This builder works by scoring every item on a 0-5 scale and applying various factors to give it an overall effectiveness or power contribution to the loadout.
First, each item in the game (weapons, grenades, stratagems, some armours (not boosters)) are scored on a 0-5 scale. 0 signifies minimal effectiveness vs. target, 5 signifies maximum effectiveness vs. target. The full definitions are below in the following table:
| Rating | Definition |
|---|---|
| 0 | Negligible or no damage or contribution/You would never use this option to destroy the intended target e.g. Airburst launcher vs. stalkers... despite being able to completely destroy them, it's completely impractical |
| 1 | Very minimal damage/Takes over 1min to kill/Usable if desperate/last option available/main option on cooldown |
| 2 | Occasionally useful/small contribution but nowhere near primary method |
| 3 | Decent damage/serviceable secondary option/should be paired with another option e.g. Laser cannon vs hulks - you may want to pair this with rocket pods or similar to have a consistent way to deal with them |
| 4 | Very strong damage and usability/strong primary option |
| 5 | Instakills/1-2 shot kills/exceptional performance with minimal downsides |
Your loadout is measured using 7 main performance metrics for each item. Anti-light firepower, Anti-medium firepower, Anti-heavy firepower, personal survival, team support, crowd control, tactical ability. The sum of each gives a total for each - Total Anti-light, Total Anti-medium etc. and they can be looked at to determine where your build focus is. The full definitions for individual metrics are in the following table:
| Performance Metric | Definition |
|---|---|
| Anti-Light Firepower | Average firepower against lightly armored or small enemies. |
| Anti-Medium Firepower | Average firepower against medium-armored or medium-sized enemies. For example, a stalker can be killed with light penetration weapons but has considerably more health and is bigger than typical small enemies, making it a medium target. |
| Anti-Heavy Firepower | Average firepower against heavily armored or large enemies, such as a charger, bile titan, or factory strider. |
| Survival | Contribution to personal survival from all sources, including defensive abilities, healing, and other means of self-preservation. |
| Team Support | Contribution to the team, including things like providing ammunition (e.g. supply pack), ongoing fire support on objectives, bases, or nests (e.g. 380mm barrage), and defenses (e.g. shield generator relay). Although there are few items in this category, removing it would prevent proper evaluation of crucial team contributions, such as the supply pack. |
| Crowd Control | Contribution of items that affect enemy mobility or provide automated fire support. This includes stuns, smokes, turrets, fire, lures, knockbacks, and other non-damage effects that control the flow of enemies in battle. |
| Tactical Ability | Contribution to the destruction of side objectives, such as structures or specific targets that need to be eliminated during a mission. |
These metrics are supporting metrics that help you make decisions about your build but aren't necessarily success-defining. The full definitions are below in the following table:
| Side Performance Metric | Definition |
|---|---|
| Short Range Effectiveness | Short range effectiveness vs. enemies. e.g. Punisher, Breaker Spray & Pray score max here, Plasma Punisher or grenade launcher score lowest here. Its generally a good idea to have some form of close range response in your build so if you get overwhelmed with lunging/charging enemies, you're not hopeless. |
| Medium Range Effectiveness | Medium range effectiveness vs. enemies e.g. almost every item in the game will score most effective in this range. |
| Long Range Effectiveness | Long range effectiveness vs. enemies e.g. Anti-Materiel Rifle scores highest in this category. Long range effectiveness is useful for accomplishing objectives quickly or eliminating heavies from a distance before they get too close and destroy your group cohesion. |
| Surge Power/ Burst Damage | The amount of effect an item can deal in a short time window. This statistic mostly gives barrages and long cooldown items a use otherwise they'd be scored very low in general indicating they are useless which is simply not true as they excel in certain situations. |
| Danger Score | This represents the amount of danger posed to your team by your item. Total danger is the sum of danger from each item. Danger is again scored 0-5 with 0 being completely safe to 5 being makes every effort to cause harm to the team. This is a good metric to look at since it can give you an indicator of how many more reinforcements you are likely to waste on the mission making it more difficult and leading to lower chances of success. |
Calculations to get the above performance and side metrics are done. The Anti-light is the average of scores vs. light enemies (pests (which is just a generic term of scavengers, bile spitters and pouncers), hunters, warriors and shriekers. Similar calculation theory for medium and heavy. Tactical ability is the side objective weighting factor, W for each side objective * the score for each side objective, S aka Sum(W * S).
| Calculation | Definition |
|---|---|
| Enemy Weighting Factors - Quantity Factor | Factor to account for number of an enemy you will fight at the same time. E.g. bile titans spawn less so get a lower quantity factor, hunters spawn more so get a higher quantity factor. |
| Enemy Weighting Factors - Threat/Priority Factor | Factor to account for threat or priority of an enemy e.g. Bile Titans or Factory Striders are larger and more dangerous so get a higher factor than say Hive Guards or Devastators |
| Side Objective Factor | Factor to account for both quantity and priority of a side objective. e.g. bug holes get the highest since there are lots of them; even though spore spewer is more dangerous, there are fewer spawns of it and it can be destroyed from range quite easily so has a much lower factor. |
| Limited Use / Long Cooldown Factor | Factor to account for items with limited uses e.g. Orbital Laser or Exosuits or items with long cooldown like barrages. This is a factor between 0 and 1.0. 1.0 being this item has unlimited uses or uses are not impactful on the game or cooldown is not a concern. A lower value like 0.8 would signify that the value of the item is affected by 20% due to the limited uses/long cooldown. Since items like the exosuits are often rated the max score of 5/5 against every enemy and several objectives, this factor scales its overall usefulness down to a more realistic score since they can only be called in every 10mins. |
| Ammo Economy Factor | Factor applies only to weapons that struggle with ammo and often run out of ammo before being able to make it to a resupply. It is scored between 0 and 1.0 with 1.0 signifying 100% of the time you will not run out of ammo and values lower than this e.g. 0.8 signifying you will run out of ammo perhaps 20% of the times thus leading to a 20% reduction in score/effectiveness. | Handling Factor | Some weapons have poor handling and make aiming difficult leading to missed shots and dps. This leads to lower effectiveness and hence score vs. targets and so is represented as a 0 to 1.0 factor. 1.0 being handling is not a concern with this item and lower values like 0.9 representing a decrease in performance of the item. This can be mitigated using a PEAK PHYSIQUE armour. The builder is coded to set handling to 1.0 for all items with the peak physique armour (or more specifically, divide the score by the handling factor again... if the score was Score * 0.8 handling factor, then the score with PEAK PHYSIQUE armour would be Score * 0.8/0.8). |