StrikeCraft - The Truth

1. Vasari have the best when all is maxed out (research and such) while Advent have the best swarming abilities due to cheapness. TEC have the best SC on the carrier caps.

2. Can't remember and can't look up the info (I just rebuilt my computer and haven't gotten all that info back yet)

3. It varies by craft and race. TEC bombers have missiles while fighters have autocannons. Advent Bombers have beams while fighters have lasers. Vasari have phase missiles which at high levels can pop the shields of ships. Cooldown is usually about 4 to 5 sec IIRC.

Based on in-game experience, I'd say that TEC and Advent strikecraft are roughly equal, while the Vasari variety are somewhat stronger due to the superior phase missile weapon.  The discrepancy from squad size doesn't really have a huge impact in practice, and other factors for each respective faction will have a greater importance.

The squad sizes and ship numbers are only important for capital ship abilities...

magnatize works best on vasari bombers, while flack burst works best on advent fighters.

And the best strike craft management is to tell them to hold position. seems odd, but it increases thier damage output and survivability.

Thanks guys - especially for the quick response. I'd still like to know what the payload is but this is good.

-Pbhead - Is that really true? The Hold position thing? do they just stay put and shoot their stuff whenever things get close? If the cooldown is 4 to 5 secs then the time it would take for them to make their pass or run wouldn't matter anymore and they could just fire away like a Missile Battery.

I guess 'payload' is thier dps (damage per second).  Below is a table I did awhile back, that summarizes squad characteristics, and compares each as an equivalent of TEC.

To answer your other questions:  With hold position you need to tell them where to 'land', and they shoot at whats close.  But then you need to remember to send them to the next target too, or they just sit there.  It takes a fair amount of micro.  They get off more shots in hold position. It seems like it takes longer for them to make a pass than it does to cooldown, but I think they just spend too much time flying around, and not shooting.   

As you can see, the squads, despite very different composition, as a whole are all roughly quite comparable!  Except for possibly the Advent fighter squads as a whole, which has 23% more damage per second, without any sacrifice in hull & armor.  But as mentioned earlier, Advent fighter squads are composed of the most and smallest/weakest individual units, thus they are the most suseptible to mass killing cap ship abilities. 

Thank you again... When I say payload i mean the actual "bomb or missile" the strikecraft fires. The actual round could deal 5000 damage and take 5000 seconds to reload so it would result in 1 DPS but if it took the fighter 10 Seconds to turn around and shoot another round then everything would be ok considering the fighter doesnt take longer to turn around then to reload. This is also referring to the "stationary" strikecraft  tactic. If it takes 1 Second to reload and the payload is 100 damage but it takes 20 seconds to turn around and go in for another shot the "True" dps would be at 100 but the actual craft in cobmat would have 5 DPS cuz it wouldn't be able to fire the round after it passes (I bet you could shoot 3 rounds as you pass but whatever). Thats what I mean by payload.

As for your chart sage you also have to take into account that some faction's research improves Squads more. Advent focuses on shields, something that strikecraft dont have. Armor research upgrades doesn't apply to squads i think (yes/no/maybe so?). And supposively vasari receive a 50% bonus to their damage because they have phase missiles. Thats a double edged sword in a way though because I don't know how effective phase missiles are. If the default chance to ignore mitigation is say 10% with a 30% Increase it only increases damage by 40% chance to do 65% more damage equals roughly 25% damage increase with the 20%  damage increase equaling 45% Increase in damage on ships with phase missiles. Then again Phase missiles may be much more likely to occur than 40% or much less likely. Or the 30% increase means it increases the 10% chance by 30% so you get 13%. Man this game is difficult. Thanks in advance if you decide to bother with my text monster of doom.

phase bomber:

DamagePerBank:FRONT 76.900002

phase fighter:

DamagePerBank:FRONT 30.750000

psi bomber:

DamagePerBank:FRONT 34.410000

psi fighter:

DamagePerBank:FRONT 16.000000

tech bomber:

DamagePerBank:FRONT 44.400002

tech fighter:

DamagePerBank:FRONT 19.500000

Your math on the phase missles is quite wrong.

a 30% shield bypass means you end up with 30% of the shots doing 2.5 times the damage they would have if they hit the shields... against shield mitigation.

doing the math... normalizing 40% damage to 100% damage... the damage increase works out...

