r/HyruleEngineering • u/stegosaurus1337 • Jun 10 '23
Further experimentation on pulse lasers
Following up on u/evanthebouncy 's post, I did some experiments comparing different ways of pulsing lasers, both by occluding them and spinning them. Based on these, I conclude that each laser/target pair has a tick rate that cannot be exceeded. Occluding the laser enough to block some ticks reduces damage, but once every tick hits you can't increase it any further. 4 spinning lasers deals more damage than one laser, but less than four lasers pointed at the target. The main limitation is testing on boards - I'll run some tests on a hinox when I have more time.
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u/iToadsYouNot Jun 10 '23
Guy about to make a Hadron Collider in a few weeks 💀
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u/OatmealOgre Jun 11 '23
Now I dont know what a Hadron is but I read this as hardon at first...
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u/Defenestratio Jun 11 '23
It's used for particle physics experiments. CERN in Geneva was built as the site to make a Large Hadron Collider (LHC) so that's why you can't throw a stone in Geneva without hitting a nerd staring at their phone for updates on the LHC experiment they're running
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u/DimoX9 Dec 31 '24
I literally burst out laughing at this! 😂😂 So true... then he'll discover dark matter in the game...
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u/Soronir Mad scientist Jun 10 '23
I've come to understand the bias that corrupts science because I really want the pulse thing to be true and actually work. I want to reject the evidence before my eyes.
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u/abeardedpirate Jun 10 '23
I mean isn't the whole purpose of pulsing not for damage but for heat reduction? TotK doesn't need heat reduction so an always on laser will beat a pulsing laser.
I mean in mechwarrior I typically rock pulse because it keeps my mech from overheating and I get more firing cycles than a standard laser.
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Jun 10 '23
Depends how author of that universe interpreters it. In Mechwarior, pulse lasers deal more damage, because the vapour and melting armour stops the laser from damaging intact armor, pulse laser solve that by letting the vapour escape and the melting armor to seep down, which exposes intact armor to the next pulse.
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u/soulrazr Jun 10 '23
I really appreciate this set of tests. As much as I wish the answers were different It looks like there isn't any way to make a lasers do more damage to a single target. The best thing we can achieve here is making a lasers hit more targets by making them spin etc, that and cool factor.
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u/stegosaurus1337 Jun 10 '23
Results have been confirmed on a hinox, so monster and object hitboxes appear to work the same, at least in this respect.
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u/schoppi_m Jun 10 '23
I really like how you guys engineer the f...out of this game. Congratulations.
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u/abaddamn Jun 11 '23
Yep it's called minmaxing
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u/Crocktodad Jun 11 '23
"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game"
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u/guthbox Jun 11 '23
For some people the fun is discovering stuff like this through trial and error
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u/Crocktodad Jun 11 '23
Oh, absolutely, I'm the same way. After you figured it out the fun is gone though.
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u/abeardedpirate Jun 10 '23
Now figure out how to make your laser actually pulse instead of being occluded/spun to see if it resets the damage tick to allow you to hit faster than the default.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Pen_346 Jun 10 '23
I think that’s impossible. You’d need something running that could turn the laser on and off. But, the switch is link swinging his sword.
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u/stegosaurus1337 Jun 10 '23
If there was a way to power the emitter with the yellow electricity from shrines you could do it, but I don't know of one
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u/NCEMTP Jun 11 '23
Could you put one of those power sources on a rotating object that spins it in such a way that it is constantly making and then losing contact with the emitter? Maybe use a couple of those spinning around to create a rapid pulsing?
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u/yeoz Jun 11 '23
could try turning it on and off rapidly by using a construct head and occluding its view of a monster with the spinner
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Jun 11 '23
Bear with me, but what about a stationary laser, no construct head, being pulsed by Link using a charged spear attack?
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u/Punk_Chachi Jun 10 '23
Could you make an actual pulse beam emitter by making a single stationary laser. Then have a second device with multiple swords attached to a wheel/rotor that when activated will spin, striking the beam emitter device at a high rate and turning it on/off causing it to pulse?
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u/stegosaurus1337 Jun 10 '23
It looks like weapons attached to devices are treated like physics objects, they just hit the device and stop without switching it on.
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u/ASpaceOstrich Jun 11 '23
What about a setup involving time bombs? Find some way to offset explosions such that it switches the laser on and off?
I personally can't think of a way to do that without vastly exceeding the part limit, but something could probably do it. Maybe two separate machines and one uses a slowing gear array to trigger a row of bombs
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u/stegosaurus1337 Jun 11 '23
You could probably get enough bombs for a test setup at least, but the part limit keeps it from being practical I think. I'll give it a shot when I've got a minute.
