Talk:Craft Armaments

I'm guessing from looking at the weapon accuracys and their ranges that craft weapon fire probably is calculated similarly to Battlescape combat, i.e. you can hit or not based on the accuracy, then comes in the size and range which might get you an incidental hit anyway. Otherwise the cannon would be even more pointless than it already is with a 10% accuracy - but close up this probably translates to something half reasonable. Equally the Stingray and Avalanche might turn out to have similar hit rates when at their respective maximum ranges are factored in. Of course the Plasma Beam owns everything else in almost every category so its fairly moot. --Sfnhltb 09:49, 7 March 2007 (PST)

The rate of fire of the Cannon might disguise its rate of misses, but your observation about Stingrays vs. Avalanches is intriguing.--Ethereal Cereal 14:36, 7 March 2007 (PST)

Well another thing that might possible - people think that the rate of fire increases as you close in, although the reload rate is given as a fixed number. Is it possible its just hits happen more often as you close in, so the combat completes faster but everything is actually firing at the same speed? (someone might have tested in depth with a stopwatch or something to know the answer, cant really comment solidly either way myself, but it seems a possibility at least) --Sfnhltb 15:17, 7 March 2007 (PST)

Try this. Get some Avengers and use either laser cannons or stingrays. Find some trouble and save the game. Launch the attack and set the two ships to their respective extreme aggression settings. Notice which one of the two gets fired on the most often or which one uses up its ammo before the other. It might take a few tries. You should be able to see a clear difference between the two ships, but a slow-down utility or - with an emulator - slowing down the emulation may help. My guess is that the exchange of attacks between the UFO and interceptor are actually happening at the same rate. However the time compression differs from ship to ship depending on how close they are to the UFO. -NKF

According to the data at the following thread, (http://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=535 ) the accuracies listed here and in the UFOpaedia are incorrect. It seems likely that he's correct, as the accuracy rating for each weapon is identical to the damage rating of each weapon. If someone could read the code of the game and find the actual accuracy to confirm/deny this, it'd be appreciated. Also, I read somewhere; (possibly here, although I can't relocate the data) that the ranges given for the Craft Armaments were too low by a factor of 8. This matches what I have seen in game(the plasma beam cautious attack range is 416, for example, and 52*8 is 416) with all 6 craft weapons. Shouldn't this be listed? -27 May, 2007, Arrow Quivershaft,

I did some tests earlier today, and measuring based on the range number displayed in the Interception window, the weapons have maximum ranges as follows- Avalanche: 480 Stingray: 240 Cannon: 80 Fusion Ball: 520 Plasma Beam: 416 Laser Cannon: 280

The default standoff range is 560 units of range. This allows us to put into perspective the ranges given on the alien craft, which are in the same units of measurement: Small Scout: 0 Medium Scout: 120 Large Scout: 272 Harvester: 176 Abductor: 160 Terror Ship: 336 Supply Ship: 288 Battleship: 520

This may not change anything, but I find it more useful to compare in the actual units the game displays to you, rather than the Kilometers of range it doesn't give you. -27 May, 2007, Arrow Quivershaft

So it seems that you've found that 1 game km = 8 distance units. Makes sense. What's caught my interst are those unknowns in Zombie's weapon tables.

By the way, for your convenience if you don't already use it: Enter three tildes (~~~) to insert your handle. It also turns it into a wikilink to your personal talk page. Enter four tildes (~~~~) to do the same and append the current timestamp. Saves having to type it out each time! I'll end this with an example of entering four tildes: NKF 00:02, 29 May 2007 (PDT)

It seems to hold that 8 distance units = 1 km, except for the laser cannon, which is an enigma in regards to range, since it should instead be 168 instead of 280; in other words, it should be outclassed by the Stingray in regards to range. 280 / 8 = 35. Of course, given that they totally screwed up the accuracy ratings, positing that they mistyped the Laser Cannon range isn't a huge leap.

Interestingly enough, actually, it appears that the accuracy and range of the Laser Cannon are the same number, based on this data. Perhaps that's where the error comes from; I will edit this into the Laser Cannon entry.Arrow Quivershaft 00:49, 29 May 2007 (PDT)

Probably AQ was using an XComUtil patched version of the game, which has the Laser Cannon range increased to 35(km). Spike 15:19, 2 July 2009 (EDT)

Weapon Damage Ranges

I was just scratching my head thinking about compiling a min/max-rounds-to-hit table to scuttle a Battleship, and suddenly remembered that like the Battlescape, weapon damage for air-to-air combat is variable.

Thought there would be mention of it on this page, but can't spot it. On further research it's on the firepower table sub-page. I'd like to work it into this page but before that I'd like to clarify if the range is meant to be 50% to 100% or 50% to 150%? I had a feeling it was the latter - like the alien weapons, but I'd better confirm it just to be sure. -NKF 04:56, 1 April 2009 (EDT)

Preliminary tests seem to indicate it is 50% to 100% ... I armed an Avenger with 1 Fusion Ball Launcher, and waited for an Abductor to spawn, then saved and Intercepted. Initial results seem to indicate that FBL will never do enough in 1 hit to crash an Abductor... which means that it's max damage is less than 250. ... 150% damage = 345 damage in 1 hit... that would be impressive...

