Beam Tank Power (equation)

[Derek]

Discussing Beam Tanks n another forum got me curious, so I decided to do some a test. I had Beam Tanks fire on a Nod Construction Yard, and timed how long it took to kill it. Here are my numbers:
# Beam Tanks....Time (s)
1....141
2....36
3....16
4....9
5....6.4
6....4.3
7....3.2
8....2.5

At this point it was getting so hard to make all the Beam Tanks fire together (they were trying to fire individually or in small groups, instead of all syncronizing their beams together) and the times were getting so short that I stopped. Obviously, more Beam Tanks means much more damage, but I decided to find an exact equation. Good thing I'm in AP Stats this year.

I found that these numbers followed a very precise power rule, if any of you know stats you could find this, but I'm guessing most of you don't want to do the work :p So here is the exact equation I found, and its very accurate:

T=138X^(-2) or T=138/X^2

Where T is the time in seconds to kill a CY, and X is the number of beam tanks. This is an inverse square equation, meaning that increasing the number of Beam Tanks N times decreases the time required by N^2, so if you double the number of Beam Tanks, it takes one fourth the time. This only measures the time to kill a building though, not the damage. Since damage is inversely related to the time need to kill a building (that is, T=k/D where D is damage and k is some constant related to the health and armor of the target), we can rewrite our equation as:

k/D=138/X^2

Solveing for D giving:

D=(k/138)X^2 (k/138 is our new constant, D is the damage of all the Beam Tanks combined)


Conclusion: The damage of Beam Tanks is is proportional to the square of the number of tanks. So doubling the number of tanks quadruples the power, tripling the number of tanks increases the power 9 times, etc.

[Star Wars Man]

You lost half the forum on the first equation, lol. :p

Interesting find. Thank God for the smart ones. :)

[SgtRicko]

Man, you're really starting to make the rest of the board look like a bunch of Deet-de-deets, Derek!!!:dunce:

(BTW, good find)

EDIT: When I really think about your discovery, it brings to bear a rather disturbing thought... but first, does linking the laser artys increase the range as well? Cause if it does, I can imagine some nasty imbalances happening in the near future with those babies, especially if someone figures out how to perfectly time their fire!!!:rockbrow:

[Derek]

You lost half the forum on the first equation, lol. :p

Interesting find. Thank God for the smart ones. :)
Which is why I have "Conclusion" in bold :p

EDIT: When I really think about your discovery, it brings to bear a rather disturbing thought... but first, does linking the laser artys increase the range as well? Cause if it does, I can imagine some nasty imbalances happening in the near future with those babies, especially if someone figures out how to perfectly time their fire!!!
No, Beam Tanks do not increase their range when firing in sync, they can increase it by reflecting off of Venoms, but then all you have to do is shoot down the venom.

[Gaucho8788]

Thats an incredible find. I'm also amazed that their are people who would take the initiative to look into things like that. Thats awesome Derek.

[gho$tface]

Say what? Duh dee de deee:freek:

[Nod Fanatic]

OK, well that pretty much was a review of the test I did today! :nuts:

[JBV3737]

cool dude.

[wargrudge]

I took AP Stats last year, so I understood everything. Jokes on you! :p

[SgtRicko]

I tried using a few beam tanks along with a Venom in order to increase their range, but what happened was that the stupid things went right under the Venom and got destroyed by the disruptor I was trying to take down. Furthermore, it doesn't seem to really boost the range in any way whenever the cannons are reflected.

Am I missing something here???:wtf:

[Derek]

If you want any substantial range boost you will have to chain Venoms, one Venom does little or nothing for the chain. As for why it went under, I don't know, did you ensure that you were using the reflector power? They won't automatically use Venoms.

[jus7addwatr]

You lost half the forum on the first equation, lol. :p

Interesting find. Thank God for the smart ones. :)

I'm smart just on at math, I just graduated 6th in my class for pols from csun.

[SgtRicko]

If you want any substantial range boost you will have to chain Venoms, one Venom does little or nothing for the chain. As for why it went under, I don't know, did you ensure that you were using the reflector power? They won't automatically use Venoms.

