  However, don't forget firing in falloff changes the damage you can expect, so the whole relative damage/range comparison between weapon types breaks down and gets complicated.

Gobla wrote:

And how does cycle time increase your critical hit chance? If you have a 10% crit chance I'd assume that 1 in 10 shots is a crit, regardless whether you fire 1 shot per minute or 1 per second.

Cycle time does not increase your crit chance per cycle, but your chances for crits within a period of time (eg. if a battle lasts 16 seconds you get 2 rolls to get a crit with a 8 second cycle time weapon but 4 rolls to get a crit with a 4 second cycle time weapon).
If you use a high cycle time weapon with a bot with a crit chance bonus, more rolls for crit together with higher chance of crit per roll due to the bonus, means high chances for crits or more crits across the span of a battle.

4 (edited by Vorgrim Scout 2010-12-17 14:04:35)

Re: PERP101: Which Faction should I choose to train?

How fast you hit is irrelvant to average dmg gained from crits, since they are a set 1.75 multiplier.

I would like to add that the more I get into fights where I can not easily dictate the terrain I am fighting on, the more I wish I went green. There is no getting past how rage inducing spamming lasers into the ground is when your target is perfectly in LoS.

Whatever the discrepancy in dmg is, it will surely be made up for over time by the amount of wasted shots of turrets. My advice to anyone in a position to choose is, carefully consider what I have just said.

Re: PERP101: Which Faction should I choose to train?

Container wrote:

Second greatest optimal range then.  Yes, one drawback to missiles is no falloff.  You may find some good opportunities through the use of falloff with magnetic weapons and firearms.  However, don't forget firing in falloff changes the damage you can expect, so the whole relative damage/range comparison between weapon types breaks down and gets complicated.

True, but the lower DPS for missiles needs to also be taken into account. Magnetics combined with the falloff bonus from Numquil bots will most likely still do more damage at missile optimal range then missiles do. Firearms will probably do a bit less but even then not that much seeing how missile DPS is really quite low.

Cycle time does not increase your crit chance per cycle, but your chances for crits within a period of time (eg. if a battle lasts 16 seconds you get 2 rolls to get a crit with a 8 second cycle time weapon but 4 rolls to get a crit with a 4 second cycle time weapon).
If you use a high cycle time weapon with a bot with a crit chance bonus, more rolls for crit together with higher chance of crit per roll due to the bonus, means high chances for crits or more crits across the span of a battle.

From a pure DPS point of view cycle time is completely irrelevant. Regardless of your cycle time each percentage of crit adds 0,75% to your DPS ( with diminishing returns, 19% to 20% crit adds only 0,656% DPS. )

From your timeframe point of view however lower cycle time weapons are actually better. Getting a crit with a 10 second cycle time weapon is like getting 2 crits in a row with a 5 second cycle time weapon. Crits hurt, but chain crits kill. The more cycle time your weapons the more chain crits would be needed from a faster weapon.

If you had to pick between 2 bonuses, double your crit chance or double your crit damage, which would you pick? Just look at so many other RPGs, increasing crit chance is quite common on items, stat effects and talents. Increasing your crit damage is generally only found on higher talents.

*Insert really awesome sig here*

Re: PERP101: Which Faction should I choose to train?

Regarding criticals: There are two things that you might want to control, your average DPS, and your variance. If you increase criticals, then you increase DPS and variance. If you decrease misses, then you increase DPS and decrease variance.

Variance is two-faced. If your opponent has a tank (shield or armor repping) that you might want to break, and you can't quite break it with your average DPS, you might want higher variance, even at the expense of some average DPS. However, most of the time you want to control uncertainty and unpredictability in battles, which leads to claims that there is a synergy between short cycle time and criticals - two bots with the same average DPS, but different cycle times, will gain the same average DPS from adding criticals, but the one with shorter cycle time will gain less variance.

Re: PERP101: Which Faction should I choose to train?

There is still one thing that I miss in this thread: the chance to miss of every weapontype.
I've recognized that EM-Weapons have a verry high missing rate contrary to Laser-Weapons.
So where are the plus and minus of the weapontypes?

I guess with Laser you have a big range, a bigger hit-chance and lower damage in contrast to EM. With EM you have a smaller range and a lower hit-chance but much more damage.

Can somebody confirm this?
I'm irresolutely about what weapontype I'll use.

Re: PERP101: Which Faction should I choose to train?

BeeZerk, the hit chance for turrets is described in the help under 'combat in numbers' - basically, you compare the hit dispersion of the weapon to the size of the target.

You're entirely correct, lasers have a lower hit dispersion than magnetics, and magnetics lower than firearms.

9 (edited by Annihilator 2011-03-16 02:22:58)

Re: PERP101: Which Faction should I choose to train?

Chance to miss:

Missiles:

  • Each bot has a base 10% chance to miss with missiles, which you can reduce with "missile guidance" extension -1% per extension level.

  • Lvl 8 of "missile guidance" means only 2% of your fired missiles will miss, and thats almost never.

  • Size of the target has no influence on this chance, but on the ammount of damage that will be dealt.

Turrets:
All turret weapons got a hit dispersion and the size of the target is the deciding factor for chance to hit. if you dispersion is smaller then the targets hitsize, you will hit with 100% chance.
If your dispersion is less or equald 50% of the targets hitsize, you will get an additional 10% damage boost

Analysis of all Turrets (from worst to best)

  • medium machine gun (short range firearm)
    base dispersion 12° - lowest possible dispersion 8.4°
    wont even hit a mech with 100% chance, forget about small ewar bots

  • medium autocannon (long range firearm) and medium gauss cannon (short range EM)
    base dispersion 10° - lowest possible dispersion 7.0°
    lvl 8 "Precision firing" will make you hit mechs for 100% chance and assaults with 50% chance

  • medium EM Gun (long range EM)
    base dispersion 9° - lowest possible dispersion 6.3°
    lvl4 "Precision firing" sufficent for fight with mechs (~100%), and assaults (~50%)

  • medium HCL Laser (long range Laser) and medium LCL Laser (short range laser)
    base dispersion 8° - lowest possible dispersion 5.6°
    "Precision firing" not necessary to hit mechs, lvl 8 "Precision firing" makes them pretty reliable against assaults and smalls

  • light autocannon
    base dispersion 5° - lowest possible dispersion 3.5°
    needs "Precision firing" on lvl5 just to hit assaults to 100%
    will never hit small bots with 100% chance

  • light EM-Gun
    base dispersion 4° - lowest possible dispersion 2.8°
    You can hit assaults 100% with no investment in "Precision firing", and lights with lvl 8.
    you will also always have 10% damage boost against mechs

  • light HCL-Laser
    base dispersion 3°- lowest possible 2.1°
    will never miss assaults or light bots, only for light ewars you need "Precision firing" lvl 3 to always hit.
    you will also always have 10% damage boost against mechs - and with "Precision firing" on rank 9 you get the 10% damage boost against Sequer.

Edit: all 10% damage boosts got removed for psychological reasons

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear