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2k20 drone power calculations

darklink3

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As you know, the spaceball2k20 even brings a new drone, giving the following benefits:
- 10% critical strike chance
- 10% flight speed

This thread aims at showing the results of tests trying to determine the relative power of this drone, especially regarding to dps.

[ TL/DR ]

This drone is, as it currently stands, barely worth using. It's very tedious to acquire, and boosts damage by a very small amount.
While more tests are required, other drones seem to have far greater power.
That said, combining it with other crit chance sources, like an aim computer, seem to have great results.

[ RAW DATA ]

Here is the raw data I'll be using. It's somewhat incomplete, especially regarding miss chances, but should still give a pretty good estimate.
For reference, this counts the blaster shots, critical strikes and misses on the following ship:
- Obsidian (TC armor)
- Logic modal blaster (no aim computer)
- Spaceball (+10/+10) and accelerator drones
- 20% firepower booster
- level 8 (max) 2k20 drone

All enemies are r82, either horus or phyrus, which are assumed to have the same amount of health. Isis were not tested to not have to count protector health.
This dataset contains statistics about 23 mob kills, and 892 blaster shots.


[ EXPLANATIONS ]

Despite what seems to be assumed, this drone does not increase your critical strike chance by 10%. Pirate galaxy's base (blaster) crit chance is around 2%. A 10% increase means we should see a new critical strike chance of around 2.2%. Instead, we observe a new critical strike chance 10% higher, about 12-13%. The increase isn't 10%, it's above 500%, and we deal critical strikes 6 times more often!

Seems strong, doesn't it?
Well... Not so much. When we look at how many blaster shots are required to take down medium r82 units, we only observe a ~1.03% overall dps increase. This is because crits don't deal significantly more damage than regular hits. In fact, somewhere between 10 and 25% more on average (to be determined).

In addition to this, we notice an increase in missed hits. While these could very well be due to lower sample size for missed hits, but the reason I started counting them is because I felt I was missing significantly more with the drone active. On the 335 shots where I recorded the misses, there was ~14% more misses while the drone was active. This could mean some entropy mechanic is trying to normalize our damage, and is working against our unusually high crit chance caused by our drone. It's worth saying that there is, as far as I know, no entropy mechanic in pirate galaxy outside of blueprint drops.

If we normalize damage counting only connecting blasters (dismissing misses), the critical strike chance increase has a far greater impact on overall dps, totalizing a 6.7% overall dps increase!
Furthermore, this drone seems to have odd behavior when paired with an aim computer, reaching very high critical strike rates (~40%, needs further testing), even with a sirius long computer on the setup mentioned above. While this definitely needs more testing, the impact of this drone seems far greater on ships able to equip said aim computer. Further testing to grab overall average dps increase from the drone is required.

That said, on anything else, from our 892 blaster shots test, the dps increase on this drone is marginal and not worth using over literally anything else.
Reminder that, if working as intended, the pumpkin drone is a ~5.2% dps increase on blasters, over 5 times more than this critical strike chance increase.
Further testing sould be done in order to determine the role of miss chance in dps calculations, and wether or not the 2k20 spaceball drone affects hit chance.
 

Vesperion

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Thing with the drones is "most are useless" anyways + 3 active drones is nowadays not enough and it´s strange that Split won´t let us use all 6 drones at once (what would require definetly a change in the charge mechanic).

Anyways the most usefull drone is the Cryo drone + the CD drone imo. Cryo is needed left and right anyways and the CD drone safes at least a couple of seconds. Some drones would work way better if used with another drone like Pumpkin + dmg + crit drone cus more hits mean more dmg with more chances for a crit to happen.

The range drone is "somewhat usefull" but only gives us a few pixles more range what may be the needed pixels if fighting against units that tend to "stay away" (Odion, Pirate Snipers) but have an higher blaster range as well. Speed drone is some sort of Middle area cus once you have reached your location you don´t need to have it active so that you could deactivate it and activate another drone for it.

Then we have the def drone that "can safe us from pod" but at the same time if bad luck strikes with crits from the enemy even the def drone is not usefull at all and the BP drone is one of those drones where no one really can confirm that it works.
 

HGus

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It's worth saying that there is, as far as I know, no entropy mechanic in pirate galaxy outside of blueprint drops.
Read description for CQ bps.
 

Getagripx

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Great work, @darklink3 !
Decent sample size and great break-down of the data. The only thing I'm not entirely convinced of is the increased miss chance with the drone equipped since in ~335 shots a 14% deviation from the mean isn't that far-fetched from being just a fluke. I haven't done the math but my gut is telling me it's not an incredibly statistically significant finding.
Once more, great work, keep it up! :)
 

hektor.barbossa

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Thx to You i will not buy new drone :p
 

Vesperion

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literally his data shows that its a good drone :LOL:, 6,7% damage increase is a lot xd
You may have overlooked here a bit cus he states the following:
[...]
If we normalize damage counting only connecting blasters (dismissing misses), the critical strike chance increase has a far greater impact on overall dps, totalizing a 6.7% overall dps increase![...]
This means in order to reach that "potential dmg increase" not a single shot did miss the targets at all.

[...]Furthermore, this drone seems to have odd behavior when paired with an aim computer, reaching very high critical strike rates[...]
I wouldn´t say that this is an odd behaviour cus the Aim PC is ment to get more crits with or without an drone that increases the chances. It depends way more on how the formula works that Split has made and runs during an active Aim PC. I think if the formula is additive it will have an way greater impact then when it´s multiplicative.
 
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