(.7*.4 + .3*1)/.4 = 145% damage.  or 45% increase. 

units with higher shield mitigation (like advent, and capital ships) get hurt even more...

I did a gigantic post on all this somewheres.... let me dig it up for you.

 https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/383347

^^^ everything you never wanted to know about phase missles.  

Yeah I remember that post. Someone was arguing the phase missile were worthless and you and me pulled out all the stops on our math proofs (hadn't done that in so long I made a few mistakes). We eventually won him over though. Glad he had an open mind.

edit: d'oh   that was a different post

ya, you throw in missle pacts and subverters you get an astounding 70% bypass (now 65% with the beta nerf)

Against lv 10 advent capital ships... with their 85% shield mitigation...

(subverted back to was 75%... now 77%)

dododo... 77% mitigation...65% bypass...

4.87 times the damage done without the subverters and phase missles. throw in the 20% NME warheads and your up to %584.4 damage... or 484% damage increase.

Phase Missiles FTW!

Which is why the Vasari have the BEST strike craft ever.

that... and their extreme hp makes them almost immune to flackburst/telepush... and they have the only stike craft healing ability in the game... on their carrier cap... which STILL has the best damageperantimatter ability in the game...

Wow...Well I intended to make a "group" of posts that reveal the truth of specific areas of game. I made this just to improve my gameplay ( I discovered the power of the Skirantra a day before i first posted this up) and maybe help some others. Most of my questions have been answered thanks to you guys. I tested out using the Vasari Fighter to see how long it took to reload by making it stationary and it was flipping huge! The thing just sat there shot a missle then waited another 30 secs, by that time the enemy had phase jumped out of the system.

The cooldown time is 12 seconds between shots for all fighters. It's possible it felt like 30 seconds depending on when you set them to stationary.

@ Schemantix7

Hold position is effective only for stationary targets like buildings or if 2 fleets hold position and just shoot at each other.....

your assumptions are wrong Pbhead.  

 lets use your numbers with something doing 100 damage on a unit that has 0 percent shield and shield mitigation already at 70%

Lets say we have two units.

Unit A has 30% damage increase (therefore doing 130 damage). So damage to hull works to

.30*130 = 39 (only 30% of damage goes to hull due to 70% mitigation)

Unit B has 30% phase missile bypass (doing 100 damage still but 30% of damage goes to hull)

.30*(100*.7)+1 *(100*.3) = 51 (damage is split with 30% or 30 going to hull directly but 70% or 70 gets mitigated by shield down to 21 damage to hull)

39/51 = 0.765 or 23.5%.  So Unit A is doing 12 damage less or 23.5% less compared to Unit B 

This situation also favors phase missiles which starts mitigation at 70% vs 15% 

Not arguing that Phase Missile suck but its not as a big as an advantage as you make it out to be.

if you calculate at 15% mitigation with everything staying the same. 

Unit A

.85*130 = 110.5

Unit B

.85(100*.7)+1 *(100*.3) = 89.5

110.5/89.5 = 1.234 or 23.4% more damage then Unit B 

So at low mitigation phase missile bypass does less damage.

My assumptions are not wrong, I was comparing the damage increase to base damage, your comparing it to an equivilant damage increase.  Its a different way of looking at the same thing.    30% phase missle bypass raises the damage delt against 70% shield mitigation by (.3 *.7+.3)/.3...  70%, or a factor of 1.7 from the base damage.  (100 damge +> 170 damage)

Now, YOUR math is wrong.   .765 is NOT the same as +23.5%   Phase missles do (1/.765) more damage than the straight damage increase... thats +30.72% its not subtraction, but inverse.  

(if your scratching your head... take it to its extreme... If something in a store is 75% off... that means its 300% cheaper than normal.  (just like donov flux field)  )

Dividing 1.7 by 1.3,  (dividing phase bypass by damage increase) Gives 1.3072...  which checks with the (1/.765)

And of course, we are still forgetting the +20% damage phase missles get at max research, which, stacks multiplicatively with the phase bypass. (just like how armor and hull upgrades stack.)... 1.7*1.2 = 2.04/1,3 = 1.57, or 57% more effective than maxxed lrms or illums with the same base dps.

And, the damage required to raise shield mitigation to its maximum level is so trivial,well, we also ignore passive regen and such.  BUt, your right, it is there, and vs LRMS or scouts, or other weak units it might be important, but for focus firing vs capital ships... which are the only not late-game advent units to have 65-75% shield mitigation... negligible.

