There's a sticky with a spreadsheet for acc-def conversion to hit rate. Unfortunately I have no data suggesting that it is the correct one. Okay I have a small bit. The part where a dev recently said "the previously posted tables are correct". Unfortunatley he didn't point at any particular tables or formula. And a quick look at the spreadsheet shows a 100% hit rate when acc-def equals zero and in game the tooltip shows that figure to be 95% when acc-def equals zero.

Does anyone have some current info on this?

Also in my search I ran across an old range vs damage table. This basically shows DHC's and Beam Arrays reaching parity at 9k range. It also shows that all energy weps are at full potential at 2k range. Is this still current?

Thankyou in advance for all your helpful links!!

I'm pretty sure the Acc math is different than the one BRJ worked on. The basic formula is the same, but they've fiddled with the numbers abit since my buddy wrote that. BRJ's formulae and thread though so far as I know is still the most current work on the forum.



DHCs and Beams have nothing resembling parity at 9km range. That particular chart is way way out of line. The old Starship Weapons Calculator is still fairly accurate by the way. The fiddling since it's last update has been substantially less.

DHCs, might as well be farting in the wind at 9km ranges. I don't know of any forum chart and forum formula, but Nagorak's Starship weapon calculator gets it pretty close.

Poopy. I think I'll go with BRJ's formula as I've seen nothing to contradict the basic hit rate calculations and Cryptic is notorious for poor tool tips. Ty for the reply though.


Nag's actually does show DHC's being close at 9k. 8 DPS difference. Meaningless in and of itself, but it does show them being equal at 8k. So yah a bit of a change there. The chart I stumbled upon was done very shortly after launch, so we should all forgive him! Wow that seems so long ago now.

Yeah I'm looking at his Weapons Calculator program now.

at 9.9km at 125 power the arrays do 215 dps (no consoles factored or boff skills)
The big cannons
do 176 dps. (3 single beam arrays vs 3 DHCs)

Something seems heinously off there though. I"m using version 4 of the program. I'm not sure off hand if there's a new one available or not.

When we add in rear weapons, and factor the beams broadside dps vs the forward dps of DHCs things get more interesting. (again no consoles, or skills just weapon power)

226 DHC
vs 335 for 6 beams broadside.

When we disable Relative DPS the gap widens even further
474 forward for the 3 DHCs 3 turrents
703 dps broadside for 6 arrays.

With 3 consoles
581 DHCs and 3 turrets
862, 6 beams.

According to the program, DHCs and Turrets do not surpass the 6 beam arrays combined dps until ranges of 6km or closer.

Now if we want to get real interesting. at full tilt at point blank range there is a 1800 DPS difference at point blank range between the DHCs and Turrets and 8 arrays That's with CRF2 + APO3 + APA3.

Interestingly enough, that gap at least for 1 second is completely covered by one shot of BO2, who's average burst is 2079. This is is all taking into account average Defense, and Damage resistance.
This is of course not a program taking into account the azn rep farming, nor the current skill tree either. (though the #s come up about the same... though APO3 is now what APO1 used to be )

at extreme range, it still seems like DHCs deal more damage then beams would at that same range. even though the % is lower, its still seems like its actually more


this opinion formed by having chased down tones of people with each type of weapon

Really I'm not even that curious for your guys sake. I take it as gospel that you guys actually know more stuff than you can accurately put into words and that you never really actually do anything um....slow?

How's THAT for a left handed compliment?

I was really asking about that as it gets REALLY fierce over in PVE land. Some guy gets ahold of one piece of info, namely that DHC's suffer a much greater percentage loss vs Beams do over any given range. And that's true. Just DHC's start so much HIGHER. So you have guys running about saying DHC's are ineffective at ranges over 5k, and that's patently not true. Again I'm talking PVE land here. I'm not advocating 9k Cannon Alphas. Just when you need info, you come to PVP land to get it.

That is a very nice calculator.

Well the big problem is SDR, HDR, Defense and healing have gotten so far out of hand that 9km alpha strikes, like beam attacks really mean nothing. It's a complete waste of your time to do so.

Anything less than Full Bore point blank range (5k or less) in pvp just isn't enough anymore.

This can get tricky w/cannons. For example say that someone TB'd a target under 5km launched a volley, the target then APOs and evasives before the traget is hit by the fire. The target eventually slows and is hit ~9km away, in theory it should be based on the under 5km distance. The travel time is a factor w/DCHs in terms of spreading out the incoming damage, but I don't think it reduces the amount of the damage based on the damage I get 20+km away after I slow down and it gets applied.

To the OP, imo this should be reproducable.

The best way is to have a stationary shooter and a stationary target. 1 cannon vs 1 beam both @ 125 power w/same captain at a shieldless target w/tetryon (so the proc doesn't matter) @ various distances. 1 volley each repeat as many times as desired keeping track of the hits.

While, Acc matters in this case keep out and compare 1 volley (not shot) to another. But, keep track of what shot in the volley hit. For example, for a DBB if 1st shot hits and the last 3 miss it could be misleading b/c of power drain to assume the result would be 4x that value if you want power usage data. Then add more cannons/turrets and more beams to see what power drain issues there are if desired.

Also, shouldn't a volley of DBB be compared to DHCs/DCs and BA to Single Cannons? It seems comparing the high end Cannon type to BAs isn't apples to apples.

Yes it should, if I get the gist of what you're saying.

Normally this type of thing comes up when I speak out for using DC/DHC over BA on KDF cruisers. So people will say first, well you can't stay on target. Then we prove that you can. Then they say that DC/DHCs just can't do any damage greater than 5k out. And then we prove that isn't true.

So normally sure if you were looking at a fed cruiser and thinking about what you wanted to mount, besides my avatar, you'd never consider the DC's. Just BA's, DBB, and Cannons. Oh and the turrets. That calculator is pretty comprehensive.