I also discovered some funky results... seems like Xcom is one of those games that "stores the next random number in memory". Or so my results from using 1 FBL on a Medium Scout would show. Jasonred 14:29, 1 April 2009 (EDT)

Revised Fire Rates

I propose to put a note on the article that the fire rates shown (from UFOPaedia) are probably wrong. I might even change them to the observed actual values. I could add an extra column with the actual values, but that might be confusing.

Actual observed rates of fire:

Weapon:         Fire Interval in Game Seconds
                Aggressive/Standard/Cautious    
Cannon                   2 /  2 /  2
Laser Cannon            12 / 12 / 12
Plasma Cannon           12 / 12 / 12
Stingray                16 / 24 / 32
Avalanche               24 / 36 / 48
Fusion Ball             16 / 24 / 32

Spike 17:30, 9 February 2010 (EST)

OK I'm going to take the plunge and change the main page. It's a wiki after all. Spike 16:45, 11 February 2010 (EST)

Fusion Balls better than Plasma Beams?

In favour of the much maligned FBL, based on revised firing rates (see above) and other data, a Plasma Beam armed aircraft must endure 6x the exposure to enemy fire before it inflicts more damage than a Fusion Ball armed aircraft.

Plasma Beam aircraft requires 26gs to close range from 65km to 52km, plus an average 72gs to fire 7 times, at which point it exceeds the average damage of a (fully expended) Fusion Ball Launcher. Total 98gs. During this time a Battleship (firing on average every 24gs) will get an average of 5 shots off.

The Fusion Ball Launcher aircraft is fully expended in an average of 16gs in aggressive mode. The Battleship will on average only get one shot off. The FBL aircraft is disengaging before the Plasma Beam aircraft has even come into firing range.

Arguably this means that using FBL armed aircraft is a much more sustainable strategy against Battleships, since the XCom fleet will suffer 5x - 6x less damage per sortie. It requires being able to put at least 3 aircraft (12 FB) and preferably 4 aircraft (16 FB) into the air. But then it's always best to use 4 aircraft when engaging Battleships, so as to minimise XCom fleet damage and losses.

The much higher ammo costs of the FBL should be considered against the cost of replacing aircraft, and even more importantly, lost interception coverage during aircraft repair time.

Of course this will be moot to Commanders who prefer to let Battleships land and engage them on the ground. :)

Spike 19:05, 9 February 2010 (EST)

If only because it has a greater range than the plasma beam, the Battleship is definitely one of the few worthy FBL candidates, as you want it shot down fast. The others are the small and medium scout - only because it's overkill and easily vapourizes them.

The FBL has always had the edge over the amount of potential damage it can deal in a short amount of time, but it's the overall convenience offered by the more frugal Plasma Beam that puts it in better favour, even if you do have to expose the ship to more damage vs. a Battleship.

The limited ammunition of the FBL and the chance that each shot will miss makes it a much more expensive gamble than the plasma beam. But that's why the plasma beam/FBL combo is always a good one. It also helps mitigate the interceptor last-shot-fired idiosyncrasy where they pull out of range the moment the last round is fired, dropping the missile out of its working range.

One other thing to consider is that the importance of the loss of air time for damaged interceptors will change depending on the number and distribution of interceptor aircraft you have in your employ. -NKF 00:06, 11 February 2010 (EST)

You still have an economic cost when aircraft are lost or damaged. Either you pay ahead of time by buying and maintaining an aircraft fleet with excess capacity, more than you need, or you pay after the event by replacing aircraft, and by coverage gaps, leading to missed opportunities and avoidable enemy successes. Either way, losing aircraft costs you.

'Chance of missing...'? But don't FBL's have 100% hit probability? And (even without using Seb76's fix for last-shot-miss) you can avoid missing the last shot by staying in Aggressive when fighting a Battleship. You might as well, since there is no standoff advantage to be lost.

The economics are also interesting. Taking a Battleship down with FBLs has a direct cost of $640,000 in ammunition (1600 damage to down, vs $400/(dmg point), see here and here). Of course with 'frugal' Plasma Beams, each UFO splash costs nothing (once the aircraft and weapon are paid for). $640K is a very large amount to spend on splashing a UFO, but it's only the same amount as replacing a single lost Interceptor and much less than the cost of losing any advanced aircraft, or even losing use of a damaged advance aircraft for part of a month. How many Commanders would throw away an Interceptor in order to bring down a Battleship, without much of a second thought? If FBLs could avoid that, using them pays for itself in cash terms.

My thinking about this was prompted by discussion of XComUtil Craft Armaments economics. With 'new laser weapons', producing Plasma Beams becomes extremely expensive, and FBLs might actually be a cheaper or easier alternative at earlier stages of the game. Which is all interesting, because it's good to create reasons to use something other than the old formula of Plasma Beams all round. Spike 17:00, 11 February 2010 (EST)

You're not taking into account the opportunity cost: The workshops which make the FBL ammo would have produced laser cannons or something profitable/useful instead if FBL weren't there. Or a commander could do with less engineers and thus expenses without FBLs. Also, wouldn't using Aggressive mode to avoid last-shot bug up the damage to XCom craft? Lastly, I think X-COM inventory management is a bit of a problem for FBLs, especially with the "unarmed craft doesn't rearm when ammo is transferred to base" issue in X-COM1. Cesium 01:00, 12 February 2010 (EST)