Saturday, January 25, 2003

MPEG1 Settings

Just a note for future capping. With the ATI digital VCR, recording MPEG1 at 5Mbps, 640x480, Motion Estimate Quality of 25, and 44kHz 16bit Stereo audio results in a file that is 635Kb/sec (or 1.09Gb per 30 minutes). I think the audio portion is included in the 5Mbps value, since that calculates out as 640Kb/sec (of which 172Kb/sec was the CD quality audio-stream). It might be worth it to record at 22Khz instead of 44Khz for when I'm pulling these old clips off of older VHS tapes, freeing up 86Kb/sec for video data. (Especially since I'm going to convert to 22kHz audio during the compression phase anyway.) Audio sync is clean as well (I've had issues in the past with this too).

On the output, I'm currenting storing to the DivX5 codec, using pretty standard settings, bit rates of 500-1000Kbps. As I mentioned I'm converting the audio to stereo, 22kHz, 16bit - but compressing it with Microsoft's ADPCM 22kHz, stereo, 4bit format (this helps with the audio sync error that can occur from using something like MP3 audio for the audio track). I forget whether the DivX5 encoder's bitrate setting includes space for the audio information or if that gets tacked on the top of the setting number. Anyway, here's my current short list of bit rates and storage needs:

5Mbps (640Kb/sec) - 1hr (2.14Gb) - 19min on a 700Mb CD - 2hrs on a 4.7Gb DVD - used for decent-good quality video sources when recording with MPEG1

4Mbps (512Kb/sec) - 1hr (1.71Gb) - 24min on a 700Mb CD - 2.5hrs on a 4.7Gb DVD - I'm not using bitrate this at the moment, opting for the 5Mpbs instead, but I'd expect the quality to be close to the 5Mpbs, maybe good for only low-decent quality source video using MPEG1.

1Mbps (128Kb/sec) - 1hr (0.43Gb) - 95min on a 700Mb CD - 10hrs on a 4.7Gb DVD - I may choose this bitrate to store my better quality clips using DivX5, or I may sneak down to 700-850Kbps instead to get just a bit more space out of a CD (US shows are 24min without commercials, so to get 96min/CD I've got to go down to 950Kbps or a bit lower to fit 4 on a CD).

750Kbps (96Kb/sec) - 1hr (0.32Gb) - 125min on a 700Mb CD (VHS tape capacity) - 12.5hrs on a 4.7Gb DVD - Seems to be a good quality level.

500Kbps (64Kb/sec) - 1hr (0.22Gb) - 190min on a 700Mb CD - 20hrs on a 4.7Gb DVD - This is about as small as I'll go since I'm archiving material, not sizing it for distribution.

Update: I just looked at somethin I encoded earlier. A 1h28m41s clip encoded into DivX5 at 780Kbps with MS ADPCM 22Khz/Stereo/4bit audio ended up at 641.8Mb (860Kbps or 108Kb/sec). Which tells me that the DivX encoder setting is for the video data only, and the audio gets tacked on top of that. So if I want 1Mbps on the output, I have to plug in 920Kbps for the DivX codec and allow 80Kbps for the audio information (which makes me wonder if the MS ADPCM compressed the audio at all).

Also, on an AthlonXP 1800+ system with DDR memory I'm encoding at a rate of about 24-25fps (just a crop filter in VirtualDub). While not quite real-time, it's close enough that I can queue up 4-5 hours of clips at a time for encoding and have them done nice and fast.

posted by Wuphon's at 9:31 PM

Friday, January 24, 2003

Forkboy's SC4 Terrains

Forkboy2's SimCity 4 Terrains

posted by Wuphon's at 10:15 PM

SC4 Map Making Site

Simcity Maps... Nothing But Maps!

This site is all about SimCity 4 maps and creating what are called Regions.
- Learn to create your own regions
- Use our terrain blanks and modify to your specifications
- Trade and download new terrains

posted by Wuphon's at 9:54 PM

Turtle Beach Santa Cruz

The Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card was just what the doctor ordered for the noise (low signal-noise ratio resulting in audible hiss during quiet portions) problems I was having in my recordings off of the video capture card. I got it hooked up and installed this morning, and the two test captures that I've made so far (one at 10% input, the other at 50% input) both sound fine. Definitely worth the extra cash (it's only around $75) over the el-cheapo sound cards or the built-in sound that I was using.

