Shadow of Cerberus EVE Community Forum

Open mouth, insert foot... HARD

As I've mentioned a few times on this blog, I am a rare mutant that -- when I am wrong -- I admit that I'm wrong.  And dear Heaven was I wrong this week... inexcusably, embarrassingly wrong.  I'm a great believer in preaching "admit to, and learn from your mistakes."  Time to practice what I preach and eat some crow.

Earlier this week, I wrote a little post called "Signature" in which I stated my belief that:

I think something's a little wonky in the actual code that governs how much damage large signature guns should do to smaller targets.

And then I wrote a whole lot of wrong about where I thought this was coming from.  EVE blogger and outstanding pilot Azual Skoll took exception and wrote a masterful deconstruction of just how wrong I was and put it on his blog.  It's great reading and I suggest you go out and give it a read if you're interested in the topic.

Now in my own defense -- and not in any way trying to deflect my mistake -- Azual's post is mostly about tracking issues, not damage, and my post was about damage.  I fully concede that large guns have a problem tracking smaller targets; I've said in the past that the tracking issue is solvable and indeed I've done my own experiments to solve it.  My statement was regarding the damage that large guns do to smaller targets when they actually hit them.  Even Azual's data shows this: when the large guns of a Naga actually hit a Cormorant, they were doing equal or better damage than the medium guns of a Ferox.

What I forgot, and the source of my mistake, is how gun damage is calculated.  When a gun does hit a target, it does a minimum of 50% base damage to the target.  And damn it damn it damn it, I knew this!  But somehow this week I idiotically forgot about it and instead of looking it up, I worked myself into a holy snit over my indignation about something that didn't deserve my indignation.

So, to summarize, Azual Skoll is completely right and I am completely wrong.  I'm really embarrassed, and I apologize.  I regret the error, as I say at times like this.

So yeah, the math within the game generating damage on large guns against small targets is working perfectly well.  So I'm now going to transfer some small bit of my indignation to the math itself.  Should guns automatically do at least 50% base damage when they hit, regardless of the target size they're hitting?  I'm thinking "no".  What do you all think?
Source: Open mouth, insert foot... HARD