Forum:Weaponry Comparison

=Introduction= The purpose of this article is to fill a gap in both data and utility in the area of comparing the weapons in Mass Effect 2. There currently is not a single Weapons page that allows you to compare one weapon to another. "Weapons" redirects you to a very general page on Equipment that mostly contains content from ME1. The data gap this article fills is that of comparable DPS stats for ME2 weapons. The utility gap it fills is putting all that information on a single page so players can compare the DPS of all weapons at once rather than having to flip back and forth between multiple weapon type pages.

This article is a work in progress. It may end up as it is now (a stand-alone article) or the data herein may get pilfered and posted to the individual weapon or weapon type pages. The feedback generated on the Discussion page will probably determine whether this data sticks around at all, and if so, how it's presented and made accessable to players.

=Methodology= In order to provide a consistant basis of measure across all weapons, certain variables have to be held constant. Thus, all of the DPS stats below are based on the following assumptions:
 * No weapons have any upgrades
 * No powers (including special ammo types) are in use
 * No feathering is used to remove the delay between bursts for some SMGs and Assault Rifles
 * All projectiles (including every fragment of a shotgun blast) hit the body (no headshot damage bonuses) at default range (no close range damage bonuses)

All DPS stats are based on a consistent timeframe (cycle). The timeframe used is the amount of time it takes to empty an entire clip and reload another. For several sniper rifles, that's a single round. For several SMGs and Assault Rifles, that's dozens of rounds. Using DPS allows those to be held constant, but the timeframe had to end with a reload to have a consistent basis of measure.

The trickiest part is figuring out the duration of the cycle. This is primarily due to the fact that some weapons fire in bursts. Thus there are delays between firing one round and another, then there are delays between burst, and then there is the reload delay. Once you figure out how long it takes to fire all the rounds in a mag and reload another, all that's left is to figure out the damage per magazine, which is very simple (dmg per round * rounds per mag). At this time, I'll leave a detailed explanation of the equation out and just get to the stats. If anyone would like more information on the calculation I can build it into this page.

The raw weapon data comes from this page: http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/944906/58941

Data on damage bonuses vs. armor, barriers, and shields comes from this page: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/128/index/1143264

=DPS Stats=

Please note:
 * Base DPS is also the DPS vs. Health
 * Only weapons with all required data available are shown