TEC - crunching numbers for TEC's LRM hull in v 1.05

from Sins Forums

I've done some of the number crunching calculations myself and I think they really show you the best part of the tech/spam balance for the game. I will make this post focused on the techs from TEC as I played them a bit more lately.

There are things that can be valued exactly and things which don't. Those that don't you need to evaluate a rough value or a rough threshold.

About military, mainly ships, you can do these calculations for damage, armor, hull and shield but I think survavability should be the top priority in your list, so shield/armor/hull should be the first to get. It's not a problem that a LRM does 11 damage or 12 damage as long as it lives :). The problem is when it dies, as you need to replace it.

I'll take into account only the LRM, which is a nice spam and a very difficult to counter unless you're a pro.
I also suppose you have the labs to get the LRMs in place so I won't count those too. So tier 2 is available.
I take 5 credits as the price for any resource as in most of my games I was buying a lot of resources from the black market and FAST lol :)

So there are 6 upgrades regarding hull. I will discuss only optimizing the total_hull/cost ratio as this is calculated easily. total_hull means the hull added for all LRMs you have out (built or queued). If you want to do this calculation for HCs you just replace the price of the LRM with the price of the HC and hull values accordingly in the following equations and you're done.

All the rest involving shield mitigation, phase missiles, hull repair rate, fleet slots costs and others are too hard to measure and put into a simple equasion.

 

1) 1st lvl is +6% to standard hull and costs 400C 25R in short (400credits and 25 resources), assuming 5C for any R, it means a cost of 525 C

a LRM costs 275C and 70R, which means 625C

a LRM has a standard hull of 500. Assuming you have X LRMs out of queued, you're going to have a total hull value of X*500. Now the cost of those LRMs is X*625. so the ratio total_hull/cost is (X * 500)/(X*625) = 500/625 (we'll leave it like this without simplifying it.

Once you have X LRMs built or queued you have the choice of building an additional LRM or upgrading the existing X ones:

- If you build an additional LRM then you have the same ratio 500/625.

- if you do the 1st upgrade of the hull, then the hull of a LRM will be 500+6%*500=500*1.06 will keep this result in mind

the ratio after this 1st hull upgrade changes to (X*500*1.06)/(X*625+525), where 525 is the additional cost of tech-ing

In order to tech up, we need a better ratio, that means that

500/625<(X*500*1.06)/(X*625+525) - this means that we get a better ratio just by upgrading, that means more hull per buck spent. This inequality changes to:

500*(X*625+525)<(X*500*1.06)*625 and this simplifies to 312500*X+262500<331250*X, which simplifies further to 18750*X>262500, which means X>14. So as soon as you have 14 LRMs you can queue the 1st hull upgrade.

 

2) 2nd hull upgrade costs 500C and 50R and gives a +13% to standard hull, which means it costs 750.

the ratio for the (X+1)th LRM is ((X+1)*500*1.06)/((X+1)*625), so it simplifies to (500*1.06)/625 - I leave out the cost of the 1st upgrade from this as it's not important at this step

the ratio after the upgrade is (X*500*1.13)/(X*625+750). So putting this into the equation, we get:

(X*500*1.13)/(X*625+750)>(500*1.06)/625 - which means we get more hull per buck by upgrading than by building another LRM

this simplifies to X*500*1.13*625>500*1.06*(X*625+750), and this gives 353125*X>331250*X+397500, which gives 21875*X>397500, which gives roughly X>18. So as soon as you have 18 LRMs built and/or queued in total, queue in the 2nd hull upgrade

 

3) 3rd hull upgrade costs 600C and 150R and gives +19% to standard hull, and means it costs 1350C

the ratio before upgrade is (500*1.13)/625

the ratio after the upgrade is (X*500*1.25)/(X*625+1350)

which gives (X*500*1.19)/(X*625+1350)>(500*1.13)/625, now you've seen the way it's calculated so I'll just put the final result: X>40

 

4)4th hull upgrade costs 700C and 200R and gives a +25% to standard hull, and means it costs 1700C

the ratio before upgrade is (500*1.19)/625

the ratio after the upgrade is (X*500*1.25)/(X*625+1700)

which gives (X*500*1.25)/(X*625+1700)>(500*1.19)/625 and this simplifies to X>53

 

5) 5th hull upgrade costs 1000C and 400R and gives a +28% to standard hull, and means it costs 3000 and this does not include the build cost of military labs (it assumes you already have them for the Phase Jump Disruption gadget :)

the ratio before the upgrade is (500*1.25)/625

the ratio after upgrade is (X*500*1.28)/(X*625+3000) and this simplifies to X>200

 

6) 6th hull upgrade costs 1100C and 450R and it gives a +30% to standard hull, and it costs 3350

the ratio before the upgrade is (500*1.28)/625

the ratio after upgrade is (X*500*1.3)/(X*625+3350) and this simplifies to X>343

 

So, these are the numbers. NOW, as this hull increases other hulls too, then this is the threshold you should never pass before upgrading :)

So, to sum it up, the thresholds are 14,18,40,53,200 and 343. These means if you happen to have more than 14 LRMs and you didn't already upgraded the 1st hull, then something is wrong :) and so on with the next hull upgrades.