Other then wishing that the ATI recorder would write correctly encoded MPEG2 files, I'm pretty well good to go.

posted by Wuphon's at 12:28 PM

Thursday, January 23, 2003

SC4 Creating your Terrain

Once you have your config.bmp properly setup, you can now begin the process of editing all of the city tiles to create the terrain that you want for each. This could take a few hours or a few days, depending on how much time you lavish on tiny details. When you start, you'll have a completely flat field of water or plains (depending on which you picked when you created your custom region). Each of those tiles now has to be seperately edited. My preference is to start by laying out the base altitudes of my various city tiles as shown here:



As you can see, I'm planning a mountainous area in the middle of the right side. Now, word of caution here, if you make a foreground tile too high, you won't be able to see the smaller ground-level tile behind it (and SC4 does not let you rotate the region view). So work from the back to the front, and don't get too crazy about tile altitudes. I created mine by going into each city, clicking on the God Mode icon in the lower left (the sun), then Terrain Effects (blowing cloud), then clicking the Raise Terrain Level a pre-determined number of times. (The really high tiles in the view above were about 15-20 clicks of the Raise Terrain Level button.)

Here is what the region looked like at various points so far:









Now at this point, I had a problem. If you look closely at the upper image, you'll see that the terrain is raised above the base and there is a gap between the two (seems to be some sort of SC4 bug). The fix was rather easy (fortunately) - just edit the tile, then raise and lower the terrain once and it will settle back down onto the base (see the next image below).











When you first create your tiles, try to match up corner heights by creating valleys or hills, but don't use Reconcile Edges until you have to. The RE command is both a blessing and a curse. My usual plan was to get things as lined up as possible by looking at things in the region view, then go into each tile, use RE, then use the Soften terrain tool on any corners that got pointy. Eventually, as you make your way around the map, you'll manage to get everything lined up. It just takes a while, it's not seemless or easy.

I'm also not sure yet how well some of these tile designs will work (mountains with no water source) for placing cities on. The samples that came with SC4 were all pretty flat. I'm guessing that the inland tiles can build wells or trade with other tiles for their water needs.

posted by Wuphon's at 9:44 PM

SC4 Creating a Region Layout Bitmap

One of the simpler things to do in SC4 is to create your own custom region layout. All it takes is a 24-bit bitmap of the appropriate size. Each pixel across and down is 1km in size, so the 16km x 16km default size would be 16x16 pixels. Once you have your bitmap, all you have to do is color in the blocks with the appropriate city size color. Small cities are 1km x 1km, and the red channel needs to be set to 255 (you can set blue and green to whatever you want). Medium cities are 2km x 2km and are designated by setting the green channel to 255. Large cities are 4km x 4km and use the blue channel set at 255 as their designator.

Here is an extremely enlarged copy of the config.bmp file that I'm using to create my custom region:



To use this (or your own), you'll want to do the following steps:

1) create the config.bmp file
2) enter SC4, create a new region, then either load a different region or exit SC4
3) copy your config.bmp file into your My Documents \ SimCity 4 \ Regions \ yournewcityname folder.
4) reload your new region and you should see your new tile layout.

posted by Wuphon's at 9:24 PM

Wednesday, January 22, 2003

SimCity 4 Guide to Creating New Regions

Creating new regions in SimCity 4 - very nice article explaining how to create large tracts of land quickly, and then how to lay out custom regions. The basic summary is as follows:

Regions are cut into the various city sizes like a jigsaw puzzle consisting only of square pieces. A small city is 1km per side, medium city is 2km per side, and a large city is 4km per side. (The default size of the map created by SC4 when you first open the box is 16km x 16km.) You can make regions any size (20x10, 10x10, 8x17) but he recommends that you keep the overall area around 256 sq km (the initial default). Don't forget that you have to then chop it up into city "squares" when deciding. One of the areas that I'd like to map is going to be 16km x 24km, which is a little larger then the normal sized region.

posted by Wuphon's at 9:19 PM

SC4 Cheats

The following cheats will work with all known versions of SimCity 4. To activate these cheats, press CTRL+X to bring up the cheat input box, then enter the desired code and press enter.

