Testing methods
I have done the first 1000 shot test and found it extraordinarily difficult to avoid misses that feel are due to "external causes". A few things i noticed while being as careful and deliberate as possible:
-stay on level ground
-close all apps possible. (I was getting frequent disk thrashing that kept causing small pauses in the game. It turned out the bloated Flash stuff on the Entropia Universe webpage i had open was the culprit.
)
and of course,
-only shoot at a mob when it's stopped and right in front of you
Weapon type and attachments:
maxed SIB laser carbine (HA 10.0)
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1008 shots
91 misses
9.0% missrate
578 shots
47 misses
8.1% missrate
--broken (L) weapon, starting with new one--
1015 shots
99 misses
9.7% missrate
1004 shots
94 misses
9.3% missrate
maxed SIB laser carbine+SE600+SE600+2500RS (<1/3 full tt)
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1041 shots
97 misses
9.3% missrate
1025 shots
99 misses
9.6% missrate
Last edit for Sunday. I'm finding the shift hotkey really cramps my play because i dare not use soc chat for fear of hitting an extra shift. I guess the ideal key for that would be the ` because it's almost never used and it's right next to 1 anyway. I'm finally getting used to the rather different controls using the utility requires, but it still makes me uptight trying to avoid missing. Just what i need: stress in my leisure activities. lol
I think the only really controlled way to do this test is with a more sophisticated utility that automatically counts shots by change of some adjustable amount of ammo, and counts misses by the absense of a dmg message in chat. That would resolve the lagged shots issue and also multiple presses of the key for eg arming the weapon. Of course, that would be a
lot more work to write!
Preliminary conclusion: there's no way in hell i can find significant differences with the lag on my US connection.
Testing unmaxed weapon 20070226
Test mob: small ambulimax VU 8.9
conventional laser carbine, no mod attachments
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1041 shots
152 misses
14.6% missrate
conventional laser carbine +SE600+2500RS (~1/4 full tt)
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1171 shots
159 misses
13.5% missrate
conventional laser carbine +SE600+SE600+2500RS (<1/3 full tt)
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888 shots
116 misses
13% missrate
Comments: i'm still seeing a lot of variation during a test, and several misses in a row or on one mob. I was much less careful in this test than the previous: i tagged the ambu without counting the shot, and once it was headed toward me i started counting.
I tried changing the conventionally accepted hit % range (80-92) to 80-91 but the unmaxed values fit much closer if i kept the old range.
Results seem favorable for attachments raising the effective hit ability on unmaxed weapons, but i'm not fully convinced. Call it 50:50.
I don't see any way to include the tt of the attachments and get sensible results though. I'd guess the attachments contribute full mod % until broken completely. Having not broken an attachment i don't know if you can even put it on the weapon when broken, anyway.
It seems pretty clear they don't do anything significant on maxed SIB weapons. I guess my earlier observation was a coincidence after all. Eerie.
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I have a laptop without numeric keypad -- that's a problem for using the two keys on the numeric pad. I can get around it with Fn keys but if you could you make the \ key reset and [ key decrement misses it would be really nice.