Yeah I'm pretty sure I activated the power, and I had four Venoms when I was using the trick. So I'm still not sure what I did wrong.:\

[gho$tface]

I tried this also when I was playing the demo and like Ricko said the cannons go underneath the venoms and just get wasted. So needless to say I haven't tried it since. I might try to figure this out cuz I love my beam cannons.:D

[M2M]

I tried this also when I was playing the demo and like Ricko said the cannons go underneath the venoms and just get wasted. So needless to say I haven't tried it since. I might try to figure this out cuz I love my beam cannons.:D

it is more effective to build a few hordes of scorps then wasting your money on something like a cannon / chopper combo.

They do however boost the range and damage of an obelisk quite well, with the support of such a cannon, an obelisk can in fact destroy a predator in one blow, while without support it cannot.

[sovietmisaki]

it is more effective to build a few hordes of scorps then wasting your money on something like a cannon / chopper combo.

They do however boost the range and damage of an obelisk quite well, with the support of such a cannon, an obelisk can in fact destroy a predator in one blow, while without support it cannot.

yea...obelisk + 6+ beam cannons on an overlooking cliff = death to any enemy ground units that dares to even try to come near, even the mammoth. I remember that one nod mission where you had to destroy the scrin base and capture a few GDI buildings while you where allied with GDI, and the AI had a ton of tripod walkers (somewhere in the 50-60's if I remember correctly) , while my main defense consisted of 6 obelisks of lights with several dozen beam cannons supporting them. I managed to lure the scrin force to my base after using some venom attacks and all except 1 obelisk fell to the enemy attack while my base still had much of it's operational capacity, by the time my remaining obelisk and few remaining beam cannons managed to destroy the last of the scrin attack force, then I went on to blow up the scrin base with my backup force of venoms near the GDI ion cannon control,center which I had captured and an ion cannon strike beforehand. I guess that pretty much shows ya the power of teh obelisk when fully loaded

[Avapodnaught]

Derek, the reason ur beam cannons did not fire together was because they were not as far as they should have been.... Because I was playing a lan game gainst two hard comps with a friend, and beat up a base with four beam cannons after strikes of stealth tanks and other beam cannons... But it seems to me that when they r close enough not all of them will make a combined beam, but at first, the 4 seemed to make two combined beams instead of one... Then when one died, it went 2 to one and another beam...
This is because they might need to be at the edge of their range for it always to work, it may work other times but not all of the time, to get them to fire at something all at once... send a buggy first then send the beam cannons to attack... but it seems easier when u just fire upon them from areas where when they fire, u usually don't c the building...
One thing I find weird is that two fully promoted Beam Cannons when firing at the same time and make a bouncing beam that does more damage than one would obviously... Would make a red laser bounce off instead of the blue one they fire when fully promoted.... Someone should report that... If they should be making the more powerful blue laser beam...

[Derek]

Derek, the reason ur beam cannons did not fire together was because they were not as far as they should have been....
This is because they must be at the edge of their range for it always to work, it may work other times but not all of the time, to get them to fire at something all at once... send a buggy first then send the beam cannons to attack... but it seems easier when u just fire upon them from areas where when they fire, u usually don't c the building...
Actually I know what the problem was. When two beam cannons begin firing at the exact same time they won't sinc up. The solution is to have one beam cannon fire first, then have all the other start firing after the first has started.

One thing I find weird is that two fully promoted Beam Cannons when firing at the same time and make a bouncing beam that does more damage than one would obviously... Would make a red laser bounce off instead of the blue one they fire when fully promoted.... Someone should report that...
A minor graphical giltch. Big deal.

[Avapodnaught]

yes, but the beam doesn't seem as powerful as it should be, I think two blue beams alone were faster...
And yes, that works too, but it seems too damn slow for me, I rather fire at the edge of their range cuz it seems to work....
Edit: Someone try that, see which is stronger... two fully promoted ones combined, or two regular ones, or maybe just two almost fully promoted ones... I might try now, but I don't know about getting those promotions... BTW, on further edit, it was making them fire one beam because of firing one by one... guess it workes more often tho because they usually roll in on different times to fire, 5 out of six beam cannons made one beam but the other made a seperate one...

[Derek]

yes, but the beam doesn't seem as powerful as it should be, I think two blue beams alone were faster...
Well since we're talking about the reflection power it doesn't really matter, because that power sucks anyways.

And yes, that works too, but it seems too damn slow for me, I rather fire at the edge of their range cuz it seems to work....
It only works by coincidence. One of your tanks happens to get in range and start firing before the others.

[Avapodnaught]

k... if we r talking about reflection, y not try using a blue beam cannon to charge a Nod Obelisk? would the range increase ( I bet the color won't...)?

