Weapon RP costs analysis

Those are some nice charts and all that you've made, but let me ask you this:

What do you think of the actual gameplay?

Unless you can tell me how this is having a negative effect upon the game experience, I don't see what the problem is.

Regardless of that, though, you very well can't reach a real conclusion until you factor in all the factors; the cost to build the weapons on a ship, sizemods, the nano-ripper, psionic weapons, as well as how all of it compares to the same characteristics of the defenses...

You've got a good start here, though. If you care to continue making all these graphs and such, you'll at least end up with a very thorough reference that a lot of people would find very useful.

Nice work!

However I would expect the research cost to attain a certain weapon damage to be monotonically increasing, but your graph does not show this. That is the cost to research a level 3 weapon is the research cost to get a level 1 weapon, plus the additional cost to research from level 1 to level 2, plus the additional cost to research from level 2 to level 3. Because to get to level 3, you need to get to levels 1 and 2 first. So the graph should show the cumulative costs, not the incremental costs.

It seems that you have shown the incremental costs to go from one level to the next. Which is useful in and of itself.

That is a bit strange.

I wonder how it would stack up against the defenses for each type, though. If Armor is also the most expensive defense to invest in, it might not be so unbalanced.

What do you think of the actual gameplay? Unless you can tell me how this is having a negative effect upon the game experience, I don't see what the problem is.

That's why there's a warning at the top of this thread about charts and math. Here's a quote from above that refers to gameplay:

By the time I research Guns-5 (Spike Driver-IV) for 49,875 RP, I could have researched Damage-22 Doom Rays for 50,025 RP.

Seems like the extra 17 points of damage per weapon trounces any difference in the cost of armor vs shields.

About running totals:

It seems that you have shown the incremental costs to go from one level to the next.

Check your TechTree.xml file; these are running totals, not the cost of individual techs, or differences between them. The numbers, as noted in the chart, are total research points to achieve the appropriate technology. Individual tech costs look like this:

DisplayName	Cost	Category	Requires
Phasors II	1600	Beam	Phasors
Subspace Annihilator	5200	Beam	Subspace Blaster
Subspace Blaster	6000	Beam	Disruptors III
Disruptors III	3500	Beam	Disruptors II
Disruptors II	3200	Beam	Disruptors
Phasors VII	2400	Beam	Phasors VI
Beam Weapon Theory	100	Beam	Space Weapons
Phasors V	2100	Beam	Phasors IV
Phasors IV	2000	Beam	Phasors III
Doom Ray	9000	Beam	Subspace Annihilator
Psionic Beam	900	Beam	Phasors
Disruptors	4000	Beam	Phasors VII
Phasors	2000	Beam	Plasma Weapons III
Plasma Weapons III	800	Beam	Plasma Weapons II
Plasma Weapons II	700	Beam	Plasma Weapons
Plasma Weapons	1000	Beam	Laser V
Laser V	500	Beam	Laser IV
Laser IV	400	Beam	Laser III
Laser III	350	Beam	Laser II
Laser II	200	Beam	Laser
Laser	75	Beam	Beam Weapon theory
Phasors III	1800	Beam	Phasors II
Phasors VI	2200	Beam	Phasors V
Advanced Troop Mod	500	Invasion	Space Marines
Tidal Disruption	600	Invasion	Planetary Bombardment
Shock Troops	500	Invasion	Advanced Troop Mods
Supreme Planetary Defense	6000	Invasion	Adv. Planetary Defense
Adv. Planetary Defense	2000	Invasion	Planetary Defense
Planetary Defense	300	Invasion	Planetary Invasion
Space Marines	400	Invasion	Planetary Bombardment
Planetary Bombardment	600	Invasion	Planetary Invasion
Planetary Invasion	900	Invasion	Space Militarization
Singularity Driver IV	1000	MD	Singularity Driver III
HD Spike Driver III	5300	MD	HD Spike Driver II
HD Spike Driver II	5200	MD	HD Spike Driver
HD Spike Driver	5000	MD	Quantum Driver III
Quantum Driver III	4400	MD	Quantum Driver II
Quantum Driver II	4200	MD	Quantum Driver
Quantum Driver	4000	MD	Graviton Driver IV
Psionic Shredder	1000	MD	Graviton Driver III
Graviton Driver IV	2600	MD	Graviton Driver III
Graviton Driver III	2500	MD	Graviton Driver II
HD Spike Driver IV	5800	MD	HD Spike Driver III
Graviton Driver	2000	MD	Singularity Driver IV
Neutrino Bullets	8000	MD	HD Spike Driver IV
Singularity Driver III	800	MD	Singularity Driver II
Singularity Driver II	900	MD	Singularity Driver
Singularity Driver	1200	MD	Mass Drivers III
Mass Drivers III	1000	MD	Mass Drivers II
Mass Drivers II	800	MD	Mass Drivers
Mass Drivers	500	MD	MiniBalls II
MiniBalls II	100	MD	MiniBalls
MiniBalls	75	MD	Mass Driver Theory
Mass Driver Theory	100	MD	Space Weapons
Graviton Driver II	2400	MD	Graviton Driver
Black Hole Gun	8000	MD	Neutrino Bullets
Space Militarization	50	Military	Galactic Warfare
Galactic Warfare	25	Military	None
Space Weapons	150	Military	Space Militarization
Positronic Torp II	8000	Missile	Positronic Torp
Stinger III	400	Missile	Stinger II
Missile Weapon Theory	100	Missile	Space Weapons
Stinger II	300	Missile	Stinger
Stinger	150	Missile	Missile Weapon Theory
Anti-Matter Torp II	5200	Missile	Anti-Matter Torp
Anti-Matter Torp III	5400	Missile	Anti-Matter Torp II
Quantum Torp	6000	Missile	Anti-Matter Torp III
Quantum Torp II	6200	Missile	Quantum Torp
Quantum Torp III	6800	Missile	Quantum Torp II
Positronic Torp	7000	Missile	Quantum Torp III
Photonic Torpedo	1600	Missile	Harpoon III
Stinger IV	800	Missile	Stinger III
Photon Torpedo II	2800	Missile	Photon Torpedo
Anti-Matter Torp	5000	Missile	Photon Torpedo III
Photonic Torpedo II	1200	Missile	Photonic Torpedo
Photon Torpedo III	3000	Missile	Photon Torpedo II
Psionic Missile	600	Missile	Harpoon III
Harpoon III	900	Missile	Harpoon II
Harpoon II	800	Missile	Harpoon
Harpoon	1200	Missile	Stinger IV
Black Hole Eruptor	9000	Missile	Positronic Torp II
Photon Torpedo	2400	Missile	Photonic Torpedo II
Starbase Conquest Strategy	4500	Starbase	StarbaseDomination
Starbase Defenses	500	Starbase	Space Weapons
Superior Starbase Defense Systems	3500	Starbase	StarbaseProjection
Starbase Projection	2500	Starbase	StarbaseMobilization
Starbase Mobilization	1500	Starbase	StarbaseMilitarization

All of which just proves what I already knew - Mass drivers are teh sux0r. Takes too long to go up the tech tree and they're too large once you have them. A fighter with 5 railguns could have had 6 or 7 lasers.

The missiles are kind of a shock. It looks like if you go any higher than photon torpedoes, their cost suddenly skyrockets. Which does match my experience. It takes a hell of a long time to go from photon torps to antimatter torps.

And it looks like black hole missiles cost 50% more RP than doom ray?

Think I'll stick with beams from now on.

These are very nice maps and charts, but you also have to consider the ingame cost. Lets say your enmies have very good shield tech. Well you are going to have to reearch and use some other wapon type. It really doesnt matter much. The whole piont is not how fast you research them it is the applicability of the weapon, how effective it will be in battle. however these are very helpful charts. But in all it seems irrelivant how many turns it will take to research that weapons branch. It all depends on what the needs of the empire are.

i don't see why the weapons should be balanced against each other. railguns are expensive to research, but they have the best damage to size ratio, and they're also the least expensive to put on your ships. it makes sense it'd be the most expensive to research.

but i'm not here to defend mass drivers. i use the weapons that are best suited for the situation i'm in. a weapon's balance isn't in a vacuum, but also must be compared to appropriate defenses, their size/absorbtion/cost/research ratios. and ultimately, the best weapon is the one your enemies can't defend against.

i think you'll need a 9-dimensional graph and that doesn't even factor in the sizemod values.

still, an interesting pair of graphs.