DollyLlama - Gives city planners llama heads
fightthepower - Operate your city without any electricity requirements.
GOL - green plasma effect
hellomynameis <name> - Reset the name of the mayor to the given value.
howdryiam - Operate your city without any water requirements.
recorder - Start the recorder
sizeof <zoom> - Change the game magnification to the given value. Acceptable values are 1-100.
stopwatch - Pauses the 24 hour clock cycle. Enter it again to resume the timer.
tastyzots - Toggles zots (cell warnings)
weaknesspays - Gives you §1000 simoleons
whatimeizit <hour> - Set the 24 hour clock to a specific time of day.
whererufrom <name> - Reset the name of your city to the given value.
you don't deserve it - Make all rewards available, even if you truly don't deserve them.
zoneria - Hides the coloring of undeveloped zoned tiles.

(Yes, I finally got SC4 to install on my desktop system!)

posted by Wuphon's at 5:40 PM

Tuesday, January 21, 2003

Sony DRU-500A DVD+RW/-RW Drive

Whee! They finally have it in stock! This drive is one of the nicer ones out there at the moment, capable of reading and writing all (4) of the current DVD formats (DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW), and it doesn't cost that much more then one of the DVD recordable drives that only does a single format.

DRU-500A DVD+RW/-RW Drive

I picked up some DVD-R media for about $4 per DVD. While not as inexpensive as CD-R for storing archival data, it makes up for it by reducing the sheer number of CDs that need to be kept track of. I expect that I'll be able to fit 6 (700Mb) or 7 (650Mb) CDs worth of data on a single DVD-R (4.7Gb) platter, which means that instead of keeping track of say, 100 CDs, now I'm only keeping track of 14-16 DVDs. I suspect I'll be engaging in large-scale reduction in my archived data collection within the next 30 days (my 48 CD storage case for personal data alone is just about full). Not to mention using the medium for backups of all of my CDs that I've ripped to MP3 (I hate the audio-CD format, it's a pain keeping track of the 100 or so CDs that I own).

Gads, it's crazy enough now that a 700Mb CD can hold over 11 hours of CD-quality music (128kbps is about 1 minute per Mb of storage). Those 4.7Gb platters are going to be able to hold about 75-80 hours of music! (There's only 168 hours in a week...) Only downside is that the MP3 player in my car won't read DVD (although having MP3 CDs is nice enough).

posted by Wuphon's at 9:58 PM

All-in-Wonder that it works

After 2 days of re-patching the system, I've finally managed to get the ATI card hooked up so that it outputs sound to my sound card when I'm watching video on the S-Video port. I think I touched the CMedia audio driver, the VIA 4-in-1 driver, ATI control panel, ATI Multimedia Control Panel, ATI video driver, ATI WDM(?) driver...

Now I can go back and re-capture all of those test videos (which had no sound before).

(oh, and SC4 seems to have failed on CD2 again on the other PC)

One of the things I'm still trying to figure out is why the MPEG2 recordings won't play back in Windows Media Player (complains that it can't find a codec). More disturbing is that the ATI file player won't play back the ATI TV recorded MPEG2 files.

Not sure about another thing either, the audio levels in my capture MPEG1s are low (about 1/4 normal) which means a high signal-noise ratio (hissssss). The audio card line-in level is set to maximum, but I'm not sure that has any effect or not. I don't hear the hiss when I listen to the VCR directly, only when playing the MPEG file back afterwards. So I might need to examine the signal level that the VCR is giving to the ATI card.

posted by Wuphon's at 8:47 PM

SimCity 4

Well, I have SC4 in my hands now... getting it installed is another thing. It may be due to some obscure oddity on the laptop CD-ROM, but this is about the slowest installation of a 2-CD program that I've ever seen. It's taken about 2-3 hours so far and I'm about 90% done. What's odd is that the install window is just still images of various in-game cities (screen-shots) with no text, or anything else. Rather boring actually (instead of odd). I'm used to subtle humor from Maxis and expected various pithy sayings or puns or in-jokes during the installation screens.

Update: It seems to be something with the laptop's CD-ROM, install was a lot faster on the video editing PC. The only other annoyance during the install is that when I move the install status window off to the side, when it flips to the next "image" it recenters the dialog box (grrrr...).

posted by Wuphon's at 5:51 PM

Noisy Office

One of my chief complaints about my home office is the ambient noise level from the various computer systems. To the point that I'm starting to look at the dB level of various components. Fan noise is the biggest contributer to the problem. If I remember, every additional 10dB is twice as loud. According to Dangerous Decibels a humming refrigerator is 40 dB, usual conversation is 60 dB, and city traffic weighs in at around 80 dB. Another list gives the following values.

