Questions about builds...

geminisierra

So, in a recent thread it was suggested:

you always want the wep with the longer CD further to the left.

Why would you want this?
What advantage is there in slot placement of weapons? vs cooldown ?
Is there a guide of any kind for this kind of thing?

wildmousex

I would suspect that it has to do with using the number keys at the top of the keyboard to use your abilities.... if your low cool down weapon is all the way to the left then your hands will be positioned to the left side of the keyboard, and the middle keys are a stretch to reach, and often go unused - - - -if you have your low CD stuff in the middle, then your hand is positioned in the middle, and you can just tap 1-3 easy with your pinky when they are ready to go.

that is my reasoning for doing it anyway.

noroblad

starvation. the ones on the left shoot first. If you had say 2 weapons and they lock each other out with a cooldown (projectiles..) and the left one cools down too fast, the right one will never fire. If you do the reverse, the slow one gets on cooldown, then the next one can fire, then the first again.

A similar issue happens with consumption of one-shot buffs like torp spread. If you hit torp spread, then attack a ship, the leftmost will fire first and use the ability (if it can). Slower weapons tend to hit harder and make better use of these abilities. The same is true of beam overload -- you want to avoid having your obelisk AP beam use this instead of your dual bank!

While rare, for a time when starting out I had DC and DHC mixed and the order they were placed in made a huge difference in how they fired and the behavior of rapid and scatter.

Normally this sort of thing is really a big deal only for ships that have multiple torps or a very strange mix of energy weapons. I doubt it matters much if you ran say 3 DHC and a torp, the torp could go anywhere.

jaguarskx

Hmmm...

Interesting bit of information. I never noticed an issue with cool down since I tend to use all Phaser Beam Arrays which all have the same cool down rate, and one mine launcher.

I did recently change my weapon load out replacing one of my forward arc arrays with a Quantum Torpedo Launcher, so I guess that should go in the left most slot due to the 8 second cool down.

noroblad

jaguarskx wrote: »

Hmmm...

Interesting bit of information. I never noticed an issue with cool down since I tend to use all Phaser Beam Arrays which all have the same cool down rate, and one mine launcher.

I did recently change my weapon load out replacing one of my forward arc arrays with a Quantum Torpedo Launcher, so I guess that should go in the left most slot due to the 8 second cool down.

It probably does not matter for that setup. Again, its really most noticeable when you have 2 launchers and one is a LOT slower than the other one. energy and projectiles do not seem to interfere with each other.

jockey1979

jaguarskx wrote: »

Hmmm...

Interesting bit of information. I never noticed an issue with cool down since I tend to use all Phaser Beam Arrays which all have the same cool down rate, and one mine launcher.

I did recently change my weapon load out replacing one of my forward arc arrays with a Quantum Torpedo Launcher, so I guess that should go in the left most slot due to the 8 second cool down.

It used to really stand out with DC and DHC more. DC timing was set up in pairs - so putting 3 on your ship was pointless as the 3rd would never fire. DHC were used in 3's or you'd get a gap in your fire cycle.

But for some odd reason they changed it.

So now, it is more to do with the power requirements of your weapons and when they take the power (as it will directly affect other weapons) and to do with skills (as others have said)

jockey1979

Right, I could be wrong - but I have roughed out how it used to feel when weapons fired.

How the game used to feel firing your weapons;

Start;

Weapon 1 shooting?

yes - goto weapon 2
no - fire weapon, goto start

Weapon 2 shooting?

yes - goto weapon 3
no - fire weapon, goto start

Weapon 3 shooting?

yes - goto weapon 4
no - fire weapon, goto start


And so on, so after each weapon is activated, it resets back to the start and checks them all again in order.
If weapon 3 fires and weapon 1 has finished it's cooldown - 4 wont get a chance, as 3 causes the check to start again, then 1 fires and causing the check to start again - by this time 2 and 3 have cooled so we end up in a loop that ignores weapon 4

This is how it always felt to me - still does with a torp boat.

(I have no idea if that is what the game is doing - I am not a programmer, this is for example only, on how it seems to be to me)

geminisierra

Wow.
I'll have to watch for this and see what it is doing. Never really watched which weapon was firing when. just always assumed it was because of one of the cooldowns.

Are there any other know "gotcha's" like this?