Factoring in the size of weapons is a bit trickier. Straight multiplication by the size of the componant gives the following, which still shows guns as too expensive to buy:

why did you multiply? you should be dividing damage by size to come up with a ratio. i'd use dmg/(size*sizemod) for the most generically accurate value.

Ok, second chart updated to be RP/(size*sizemod); hit refresh to see the changes.

Including such size info shows Gun-9 to come down and be more in line with the other weapons. Gun-4 and Gun-5 are still out there on price/performance. It might be possible to bring them into a more competetive role by removing several redundant 'sleightly smaller/cheaper' versions of the same damage level.

Beam-6 (Subspace Blaster) also remains as an anomaly. Considering it's cost and placement in the tech tree, it would be more appropriate for that weapon to do 10 damage instead of only 6. It would have to be sleightly bigger to fit in neatly.

And it looks like black hole missiles cost 50% more RP than doom ray?

Beams	Cost	Missiles	Cost
Beam weapon theory	100	Missile weapon theory	100
Laser	75	Stinger	150
Laser II	200	Stinger II	300
Laser III	350	Stinger III	400
Laser IV	400	Stinger IV	800
Laser V	500	Harpoon	1200
Plasma Weapons	1000	Harpoon II	800
Plasma Weapons II	700	Harpoon III	900
Plasma Weapons III	800	Photonic Torpedo	1600
Phasors	2000	Photonic Torpedo II	1200
Phasors II	1600	Photon Torpedo	2400
Phasors III	1800	Photon Torpedo II	2800
Phasors IV	2000	Photon Torpedo III	3000
Phasors V	2100	Anti-Matter Torpedo	5000
Phasors VI	2200	Anti-Matter Torpedo II	5200
Phasors VII	2400	Anti-Matter Torpedo III	5400
Disruptors	4000	Quantum Torpedo	6000
Disruptors II	3200	Quantum Torpedo II	6200
Disruptors III	3500	Quantum Torpedo III	6800
Subspace Blaster	6000	Positronic Torpedo	7000
Subspace Annihilator	5200	Positronic Torpedo II	8000
Doom Ray	9000	Black Hole Eruptor	9000
Total	49125	Total	74250

Nice charts man

Thanks

railguns are expensive to research, but they have the best damage to size ratio, and they're also the least expensive to put on your ships.

If the AI were unfortunate enough to decide to research guns, it would fall behind in military tech. Once it hits Guns-3 (Graviton Drivers), it will be stuck there for a long time. Meanwhile, the player can go from Beam-3 (Phasors) up to Beam-4, Beam-5, Beam-7, and finally Beam-8 (Disruptors III) before the AI can get to Guns-4. By then it would be too late, the war would be raging, the player on to the Beam-22 doom rays before long, and the AI would still be struggling to get to Gun-5.

Has anyone been attacked by an AI ship with a high Gun-attack rating?

What about defence techs? If the cost/effectiveness ratio of a weapon matched that of its defence counterpart, there isnt a problem. (For instance, if Beams are cheap attack techs, and Shields are cheap defense techs, they balance eachother out.)
If not, it looks like its more cost-effective to go the beam route.

I like the techs to have quirks in their research and attack size ratings.

I research and use what the AI doesn't. It varys game to game. But the new impact of version 1.2 combat makes defense more important.

Larger ships , even with module sizes being different, have an advantage that by stacking weapons they have a larger attack factor that can destroy or damage any one undefended ship per round. While if they have enough defense they can become almost invulnerable to other smaller ships because their combined attack factor cannot penetrate their shields.

I like seeing 0's on the combat display.

The chart does not take into account the advantages of big ship firepower/defense nor does it take into account the fact that the AI often researches both the attack and matching defense trees at the same time.

If mass drivers are not AI researched you can cut through their fleets like butter.