I don't agree with above statement. Normal price is 100% and if it's 75% off they are selling at 25% price of normal. That doesn't mean its 300% cheaper it is only 75 % cheaper. Because you have to extrapolate from base price of 100% not price of reduction.

And while you are assuming all calculation from reduced "price" your calculations are wrong.

To get it to extreme:

Whatever is 100% reduced in price is for free and there value is 0. If you were looking from your point of view you would get to infinity because your base value would be 0. And whatever larger or (more expensive) than 0 is infinitely more expensive.

Actually he can as Shield Mitigation is figured differently the phase missile penetration in game. Shield Mitigation is straight up. 75% is 75% reduction in damage. Phase missile penetration and almost all the other percentages you see are figured differently (can't recall the exact formula). So yes, he can change the base because the game changes it.

Mathematically he can not. Mathematic is only language that let you interpret something in only one way. It is most precise language humans have 

If you change something and come to same conclusion yes then you can as in addition:

5+7+3=15

7+5+3=15

This is same thing

But in this case:

(5+7)*3=36

5+(7*3)=26

Its not same thing.

So to conclude if you could change it you would need to get to the same result in both cases

EDIT: Perhaps not best example but..... mathematically if you can change it you need to get to same conclusion. 

JJ calculated % difference made on base of phase missiles 39/51 = 0.765 which says that normal missiles do 0.675% of damage compared to phase missiles and therefore LRMs do 23.5% less than phase.

If you are changing to the view of LRMs as a base you take lrms. So 51/31 = 1.3076 Which means that phase missile do 130% of damage of normal ones so 30% more.

I think that for comparing things and for debate sake base value needs to be set at point which is the same and we are able to calculate and compare 0% phase missile bypass and 0% damage upgrade and same base should apply for 30% bypass and 30% damage upgrade.

Ya, i was thinking about this last night.  And, yes, they are the same, as long as you are specific on what they are... the 23.5% less... is equal to 30% more. just like how 75% less is 300% more, and 100% less is infinity% more. 

I have always used the base damage (0% bypass and 0% damage increase) as my base, and compared things in a "more" way.  I only do it that way, because that is the way the game does it. More importantly, since I had been doing it that way, I incorrectly assumed that any reply to my math would also use a similar system.  (its as if I posted in metric, and jj replied in english units)

The ONLY reason "I kept changing my base" was because JJ was using a different base than i was... so, i was doing some calculations my way... and some calcuations JJ's way.... because i was replying to JJ.

You know how vasari starbases with the frontal shields with 100% and 200% damage reduction?  thats the same thing as 50% off, and 66.7% off.   ... or multipliers of .5 and .33.  One just needs to be careful about those things. 

Numbers dont lie... but one needs to be careful in interpreting them.   Numbers dont lie... but, well,  "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics"

and greg, yes, sorry, but your example is horrible.

My store example... at 75% off... 300% more... might be better interpreted as... since it its 75% off, you can buy 300% extra (or, kinda like buy 1 get 3 free)... You end up with 4 for the price of 1.  (once again, just like the donov flux field, you get 4 GRG shots for the price of 1.) But in the game... if there was a skill that said 75% off... you would get only 1.75 for the price of 1.  Armor might be a good ingame example... Each unit of armor is advertised as a 5% damage reduction...but... we all know that 15 armor gives you the equivilant damage absorption capabilitiy as if you had 75% increased hitpoints. 

Is this table right/wrong? I've checked it a couple of times and seems kosher.

Assumes phase bonus is .3, phase damage is 20% and TEC damage modifer is 30% for autocannon and missile...

Assuming it's right which is seems to be based on this thread the biggest areas of concern are Bombers, AF and Fighters. It's just obscene that fighters and flak can damage a capital ship that much which we all know is an issue especially as their primary targets don't have shields. 

Bombers could probably be nerfed some to keep the game in balance and follow more of the Long Range damage scale without touching phase missiles. Not sure what to do about fighters and flak since it seems people are unwilling to change weapon types. 

It does indeed seem to check out.  I didnt check everything, of course, but it seems right.

(btw, I am not unwilling to change damage types... I just know its never going to happen)

Another thing about why vasari bombers are better is I think they have armor 5 while others are 1.