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How Mark bonuses work

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
edited March 2010 in The Academy
The following is based off of observations on the trends of several different systems, although I'll only be using Personal Shields as an illustrative example. The only system that I haven't observed following this trend are ship shields.


In systems where an effect depends on the mark number of the system, it's easy to see that there's a fairly regular increase between marks. Phaser arrays go up a little over 10 base damage (8 dps) per mark, engines by a bit under 0.4 impulse per mark, etc... A complete table of the values for Personal Shields for example is:

Mark - Value
TRIBBLE - 100
I - 124
II - 155
III - 186
IV - 216
V - 247
VI - 278
VII - 308
VIII - 339
IX - 369
X - 400

Other than the step from TRIBBLE to Mark I, they're all going up by a touch over 30 points per mark. The step between TRIBBLE and Mark I seems to be roughly 80% of a normal step (~24 in this case). If we notice that the difference between Mark X and TRIBBLE is 300, then each step is just over 10% of that difference. Or looking at it another way to account for the smaller TRIBBLE to Mark I step, there are 9.8 steps between TRIBBLE and Mark X, making each step ~10.204% of the TRIBBLE to Mark X difference.

So in the shield example, this gives each step a value of (400-100)/9.8 = 30.61224. Applying this to each mark as we come down from Mark X gives values of 400, 369.39, 338.78, 308.16, 277.55, 246.94, 216.33, 185.71, 155.10, 124.49, which when rounded off give the observed values in the table above.

The assumptions behind this are that the both the Standard Issue and Mark X versions will be using "nice" numbers for their values. Some observed ones are 100 and 400 for personal shields, 5% and 25% as well as 10% and 50% for personal armor, 7.5 and 11.25 for impulse engine flight speed on 0.15 impulse modifier ships, 10.0 and 13.75 impulse engine flight speed on 0.20 impulse modifier ships, 100 and 200 for phaser arrays, etc... Especially in situations where sub decimal precision is available, the formula has matched up with the values when rounded to the same precision.

Ship shields seem to differ in that the TRIBBLE to Mark I step is the same as all the others. Here the size of the steps and the shield values seems to depend more on the tier of your ship and its type than on the described mark bonus formula.
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