Just had a recent game where the AI had beams and sheilded ships and I concentrted on mass drivers and shields.

Nice chart though, it has potential as a greta reference.

Just had a recent game where the AI had beams and sheilded ships and I concentrted on mass drivers and shields.

How far up the mass driver tree did you end up researching by the end of the game? And what beam weapons did they have at the time?

My guess is that it got hard about the time those Graviton-equipped Gun-9 heavy fighters and Gun-12 Mediums started attacking planets guarded by Phaser-equipped Beam-20 to Beam-25 defenders.

To teh end of the line of the mass driver tree although most of the game I was using the atk 9 weapons.

I had conquered 2 civs first when the other AIs starting declaring war two at a time on me. They were using battleships and frigates using combined 40-60 attack points per ship, plus 20-40 in shields that were virtually useless against my shields. I think then were using atk 8 or so weapons.

The final two civilizations actually improved their designs to mass drivers to counter my shielded ships but they stayed wwith shields. I had to generate a new generation of ships with mass drivers and armor for the cleanup.

Really nice work - will comment further when I get a chance to review - thanks for putting it in a spreadsheet

Well, looks like you beat me to it. I was planning on doing some analysis like this this weekend. I haven't looked at the spreadsheets yet, but I will take a look.

BTW, what is "sizemod"? I have no idea what that number means.

SizeMod is additional space that a ship part takes up, rated as a percentage of hull space. For example, a weapon that has a Size 5 and SizeMod 6 will take up 5 space plus 6 percent of the ship.

I imagine that it's purpose is to dampen the effect of larger hulls, making smaller hulls more valuable. It also sets a hard limit on the number of componants that can be put onto a ship, no matter what size the ship is (depending on parts, that limit is in the neighborhood of a dozen to two dozen).

It's sleightly buggy though. The size of a part is rounded down, which produces jumps in componant size as miniturization and hull sizes go up. Even to the point that some ships that were made at one hull size cannot fit into a sleightly larger size, because several pieces have jumped up a notch. Best solution presented so far is to mod all part and hull sizes to ten times their original, thus adding one digit of precision.

Didn't really look at all your charts and graphs but i have done my own research into weapon tech costs and the payback on different types. And i go with missiles myself and haven't had a problem. You can look at cost all you want but the big stat is how much damage you can put on a ship so damage per space is what really matters.

And from what i see, defense on the ships is a waste of space and I wouldn't want to lose time researching defenses. If i got em for free from espionage or battle prizes i might consider using them. I have run up against ships that had lots of missile defense and they were easy to take out and had a few ships given to me that were like that -- and they weren't good except against ships that were using older equip and hadn't been upgraded.

I've gone up against civs that had better missiles than me and taken them out.
Sure liked getting the Anti matter torpedoe tech as a battle prize when i was still using photonic missiles.

You do need to choose a line of weapons and go with it. The tech costs go up for a second line of weapons and even more for the third line of weapons. I tried researching 2 weapon techs ( beams and missiles ) but found out the research costs were about 16% more for each tech doing that.

Ok, second chart updated to be RP/(size*sizemod); hit refresh to see the changes.

I think what #8 was saying is that you should plot Total research points against DAMAGE/ SIZE * SIZEmod .

What matters is not damage after all so using it has one of the axis is kind of pointless.

Also Using RP/ Size * sizemod makes very little sense and is hard to interprete

Imagine 2 weapons with the same base damage, same total rp cost but one is larger than the other. Using your graph, it would mean the bigger (and inferior) weapon would have a *lower* RP / (Size * sizemod) value ??

On the other hand, a weapon with exactly the same stats (in size and damage) but higher RP value would have a *higher* RP/ Size * Sizemod value?

So is higher RP/Size*sizemod value better or worse?

This plot is a study of when the various weapons become available. It shows the technology race in the three main weapons, and who will get what first.

weapons with large base sizes and small sizemods will work best on larger hulls, esp with miniaturization. Small base size with a large sizemod works best on smaller ships. It all depends upon your overall naval strategy and that of your opponent. 2 black hole torpedoes wont be as useful as 1 black hole gun if your opponent has ships with effective missile defenses.