Titanomachina: Performance Envelopes

Lately it has occurred to me to chart the relative performance envelopes of the Titans and put development on a more mathematically clear foundation. To this end I've whipped up the following chart describing the relative maximums available to each Titan. Damage-wise, this is the total of the Titan's weapons and limbs, and does not include bonuses from crew or any specifics related to concentrating that damage on any particular targets, just raw output. Likewise this does not include damage from collisions, except where those collisions are caused by Impact weapons, which are assumed for the purposes of describing the maximum damage out to have pushed the target back for an additional point of damage. Note then that this means Impact and Grapple weapons are assumed to do one more point of damage than their Effect plus any High Explosive, Armour Piercing, Shield Breaker. This ignores that the weapons actually do +2 points of damage upon successfully smashing another Titan into a building or another Titan as not all pushes or pulls successfully do that. Shock is not assessed as damage. 

Similarly in each case where Capacitors are available they are assumed to give Full Power to whatever weapon has the greatest damage potential (so like a Buzz Saw or Vulcan Gun instead of a Plasma Howitzer in the cause of Eos' configurations 1 & 3). A further assumption is that this is the amount of damage a Titan can inflict in four rounds, although notably Eos Configuration 3 uses more cards than would be available in its deck. If we leave off activating one of Their arms then it's 27/22 in terms of damage/card-cost. 

What is the utility of doing this? Well, for one thing it indicates how the +7 Operate bonus available to each Titan (at a commensurate card cost of 7, including cards played face-up) can be employed. The Styxx Configuration1 can put out a staggering 25 points of damage provided She does nothing else except lash out around Herself at a minimum of three targets. Conversely, Rhea Configuration 1 can direct Her entire crew to boosting Her damage output to 21 and still have four cards left over for Her sponson, and a thruster to get into a better position, and an extra armour system for defense. Notably the Detect action includes the entire bonus that a Titan might allocate, including cost, since this is an easy way to score victory points, or to make up a dearth of them. 

It's interesting to see the ratios that various configurations get, especially for some configurations that are experientially really good. Tethys Configuration 4, for example, seems really under-sold for the horrific amount of damage She can do on a consistent basis, particularly where crew can be used to Operate those laser blades. In particular this seems to under-value armour-piercing weapon despite AP adding one point of damage to any weapon's Effect. I think this is because this is agnostic about the value of damage, with three damage destroying a system or causing light damage to three damage, or even just removing three shield tokens. Lasers, for example, are weak against well-shielded targets because they do not get their armour penetration damage. Against unshielded targets they are somewhat effect in that they also affect multiple systems. When operated, however, they can remove vital systems long before a weapon without the Armour Piercing trait has ground through any protective armour. Combined with weaponry that removes shields efficiently, particularly weapons with the High Explosive trait, they hit harder than their raw damage potential might suggest. 

Furthermore this is agnostic about range, with longer range being a massive advantage because it not only allows a Titan to attack with less commitment to defense, but it allows a Titan to counter any attempts to detect buildings by shooting them from across the board. The maximum range is, after all, 8 squares. 

More sophisticated analysis as I develop it, but as it stands I think these numbers suggest which configurations are preferable for which end-game conditions such as ring-out, knock-out, and time-out.