Combat vs Pilot duel - Results

[EyeContact]

Last saturday Ecvej and I did some tests to finally settle the age old Combat vs Pilot debate, here are the results.

We did a total of 4 battles, 2 in a High Damage sector, 1 in a Low Damage sector and 1 in the Asteroid Fields.


For this first test I went all combat and Ecvej was full pilot. For the first 13 shots I was in the lead, but then I had some bad shots and Ecvej overtook me. The sample size of this test is small, he killed me with this 22th shot, so we decided to do another battle in the same sector.


This time I went full piloting and Ecvej was full combat. It was very close until right before the end, Ecvej's 24th attack killed me.

For the low damage sector test Ecvej manually set our health to 20k, so this test gives us a really good sample size.

It's quite obvious that the two lines above are very close to eachother. Ecvej's 107th shot killed me and at that point he was at only 572 hp himself.

We couldn't allow Ecvej to win all duels, so I challenged him to a battle in the Asteroid Fields, and he would have to go full combat

Ecvej fired his 5 shots first, at which point I was at 9121hp, but the asteroids damaged him for 1580hp. I shot him for 1796, and that damaged myself for 1044hp. After this first tick it was clear that when it comes to asteroid or PDS damage, piloting wins hands down.

I made two additional graphs, with the damage spread of all combat vs pilot shots fired:

In this first damage spread graph I combined all shots from Ecvej and me when either of us was full pilot and also when we were full combat.
The average damage of Pilot vs Combat was 397hp/shot and Combat vs Pilot 374hp/shot. This seems like a significant difference, but I blame it on the small(ish) sample size.


Here we can clearly see that the average fire power is really close. Pilot vs Combat 187hp/shot and Combat vs Pilot 182hp/shot. 3% deviation is, as far as I'm concerned, well within the statistical error margin for this sample size.

All in all I think we can conclude that in a 1 vs 1 duel with no asteroids or PDS, damage will always even out. Whether you win or lose in that duel will depend on luck, not on stats (unless you're Ecvej and have the admin bonus )

[piggycape]

What effect does this have on bombers with combat points?

[Demolition]

Yea, should we do test with bombers as well?

[Steak]

i wonder if 50/50 pilot/combat split would beat either end of the spectrum...?

quite new to this - when is a new game likely to begin?

[Clementus]

Steak. In the announcements section you'll find the latest information. Best to check Ecvejs post in there!

[Steak]

Yeh he sent one out later that day ta

[whykt]

Very interesting, thanks for the graphs! I thought that combat would always win out, but just not very feasible in a proper beta when there are Roids and HW battles. So this really makes a case for all players to go high piloting?

[iceblink]

I suppose a high combat ship will get more points shooting other high combat ships, whereas high piloting ships will always score low. So high combat ships have a chance to level up quicker (as most will already know), with the risk of getting damaged quicker in a combat against other high combat ships. So there is the trade-off between short term quick leveling versus having a more rugged ship once leveled up.

[Fwiffo]

High combat ships will also benefit more from repairs than high piloting ships. Add a repair ship to each side in these scenarios and the combat side wins with ease.