Target Painters and Torpedos

I spent some time recently experimenting with target painters.  In particular, I wanted to test out the effectiveness of using target painters with missiles.  I could just go straight to equations, but nothing beats hard data.  So I set up some tests using torpedos against stationary targets to see what the difference in damage would be both with and without a target painter.  A target painter increases the signature radius of a target, and the damage done by a missile is dependent on target signature radius, so a painted target should take more missile damage than an unpainted target.  Below are the results:

Test torpedo:  

• Torpedo Type:  Mjolnir Torpedo
• EM Damage:  450
• Explosion Radius:  450 m
• Base Shield Damage:  450
• Base Armor Damage:  180

Test Target Painter:

• Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron (Meta 4)
• Signature Radius Bonus:  30%

Test Launchers:

• Prototype 'Arbalyst' Torpedo Launcher, Meta 4
• Experimental TE-2100 Light Missile Launcher, Meta 3 (I used Meta 3 because that is the T1 version I would tend to use due to the really high cost of the Meta 4 light launchers -- Meta 3 is about 700K each, Meta 4 is about 4 million each)

Test targets:

• Navitas, Frigate, base sig radius of 36 m, 2 Medium Shield Extenders
• Catalyst, Destroyer, base sig radius of 68 m
• Exequror, Cruiser, base sig radius of 80 m, 2 Medium Shield Extenders
• Mobile Tractor Unit, sig radius of 500 m

 Test Results:

Note that the actual signature radius of the test ships is more than the base signature radius shown due to having shield extenders equipped. I equipped the ships with shield extenders to give them a larger shield buffer to make testing easier. Damage shown is against shields only, without dropping into armor. Torpedos were fired from a Purifier. My torpedo and ship skills were low to moderate, mostly levels 3 and 2 for all affecting skills.

Target	Base Damage	Painted Damage	Damage Increase	Painted DPS	Light Missile DPS
Navitas	70	91	30%	8.6	12.7
Catalyst	150	195	30%	18.5	12.7
Exequror	155	202	30%	19.1	12.7
MTU	785	785	0%	74.3	12.7

The damage increase is significant on targets where the target painter's affect can be utilized fully. Interestingly, the damage increase came out as the exact same value as the signature radius increase of the painter. I wasn't expecting the correlation to be linear, but if we now go look at the equations, I expect that is what we will find.

The signature radius of the MTU is larger than the explosion radius of the torpedo, so that serves as a control of sorts. You can see the damage applied is already maxed out, as the painter had no affect on damage when used against the MTU. It also shows how much the damage is reduced against smaller targets. Against the frigate, damage was reduced to less than 10% of maximum potential. That is huge! While the painter increases damage significantly, it's still going to be way less than maximum against such small targets.

I also included in the table Light Missile DPS (using Meta 3 launcher, because Meta 4 is ridiculously expensive), to compare and see when Light Missiles are actually better than using torpedos. Torpedos have an advantage here because I am using the Torpedo bonuses of a Purifer. As shown, light missiles actually do better against the frigate, but the torpedos work better on the tested Destroyer and above. For DPS, I did not include reload time in the DPS calculation, so bare that in mind. Doing so when considering a long battle might change the results a little.

One additional note: Torpedos are supposedly not affected by the Guided Missile Precision skill, which is one reason why I used them. I didn't want any more variables to factor in than there had to be.

Further Research:

The torpedo stats came from Evelopedia. I'm not fully confident I understand why there are separate base damage attributes for shields and armor. It suggests that torpedo damage will be less against armor than against shields, without taking resists into consideration. It didn't show a separate number for structure, but I would guess it would be the same as the EM damage shown, 450. Why the damage would be reduced against armor, I don't know. I would also be nice to run some numbers taking moving ships into account, but this would be a much harder test to set up. I'm not sure if I will run such a test or not, but if I do, I will post the results in another blog entry.

Until then, fly safe, and try to make room for a target painter when flying a missile boat against small or mixed targets.