Why you should opt for a gun with multi in the center.

[Aileron]

I am writing this one for the sake of the newbs who ignore multi, using the argument that if their aim is accurate, they don't need multi. The truth of the matter is that even if your aim is perfect, you can *still* miss the target.

 

Subspace was made in the 90s and is a sprite-based game, which is unlike modern games which uses a 3D model that can face any angle. In subspace, there is a finite number of directions your ship can be facing, a number which happens to be 40. Just for fun, I made the following image.

 

 

The red lines show all 40 directions you can face, and therefore all 40 directions you can shoot with non-multi, non-double guns. Anything in black is dead-space that the player cannot shoot without moving. The distance from the ship to the side is 300 pixels. You can clearly see that at the edge of the image, the dead space between the red lines is big enough that a 2 tile wide ship can fit in it. Pros will dodge your bullets by instinctively getting in your dead-space. Now, if you add movement and timing, it does get more complicated, but the jist of it is, the farther away they are, the lower the probability you have of hitting them even with a perfectly aimed shot, because depending upon your positions, a hit might be *impossible*. Keep in mind that 300 pixels is a pretty short distance.

 

Now enter multi-fire. Imagine if each of those red lines had two other red lines a few degrees in both directions. Instead of 40 red lines, now you have 120. Now, your dead-space becomes narrower, so it takes a longer distance until ships can actually start fitting into it. Instead of gaps big enough to fit ships showing up at 300 pixels, you have about 900 pixels until perfectly aimed shots start missing.

 

 

I could go into the whole thing concerning multi, double guns, and prox bombs, with detailed diagrams of each including at what ranges do the different sized ships become hittable with hit-miss probability equations all along the way, but I won't. I think you understand the important aspects of it. You can only shoot 40 directions, and at longer distances you might not be able to hit your target.

 

 

So, if you are flying a javelin with a phaser and you continually are getting pwned because you can't hit crap, and then I come flying in with my terrier equipped with double-multi plasma cannons and kill you quickly, I don't want to hear any more complaining and accusations about multi-users being 'unskilled'. The reality is that non-multi gun users (and non-prox bomb users if they are planning on direct hits) are morons who don't realize just how old Subspace really is.

 

Now, if you have a phaser because you want to kill lancs at close range and know that your dead-space is small enough to allow that, by all means go for it. There is a time and place for everything. I'm attacking the myth that skill can make single-fire weapons hit all the time.

[Kilo]

Glad one other person in SS realizes that multi isn't skill-less. It's almost like the gun stats are balanced around doing less damage but hitting more, too!

[vetta64]

Then someone (not me of course) should make a list of gun stats with a weighted probability of actually hitting the target. Maybe multi is twice as likely to actually hit something.

[Kilo]

Considering how many bullets are in play it'd make more sense to write up a module to do hit% stats. Of course considering people use single/multi for different things it wouldn't exactly be very useful to compare between guns, only between players with the same gun. For example, a bounce gun will probably hit more in a base than a multi gun, and a multi bounce gun negligibly more than that. With some effort you could make it distinguish by area but then it's no longer a zone-neutral module without a lot more work so less cool.

[Aileron]

Well, I said I can do it but didn't want to. The probability of hitting a perfectly aimed shot (That is, assuming the shooter chooses the one of 40 directions which places a bullet as close to the target's center as possible, the odds that this is close enough to be within the target's radius) is:

 

 

Probability = (diameter of your target in pixels) x 40 x (number of bullets you fire per burst) / { 2 x pi x (range to target in pixels) }

 

You can see why I didn't want to do it. As you can see, the weighted probability isn't a flat stat...it depends on what you are shooting at and how far away they are.

 

I made several deliberate errors, most notably in treating double bullets as firing on an angle rather than straight, but if anyone can do better and more notably still keep the calculations simple, then by all means.

 

 

 

Edit: You know what, I do have a flat stat that can be assigned to guns. First off, I'll create a definition for our purposes.

 

Effective range: The range at which a gun has an 80% chance of hitting a standard 2 tile diameter ship.

 

Plugging and chugging into the above equation, we get:

 

No multi, no double: 255 pixels

Double, no multi: 510 pixels

Multi, no double: 765 pixels

Multi and double*: 1020 pixels

 

*not lancs. Lancs fall under the double, no multi range even if they have multi on because their multi shoots out near the back. Duh.

 

Keep in mind this doesn't take into account bullet speed or bullet lifetime, and we are assuming the shooter is accurate and that the target isn't dodging. If your bullets are slow, you might not reach these ranges, or the target may have forever and a day to dodge.

 

The good news is that not once did I involve zone settings, so this is good for other zones as well.

 

 

Finally, be advised that if you are a non-prox bomber, the effective range of your weapon is in many cases shorter than the blast radius of your weapon. So please, if you use bombs in the center, use a bomb with prox. I'm tired of catching strays from noobies who spray bombs all over the place.

Edited August 23, 2010 by Aileron

[Kilo]

Prox bombs do less damage, though. Especially L1.

[BZAP]

I am writing this one for the sake of the newbs who ignore multi, using the argument that if their aim is accurate, they don't need multi. The truth of the matter is that even if your aim is perfect, you can *still* miss the target.

Well said. I feel the same about prox. During league, teams usually included a proxed jav. These javs also held the highest kill count per match. Yet proxers get alot of hate because their shots hit. An impact-bomb jav may pack a punch but no matter how good they are, they can't give chase. As long as you don't follow them, they don't pose much of a threat.

 

Multi is great for pressuring at range and producing volume (filling the screen) but lack dps for close range. It really encourages defensive, run-away play. The signature gun "sharppinger" throws nearly as much volume as gauss without this caveat. Mass driver is insane, too. In the end I suppose it comes down to building around your playstyle

[vetta64]

If you are using Dueling League as a guage it is always a good idea to have diversity amoungst ships rather than everyone having the same "great" ships. However that doesn't mean that prox jav would necessarily get very far by itself.

[op2rules]

Mmm, most non-complainers are quite aware of the 40-angle factor already, but glad somebody was arsed to make a detailed topic on it.