Money shot for the Multi-shot.

Multi-shot: The confused weapon story.

By: George Argyropoulos

a/k/a Dragon_Bane

So... my bon mots are getting worse. Give me some coffee, some ibuprofen and a shot of... er... yea, that'll be good enough....

Earlier today I had a weird convergence of randomness. I got a couple emails asking about Fury builds (with multi-shot questions thrown in) and a couple more emails and some messages asking about multi-shot and how it works with specificity. I sort of put all those off to the side (I needed coffee) and played with a Fury build for a friend of mine that had some limited tech.

While in Huggies , and comparing it to the in-game shipyard, I noticed a few odd things, and not one to pass up a chance to harass and pick the brain of Dave (a/k/a Huggy), I shot him a few questions since our math didn’t match and to go over an issue or two I had come up with (and I was annoyed at the in-game shipyard's obfuscation). After going back and forth for at least a couple of hours, we hammered it all out, got on the same track and Dave decided since he was making tweaks to his shipyard already, he wanted to go the extra mile and make his display interface for this better than he had it in the past (likely because the mechanic is starting to get used more). You should see an update to his site... soon. (In other words, the pics you see in this article will not match what you see on Huggies as of publication.) Edit: Seems he seriously doesn't rest. New full update is live! One at a time! Don't push!!!

Let me take a moment to say this- Dave busts his ass in some crazy ways for that site- for our use and pleasure. I can not stress how much work that damn thing is. (Nor how pissy I get when players on the forum get whiny and start making demands of his site.) Every time he and I have decided to scurry down a rabbit hole, this man goes full force to make sure his site is accurate and correct. I have never once worked with him and heard an iota of complaint either- and that's saying something. Not only that, he tries to ferret out a lot more than just the math if applicable, and THEN tries to incorporate it in the best way for the user of his site to use. I hope everyone is as appreciative of his efforts as I am. Dude rocks.

This episode brought me to ask on the TFC page if anyone would be interested in an article reviewing the multi-shot mechanic and specials. I was somewhat surprised to see a rather large immediate response in the affirmative. So... here we are.

Let us review a bit on multi-shot, shall we? An apt analogy for the multi-shot mechanic is a shotgun, in that when a multi-shot weapon fires all its little pellets fire off at once much like the shot in a shotgun shell. There are no salvos to address. It is one salvo made up of multiple pellets. Hence- Multi-shot.

So, let’s start using an example, yes? As we can see above, we have a damage listing of 2,220 with a multi shot of 6 and a reload of 9. What does this mean exactly?

Each time this weapon fires it will fire 6 pellets all at once.
Each pellet will do 370 damage. (Yes, this is how it works. Really.)

(For some reason this seems to confuse people so I am trying to explain it clearly. If some of this is not clear, contact me with your concern and I will try and make it clearer.)

So, lets use the Fury as an example so we can see how hulls and specials affect the multi-shot weapon.

First, a picture from the shipyard:

In this pic we can see the total damage of 2,775. Math time!!

From above we remember the following:
6 pellets @ 370 each. (why do I break it down to pellet damage? It will be easier to explain things to come.)

The hull gives us a 25% boost.
.25 * 370 = 92.5
370 + 92.5 = 462.5 (per pellet damage)
462.5 * 6 = 2,775

Kosher so far? Now we get into some more math and an explanation of Kixeye display... peculiarities.

So, the new special gives us both another 25% damage as well as a +1 for multi-shot.

Let's do the math for each pellet first. In order to get the actual damage total, you have to get the additional damage by multiplying the base damage by the special's multiplier.


So we see again:
.25 * 370 = 92.5

We then take this additional damage amount and add it to the hull calculated damage (from above):
462.5 + 92.5 = 555
555 * 6 = 3,330

Copacetic results, yea? Matches the yellow circled total right? But wait... what's that niggling little +1 Multi Shot in the blueprint? And that +1 in circled in red? Ah yes... another little confusion point that I wish were handled differently in the in-game shipyard- but have no fear, Huggy's is here (to help me explain more clearly!)!

See the thing with multi-shot is this: For every multi-shot addition that a special gives you, you get an exact EXTRA COPY of any pellet you are firing (this holds true for any multi-shot special for each additional pellet it imparts) . So, in the current example we have:


6 (pellets) * 555 (calculated damage)

The bonus +1 Multi Shot now gives us:

7 (pellets) * 555 (calculated damage) = 3,885 total damage.

Remember the red circled +1? In the in-game shipyard, rather than give you the total damage, your additional multi-shot is recorded on another line for you to do the math. I don't know about you, but Kixeye math makes me irritable sometimes. I want to do less of it, not more. Now you see why I do the calculations at the pellet level rather than the whole.

Yes, this is really how it works. You do not lose damage per pellet using this special.

Really.

One other thing to note: At full rank the reload on a fury comes down to 1.13 for a cycle time of 1.33 for your DPS calculations.

Overview:

2,220
6 shots
370 per shot base damage value

base damage value + hull bonus + special bonus = calculated damage value
370 + 92.50 + 92.50 = 555

+1 multishot = 7

7 * 555 = 3,885.

For comparison, with a Barrel3 setup you get a 3,700 calculated damage value.

Now to juice it up a bit....

Building damage with Hydroxide Injector, SB3 and ST3 (my numbers are at R15 so we will have a discrepancy):

Base building damage: 4,440
Per pellet: 740
25% for each the hull and the special
740 * .25 = 185
185 + 185 + 740 = 1,110

ST3: .93 * 1,110= 1,032.3
SB3: .74 * 1,110 = 821.4

1,110 + 1,032.3 + 821.4 = 2,963.7
2,963.7 * 7 = 20,745.9*

*Because of Kix's rounding I can't see in-game what the actual R15 numbers are, but since Huggy does, I can check for the actual number, which is 20,721. Yay Huggy's!!

I hope you have followed me this far. I want to make a quick note however. The theory behind multi-shot carries straight over to turrets as well, BUT... the display issue there is a little different:

See the discrepancy? In the case of the turrets, you need to know that the 'stock' multi-shot count is 10 and that the special is 2 so you can do the math. I'll leave that for another time when I have a turret to play with and have examples.

I hope this has cleared up some of the mystery and confusion in your time of change... er.. I mean in these changing times.