Better explain "banks"

Banks basically refer to where the weapon can fire from. Each weapon can have up to 4 banks: front, left, right, rear. For the Kol example, the beams only fire from the front, so the side and rear banks for the weapon are unused. Autoccanons fire from the front and sides. Now if the Kol had 3 targets per bank, that means its autocannons on each side can target 3 units because the setting is for each weapon bank, not the entire weapon.

I hope that makes sense

A bank is basically a single weapon Hardpoint.  For the Kol, each autocannon turret is a bank, the 4 beams together are a single bank, and the 3 stacked cannons on the side facing forward I believe are a single bank as well.

so ... with these numbers, the autocannons could attack 3 targets each which would result in 3 x 3 = 9 targets. or all banks can fire in the same 3 targets for higher values.

do we actually know the real numbers? how many targets a bank can acquire? It'd be nice if it were somehow on the infoo card, you know, like 'autcannon 26 x3' or sth. 'beam weapon 15 (1 target max.)'

If I remember right, Kitkun posted that the capital ships only have 1 target still. Starbases have 4. I wouldn't mind that displayed on the info card, but those are getting rather crampy too. Generally though all 3 banks couldn't be firing on the same 3 targets because they're all on different sides. But yeah, if the Kol was set to 3 targets (according to Kitkun it's global, not per-weapon, I haven't looked at the files myself) then each side could attack 3 targets so it would have the potential to engage 9 with the autocannons.

very interesting, I didn't know how the actual sides factored in too. I'm not too good at going through files and such.

you are of course right that the info card is already getting stuffed, now that for example starbases display credit/ culture rates too and sometimes have quite a bit of squads listed. that's why maybe a small, a subtle note would help. but then, with sides AND banks it could get hard and confusing to display it in any concise way to speak of.

maybe this way:

legend (front, left, right, back)

beam (15 x1,0,0,0)

autocannon (8 x3, 8x3, 8x3, 0)

...

does that make any sense? I mean it is fairly short and to the point, yet does give you a lot of info and all you have to do is remember which side each value stands for. maybe there could be a toggle, but that sounds like more effort to make it. and all of this stuff is for caps and starbases only anyway. I dunno, I'm just not a big fan of looking up information in some files or consult info online from someone who has.

Here's how it looks in the old files (I don't have the new ones at work). Hopefully this will help explain banks better:

Weapon
 WeaponType "Projectile"
 damageEnums
  AttackType "CAPITALSHIP"
  DamageAffectType "AFFECTS_SHIELDS_AND_HULL"
  DamageApplyType "BACKLOADED"
  DamageType "PHYSICAL"
  WeaponClassType "AUTOCANNON"
 DamagePerBank:FRONT 27.000000                <----
 DamagePerBank:BACK 49.500000                  <----
 DamagePerBank:LEFT 49.500000                   <----
 DamagePerBank:RIGHT 27.000000                <----
 Range 5000.000000
 PreBuffCooldownTime 4.500000

It's one weapon, but it has firing points on all sides and each side is the "bank". So multiple targets per bank would mean that each side can fire at that many targets with 100% of the overall bank's damage. So with 3 targets, each of the 3 targets would take 27 points of damage from the front autocannon, not 9.

The infocard summarizes the total damage by adding up all the banks and dividing by the PreBuffCooldownTime (the weapon cooldown). So there's no "sides and banks", the side is the bank

ah, got it. thx.

let's see, maybe the infocards do get some update. doubt it though.

Sins is pretty terrible at making information available to the end-user...  Beam damage.  Is that per second?  Per hit?  Per beam?  There's 4 beams, is it 4x as powerful?  Is that just visual?  How many targets can it hit?  What are its damage modifiers?  How large of an arc does it have?  *head spins*

Weakest aspect of Sins, imho.

It's actually pretty simple and straight forward. All damage shown on the infocard is rounded damage-per-second the ship is capable of (hence the sum of banks). Ta-da.

The damage on the infocard is per second for all banks that weapon has. Does not take multiple targeting into account.

The effects you see are just visual.

Targets it can hit aren't shown.

Damage modifiers are taken into account on the damage displayed.

All weapons in a bank have the same arc.

Edit: I need a new keyboard. Dropped keystrokes are really annoying.

as a matter of fact, most if not all numerical values are given in a per second basis. income, resource generation, hull repair, etc. very clever to put it on a unified base.

