Damage done by Ion Storms

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2474 days, 10 hours, 15 minutes ago

Can somebody please help me with the calculation of the damage done to ships by ion storms?
I seem to get wrong results.

I used these formulas:
damage = voltage - shipmass - shipexperience + 20 * (10 - enginetype).
Fuelless ships suffer another 50% damage.
(taken from Donovan's details on ion storms)

shipmass = hull mass + fuel mass + cargo mass + count of beams * beam mass + count of torp tubes * torp tube mass
(taken from Donovan's details on mass)

Example ship:
D7 Coldpain
Transwarp Drives
4 Disruptors
2 Mk7 Torp Tubes
10 Clans
10 Mk7 Torps
299kt Fuel

Ship Data:
hull mass = 175
fuel mass = 299
cargo mass = 20
count of beams = 4
beam mass = 4
count of torp tubes = 2
torp tube mass = 3
enginetype = 9
shipexperience = 0
(The crews' experience is unknown. So I took the worst case, i.e. shipexperience = 0.)

Resulting ship mass:
shipmass = 175 + 299 + 20 + 4 * 4 + 2 * 3 = 516

Ion Storm Data:
voltage = 263 MeV (255 MeV the turn before)

Resulting damage:
damage = 263 - 516 - 0 + 20 * (10 - 9) + 0 = 263 - 516 + 20 = -233 = -23300%

This result cannot be correct as one of my ships with exactly these values just suffered 35% damage from such a ion storm.

Where is the mistake?

2474 days, 7 hours, 6 minutes ago

juuso

RE: Damage done by Ion Storms

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Ion storm physics page says: "Note that the Ship_Mass seems to be the mass of the ship at the beginning of the turn, that is, the same as it was in your last RST. So load your ships with cargo early, not in the same turn you enter the storm."

Maybe that's what happened. You have to load your ship one host run earlier than you would imagine.

2473 days, 20 hours, 14 minutes ago

veldan

RE: Damage done by Ion Storms

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I've found Joshua's ion storm physics to be spot on to the documentation. Nakor your calculations are correct. I bet next turn your D7 will take 0% damage.

2473 days, 9 hours, 2 minutes ago

nakor

RE: Damage done by Ion Storms

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@juuso:
I believe the mass that matters is the one I have at the beginning of a turn. Additionally, I can even perform cargo/fuel transfers between own ships and ship <=> planet as this is part of the "clientside-actions" which come before the ion storm handling in the host order.
Furthermore, the calculation results would only match the 35% damage, if I change the fuel+cargo mass to 51kt. And that was never the case for that ship.

@veldan:
We have a planets.nu documentation on ion storms here? Where? Or was it meant sarcastically?
Thanks, I hope I used the formula correct. But why did it take 35% damage in the last turn then?

2473 days, 7 hours, 53 minutes ago

juuso

RE: Damage done by Ion Storms

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I have personal experience that the cargo transfers you do the turn before the storm effects you will not help. You can forget the host order with ion storm damage. Watch from the time machine what was the ships mass at the end of the turn, two turns before the distress call. If you still get the wrong damage, I haven't got a clue why.

2473 days, 4 hours, 2 minutes ago

nakor

RE: Damage done by Ion Storms

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Thanks for your answer, juuso!
2 turns before you say? Wow! Ok, I calculated it on that basis:

At the start of that turn:
D7 had 150kt fuel, its ship mass was 367.
Hence damage would have been = -84% = 0%
Wrong. :(

At the end of that turn:
D7 should have had 2kt fuel, its ship mass was 219.
Hence damage would have been = 64%
Wrong. :(

That is weird. Any other ideas?

2473 days, 2 hours, 43 minutes ago

juuso

RE: Damage done by Ion Storms

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Maybe your ship had 29 experience. It would lead to 64 - 29 = 35 damage.

2473 days, 2 hours, 34 minutes ago

nakor

RE: Damage done by Ion Storms

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Ah, good idea. The experience. Forgot that one. Thanks!

