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Topic: Some interesting findings on ammo & resists vs NPC's.

tl;dr - pay attention to what the NPC's you fight are dropping for loot.  If they are dropping resist plates, that resist is buffered.   Also pay attention to the ammo they drop - that is what they are using against you. 

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I've been working a pack of T3 blues assault mechs near Radholme using my Waspish.  This is a fairly bad mix - they do damage to my weakest resist and are most resistant to my strongest damage type - good for testing out different ammo usage.

I've tried a few different types of ammo with them and here's what I've seen.

Small 'Smite' ballistic Missiles - best results - average of 9 volleys to kill them (45 missiles).
Damage Types:  8 therm, 8 kin, 8 chem, 21 seismic  (45 total damage)

Small doublecore ballistic Missiles - average 15 volleys to kill them. (75 missiles)
Damage Types:  15 therm, 20 seismic (35 total damage)

Small chemical ballistic Missiles - 14-15 volleys to kill them. (70-75 missiles)
Damage Types:  15 chem, 20 seismic (35 total damage)

Small armor piercing ballistic missiles - 16 volleys to kill them (80 missiles)
Damage Types: 15 kinetic, 20 seismic (35 total)

Small sonic ballistic Missiles - worst tested - 20-21 volleys to kill them.  (100-105 missiles)
Damage Types:  40 Seismic.

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The reason doublecore (therm damage) didn't come out on top is these blue mechs were dropping thermal armor on a regular basis.  As such, they had "filled the resist hole".

By fitting the thermal plates, chemical then became their weakest resist but it also doesn't look as if they activated the plates.

If the plates had been activated, that would have been +100 points to thermal, putting it at the second highest and that would have shown with the number of volleys that I fired to drop them.

Overall - the end resists on these guys:
Seismic highest
Kinetic second
Thermal third
Chemical weakest
-- with the 3 lowest within 5-10 points of each other.

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Just some interesting findings I thought I'd share.

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Re: Some interesting findings on ammo & resists vs NPC's.

I'm fairly certain the NPC's dont actually have the hardeners active.  They will gain the passive resistance of the item, but not nearly the full effect possible.  This generally doesnt change what type of damage you should do to them.  I still do massive damage to thelodica bots that fit a seismic plate, instead of seismic becoming its best resist and me doing crap.

And yes, you are an idiot for trying to kill Nuimqol bots in your waspish.  You just have to accept that Nuimqol can still be fairly effective against Thelodica, and Thelodica can still do something to Pelistal, but Pelistal will forever be complete sh*t against Nuimqol.  I think its the perfect sh*t storm between passive resists, speed, and armor repair bonus.

They also probably didnt "fill the resist hole" as much as you'd think.  Smite does more damage as a whole (45), so what more was being resisted by its other higher resists didnt make up for the extra 10 damage it was doing over doublecore (35).

Your results do not surprise me in the least, but thanks for sharing.  Although I do consider using Smite missiles more often because they are damn cheap because of all of the mission runners get them and they're not needed for pvp so much.

->You just lost The Game<-

3 Reply by Jack Jombardo (edited by Jack Jombardo 2011-07-21 01:18:47)

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Re: Some interesting findings on ammo & resists vs NPC's.

Marak Mocam wrote:

good for testing out different ammo usage.

Do you read this Neoxx?

Neoxx wrote:

And yes, you are an idiot

FAIL

Good work @Marak Mocam smile
Testing such stuff is allways good and to test stuff, you have to do stuff, which you NORMALY wouldn't do cool.



PS: I'm currently grinding my reputation for green with level 2 missions.
After I did the 6 good missions I have to do for of the bad once.
1 I have to walk 10 mins to get there, kill 6 NPC, walk 10 min back to station
1 I have to walk 5 min one way but they are heavy EW
1 I have to kill yellows with my Arbalest but it's just 1 min walking.
Gus which one I do? smile

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Re: Some interesting findings on ammo & resists vs NPC's.

Neoxx wrote:

I'm fairly certain the NPC's dont actually have the hardeners active.  They will gain the passive resistance of the item, but not nearly the full effect possible.  This generally doesnt change what type of damage you should do to them.  I still do massive damage to thelodica bots that fit a seismic plate, instead of seismic becoming its best resist and me doing crap.

And yes, you are an idiot for trying to kill Nuimqol bots in your waspish.  You just have to accept that Nuimqol can still be fairly effective against Thelodica, and Thelodica can still do something to Pelistal, but Pelistal will forever be complete sh*t against Nuimqol.  I think its the perfect sh*t storm between passive resists, speed, and armor repair bonus.

They also probably didnt "fill the resist hole" as much as you'd think.  Smite does more damage as a whole (45), so what more was being resisted by its other higher resists didnt make up for the extra 10 damage it was doing over doublecore (35).

Your results do not surprise me in the least, but thanks for sharing.  Although I do consider using Smite missiles more often because they are damn cheap because of all of the mission runners get them and they're not needed for pvp so much.

Well, after killing several hundred of them - I'd say "idiot" doesn't quite fit - zip losses and a whole bunch of kernels, a few T2 fittings, etc.  tongue  (besides, it's a lot easier to see how resists work when your main damage type is weak - you can then see how things stack up.)

