Autocrat's Ranged Weapon Guide
The purpose of this guide is to explain some of the weapon mechanics and offer some subjective advice on weapon selection.
Weapon IP Cost, Caps and Buffs
Please follow the link. It is one of my best posts and will explain a lot about IP skill costs in general:
Truth about Skill Color - MUST READ Newbs & Veterans
As Crats we have a very limited ranged weapon skill set:
IP- Weapon/Special
1.6 Pistol
3.2 Shotgun/SMG/Ranged Initiative
4.0 All other ranged weapons, all specials, Multi-Ranged
IP cost is important but more importantly it dictates how high you can raise a skill before hitting a Title Level cap:
IP Cost Raise TL1 TL2 TL3 TL4 TL5 TL6
1.0-1.4 --5--- 60 200 360 490 550 600
1.5-2.4 --4--- 50 180 330 450 500 540
2.5-3.2 --4--- 40 160 300 410 450 480
3.3-4.0 --3--- 30 140 270 370 400 420
4.1-5.0 --3--- 20 120 240 330 350 360
Thus, for a level 200 Solitus Crat, unbuffed Pistol skill will always be higher than Shotgun/SMG by 60 pts and 120 pts higher than any other weapon skill.
Buffs
Always nice to know how high you can go besides the standard Expertise. A wrangle can buff your weapon skill by up to 132 (wrangles do not buff specials.) Universal Advantages, Ransacking Towers and special armors also increase weapon skills.
Pistol: +120 Extreme Prejudice, +40 Pistol Mastery (overwrites the +20 Gunslinger)
Rifle: +120 Unexpected Attack (overwrites +50 Sniper’s Bliss/Rifle Mastery), +19 TIM Scope
Ranged Energy: +70 Ranged Energy Mastery
Assault Rifle: +60 Assault Rifle Mastery
SMG: +8 Minor Suppressor (LOL, Fixer Startup Nano)
Aimed Shot: +130 Take the Shot, +23 TIM Scope or up to +287 Vision Enhancer
Burst: +110 Riot Control, +7 Minor Suppressor
Fling Shot: +30 Offensive Steamroller
Full Auto: +72 from special Sleeves armors
Implant Conflicts
Weapon and nanoskill conflicts are always a concern. At the high level game, almost all weapons need to have all 3 weapon clusters to be effective. Rifle is the only skill which does not conflict with a nanoskill but conflicts with Nano Resist which is a concern for PvP. Conflicts:
Pistol – Bright and Faded MC/TS, Shining Ranged Initiative
Shotgun – Bright MC/TS and Faded BM
SMG – Bright MC/TS and Faded SI
Assault Rifle – Bright and Faded MC/TS
Fling Shot – Bright MC/TS
Full Auto – Faded BM
Rate of Fire
Total weapon damage is the sum of regular damage plus specials damage. A high ROF is essential to increasing regular damage. ROF can be increased by spending IP on Ranged Initiative skill (3.2 IP/pt 480 IP cap), implants, and armors/HUDs that increase RI.
Each weapon has an attack time and recharge time that can be reduced or increased based on:
1) Net RI skill after buffs and debuffs; and
2) Your Agg/Def setting
RI skill affects attack and recharge time differently. Every 600 pts of RI reduces attack time by 1s and recharge time by 2s. Negative RI will increase both attack and recharge times per the above formula. The formula is supposed to break down when you get to 1200+ RI per FunCom but Crats don’t have to worry about this.
Because it takes a lot of RI to reduce a small amount of attack/recharge time and the skill is rather IP expensive I recommend raising RI skill only when you have spare IP. I probably would not raise RI until I reached the Title 3 caps (level 87). Choosing a fast weapon, obtaining a TIM Scope and using implants is a preferred course of action early on.
Agg/Def setting affects attack and recharge time equally. There is some debate as to where on the Agg/Def bar the default database settings are. Most believe that at 75%-87.5% Agg/Def is where the database numbers default to. At 100% Agg/Def the times decrease by 0.25s and at 0% the times increase by 1.75s (some believe the numbers are 0.5s and 1.5s but it is generally agreed the difference between 0% and 100% is 2s.) You need to keep in mind that Agg/Def setting also affects your nano casting times and the effectiveness of your evade and nano resist skills. In PvM, you would generally set it to 100% Agg/Def.
There is a cap of 1s/1s on attack/recharge times. Note: this is significantly different from casting nanos where there is no cap on attack time (hence the term instacast) and recharge time never changes.
