Confused about weapon damage in WC1/WC2

Zookie

Spaceman
In all the lore of the games the damage of the weapons is summed up as: Lasers low, mass drivers medium and neutron guns/particle guns high.

But all the sources I can find for damage show

Lasers 1.8

Mass Drivers 4.5

Neutron guns 3

Particle guns 4.3

Am I missing something? Mass divers seem to do the most damage per all the stats I can find and if you consider rate of fire and energy consumption mass drivers are far more damaging then Neutron guns or Particle guns. But in the game Neutron guns are really strong (so it seems). Are these stats right or is something off?
 
They look like stats from WC3 (except for the Neutron guns).

Quarto posted a while ago the stats for the WC2 guns:

Hellcat cockpit in the WC2 style

So, damage for WC2's Laser is 25, for the MD 30, for the Neutron 40 and for the Particle gun 51.

Sadly, according to the thread above, no one has yet extracted the real WC1 gun stats.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Apart from the base damage, the Wing Commander 1 & 2 Ultimate Strategy Guide (Pix has a scanned PDF) contains these sentences on page 45 ("Using Your Ship's Guns"):

The Scimitars and Raptors were equipped with the mass driver cannon, the only weapon in the Terran arsenal where explosive power is not affected by the distance to the target. [...] The effectiveness of the lasers and neutrons decreases the farther away you get from your target.

Like most strategy guides, this was a third party publication, although they seem to have received a decent amount of cooperation from the development team, in the form of interviews and inside information about the AI. However, I have never managed to measure out if the text quoted above accurately describes the game mechanics in WC1 or WC2.
 
Apart from the base damage, the Wing Commander 1 & 2 Ultimate Strategy Guide (Pix has a scanned PDF) contains these sentences on page 45 ("Using Your Ship's Guns"):



Like most strategy guides, this was a third party publication, although they seem to have received a decent amount of cooperation from the development team, in the form of interviews and inside information about the AI. However, I have never managed to measure out if the text quoted above accurately describes the game mechanics in WC1 or WC2.

I tested this some time ago, and can confirm (as expected, sadly) that it takes the same number of hits to destroy a WC1 'Star Post' with lasers, regardless of distance from the target.
 
Here's a fun chart of gun stats that might help: https://www.wcnews.com/articles/gunchart.htm

Obviously the stats vary quite a bit from game to game, and even by the Privateer era, the neutrons and particles went from the top of the pack to fairly medium powered.

It's also worth noting that the heaviest hitting guns are frequently not the most damaging on a damage-per-second basis once you consider refire rate or energy consumption. That's what makes a tiny little Ferret such a beast in WC2 or the tachyon cannon the popular favorite in Priv.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top