I'm not sure if i'm understanding it right. So if you tell a weapon to fire at 1 target at each side, the damage is split to 1/4 dmg per side and the weapon is only doing full dmg if told to just shoot from 1 side?
Sorry, if my questions seem to be dumb, but i'm completely new to sins modding ^^
Its a little odd, but here's how it works:
Go to your list of weapons, and the stats for each weapon. Note the:
"DamageperBank:Front
DamageperBank:Back
DamageperBank:Left
DamageperBank:Right"
lines. The numbers after these is how much damage every attack will do on that side per target. Say you had this set up:
"DamageperBank:Front 65
DamageperBank:Back 15
DamageperBank:Left 25
DamageperBank:Right 25"
Any targeted ship designated as being infront of your ship will take 65 damage. Any targeted designated as being behind your ship will take 15, and any target designated as being to the left or right of your ship will take 25 damage every time that weapon fires.
Then you come across these fields after all the weapons:
"TargetCountPerBank:FRONT
TargetCountPerBank:BACK
TargetCountPerBank:LEFT
TargetCountPerBank:RIGHT"
This tells you how many ships can be targeted per side.
Lets say you had it set up like this with the above DamageperBank examples:
"TargetCountPerBank:FRONT 1
TargetCountPerBank:BACK 1
TargetCountPerBank:LEFT 1
TargetCountPerBank:RIGHT 1"
In this situation, 1 ship in front of your ship would take 65, 1 behind would take 15, one to the left would take 25, and one to the right would take 25 damage each time the weapon fires. If there is only 1 enemy around your ship, and it is infront of your ship, it will take only 65 damage. If that 1 ship is behind yours, it will take only 15 damage. If it is to the left or right of yours, it will take only 25.
Lets change the TargetCountPerBank varaibles to 2 now, like so:
"TargetCountPerBank:FRONT 2
TargetCountPerBank:BACK 2
TargetCountPerBank:LEFT 2
TargetCountPerBank:RIGHT 2"
Now, 2 ships in front of your ship will take 65, 2 ships behind will take 15, 2 ships to the left will take 25 and 2 ships to the right will take 25.
If you have only one ship infront of your ship, the forward weapon bank will only have 1 designated target, and will do 65 damage to that target. If there were 2 infront of the ship, the forward weapon bank would have 2 designated targets, and would do 65 to each target - a total of 130 DPS.
Even if there is only 1 target, batteries will not focus fire. What I mean by this is that whilst you may deal a total of 130 DPS with the above setup vs 2 ships in front of you, that does not mean you will do 130 DPS to a single ship in front of you. If there is only 1 ship in front of you, you will only deal 65 DPS and only to that ship.
Hence, your forward battery will only deal half of its total damage if there is only 1 target to focus on, but all of its damage if there are two ships.
The way it is being explained for starbases is using each side. A starbase will only deal 1/4 of its DPS when fighting a fleet attacking from 1 side as only 1/4 of its weapons are facing it. Say the above DamageperBank" variables above were for a starbase, and the numbers were all 65. If you attack only from the front, only the front weapon banks will be attacking you. Hence, you are missing out on the "DamageperBank:Back", "DamageperBank:Left" and "DamageperBank:Right" DPS, as they will each only fire in their respective directions. Their damage is not added to the forward weapons of the starbase if they have no targets. Hence, assuming each bank only has 1 target, your Starbase would only deal 65 damage per attack.
Now, if you attacked from all four directions, all four of the Starbases weapon banks would be able to fire. This means you are dealing 65 damage forward, 65 damage back, 65 damage left and 65 damage right. A total of 260 Damage per attack thanks to the increased number of targets.
VS 1 side, it can only shoot 1/4 of its total targets, and thus deal 1/4 of its total DPS. VS 4 sides it can target all 4 of its targets, and deal 4/4 of its DPS.
This works the same for targets per bank. A 4 target forward bank will deal only 1/4 of its damage when fighting a lone target, as it is only attacking 1/4 of the number of targets it can attack. When fighting 4 targets, it deals 4/4 of its DPS thanks to being able to attack all 4 possible targets.
It is simple to think of it in terms of Focused and Total DPS. The "DamageperBank" variables are the Focused DPS - the DPS that weapon will deal against 1 target every time it fires.
The "TargetCountPerBank" is a multiplier for your Focused DPS that will give you the maximum POTENTIAL DPS of a weapon when fighting.
1 ship will always receive the Focused DPS every time the weapon fires.
A fleet with a number of ships equal to or greater than the number of Targets per bank will receive the Total DPS each time the weapon fires, but only [TargetCountPerBank] ships will be damaged, and they will only receive the Focused DPS each, whilst the fleet overall receives the Total DPS.
Against a number of enemies less than [TargetCountPerBank], you will only deal [Number of ships]/[TargetCountPerBank] of your Total DPS. You will still deal 100% of your Focused DPS however.