Re: Dispersion Pistol damage statistics (primary/secondary/splash) at each level?
Posted: 23 Nov 2012, 23:43
integration wrote:Sorry, the "powerlevel" in the formular is 1 less than in the oldunreal guide, i.e. you start with powerlevel 0. So the numbers for the charged secondary should move one class lower. I also verified them with some damage-triggered movers. I got 28|34|39|45|51 for powerlevel 1 - 5. So pretty much the same numbers, just rounded down.
Note, that the real damage can be the double of those numbers (direct + splash). On powerlevel 5 you should be able to deal 102 damage with a direct hit.
But in practice secondary fire doesn't improve with powerlevel. Charging your dispersion will alarm enemies and has a worse damage per ammo ratio. And unlike Gesbiorifle hurtradius isn't increased. In my opinion, primary fire even gets worse. Damage per ammo gets worse for powerlevel 2 and 3, and firerate massively sinks for powerlevel 4 (bad against Skaarj). So I don't collect powerups. If I had designed the dispersion, I would have let it consume as much ammo as powerlevel in primary fire mode and let it recharge faster for more maxammo.
Once again, very interesting! I have updated the chart in my previous post, to reflect the "starting at Powerlevel0" adjustment, and also parenthetically mentioned the possibility of double damage by doing equal amounts of both direct hit damage and splash damage with a direct hit from a charged secondary botlt.
I must say, I don't really understand how that splash damage works - if you make a direct hit on your enemy, does the energy from the bolt "splash" off of the enemies body and hit other parts of his own body? What is the likelihood of doing both kinds of damage in this way? Would a direct hit in the "center mass" of, say, a brute or skaarj who is standing still with his back to you (or who is so far away that he doesn't realize you're there - as in the situations that UBerserker describes, with gasbags or skaarj snipers in Deja Vu 2) be "quite likely" to do double damage? Assuming that's the kind of situation in which I'm most likely to take the time to charge up a secondary bolt (another situation might be with tentacles, who can't move out of the way even if they know you're there), it helps to know if I can usually expect to inflict the "plain" damage (51 for a red shot) or the "doubled" damage (102 for the red shot with splash damage as well), or something in between. Especially because a primary red shot does 75 damage, so 51 is worse and 102 is better - so it makes all the difference in deciding which kind of shot to use against an unsuspecting enemy in that situation!
Regarding the question of whether "charging your dispersion will alarm enemies", UBerserker claims that is not the case, but I seem to remember in situations where a skaarj has his back to me, he won't hear it when I charge the shot up, but once I "release" the bolt he suddenly spins around and dodges to the side, avoiding the shot. I'm not 100% sure if I'm remembering that correctly, though, so I'll have to double check that.
It is definitely true that a charged secondary bolt has a considereably "worse damage per ammo ratio" than a primary bolt, thought the gap is closed a little by the possibility of doubling damage via "bonus" splash damage with a charged secondary shot...
Let's look at the cases of Powerlevel 1 (blue primary shots) and Powerlevel 5 (red primary shots):
For Powerlevel 1:
Primary damage/ammo maxes out at 15.
Charged Secondary damage/ammo maxes out at 28/7=4 (or 56/7=8, with full splash damage plus direct damage).
For Powerlevel 5:
Primary damage/ammo maxes out at 75/7=10.71
Charged Secondary damage/ammo maxes out at 51/15=3.4 (or 102/15=6.8, with full splash damage plus direct damage).
However, if you are just going for an initial "surprise attack" (or a series of surprise attacks, with time to recharge in between). then it doesn't matter if you're going to use more ammo/damage, as long as you don't risk running out of DP ammo, or if you're going to switch to another weapon after the first shot, anyway....
Anyway, this has all been quite educational. I have recently finally realized the utility of secondary ASMD shots against slith, and will probably use them where available, but it's good to know that uncharged secondary DP might have some use against them as well...