0 dB Threshold of hearing
10 dB Rustling of leaves
20 dB Whisper
30 dB Quiet conversation
40 dB Average home
50 dB Normal conversation
60 dB Busy shop
70 dB City street
80 dB Busy workplace
90 dB Underground railway
100 dB Pneumatic drill 10ft away
110 dB Propeller aircraft taking off
120 dB Jet aircraft taking off

First up is CPU fans (2CoolTek). At the top end of the scale is the Delta 60mm 50cfm fan which weighs in at 54 dB. The YS Tech 60mm Xtreme 40cfm Fan isn't much quieter at 48.2 dB. Next down the list I see a Sunon 60mm High Output (23.5cfm) fan that is 33.5 dB.

Now, the other place I know of is Cooler Guys. One of the el-cheapos is the Vantec FCE-62540D 38cfm and 42.5 dB.

posted by Wuphon's at 6:22 AM

IBM TrackPoint USB Space Saver Keyboard

Nice keyboard (I prefer the little nubby over the touchpad for in-keyboard mouse control) but a little expensive. A competing technology is called AccuPoint (used in the Toshiba laptops).

CDW: Product Overview

The IBM TrackPoint USB Space Saver Keyboard incorporates multiple technologies into one solution. You will save desk space by eliminating the need for a mouse and having a smaller footprint. The added USB hub minimizes the end-users cost by not having to procure an additional USB hub when wanting to expand to multiple USB devices.

posted by Wuphon's at 5:53 AM

Compact Keyboard

Currently looking for keyboard options to shave some deskspace. One option is to find a keyboard with integrated mouse (PS/2) and then add in a USB optical mouse. While it sounds strange, this is actually what I use on the laptop (which has the built-in trackpoint nubbie) and WindowsXP allows me to use either device to control the mouse.

Compact keyboard with touchpad - 89-keys, wrist rest, touch-pad mouse, 11.25"x8.5"

posted by Wuphon's at 5:43 AM

Hauppauge WinTV

I'm still half-tempted to just scrap the ATI card (currently I'm not getting any sound during my video captures) and buy the Hauppauge card instead (then I can reinstall my GeForce4 Ti4600).

CDW: Product Overview

WinTV is a 125 channel PCI TV tuner card that allows you to bring TV in a window to your desktop. it can capture still and video frames, upgraded to a video conferance solution by adding an analog camera. Intercast broadcast receiver tuner card.

posted by Wuphon's at 5:31 AM

Monday, January 20, 2003

Video Resources

Still looking for information...
A&E's Technical Guides to All Things Audio and Video

Nobody seems to have a basic "here's what bitrate to capture at", so I guess I'll try 640x480 at 6Mbps and see what sort of quality I get out of it.

posted by Wuphon's at 7:21 PM

How to tie a bandana

As someone else said, sometimes there are things that nobody taught you or you just didn't think to ask at the time. There's actually a page that gives the basic directions of how to accomplish tying that silly thing to your noggin, complete with pictures of a Ken doll.

posted by Wuphon's at 2:46 PM

Tape drives are the debil

(groans) Did I ever mention how much I despise tape drives? Slow access times, clunky interfaces - both guaranteed to drive me up the wall.

Slow is annoying because during the wait I tend to multi-task, working on other projects at the same time (such as blogging!). The problem is, however, that I'll forget about the tape operation that is iin progress because I'm working on other stuff. So that 10 minutes to recatalog the tape just became 1-2 hours, at which point I remember, and start another process that takes 5 or 10 minutes (rinse-repeat).

And these are only 4.5Gb capacity (uncompressed) 8mm tape drives, which is getting small now. I'm looking forward to getting and installing the Sony DRU-500A DVD writer in another month. The cost per DVD-R is around $4 or $5 (8mm tapes are $12), it'll take me the same effort to backup files to it, but access time for restore is going to be a lot faster (and I can just catalog it with SuperCat). I may bother with the DVD-RW, or may give it a pass (depends on how well it works). I used to backup to CD-RWs until my storage needs regular exceeded 500Mb.

posted by Wuphon's at 10:04 AM

Small computer cases

I'm looking to take some of my older equipment (ATX motherboards) and put them in smaller cases as I upgrade my server towers. One of the goals is to find cases that are super-tiny and quiet, yet take an ATX motherboard. So far, I have found the following (looks like there are 5 main manufacturers):

Asus T-5AB mid-tower, 235W
Antec SX630-II Mini Tower 300W
CasEdge 3000S ATX Mid Tower 300W
Enlight EN-5100A2 Micro Tower 200W
In-Win S700 ATX MidTower 250W
Antec PerformancePlus AMG MiniTower 330W

