Umm, is it the Cerberus?

The guardian? I had a very davastating gun in my possession and it did +/- 1000 shield damage and +/- 500 hull damage. Before the nomads destroyed it. It was a lvl 10 gun. Got it from a wreck in the corsair-sytems. I believe it was the guardian.

Cerberus and Diamondback. These two have exactly the same stats and the only difference is the visual effect. 1143 hull damage as far as I remember.

The shield buster guns in general and among shield busters the Tizona del Cid, of course.

Missiles, mines, torpedoes and normal guns do only half damage against shields (lets not quibble about gun type vs. shield type here), and shields also recharge constantly which slowly undoes the 'work' done on them so far. The shield buster guns do insane amounts of shield damage - compared to hull damage for normal guns - and eat away the shields quickly. This lets the other weapons rip into the armour, which they are better at than they are at destroying shields.

On top of that, the Tizona del Cid fire is invisible.

Yeah, but TIzona del Cid only does like 40 hull damage, so it would be pretty suicidal to fight with only Tizonas equipped
What I like to do lately, is equipping dual Paralyzer and dual Cannonball missile launhcers. With that, I can destroy any ship damn quickly. First, I fire two Paralyzers and maybe a second later I fire two Cannonballs. Guaranteed kill without having to dogfight. Sure, it's expensive, but I'm rich now so I don't care.

He also said:

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This lets the other weapons rip into the armour, which they are better at than they are at destroying shields.

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Off course you don't only use del Cid's. I usually only use one of them.

The most damaging GUN in the game in terms of shield and hull damage combined, is without a doubt the Nomad Cannon.... No not the CERBERUS or DIAMONDBACK, here's why... if for instance you fire on your enemy for exactly 1 second the DIAMONDBACK would do the following shield damage: 586(shield) x 2(refire) = 1172, hull damage would total: 1173(hull) x 2(refire) = 2346. Now the Nomad Cannon has a refire of 3.03!! So firing that baby for 1 second would result in: 423 x 3.03 = 1281.69 shield and 847 x 3.03 = 2566,41 hull damage, which is simply more than any other gun can do. If you're just looking for shield damage, then yes... Tizona is the gun for you.

Eagle has landed...

Nice theory,

Only one thing doesn't seem right:

You say the Nomad cannon does more damage then a diamondback, but this is only truth if you make all three rounds per second HIT the target.

With the diamondback you only have to hit the target twice. 586(shield) x 2(refire) = 1172
With the nomadcannon you have to hit the target three times. 423 x 3.03 = 1281

Although the above happens in the same time period (1 second), the chance of missing your target gets bigger because you'll have to hit it more often.

Edited by - McKracken on 27-06-2003 13:56:27

In the SP TIzona del Cid is useless and the best guns in the game are CEREBUR+DIAMONDBACK, but its better with nomad weapons(u dont have to worry about energy used...

You have a point there, but lets do a little more math on it. I'm keeping it simple here because factoring in hit chances per shot would make this too long and probably too boring to follow. So here goes...

First we picture ourself firing at an enemy when we get him in our sights, we miss a few times, sometimes we first have to turn the ship about to get him in our sights again etc. At certain times we Do have him in our sights and fire, lets say we have him in front of us for 33 sec. (NOT SEQUENTIAL!) in which time we fire upon him.

If I used a Nomad Cannon I would have fired 100 rounds in those 33 sec, and missed a few too ofcourse. With a DIAMONDBACK I would have fired 66 times, also missing a few. I'm not going to do an entire probability calculation per shot here, you can do that for yourself if you like, but lets say all in all I miss 40% of the total shots fired. Nomad Cannon would hit 60 times, DIAMONDBACK 40 times, which is still the same ratio (3.03 vs 2).

No matter how you twist it, in the end the cannon simply delivers more damage per unit of time than any other gun, reguardless of how good or bad your aim is.


Eagle has landed...

@Eagle Yes, the Nomad cannons would be the most powerful weapon if you take into account energy, refire rate, etc. But the most powerful single-shot weapon (that is, if you fired just one shot) is the Cerebrus/Diamondback. Of course, if you want to deal the most damage over a period of time, you'd need the cannon.

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The problem is, math is going to fail you unless you make some really inaccurate assumptions and base your mathematic equations on those assumptions. The resultant output is integrally flawed. I'm not going to give you mathematics in this post. I'm going to give a little common sense. It will be debatable, but I think most duelists would agree, and are already aware of what I am about to say.

First of all, if you were to guess at the chances to hit of any given pilot, you'd be missing a key important factor: When two ships are not pointing at one another, the chances to hit of each are ZERO. Any of us who actually duels could tell you that you are forced to point away from your target in order to manuever.

Commmonly duelists will engage in a series of 'passes'. Though the fundemental goal of a duelist is to be able to shoot at his target when the target is not shooting back, unless one duelist is unskilled, this rarely ever occurs for an extended duration. So you have got to take into account that your guns are not going to be firing all the time. The average amount of time firing on the opponent is most likely one or two seconds, and the sweet spot (the time you have greatest chances to hit) occurs over a period of about 1/2 of a second.

Now given a % chance to hit you will see that given an equal damage product/second, a slower firing gun, and a faster firing gun will do an equal amount of damage on average. The faster firing gun will do a more consistent amount of damage, and the slower firing gun will be more inconsistent, typically straying farther from the average during every fight. I'm not going to illustrate this mathematically, as it shouldn't be neccesary. It should be pretty easy to conceptualize. HOWEVER, when you consider the factor of an average 1/2 second sweet spot of accuracy, you will find that during that sweet spot of accuracy a slower, high damage gun is going to do much more damage than a faster firing gun.

In practice, what is happening is that in a battle you can take that single moment to fire when you know you will hit. The rest of the time, you are basically firing flak fire, of which some will hit and some will not. In that short period of time of enhanced accuracy, you have high chances to hit, but only once. A bigger gun is a real asset in this case.

So what conclusion am I trying to draw? I am just pointing out that KNOWING you have the capability for a large, single blast of damage is a tactical asset in a duel. You can take advantage of that. You can go head on with your opponent for a brief moment, knowing that in that duration you WILL do more damage than that guy with the faster firing guns. It's an asset not to be ignored. Killing on the first pass, within that brief period of time is actually quite common.

Nice conclusion...

And to keep it simple: I guess in the end it only matters who's the best pilot with the best shot anyway .

@HornyJesus :

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In the SP TIzona del Cid is useless

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Suggestion: Maybe you should start giving some arguments with wat you say. If someone gives his opinion on why he thinks a certain weapon is good, just saying that he's wrong and the weapon is crap sounds kinda stupid. And there's nothing wrong with respecting someone elses opinion.

Edited by - McKracken on 27-06-2003 15:16:03

I think he means...that by the time you can get them... u are fighting nomads... so you won't have much use for it...