Value of absorbing weapons: some research

[Xavier]

A long time ago one newcomer to Pulse was wondering about how he could get better at the game ("I'm rubbish," were his exact words, I think), and I mentioned how it would be useful to know how damage and energy were calculated. Well, I've come back to playing Pulse again (on the train to work... Fusion takes up my time at home) and decided to do some research for the good of the team!

(If someone has done this already, please post a link, and don't flame me!)

Here I'm going to attempt to figure out how much energy you recover when you absorb stuff.

What I've discovered so far:

• Your racing class (Venom, Rapier, Phantom) doesn't seem to matter, but you get much more energy back as you switch to *harder* classes.
• You get more energy back if your shield rating is *lower*. The 10-shield Triakis benefits less from absorption than the 6-shield Icaras. This difference is slight, though; much slighter than the gains made if you're racing in Hard mode.
• Your energy is rounded to the nearest percent, so there's often a 1-percentage-point variation in how much you absorb. My figures are the lower of the two values.

Here are some preliminary figures, using Venom class, Easy difficulty. (I don't think the course matters, but for completeness, the Triakis, Auricom, and EG-X numbers were obtained on Basilico, and the other two were on Metropia.)

Ship      Tri. Aur. Mir. EG-X Icaras
Shield    (10)  (9)  (8)  (7)  (6)

Item:    
Plasma     27   27             31
Shield     17             18   19
Leech       7    7    7    8    8
Autopilot  14   13   15   15   15
Flame      13   13   15   14   15
Turbo      16   17   18   18   19
Quake      27   27        29   31
Missile    20        17   22   23
Mines      14   14   14   15   15
Cannon     13   14   14   14   15 
Bomb            14   18   19   19

The Cannon figures assume that you have all 30 bullets left. For reference, using the Icaras (shield 6), you pick up +6 at 10 bullets remaining, +2 at 2. I didn't test much with this.

The blanks are where I just didn't coincidentally get that item for a while and decided to move on to something else rather than keep waiting for it. I'll fill those in as I test more.

More possibly-useful data: a barrel roll took away 8% for all ships at Easy/Venom level. The flames seemed to be the least damaging (-10% on Triakis), the quake and bomb took about 15% each, and the plasma took about 50%. Hitting the walls can range from 1% every second or so, scraping against it, to several percent for slamming into them at full speed.

[Darkdrium777]

By Flame do you mean rockets?

[Xavier]

Yeah, I should have switched the the official names. "Flame" is "rockets". I should probably put them in some kind of order (green "helpful" stuff, pink "forward attacking" stuff, blue "defensive attach" stuff; something like that).

Now I'm putting together some numbers for the EG-X in Easy, Medium, and Hard. Hard gives you lots of energy back. Should have a table ready tomorrow.

[Darkdrium777]

It's interesting results. In HD everything gives back a fixed value, and all the weapons do basically the same damage (Rockets, Missile and Quake is all 15 AFAIK) and give back the same energy no matter the ship...
Here it seems to be different... Well not seems, it actually is.

[rdmx]

No - weapons give back a fixed amount whenever you absorb - there is no difference in difficulty level (and would be stupid otherwise).
Half your figures don't seem to go with my memory either. The 8 shield ag-systems gets back 10percent from absorbed leech, 20 from rockets, 30 from missile, something big from quake, 25 from shield, something big from plasma, 20 from mines, 25 from bomb.

[Xavier]

Insertcoin, are you sure you weren't using Medium difficulty? I've never gotten anything other than 7 or 8 percent from absorbing a leech for any ship on Easy difficulty, but have received 10 consistently using the EG-X (7 shield) in Medium.

It's easy to forget the difficulty level, particularly between Easy and Medium, where even a mediocre pilot like myself can finish far ahead of all the computer ships. Don't take this as a flame, but did you just get Easy and Medium confused?

There is no difference in speed level (speed class: Venom, Flash, Rapier, Phantom) that I've seen so far, but in difficulty I think there is.

[Xavier]

OK, Insertcoin, I think I see why you think all the values are fixed. Medium and Hard have the same values, which are greater than those of Easy. You must never play Easy mode!

Your figures look pretty good for Medium and Hard. I just did a bunch of runs with the 7-shield Assegai and am about to do some for a few other ships.

[rdmx]

Yes I stand corrected - Easy mode does give less shield upon absorb - I tried it this morning. It's true, I never played easy mode on Pulse

[G'Kyl]

[LIST][*]You get more energy back if your shield rating is *lower*. The 10-shield Triakis benefits less from absorption than the 6-shield Icaras. This difference is slight, though; much slighter than the gains made if you're racing in Hard mode.

What do you mean by "less"? I figure they benefit the same.
The shield indicator on the HUD shows the percentage of the maximum shield power, hence ships with higher shield capacity get less _per cent_ fixed when absorbing a certain weapon - however, all ships gain the same _absolute_ value in shield power when absorbing that weapon.
Did I miss anything? ;)

Ben

[Xavier]

Ben, that's a good point, and I never considered looking at it that way.

The way I was seeing it was that all the ships have the same shield power (100%), and those with a strong rating (Triakis' 10) will lose less of that percentage when they get hurt, and gain less when they absorb stuff, whereas a weak shield will lose more of that 100% when getting hurt and gain more back when something is absorbed.

Your way is probably more logical -- keep the value of each item fixed and the damage from each weapon fixed, with the number of "shield points" varying, like it does in Fusion (which is pretty easy to understand).

But since the game doesn't display shield points anymore -- only percentages -- wouldn't it be easier for pilots to look at the number on the screen and then figure out how much that number would change if they absorbed something, did a barrel roll, etc.?

I'd be happy to switch to the other way if people think it's easier to use.