Exactly how good is ship fire rate?

[Less2]

I think a lot of people overestimate overkill. It's quite a small factor. Even the strongest L weapons can't take out the smallest corvette in one shot, and you obviously shouldn't be using L weapons vs. a corvette swam. Using normal weapons for the situation (i.e. at most M weapons vs. corvettes) you see that you usually require at least 10 hits to kill a corvette. By its nature, overkill averages half of a single shot of damage wasted per ship. This means the estimated overkill waste is around half of 1/10th = 5%. That's very minimal, and it only goes down from there as ship size increases. L-weapons can take 30-50 shots to kill a battleship, meaning your wasted damage is around 1%. S-weapons vs. corvettes is basically the same. Boosting weapon damage by 10% increases that expected overkill from 1% to 1.1%. Ohnoes, 0.1% more wasted damage!

I would always value damage over fire rate. Less hits = less chance to warp out. Fire rate is easy enough to get anyway. If you've ever fought one of the FEs you know how painful it is when you win but lose a third of your fleet while the FE loses nothing. That's because of the damage bonus disparity.

Also, diminishing returns on fire rate makes continual stacking inadvisable compared to getting some kind of economic bonus to act as a force multiplier. Turning on No Retreat when you already have 70% or more fire rate seems like a really dumb idea. Way better to go with Hit and Run and virtually never lose a ship ever, or Rapid Deployment to get to places quicker. Unless you are going for a do-or-die early game rush you're simply better spreading bonuses out.

 

[Flame13223]

Plus fire rate is preferred over plus damage because it is not impacted by overkill.

Overkill is where a weapon does 100 points of damage but only 50 points were needed to kill the target. Doing 110 damage points does not cause any extra damage.

Firing every 9 sec vs 10 sec is always a straight 10% DPS buff. Or at least that is what my MMO brain tells me.

So if you have a DotA/MobA brain you realize that while this is accurate in long battles its not accurate in short battles.

Burst damage is a really important thing. That's why full X-LLLLLL Battleships are so good and that's why Devastator torpedo corvette swarms were so good. You fire once and you take away a big % of the enemy fleet's potential damage already in that first volley. So a big burst can be incredibly useful.

However sustained damage is not to be underestimated each has their own benefits, for example a swarm of stormfire autocannon and plasma cannon corvettes can dish out an incredibly huge amount of damage if given enough time while not really losing much due to the evasion stat. Evasion btw is much more effective against burst damage than agains sustainned damage, and also corvettes in general are much more effective against burst due to the overkill damage that they can receive. However as others have pointed out, corvettes due to their small HP will often get killed before they can jump away to safety so when it comes to cost effectiveness they are not as good.

So overall you want to balance your fleet to suit the situation, 10% fire rate can be 10% bonus damage in a long fight but in a quick fight its not that useful, and it does better than 10% damage would if you are fighting small ships but against larger targets + damage will often be the better choice due to overkill mechanics.

 

[sillyrobot]

Wait... Rithral said that he values fire rate over damage because + fire rate is less likely to result in overkills than + damage. You're saying he has that backwards?

He's not backwards, but Blurb has a strong counterargument.

The best case would be n shots of m damage destroying a ship with nm total defence.
Overkill is completely wasted damage. It is the difference between 1 - m that exceeds the defence of the target on the last shot. Optimal weapons design tries to eliminate it.

Stellaris' disengagement mechanics, however, favour focusing on large m because each hit that affects hull has a chance to force a disengagement. Ships that disengage are likely opponents in a future conflict and don't count towards war exhaustion. If you could properly tune your weapons, you'd want to one-hit-kill ships once shields and armour are stripped to maximize enemy losses -- preferentially without overkill.

 

[Madzai]

I value damage over fire rate specifically because it is more likely to result in kills: I believe a kill is far more valuable than the wasted damage of an overkill.
A ship that goes down to 25% hull and disengages will be repaired and fight you again in a later battle, but a ship that is overkilled to -25% is sure to stay dead.
My RTS brain tells me that wars are won by economy, and combat disengage chance is effectively a modifier to ship costs during wartime.

This. Especially counting in strange things around AI ability to disengage way to effectively for some reason in latest patch\beta patch...

 

[Gratak]

I think a lot of people overestimate overkill. It's quite a small factor. Even the strongest L weapons can't take out the smallest corvette in one shot, and you obviously shouldn't be using L weapons vs. a corvette swam. Using normal weapons for the situation (i.e. at most M weapons vs. corvettes) you see that you usually require at least 10 hits to kill a corvette. By its nature, overkill averages half of a single shot of damage wasted per ship. This means the estimated overkill waste is around half of 1/10th = 5%. That's very minimal, and it only goes down from there as ship size increases. L-weapons can take 30-50 shots to kill a battleship, meaning your wasted damage is around 1%. S-weapons vs. corvettes is basically the same. Boosting weapon damage by 10% increases that expected overkill from 1% to 1.1%. Ohnoes, 0.1% more wasted damage!

I would always value damage over fire rate. Less hits = less chance to warp out. Fire rate is easy enough to get anyway. If you've ever fought one of the FEs you know how painful it is when you win but lose a third of your fleet while the FE loses nothing. That's because of the damage bonus disparity.

Also, diminishing returns on fire rate makes continual stacking inadvisable compared to getting some kind of economic bonus to act as a force multiplier. Turning on No Retreat when you already have 70% or more fire rate seems like a really dumb idea. Way better to go with Hit and Run and virtually never lose a ship ever, or Rapid Deployment to get to places quicker. Unless you are going for a do-or-die early game rush you're simply better spreading bonuses out.

Yeah. Overkill was a problem with missiles back when battles where slow and missiles could not retarget.

 

[KingAlamar]

Wait... Rithral said that he values fire rate over damage because + fire rate is less likely to result in overkills than + damage. You're saying he has that backwards?

I don't know about backwards ... we're talking preferences. I personally don't mind overkill as long as I get a "kill". Others prefer to just win battles and will worry about the ship repairing and coming back after you again later.

 

[aprogressivist]

Yeah, overkill is less an issue now for many reasons. On top of all the points mentioned before about missiles re-targetting, etc., if you're "overkilling", it also means that ships will be killed outright rather than disengaging.

Rate of fire is still good though.

 

[Rithral]

T

Wait... Rithral said that he values fire rate over damage because + fire rate is less likely to result in overkills than + damage. You're saying he has that backwards?

It’s complicated.
Tactical vs strategic.
Rate of fire will help you win a specific battle because it will increase DPS with out increasing overkill.
+Damage will result in more kills but more overkill. Every ship you kill is a ship you don’t have to fight again.

Plus damage is more helpful when attacking battleships (no overkill) and less helpful when attacking corvettes (more overkill).

 

[wingren013]

Rate of fire is also particularly useful for missile heavy fleets as it reduces the effectiveness of PD.