Use "damage per second" instead of just "damage"

For pirates and defenses the game always says just "damage". Looking at the figures it seems that this isn't a "per second" figure but more like damage per shot. This means that you have no way of comparing the fire power of different defense buildings (or even pirates?). You for example can't know if the 10 of a gun tower is more or less than the 30 of a cannon.

So, change it so that you either show the fire rate or show damage per second like clash and boom beach do.

 

Oh, I accidentally put this in General Discussion instead of General improvements. Could some moderator move this? Thanks.

 

Hmmm good idea, I can see how this is confusing.

 

This is a good idea but.....

 

I like this idea!

 

Staff, Chris? Any comments on this? What's the reasoning behind showing the damage in such an uninformative manner? I was asking about this in the other thread too. I would really like to hear your take on this.

 

I think so
ex. cannon lvl 8 has damage 30
gun tower lvl 4 has damage 8
gunner lvl 11 has toughness 85
3 shots is enough to kill gunner from cannon
11 shots is enough to kill gunner from gun tower

 

That's true that this kind of comparison is something that wouldn't be possible if you only had damage per second. But the thing is that that kind of analysis requires more from the player to begin with, and even so only makes sense when considering pirates or defenses that have a really low rate of fire and high damage. In Plunder Pirates mortar and cannon are pretty much the only ones that could fit that and even those to a pretty limited extent, as you have several different troops and you'll need multiple shots from the defense any way to destroy the enemy. And counting the bunker bullets with damage 4 of course doesn't tell you anything (unless you're just comparing to the upgraded bunker of course). If Plunder Pirates had a defense like the Boom Cannon in Boom Beach, Damage per shot would be more interesting for that defense. Still all the other defenses and pirates would be better off with just the damage per second.

Of course there is the option of showing both damage and damage rate, but just showing damage doesn't tell you much.

Still no comments from staff. Chris?

 

Thanks for the comment. However, like I mentioned in the previous post, what's practical depends on how the defenses and pirates are in terms of their visible and non-visible stats. If the values in your example were close to what they are in the game, just showing damage could make sense. But they aren't. My level 12 buccaneer does 20 damage and lvl 14 gunner 42 damage. Sure, bomber has 82, but a level 10 cannon has 935 hit points. So it's still not a matter of whether something needs 1 or 2 shots but more like how long it takes for the thing to go down. You any way need to "do the maths". Without the second you are just missing one important factor while doing so: the fire rate.

What do you think are actually the player needs? Let's see:

1. Compare defenses with each other.
2. Compare defenses with their upgrades.
3. See how long it takes for a defense to take down a specific type of target.
4. See if when a defense attacks a target of a specific type, there is fire power lost in the remainders of the damage power of shots (eg. if you need a third shot to kill a troop even though 2.1 shots would be enough).

And same list for pirates. Damage per second directly answers questions 1, 2 and 3, but not 4. Plain damage answers 4, but fails to answer 1 and 3. So, DPS answers 3/4 questions directly, whereas your plain Damage answers only 2/4. And there are three reasons why number 4 isn't usually even important at all:

• When attacking, you don't see the intel of the defenses any way, so you can't plan that part. Similarly you don't know with which troops or what level troops the players attack with.
• Like mentioned, your 100 hp vs 100 damage examples don't really exist in the game (at least not for cannon). The game mostly has high fire rates with low damages rather than the opposite.
• You are talking about simplicity? How many people do you really think will think about the remainders of the shot damages? That's easily more complex and demanding from the player than just reading Damage Per Second.

So I still ask: how do you think just giving the player "Damage" makes things more clear to the player? With just "damage" I have really no idea how to compare Buccaneers with Gunners or Cannons with Gun towers for example. Did I miss some player need in my 4 point list?

 

Any other DPS? The damage only system used in Plunder Pirates doesn't give you DPS in any form.

How exactly does the "Damage" alone give you a good understanding what something is capable of? For example:
- Bunker damage 4 vs Gun tower damage 11. Which one actually means more? How can you tell that? Or does Cannon's 36 damage mean that it does much more damage than a gun tower let alone a bunker? How can you tell how effective the bunker is compared to the cannon?

 

I agree with Jeffie, it's frustrating not to be able to compare units and defenses with each other. For example I'm blindly upgrading my heavy gunners in the hopes that they will be useful, because I have no idea how much damage per second they do compared to regular gunners.

I can also appreciate the simplicity of seeing the actual damage per shot. So...could we just get a readout of fire rate somewhere? Even if it's just a table posted to the forums it sure would be useful. The fire rate I would like to see reported includes increases due to gains in simultaneous shots, such as from when a gun tower goes from 2 guns to 3 guns (level 6 I think?).

 

Gun Tower goes to three cannons at Level 7. And I wish this was also added. When you first look at the bunker, it looks ridiculous. Over a million for 4 damage? Only when you zoom in and realize Hey! that's a gatling gun! does it start to make sense.

But it still says 4 damage, which is misleading. You can assume each unit will be hit by at least three shots, making it 12, but you may be wrong. Just remove the uncertainty.

 

Yet it's still unclear if having three cannons even increases the fire rate (e.g. by 50% compared to having 2 cannons).

 

Well, I've seen the third gun fire and splatter an attacker, so I think it definitely increases the overall number of shots fired, but not the rate of fire for the other two cannons. But who knows. PH6 has four cannons sticking out of it, and I don't see them doing much shooting.

 

I can say with some confidence that the three gun gun turret targets three different dudes.

 

I fully agree. Here is some timing collected from replay.

Firing rate as shots per second:

Cannon: 1/s
Tower: 1.2/s but only one gun per target
Bunker: 4/s
Ship: each gun 1/s
Mortar: 0.25/s

So that means that no gun is as useless as the cannon tower. Even a lvl 1 bunker will outgun a lvl 7 tower if there is only one target. And it can't shoot up close or far away.

Only ever build towers when you have exhausted all other defenses.

 

the gun tower upgrades doesn't increase the fire rate, it just fires multiple times since it has multiple cannons at later lvls. I have 4 maxed, and I can tell you that they are far from useless.

 

I agree. It would be nice if all the guns would blast a single target, but I suspect if there's only one target in range, they do exactly that. Towers can make a big difference in a battle, it's just not immediately obvious.

Plus, at Level 9, they get a very nice +10 range boost, which makes them great for sticking in a protected area and filling in areas with poor defensive coverage.

 

My point is that you would prefer all guns fire at a single attacker and kill it then move on. Even at 99% dead, an attacker does full damage, so by spreading out it keeps the attackers alive as long as possible.
A single target gets 11 damage about 1.2 times per second. The cannon at same level would deal 34 damage 1 time per second and kill the enemies off much faster. Even the l1 bunker can keep up at a measly 12/s. A lvl 2 bunker does 12 damage 4 times per second. That 48 is more than the combined output of a l7 tower (3x11x1.2).
I'm not saying towers don't kill. They do. its just everything else does it better. So choosing between cannon and tower, you should always prefer the cannon (or anything else for that matter).