On the smites - yes, that's shown -- and so are the other damage types from missiles which show more specific damage focus - "primary" + 1 other type.  When all resists, outside of focused damage, are within about 10 points of each other, "generic" - at higher base damage- is going to do the best.

On the passive vs active - it shows.  If it were active, the thermal damage missiles would have been much worse/taken more missiles to kill the mechs.  They took little more than what the chem did vs a lot more if it were +100 vs +25.

I honestly doubt my tests will surprise any of the more veteran players but the general "use x damage" - is not necessarily the best way to go.  Mixing damage types of ammo may do better in some situations - especially against "off mech" opponents.

PS: You may feel like tossing 100k+ per kernel at someone else for their farming but I've a young industrialist too and he has a LONG way to go to learn how to make many things so my combat fellow here will do a good deal of that farming - AND I get to learn how to fight these "you can't beat them" guys.  big_smile

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Re: Some interesting findings on ammo & resists vs NPC's.

marak:
http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/post/33227/#p33227

that post and the third one after that. wink

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Re: Some interesting findings on ammo & resists vs NPC's.

Annihilator wrote:

marak:
http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/post/33227/#p33227

that post and the third one after that. wink

Yeah - it was handy info.  I simply tested it against the damage types - primarily due to the resist plates dropping.  I wanted to see what would happen -- as in: do they use the stuff or is it just drops? (in EVE, you had NPC's drop stuff that had nothing to do with what they used...  Here - the NPC's actually use what they drop/drop what they use. -- VERY nice difference.)

7 Reply by Jack Jombardo (edited by Jack Jombardo 2011-07-21 02:40:04)

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Re: Some interesting findings on ammo & resists vs NPC's.

There are equip scanner and NPC realy just drob what they equip.

So if a bot just fires missiles against you, you can be sure, your cargo will be full very fast ... erm, they just drob missile launchers and no autogun, em or laser.

And the more missiles they fire, the more launcher compared to other items you will loot wink.

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Re: Some interesting findings on ammo & resists vs NPC's.

Baph are natural passive resist to Kinetic but for reasons I can't explain I can eat through Baph armor faster with Autocannons than lazors, even when I am hugging them 30 meters on both and it costs me less in ammo. hmm

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Re: Some interesting findings on ammo & resists vs NPC's.

yea, its not nearly as cut and dry as "they are blue so tank for kinetic and do thermal"

it seems for balancing reasons different spawns will use a variety ammo weapons and fit all sorts of stuff. 

The colour coding is a good rule of thumb,  but if you tank up with one damage type its not always that effective, I often find just using a universal hardener is just as good.

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Re: Some interesting findings on ammo & resists vs NPC's.

This is a very good research. My anecdotical evidence also show the same results.

This is not EVE. Different spawns shoot very different kinds of ammo. I was farming Thelodica NPCs and some of them were shooting thermal, some of them therm/chemical and others seism/therm. So tanking for pure therm, as tables in other thread show, would be suicidal.

Also I can confirm that NPCs drop the same ammo they shoot with.

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Re: Some interesting findings on ammo & resists vs NPC's.

Greatgum, they don't always drop the ammo type they are using, but not sure if it's a bug- a GM or a DEV said it's not.

<GargajCNS> we maim to please
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Re: Some interesting findings on ammo & resists vs NPC's.

Bottom line before farming if your a penny pincher or a maximum effective freak.

  • Before Farm

  • Scout your possible spawns. (use a chasis scanner)

  • Don't farm above your skill

  • Check terrain for best advantage.(should be a no brainer)

  • match your resists to your enemys damage

  • bring proper damage for enemys resist

  • counter enemy e-war if possible (plates for Dmobs?)

  • Find Npcs "rubberband" point and scout a good spot for a can (LOS issues?)

  • During Farm

  • only fire enough ammo to kill (no over kills or wasted ammo)

  • reload each gun on its own ie. 25rnds per gun reload 1st after 5 shots 2nd after 10 and so on

  • Have secondarys locked at all times so target switching is seemless

  • try and kite a few npcs towards your can when making the goodie dump

  • know your effective range and keep enemy in it as much as possible

Don't go over board on it but if your seriously thinking in terms of maximum effectiveness time and nic those tips should help you farm any thing you want to farm

FFS please keep your IMBA posts in the proper forum
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Re: Some interesting findings on ammo & resists vs NPC's.

Sisohiv wrote:

Baph are natural passive resist to Kinetic but for reasons I can't explain I can eat through Baph armor faster with Autocannons than lazors, even when I am hugging them 30 meters on both and it costs me less in ammo. hmm

Autocannons - if your going the the half kinetic, half seismic ammo, your already doing more seismic damage then you can do with lasors

if your rather low on robotics extension, the autocannons also having a higher damage-mod as base then your laser with the robot bonus.

combine both = AC does more damage

@ Khadia:

  • Get a second account with a termis with 1x shield + 2x remote sensor amp + 2x remote repair + 1x energy-transfer behind your combat agent and you you can use the free head/legslot for better tanking+dps wink
    ontop of it, it will get all the npc attention most of the time

*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