Cyrus Grevare
WarRavens
420
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Posted - 2015.02.23 19:23:00 -
[1] - Quote
You may know that a weapon's performance depends on the range at which you use it, in game stats show what is called an 'Effective' Range, you may also know about the 'Optimal' Range which sadly we don't have in game, not even on the SDE. Then there's the 'Absolute' Range which we also don't have in game but DO have on the SDE.
So what do they mean? how do they affect me and my weapon?
Well, to start, a remarkable { Guide } has been made by Musta Tornius that aims at finding out all weapons optimal range which is very helpful. With this we can now know a weapon's Optimal (approximate optimal), Effective and Absolute Ranges and start doing some useful calculations.
Some Definitions in case they're needed
- Optimal Range: that at which we get maximum performance out of the weapon, that is, the damage we do is 100% (add or deduct any profile bonus, proficiency bonus or warbarge bonus)
- Effective Range: Comes after the optimal range, at this range effectiveness is reduced drastically up to the marked value - a range at which the weapon is still considered 'useful'. This is the first damage drop off slope.
- Absolute Range: After the effective range comes the absolute range, at which the damage done is marginal, after the absolute range damage is 0 and you won't even get tactical info when aiming. This is a second drop off slope.
In an effort to squeeze more information I applied the same method used by Musta Tornius to determine Optimal Range, but started taking some additional samples beyond the optimal, throughout the effective range and almost up to the absolute ranges of a weapon, this to see how the damage drop off behaves, the results are in the following GDOC with some graphs:
{ Sampling of weapon damage drop off }
In there you will see some sampling I did, reading the tactical info when aiming at a blue (red in some cases) I did the sampling on several weapons, but these are the most complete ones I did. Assault Combat Rifle, Scrampler Pistol, Bolt Pistol and Ion Pistol. For each weapon I show two graphs, one with the actual read values, the other where auto ploting filled the empty values.
The fun thing I found is that the damage drop off curves behave the same , you have consistent effectiveness up to the optimal range, then a linear drop off in effectiveness up to the weapon's marked effective range, then another drop off slope (though less steep) up to the weapon's absolute range.
Laser Rifle is an outlier; 'Payload' weapons (PLC, Mass Driver, etc) don't have drop off; Ion Pistol has a likely error in implementation.
Hope this helps paint a clearer picture about how your can expect your weapon to handle at different ranges and if you want to avoid doing calculations I'm applying this insight to protofits.com, given a weapon's Opt, Eff and Abs ranges we can know approximately how much damage you can expect to dish out in an easy way.
{ Sample Fit with new calculations }
(View the weapon's lab and you should see the new Range Finder feature, this will be done soon for all weapons)
Thanks to those brave snipers that served as test subject even if they didn't know about it. Sorry for the teams that had me during this test period for doing absolutely nothing to contribute to the battle.
A note to CCP: Not sure if intended or not, but you'll see that Ion Pistol does no damage after the effective range. The SDE has the following entry for the Ion Pistol:
[ mFireMode0.absoluteRange = -1 ]
Coincidence? intended? dunno, but if not dealing damage beyond effective is a bug, then this could be a likely cause.
www.protofits.com - a Dust 514 fitting tool
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Cyrus Grevare
WarRavens
437
|
Posted - 2015.03.10 18:37:00 -
[2] - Quote
UPDATE
Since the attached document guide does not include Hf Bravo, which saw weapon range homogenized for all weapons, effective and optional ranges changed for most items. As such I set to the painful task of going in game and reading the new ranges for all (most) weapon variants.
Data and calculations are live on site for those interested. So you want to see how much *potential* damage your HMG does @40m? or what an AR does @60m?
I did not read ALL weapons though, but since effective range is the same I'm expecting optimal is the same too, at least for a few samples it is.
www.protofits.com - a Dust 514 fitting tool
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