 

... now shoot, as I have enough hull to withstand your power :D

strategy
5,452 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Wow. That's interesting and useful.

Still, you have to much time on your hands. ;)
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Nice number crunching for the masses. I would highly recommend you upgrade armor first. It helps a lot against Illuminators whose damage comes at you from 3 beam mounts, so three opportunities to lower damage (also helps against those people who insist on countering you with Flak).

You also have to take into account Logistics research. Sometimes keeping your fleet cap size a bit lower pays for those tech upgrades.
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Something else that very few people seem to take into account is the travel time of any new ships to the front-line. So when judging whether to upgrade a hull/weapon/etc or not, keep in mind that the technology will arrive there instantly. This is a very handy little "boost" you can get right before that critical first "clash". Gives you superior local "firepower/toughness" which has a great impact in losses/etc of any given battle...Sometimes 10% extra firepower/toughness can make you go from 80% losses in a battle to 20%. Then once you win the first battle, the opponent is not only on the defensive...but your production is better since you are producing tougher units relative to theirs.




Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Excellent point Drexion. It pains me to see an opponent with a few more illums than me, but all his illums are doing 2-3 damage less than mine. I don't even bother running from the fight, since I know that despite his slightly superior numbers, I have the advantage in DPS.

Also keep in mind that damage scales with the number of ships you have. If you have 5 illuminators, then a 1 damage upgrade (each upgrade roughly) only adds 10-15 damage to the battle(accounting for the side beams) (as where the cost of the upgrade would pay for about 3 illuminators, another 52 damage). Now if you have 30 illuminators, the upgrade adds roughly 60-90 damage to the battle, a much more significant upgrade factoring in the fact that the damage is applied instantly and for the rest of the game.

as far as whether or not to upgrade damage or hull, I'd say that it's ship/strategy dependent. If you're using illuminators, the damage upgrade is more significant, while someone using flak to soak up enemy damage would want to upgrade the hull. To sum it up, nothing is set in stone. Almost everything is situational.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Holy god, that was the stuff!!! I will appreciate what you are doing here. You have to upgrade the hulls as the TEC. All the hull upgrade for the TEC are relatively great(Tier 1 upgrades are just pure awesomeness).
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
All this math means nothing for a very simple reason.


Any spam wars with LRMS or ILLUMS is generaly backup with the other guys respective capitalship.



Due to shield mitigation and general toughness of caps focusing on the otherguys lrms or illums while he focuses on your capital means you lose your capital while theres stays and supports the fleet.

Two equal fleets and the guy who didnt focus on the other guys cap loses.


With that in mind capitalships are effected by armor and health upgrades.
The longer that capitalship survives the longer your lrms survive.

Also... armor can only ever reduce damage by a maxium of 50%

if you end up with 63% shield mitigation as you normaly do on a LRM
thats only 47% damage so 10 damage is reduced down to 5.

3 armor is the max armor required to reduce that down to 2.5

because of this
Health is far better then armor upgrades except for fighters/bombers who have mutiple units to a squad and damage is spread out from mutiple sources to mutiple members.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Also... armor can only ever reduce damage by a maxium of 50%

if you end up with 63% shield mitigation as you normaly do on a LRM
thats only 47% damage so 10 damage is reduced down to 5.

3 armor is the max armor required to reduce that down to 2.5

because of this
Health is far better then armor upgrades except for fighters/bombers who have mutiple units to a squad and damage is spread out from mutiple sources to mutiple members.
End of quote


An LRM attack actually does 71.5 damage every 6.5 seconds. All ships individually hit harder than their DPS figures might have you think, so armor does in fact play a role. While it is true the math here doesn't necessarily translate to in game strategy, it is helpful to people to get a sense of relative values.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
maybe....

However I have noticed damage in SINS doesnt quite follow this.

and ships that have HIGH damage for a bank but which fire vollies seem to actually have the damage devided by the volly before armor takes into effect.

The Dunlov missile is a good example of this.. its spose to do crap damage compared to the dunlov laserbanks.. but agasint any armored targets the missile does more damage.
It only fires like 1 missile per cycle.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
maybe....However I have noticed damage in SINS doesnt quite follow this.and ships that have HIGH damage for a bank but which fire vollies seem to actually have the damage devided by the volly before armor takes into effect.The Dunlov missile is a good example of this.. its spose to do crap damage compared to the dunlov laserbanks.. but agasint any armored targets the missile does more damage.It only fires like 1 missile per cycle.
End of quote


ahm... (M x A) x n = (M x n) x A ...

In other words: applying the armor factor on each missile individually or on the volley as a whole is exactly the same..

The behavior you have observed is probably better explained using armor type vs damage type factors.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Or the short version: multiplication is commutative and associative.

Hehe. I guess that mathematics minor/double was good for something :p.

-Drexion