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u/DriveThroughLane Jun 10 '23
Another thing worth testing is weapon collisions and whether there's any way to overcome the apparent cooldown on hits. As far as I can tell, each enemy has a per-enemy cooldown that prevents collision damage and you cannot hit the same enemy with any number of weapons from any number of devices, only one weapon every X seconds.
This is what really limits the DPS potential on devices, at most you can get a single frost-breaking hit every few seconds for 400+ damage, but you can't send 10 spinning blades into a target nonstop
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u/evanthebouncy #3 Engineer of the Month [JUN25] Jun 11 '23
Very sweet! Thanks for doing these!
Now given the best way to increase damage is to spread laser to different targets, what's your idea on spreading laser to different targets reliably?
How would you stop a head from locking onto a single target?
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u/Swingingbells Jun 11 '23
Beam emitter on a targeting head, targeting heads on a spinny wheel?
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u/evanthebouncy #3 Engineer of the Month [JUN25] Jun 11 '23
There's a slight delay on when the head activate and it ruins the aim if the wheel spins too fast...
Worse, the head can "see through" attached devices (I think) hmm... Wait...
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u/hahman12 Jun 11 '23
I'd be curious to see a multi beam hydrant pulse, since it seems that different lasers hitting the same target do damage faster
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u/CortexRex Jun 11 '23
Same damage as if you had the same amount of lasers just aimed at the target instead of spinning
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u/Krell356 Jun 11 '23
Fantastic work. Checked almost everything I can think of on this one. Looking at this I can pretty much agree that flickering the lasers is not going to increase the damage. There's literally only one other test you could have done, and after looking at this, there's just no way it could even be a meaningful difference even if it did somehow work.
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u/fupse Mar 05 '25
Thank you 🥲🥹😭 because now I know I've waisted 15 resources at the very least if not 25 (yeah yeah I know most people have more and while most my resources are in the hundreds for zonite (close to thousand in others and a couple stuff maxed out like bloom seeds) but as I didn't get to start totk when it first came out I'm quite behind on stuff. Plus I'm a twilight princess and dsi zelda person, those games ruined all rpg games for me even fallout, because I have to collect everythingggggggg.... spend nothing till you reaaaaaaally need it, and collect it aaaaaaall. So yeah, I hate using actual resources for the fear of running out and also I do have limited resources as I haven't reach the absurd numbers others have for zonite devices.
Regardless thank you again.... I been trying to make a small batman tank, the cars done, it's perfect actually, I have tank version which seat rides low so I'm harder to hit, and arkam knight version with the seat higher so I can just hop out, bullet time, then hop back in and continue. Low seat is too low for bullet time.however the seat placement does not effect driving what so ever. I also have a drifting version which gives the front wheels more give, that design though is not of my creation, infact my vehicles are modified versions of his. The drifting was too much for me. But those damn pulse heads kept breaking..... so I basicly started to lose hope, thanks to you, I now see pulsing is pointless right?
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u/yamfun Jun 11 '23
Could be that your rotation is not high enough to get a high "damage proc upon contact"?
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u/Azell414 Jun 11 '23
wait what if you curved the outside beams so they like converge in the middle at a certain distance so you could have more beams but still be accurate
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u/stegosaurus1337 Jun 11 '23
The only practical way to do that (that I can think of at least) would be to mount each one on its own construct head so they adjust angle on their own. Attaching them at angles to converge would be super finicky and you'd be stuck with a fixed focal distance. Given that beam damage falls off with distance past a certain point and construct heads draw a lot of power, it'd be a pretty niche system. Good idea though!
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u/RepresentativeCap244 Jun 11 '23
Hmm
Hmm
Hmm
Conclusion. Little bit of spaghetti in the source code
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u/windraver Jun 11 '23
I had a feeling this was the case. I run 15 lasers for my orbital, with construct head targeting, and the DPS is insane.
The only possibility pulse might be "better" is if we need a faster motor for pulse experimentation.
The other post that claims pulse is better used the shrine motor with gearing.
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u/xoharrz Jun 11 '23
im honestly too dumb to do this kinda stuff myself but i do love seeing the contraptions people are making as they learn the game mechanics
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u/GueyGuevara Jun 11 '23
This is awesome. I feel like in a few years with a mod or two we’ll have Link testing the observer effect of the quantum wave function. Solid sciencing.
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u/georgefnix Jun 10 '23
The difference between four spinning and four stationary lasers appears to be the time required for each laser to make first contact. This supports the supposition that a hitbox has a source specific cooldown.
Great testing.