Ships Skills and Outfitting spreadsheet

[Remus]

It is with a little trepidation that I announce a new release, as I have not been able to get the graphs working in Open Office yet. That's the problem with being a mere mortal; make me a god now, and I'll doubtless be able to do it tomorrow
But I did not wish to delay the release of a 2.8 version any longer.

The only changes are

• new outfittings I have found in my travels
• the 2.8 changes
• removal of the OS polars and graph as these bore no relation to actual in-game stats.

Download from 4shared.
Alternative download here, courtesy of Slamz.

I have not actually tested any of the changes except for the San Fernando OS speed and polars, but reading the release notes, in-game tooltips and F1 help make me want to look a little closer at a couple of FT skills.

Other testing I have carried out reveals that damage from the lightest guns is calculated before heavier guns. I am sure I had determined it was the other way round when I was writing this spreadsheet, and Ships Skills and Outfitting still calculates the heaviest guns first. This could make a noticeable difference against ships with high DR.
I have a list of other testing I want to carry out and there are a few other minor discrepancies I have already noticed, so I will be working towards another update, possibly before the next build goes Live. And I do very much want to get the graphs working with Open Office.

If anyone can help, my current problems are still with Excel. As per my last post, I can scale the graphs to the range I wish to display by turning unwanted cells to an empty string (as is done in this version with the ship speed / distance table), and then using an X-Y Scatter graph, but I cannot get the x-axis to display the correct values. My guess is that line graphs are more suitable in any case (these are what I use now), but how can I not display empty cells when using a line graph, and get the x-axis to scale correctly?
I am pretty sure I did exactly this years ago in Excel 97 and I think I still have the spreadsheet somewhere on an old laptop, but if anyone can suggest anything I would be most grateful.

[Remus]

Now what on earth could the OO in the filename stand for, I wonder?

Open Office users now have graphs

And they look bloody awful. Come on you skinflints, buy MS Office to display my hard work in all its glory.

Download from 4shared.
Alternative download here, courtesy of Slamz.

This is identical in content to the version released yesterday, the only difference being how the graphs are displayed.
MS Excel users will notice a couple of differences. I have made the ship polars graph bigger 'cos I prefer it that way, and the Speed/Time and Distance/Time graphs have slightly less satisfactory x-axis ranges so they display in OpenOffice, but I don't think this is too detrimental.
I don't think I have introduced any changes to how the Damage graphs are displayed.

OpenOffice users may need a little help, not least because OpenOffice does not display the series labels. I have not checked whether these can be displayed if set in OpenOffice rather than merely being carried over from MS Excel - if any OpenOffice user works out how to display labels please share it with the rest of us.
Here is what the lines show:

• Red is ship one and blue is ship two, as per the Comparison sheet.
• In the Damage Graphs sheet:
  Hull is shown as a solid line
  Where armour and structure are shown separately, armour is a thick line and structure a thin line
  Masts/sails is a dashed line
  Crew is shown as a dotted line
• Guns in the Integrity against Time graph are plotted against the right hand axis.
  Ship 1 guns are a thin solid orange line
  Ship 2 guns are a thin solid turquoise line
• If you can work out how to do it, the graphs sheets should look far better if you can turn off the gridlines. I have tried doing this in Excel but it does not carry across to OpenOffice, and a quick scan of OpenOffice forums suggests OpenOffice handles gridlines rather differently from Excel. Excel hides gridlines around any cell with a fill colour, so colouring cells white is an easy way of hiding gridlines in parts of a sheet. This does not seem to be possible in OpenOffice. Advice from OpenOffice users would be welcome.

As I posted above, I am aware of a few cases where calculations in Ships Skills and Outfitting do not (no longer?) match the game mechanics so I will be working on another update over the next couple of weeks.
Now that OpenOffice users can see the graphs you might have suggestions of your own. Fire away, and I'll see what I can do.

Do you think I've now done enough finally to take Valeroth's Sticky place?

[Capitane Jean]

this should be stickied the day before yesterday!

[Josh_Brown]

Originally Posted by Capitane Jean this should be stickied the day before yesterday!

Seriously. Thanks for all the work, Remus.

[Alcarondas]

All praise be upon Remus.

Can't thank you enough!

/tiphat

[Capitane Jean]

Just used this in proper excel, and wow it's useful!

[Alcarondas]

Remus:

I have a general mod that doesn't appear in the lists.

It's nothing earth-shattering, but for the sake of completeness, I offer its details for inclusion in a future version.

Law's Propellant
Category: Powder Room
Damage +10%
Reload -4 %

(It's a gunpowder mod roughly equivalent to Cantonese 1)

This item is among the rewards at the end of a long chain of quests for John Law and the French Mississippi Company in Leogane. It occurs to me as I type this that I don't know the level of the item; 40 would probably be a close guess. I will update this post when I have verified that.

[Remus]

I have added the Centurion and new outfittings to Ships Skills and Outfitting.

Download from 4shared or Slamz' site.

I have not yet tried out the Centurion so I have not added OS Speed or polars, and probably won't do so till shortly before it goes live. I hate testing polars on low acceleration ships.

I think the only other change is that I have finished changing over the damage calculations so that smaller cannons hit first.
I have not added Alcarondas' Law's Propellant (yet), but I intend finally completing the French and Dutch European Trade Company missions reasonably soon I will be sure to add any missing outfittings I find.

[Remus]

I have added the new ship and outfittings.
I have tested the polars and the OS speed of the Centurion so the speed graphs should be more or less ok. Speeds of low acceleration ships are tricky to test so I might have some of the polars a little off.

As usual, the new file can be downloaded from 4 shared or Slamz' site.

I have been doing a bit of behind the scenes work on the damage graphs sheet completing the change from largest guns hitting first to smallest guns hitting first. This might have resulted in some errors. Please post any that you find and I'll let you have a free replacement copy

[Alvaro1611]

Remus, is the DPS graph flipped? I'm looking at a stralsund mc vs an raa mc. The stats table shows the raa mc has a higher dps at every distance, but the graph of DPS vs distance shows the stralsund mc higher up. The damage vs time does show the stralsund doing more damage per hit but the raa eventually winning because of its quicker reload. Or...is there somehting about the DPS vs Distance graph I'm not considering?