Weapon Damage Calculation
How does weapon damage work? Take for example the Assassin FDA Caterwaul 913:
10-410 (280) - energy ac
The above numbers list the weapon’s base damage. The lower number is the minimum damage, the middle number the maximum damage and the number in parentheses is the crit bonus damage. These numbers assume your AMS (Attack Modified Stat) is zero. (AMS is the number listed to the right of ATTACK in your stat window)
The higher your AMS the higher your chance to hit, to crit and modifies the weapon’s base damage. The formula is:
(AMS/400 + 1) x weapon base damage
So if your AMS is 800 then Caterwaul will be calculated using this formula:
30-1230 (840) - energy ac
Normal Damage
Using the Caterwaul and 800 AMS as an example, when you score a non-critical hit, the damage is a random number from 30-1230 (halved if it is PvP.) Any reflect damage is factored in, every 10 pts of Energy AC reduces damage by 1 pt, and Layers absorb damage also. (I am not sure of the order in which these take place.)
Critical Damage
Well if you manage to randomly score a critical hit the damage is easy to calculate. It is simply maximum damage plus the critical damage bonus so 1230 + 840 = 2110 and then reflect, AC, etc. are deducted. Base critical chance is 3%. Many things affect critical chance. A higher AMS vs. the defender’s DMS will increase it and vice versa. Certain buffs/debuffs and equipment will also affect the probability of landing a critical hit. In PvP, critical chance is halved.
Specials Damage
Specials always hit. There is also a maximum damage cap of 10000. Specials damage are as follows:
Aimed Shot damage can be normal or critical, subject to bonus multiples based on Aimed Shot skill, and is always armor piercing (i.e. it ignores the defenders AC for damage purposes). The minimum Aimed Shot damage is a maximum normal damage. A bonus multiple will be applied of 1-5x the damage, the higher the Aimed Shot skill the greater the chance of scoring a higher multiple. Reflects and Layers can still reduce Aimed Shot damage.
Burst is simply the sum of three normal non critical shots.
Fling Shot is simply one extra shot but it can be a crit.
Full Auto empties the weapon’s ammo clip and each shot can score a crit but can also be evaded. There is a cap on maximum number of hits (11 is the most I have seen.)
In PvP, Aimed Shot does not require a concealment check and is currently the best special all around followed by Burst. Full Auto is horribly ineffective vs. players and mobs with high evades.
Specials Recycle Rates
In general, the weapon and the specials skill determine how fast a special recycles:
Aimed Shot
Recharge x 40s – (Aimed Shot Skill x 3 / 100s)
Burst
Recharge x 20s + Burst Cycle – (Burst Skill / 25s)
(Burst Cycle is listed with the weapon stats in databases)
Fling Shot
Attack x 15 – (Fling Shot Skill / 100s)
Full Auto
Recharge x 40s + Full Auto Cycle – (Full Auto Skill / 25s)
(Full Auto Cycle is listed with the weapon stats in databases)
Note: There appear to be caps to minimum recycle times.
Recycle is very important because on some weapons you can achieve very rapid recycle times especially since specials always hit.
Multi-wielding to Increase Damage Output
Multi-wielding 2 pistols for buffs is perfectly acceptable. Multi-wielding 2 weapons to increase your damage output is dubious. The FunCom mechanic of multi-wielding in a nutshell is Fire Gun1, Fire Gun2 and recharge both (you would think Fire Gun1&2 together, recharge both or Fire Gun1, Fire Gun2 while recharge Gun1 would make more logical sense.) Also, if both guns have the same special then only one will fire the special, the other is wasted. So at best, your ROF would increase by 50% and total damage output increase is <50% if you lose specials on the off-hand weapon.
The above assumes you can wield 2 guns of the same QL which is nearly impossible on nearly all the good weapons because the MR requirement is enormous or even unachievable. If you wield in your off-hand a significantly lower QL gun you might actually lose damage output because the higher QL gun fires less often. The only decent combinations I think are 2 Customized IMI Desert Reet 1000 or 1 with a Original Electronicum. My suggestion is to stay away from multi-wielding except to obtain buffs.
Dual Skill Weapons
Some weapons require 2 weapon skills which is unfavorable because of the increased IP costs and is likely to lower your AMS significantly because one skill makes up 67% of AMS and the other 33%. Yet you still need to maximize/buff both skills to maintain a high AMS.
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