The last one seems to be a fairly nice, ATX, mid-tower, 8 bay design that focuses on noise reduction. One of the places I need to check out is 2CoolTek who carry a decent selection of fans and cooling items. Or Dirt Cheap Drives which is another store that I've used in the past to find supplies.

posted by Wuphon's at 7:22 AM

Video Editing Links

ars technica faq - an index of the Digital Video Question & Discussion archive (links to message topics about various FAQs)
What is DivX? - DivX is one of the popular MPEG4 codecs currently in use. Also available here is the DivX v5 encoding/decoding software codecs.
Building your own editing computer - Nebraska Independent Film Projects, provides a short tutorial regarding the types of gear you would need to edit video semi-professionally.
Adobe Premiere, Maximizing video capture performance - Technical article from Adobe on how to keep from having dropped frames, or other glitches while capturing video.
Video format resolutions - An estimate on how many lines and dots per line various video signals have. I've seen it argued elsewhere that the NTSC numbers here may be a bit off.
virtualdub.org - makers of VirtualDub, one of the bits and pieces of software that I used to use back in 2000, mostly for converting files from various formats into MPEG4.
Converting VHS tapes to DVD - Article by Brien Posey explaining using a digital video camera to convert VHS to DV to your computer (via firewire).
EverWicked DV Introduction to DivX - A full explanation of the DivX and other MPEG4 codecs that are currently in use.

posted by Wuphon's at 6:42 AM

Sunday, January 19, 2003

Video Editing

Rebuilt my game machine again today... (well, just changed video cards and removed some obsolete items - didn't reinstall the O/S) ... I've reinstalled my ATI Radeon All-in-Wonder 32Mb AGP video card. I want to get back into video editing again now that I have a faster system (I originally tried this on a 350Mhz Pentium2). I'll have to find my notes, because the old P2 just wasn't fast enough to capture 640x480 video. I'm also mucking with the various formats that the capture card software (ATI's) can save files to. System specs are as follows:

Athlon XP 1800+
512Mb PC2100 DDR RAM (CL3? probably...)
Asus A7V266E motherboard
Promise FastTrak100 PCI RAID card
(2) 75Gb IBM 7200rpm Deskstar drives
ATI Radeon All-in-Wonder 32Mb AGP video card
pair of USBv2 external 40Gb HDs
Toshiba SVHS 6-head VCR, S-Video in/out
19" TV (to be replaced with a 14" Toshiba)

The first trick is to find a setting where the PC doesn't drop frames left and right during the initial capture. At the moment, that seems to be around 6Mbps on the 640x480 capture size (both MPEG1 and MPEG2 like to start dropping frames at anything over 6Mbps). Strange thing is that the CPU is only at 80 percent utilization when this happens - which means that I've got a bottleneck somewhere other then the CPU. The other interesting thing is that ATI's MPEG2 format seems to be either proprietary or just something that Windows Media Player can't make heads or tails of.

Now if I could just find my editing notes from almost 2 years ago... I figure they're on one of my servers, but I'm not finding them with a quick look around. That's what happens when I rebuild my servers about once a year, files end up a bit out of sorts.

(chuckle) They don't even make that VCR anymore. Neither Sony or Toshiba make Super VHS ET VCRs anymore, JVC still does though. (Super VHS records at 400-lines.) Now, that's not a real big deal to me since digital is coming around the corner - I'm mostly working on moving stuff off of video tape and into digital format (which is my next trick).

Hmmm... no hits on searching for my notes from 2 years back yet and I've searched both of my servers where stuff usually gets dumped. Next possibility is on the laptop (those 3 searches are still running...) or maybe I dumped it off onto a CD or my search criteria is wrong. Time to go look in SuperCat (a listing of the files on my "archive" CDs). Maybe broaden my search criteria as well.

Looking at the files on my test CD from November 2000, when I made a bunch of captures at various resolutions and bitrates, it looks like I have my answer on what my old system was capable of. All of the captures are MPEG1, resolution seems to always be 320x240 or 352x240 (guess the old system wasn't able to capture 640x480), and bit-rates are 3 to 4 Mbps. There is one 640x480 capture, but it's at 1.5 Mbps.

posted by Wuphon's at 9:22 PM

MOO2 Race Picks

Okay, last MOO2 thing for now. Here is my current favorite racial picks. This race is designed to compete aggressively with even the Sakkra (who have 100% population growth). I may fall behind on the population growth side, but the 50% boost to industrial output from Unification makes it possible to build up worlds and colonies faster then they can. I also set aside small worlds that have Automated Factories and Robo Miners as housing colonies (strip the colony down to 1 population, set the build queue to Housing). These housing colonies can produce 1 unit of population every 2-2.5 turns which I then ship off to my frontier colonies.