I will have a look at what happens next turn.
Because of the sudden speed change of the ion storm (warp 6 => warp 8), multiple of my ships will be hit next turn. So I will get some data to check your theory and report back.

2472 days, 10 hours, 52 minutes ago

veldan

RE: Damage done by Ion Storms

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Nakor, no sarcasm intended. I realize you and I had a bad run-in in a game, but I wouldn't let that spill into the forum. By documentation I meant this;

http://www.phost.de/~stefan/ion.html

Stefan's page is basically the authority on Ion storms and Joshua has stated that he has based his ion storm physics on Stefan's.

Ion storm ship damage is determined by the weight of a ship at the end of the turn prior to being swept up in an ion storm. So If a ship heads into an ion storm during the hosting from turn 54 to turn 55, it is the weight of the ship as calculated at the end of the host from turn 53 to turn 54 that the game uses.

I have used Stefan's formula's numerous times to allow light ships with poor engines fly through Ion storms unharmed, the numbers are sound and consistent. The only big variable is the ship experience modifier that Juuso cited. (which would matter quite a bit for a ship like a D7)

2472 days, 8 hours, 43 minutes ago

nakor

RE: Damage done by Ion Storms

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Hi veldan,

no worries, with "sarcastically" I meant not sarcastically towards me, but eventually the (missing) Planets.nu documentation.

And btw, I'm not disgruntled about you (hope that is correct English) because of that game back then. I rather have to apologize to you because I did not behaved very sportsmanlike in that game. I shouldn't have given up that early in the game. Especially not with the Borg. I still played the race quite long in that game, but I gave up too early and played destructively then. That eventually took out some of the fun for you guys. That was definitely a mistake. So sorry for that!
I think I learned from that and would be glad to meet you sometime again in a game - independently if as ally or enemy. ;)

And thanks for your detailed answer. That is good to know!

Based on that I think it would be of help for players to show the crew's experience in-game. Then we can exactly calculate what will happen to our ships.
Or even better: let the game calculate it for us and show a preview of the effects in-game.

2472 days, 2 hours, 39 minutes ago

streu

RE: Damage done by Ion Storms

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> Stefan's page is basically the authority on Ion storms and Joshua has stated that he has based his
> ion storm physics on Stefan's.
> Ion storm ship damage is determined by the weight of a ship at the end of the turn prior to being
> swept up in an ion storm. So If a ship heads into an ion storm during the hosting from turn 54 to
> turn 55, it is the weight of the ship as calculated at the end of the host from turn 53 to turn 54
> that the game uses.

However, this is more of a bug than an intent in HOST. This happens in HOST because it caches ship masses, and forgets to update the cache before doing ion storms. It does not happen if you use an add-on in auxhost1 that updates the cache (anything PDK-based).

This takes quite some extra work to reproduce in a database-based host, so I'm quite surprised that Nu does it. PHost does not reproduce the effect, because I believe it to be much easier to understand without it.

--Stefan

@Nakor: if you send a PM "look at this thread", it'd be useful to say which thread :-) That aside, I would subscribe to juuso's conclusion.

2472 days, 2 hours, 34 minutes ago

nakor

RE: Damage done by Ion Storms

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I'm pretty sure I send you the link to this thread. Eventually, links are automatically removed from PMs. Or I really forgot to paste the link into the message. ^^
Anyway, thanks for your help, Stefan!

2471 days, 23 hours, 34 minutes ago

veldan

RE: Damage done by Ion Storms

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Nakor,

Anytime, no hard feelings on this side either. Friend or Foe, it'd be great to get in another game with you.

2468 days, 7 hours, 32 minutes ago

nakor

RE: Damage done by Ion Storms

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Good to know. Thanks, veldan!

2468 days, 7 hours, 19 minutes ago

nakor

RE: Damage done by Ion Storms

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Hope that big beefer will enhance his "predict ion storm path" script to cover this case:
http://planets.nu/discussion/utility-script-predict-ion-storm-path