I’m currently working on the research for a new article covering several aspects of starships in STO, and how they’re affected by the ‘Captain’ skills. As it’s been fairly slow going so far, I thought I’d share some initial results on the relationship between speed and defence in space combat.
In the following tests I took a Tier 2 Science Wessel and circled constantly while two even-level (Lt Commander-1) Birds of Prey attacked. I logged 3-4 minutes at each speed, then used a log parser to compare the hit rate of their Disruptor Turrets (the only weapon that they fired enough times for a statistically significant result, although their other weapons tended to have around the same hit percentage).
Here are the results:
| Speed (Impulse) | Bird of Prey 1 Turret hit rate | Bird of Prey 2 Turret hit rate |
| 20 | 76.4% | 74.0% |
| 15 | 82.1% | 81.7% |
| 10 | 93.0% | 96.1% |
| 5 | 100% | 100% |
| 0 | 100% | 100% |
It seems fairly clear, then, that the speed you’re travelling in space combat can have a pretty significant impact on how often you’re going to get hit. I’m planning to do some more testing with different ship types and opponents, but I thought these were interesting enough results to post them in the meantime.
As an aside, the testing really brought home to me just how trivially easy PvE space combat is right now. In over 20 minutes of constant firing, two even-level Birds of Prey were completely unable to dent the shields of a Tier 2 Science Vessel with common Mk II gear running at 65 shield power. I didn’t even need to rebalance the shields, let alone use any abilities. It also highlighted that the AI seems to be completely incapable of lining up shots with Dual Disruptor Cannons, rarely getting off more than three or four shots with these weapons in each 3-4 minute test.
Excellent info.
Good luck with your tests. Testing this could be a nightmare.
If there are other factors to miss chance like range or relative velocity(EvE does this, I think its unlikely for STO’s actiony gameplay)it’s going to be tough.
Hopefully its a simple relationship between your own speed defence and enemy accuracy values. I think energy weapon fall off if enough of a detriment to range without miss chance being a factor too. :p
You may want to take a look at the elusive alien trait since it shows you its value. It may make working out the relationship between defence/speed/miss easier.
Yeah, I did my best to keep everything else the same and only vary speed, but if range and/or relative velocity count, it’s going to be hard to come up with anything definite.
And yes, the Elusive trait is on my list to look at.
I wonder how much the speed buff with evasive maneuvers continues to increase the accuracy penalty. Unfortunately, that’s much harder to test since it’s a short term effect.
hey is there a program to parse the combat log?
Yup – it was written for Champions Online, but the log files for STO appear to use the same format, so it works:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/combatlogparser/
(Use /combatlog 1 and /combatlog 0 in-game to turn logging on and off.)