[yurihomer]

Discussing Beam Tanks n another forum got me curious, so I decided to do some a test. I had Beam Tanks fire on a Nod Construction Yard, and timed how long it took to kill it. Here are my numbers:
# Beam Tanks....Time (s)
1....141
2....36
3....16
4....9
5....6.4
6....4.3
7....3.2
8....2.5
At this point it was getting so hard to make all the Beam Tanks fire together (they were trying to fire individually or in small groups, instead of all syncronizing their beams together) and the times were getting so short that I stopped. Obviously, more Beam Tanks means much more damage, but I decided to find an exact equation. Good thing I'm in AP Stats this year.
I found that these numbers followed a very precise power rule, if any of you know stats you could find this, but I'm guessing most of you don't want to do the work :p So here is the exact equation I found, and its very accurate:
T=138X^(-2) or T=138/X^2
Where T is the time in seconds to kill a CY, and X is the number of beam tanks. This is an inverse square equation, meaning that increasing the number of Beam Tanks N times decreases the time required by N^2, so if you double the number of Beam Tanks, it takes one fourth the time. This only measures the time to kill a building though, not the damage. Since damage is inversely related to the time need to kill a building (that is, T=k/D where D is damage and k is some constant related to the health and armor of the target), we can rewrite our equation as:
k/D=138/X^2
Solveing for D giving:
D=(k/138)X^2 (k/138 is our new constant, D is the damage of all the Beam Tanks combined)
Conclusion: The damage of Beam Tanks is is proportional to the square of the number of tanks. So doubling the number of tanks quadruples the power, tripling the number of tanks increases the power 9 times, etc.
roflmao, now let us do derrivative to find the maxima/minima for the damage

say derek's equation is correct, then we can substitute k/138 to a new constant K. now the new equation becomes D=Kx^2. and if we take derrivative of D respect to x, then we get dD/dx = D' = 2Kx. and at a maxima or minima, we know dD/dx = 0, therefore 2Kx = 0, and since K is a constant and can never = 0, therefore the only possibility is that x = 0. now if we take the second derrivative D'', we get D'' = 2K, since K is a positive constant, it means that the curve of Kx^2 is opened upward, or at point x = 0, we have a minima, which kinda make sense since if u have 0 beam tank, ur damage is 0 :p and its the smallest damage you can get :D. what derek forgot is to mention a limit, the limit is that x >= 0. orelse if u have negative number of beam tank, you can still produce a damage.;)

[SgtRicko]

Damn my minimal math skills, DAMN THEM!!!:flame:

[Cylon Crusader]

Its great that someone actually took the initiative to find something like this, great job!

[Diggelei]

Damn my minimal math skills, DAMN THEM!!!:flame:

Thank god im not alone:tantrum:
But i think its cool someone actually took the trouble of looking into this;)

[Derek]

Its great that someone actually took the initiative to find something like this, great job!
Thats what happens when you have a game demo and are bored silly but the game doesn't come out for another month ;)

[yurihomer]

i was bored at work, so i did that.
:Dderek, Excel gives me an exact equation of D = f(x) = 138.04x^-1.9354;) ur's is close enough

[Derek]

i was bored at work, so i did that.
:Dderek, Excel gives me an exact equation of D = f(x) = 138.04x^-1.9354;) ur's is close enough
Thats called "experimental error". I got a value in the 1.9s' too, but I rounded off because I know they wouldn't actually use a non-integer equation. Actually, there is a nice, simplified explanation for how the beam tanks work (that is equivialent to my equation): Each beam tank does the damage that all the beam tanks would normally do together if they behaved normally.

[Avapodnaught]

/me 's eye pops out at sight of venom chain beam cannon ability works well against conyard leaving beam cannons safe in their little defense base

[SgtRicko]

/me 's eye pops out at sight of venom chain beam cannon ability works well against conyard leaving beam cannons safe in their little defense base

I never could figure out how to do that properly...:nuts:

[Avapodnaught]

basically u just get a bunch of venoms and beam cannons and use formation move + hold fire to get them venoms in a chain into the enemies base and then click on the beam cannons, click on their ability, and then move over to what u want to kill, and click on it and make sure ur beam cannons don't move over there to fire at normal range, that means u did it wrong:)

[pozzy]

Thats fantastic.......Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm what does it mean ?