Are you guys sure it can do full damage to 3 seperate targets or does it split the damage between the 3?If the forward gun does 27 damage per round and has a cooldown timer how will it do 81 damage to 3 seperate targets?

Yes, it does 100% of its damage to each target. The number of targets here is hypothetical, the Kol only engages 1. I just did "what if it was 3" for example purposes.

It targets all three simultaneously.

Which looks really cool on a starbase, but would be a little awkward on the Kol. Each beam emitter would go to a different target It'd be like space disco!

Thats a bit confusing how it jumps in damage like that.

The bank thing is really cool when you see the Marza go crazy with its weaponry, or when you have your fleet do an attack move. They're firing every which way!

If its of any interest, the gameplay design desired with allowing the damage to be equal per target per bank instead of splitting the overall damage is so that we can have units that get better engaging multiple targets but not better when engaging just a single target (because this encourages focus fire).

All the starbases and the Advent's Adjudicator are perfect examples of what I mean.

A bank is where you store your money for zero return due to the credit crunch. In other words, it is a matress!!!

I'm now completely confused.  Probably mostly because I haven't played the beta.  But try to clarify this for me anyways.

How many targets can the Kol attack at once?  You just stated it can target only 1 still.  I'm only playing the regular game right now (1.12 or whatever the current non-expansion beta is) but I can see it hit other targets from the sides once in a while.  I guess those are the auto cannons.

So are you saying you can *specify* multiple targets for a starbase to attack?  You say 4 targets - that seems really low for starbase considering it sounds like a single bank can already hit 3 targets.  I'm totally confused.

Also - if you order a capital ship (Kol) to attack an enemy frigate will it turn to fire its beam weapon?  And if that is the case - will it still continue to use its other weapons agains the surrounding ships in range?

And last question - where can we find information on banks and # of simultaneous targets for each ship?

And do these ships have a "main" weapon that does more damage than the secondary weapons - which seems to be the case of the Kol.

Ok, I guess last question was a lie.

If I target some fighters with the Kol for example what happens?  Does it turn to chase them or do the side cannons attack them?

Also I think it would be really good if we could hold down a button (like shift, alt, whatever) to see which enemies are being targeted by the current selected ship(s).  This way we could see how targets are aquired and avoid a lot of this confusion on number of targets and stuff.   Plus it would just be plain cool.

From what I can tell, if you order a ship like the Kol to move towards a certain ship, it will use its main guns on that target (i.e., the four cannons as one bank), but will utilize other banks for other targets. If you want to see it in action, just send in a capital ship (Kol or Marza are easy to spot) and have it attack move, or simply attack a certain target. I've seen the Marza move into firing range of its main target, but use its laser cannon for other targets while moving.

i stil lwonder why the kol seems to be about the big beam array (gfx wise) and yet it only does lolwut damage.

It behaves exactly as it does in vanilla Sins.

You can't specify them, it picks its own. You can specify the "primary" target like you do now when you right click, and it'll just pick 3 others. But think of it this way: in normal Sins (and the previous beta) each side could only hit one target. For example, the Kol's beams.. there are 4 beams that get fired, but it's one weapon and one shot. That's what the Starbase was doing. It had an ungodly number of firing points (8 for beams, probably over 20 for lasers) but it was always only attacking one target. Now it attacks 4. Same weapons, same firing points, it just looks a lot cooler because you have lasers and beams hitting different ships and all doing the same amount of damage. It's like in the movies where you see space stations firing every which way and blowing stuff up left and right

Yes and yes.

As far as I know, the only things that can attack more than one target after this change are starbases and the Advent anti-structure cruisers. But it's not displayed anywhere in-game (yet, at least) so you have to dig in the files.

Yes, the main weapon is always the one that does the most damage per side, not total. That's why the Kol's primary is the beam, even though the autocannon is listed as having higher DPS. The autocannon DPS is with all the sides added together, but each side on its own does lower damage than the beam.

It can't attack fighters

but if the banks change have no effect on capital ships, why were they mentioned as such in the 2.0 changelog? they said capships were not the primary beneficiaries, but they were affected. of course, it may that only some are affected, but from I understood, I wouldn't say that only sbs and adjudicator are affected.

edit: hm, checked the log again. a bit unclear, but the capship bank changes seem more about optimisation and fixing that multi target acquisition. it's not totally clear though.

I haven't checked all the capitals myself. So blame Kitkun if it's wrong!