Population: +50% (+3)
Farm: -0.5 (-3)
Industry: 0 (0)
Science: 0 (0)
Money: 0 (0)
Ship Defense: -20 (-2)
Ship Attack: 0 (0)
Ground Combat: -10 (-2)
Spying: -10 (-3)
Government: Unification (+6)
Specials: Aquatic (+5), Subterranean (+6)

posted by Wuphon's at 9:47 AM

MOO2 Tech Strategy

Here's a technical strategy (what to research and in what order at the start) that I snagged off of the MOO3 forums. The goal with this is to jump-start your research budget and economy at the beginning of the game while also providing you with enough fire-power to defend your holdings. The last game I played in hard mode, 8 races, huge galaxy, mineral rich, average technology - I had *zero* scientists after turn 100 or so and still stayed way ahead of the Psilons. The key to this was that I had 2x to 8x more population then the Psilons due to aggressive expansion during the initial stages of the game (lots and lots of colonies) before the galaxy filled up.

Starting technologies (do in this order)
(comp) Research Labs (150rp)
(const) Reinforced Hull (80rp)
(const) Automated Factories (150rp)
(comp) Neural Scanner (400rp)
(comp) Planetary Supercomputer (650rp)

Now, at this point, you'll have a good number of research points being generated, and you'll want to expand as fast as possible (every additional colony gives you many more research points). The next choices depend on whether you need defense immediately or if you can wait another 10-20 turns before getting pummeled by your nearest neighbor (keep your neighbors happy for the first 100 turns through trade, exchanging research, giving tribute or other baubles). In the early game, MIRV'd nuke missles are key (does 4x the damage of a regular nuke missle). Fire off your two salvos and retreat to the corners of the map (or jump out, leaving a scout behind). Each missle does 8x4 points of damage and you'll be able to fit 4 or 5 in a Cruiser class hull.

Defense (gives you MIRV'd nuke missles)
(chem) Dueterium Fuel Cells (250rp) -> Pollution Processor (650rp)

Production (boost the economy)
(const) Battlepods (250rp) -> Spaceport (400rp) -> Robo Miners (650rp)

posted by Wuphon's at 9:40 AM

Master of Orion 2 - Cheats

For those games where you just want to get in and play around...

During play, hold down the Alt key while typing these codes:

canbonly1 - computer players unite against you
crunch - type at individual planet screen to finish current building project
einstein - all technologies
iseeall - shows all planets and players
menlo - finishes researching current technology
moola - gives you 1000 BC

posted by Wuphon's at 9:31 AM

Corion2

I've been mucking about with Master of Orion II again in my spare time (v1.31 patch) and came across the COrion2 save file editor. It lets me change anything about current players, ships, systems, leaders by editing the save game files.

COrion2.zip (May 1997)
README.NOW - this is the readme file
TIPS.TXT - some tips the author wrote

Unfortunately I haven't found a way to do what I really wanted to do... edit the space / cost starting values for various technology items. You see, I'd like to make it so that phasors, black hole generators, and stellar converters are a good bit larger then they are now - as those (3) items are pretty much super-weapons in the late game. A ship with banks of Auto-Fire Shield-Piercing Phasors, Structural Analyzer, and High-Energy Focus can easily decimate multiple opponents of the same ship class (especially if combined with the Achilles Targeting Unit). One of my late-game doom-stars has 180 Shield-Piercing, Auto-Fire Phasors which is 180 [quantity] x 20 [damage] x 3 [auto-fire] x 1.5 [h.e. focus] x 2.0 [structural analyzer] = 32,400 points of potential damage output. Even late-game doom stars don't stand up to that kind of abuse, even with Xentronium Armor (1500 base points on a doom-star), Reinforced Hull (triples structure points), Heavy Armor (triples armor points) a doom-star only has around 10,500 points. Using a Damper Field reduces the damage taken by 75 percent, which would possibly allow you to survive a mauling by that ship design.

Shield-Piercing Auto-Fire Phasors are a seriously powerful weapon...

posted by Wuphon's at 9:05 AM