Firing Cycle

Firing Cycle is the repeated process of charging, firing, and cooling down a weapon in sequence.

Explanation
The firing cycle can be decomposed into the aforementioned three phases. While all weapons have a firing phase, some may omit the charge and/or cooldown phases, which implies that the duration of the unused phases are set to zero.

If the target of the weapon is destroyed during the charge or fire phase, then the weapon immediately enters the cooldown phase.

Charge Phase
This involves warming up the weapon. The target of the weapon is locked shortly after this phase begins and cannot be changed until the end of the firing cycle. In general, only beam-type and Tier 8 weapons have this phase.

The duration of the Charge Phase is known as "Charge Time".

Fire Phase
During this phase, the weapon fires all of its available bursts (equal to Bursts per Cycle) in predefined intervals. The number of available bursts varies from weapon to weapon. For example, Wave Drivers only fire once per cycle, but the Aurora Ray can fire 6 bursts per cycle. If a weapon only has one burst, this phase ends as soon as it begins, i.e. its duration is zero. In the case of beams, "bursts" are equivalent to damage ticks, which occurs once every 0.2 seconds during the fire phase.

Each burst may include multiple shots (aka projectiles), for example the Bayonet Missile fires 3 shots per bursts. This number is defined by the "Shots Per Burst" stat.

The duration of the Fire Phase is known as "Firing Time".

Cooldown Phase
Cooldown implies that the weapon ceases to fire and has to reload. Therefore, it is also known as the "Reload Phase". After the weapon finishes reloading, the cycle restarts.

There are two official statistics that refer to the duration of this phase: "Cooldown" directly measures the cooldown time, while "Cool Down" is inversely proportional to it.

Calculating Damage Per Shot
The damage per shot of a weapon is calculated according to the following formula:

Damage per shot = DPS * (C+F+R)/N - DPS = Damage per second of the weapon C = Charging time in seconds F = Firing time in seconds R = Reloading time in seconds N = Number of available shots per cycle

Firing Cycle Display Notation
In this wiki, weapon firing cycles are expressed in the following notation: C: [Charging time in seconds] / F: [Firing time in seconds] / R: [Reloading time in seconds] / N: [Number of bursts per cycle] For example, Thermal Beam has a charging time of 2.0 seconds, a firing time of 3.0 seconds, a reloading time of 0.6 seconds and ticks 15 times. Therefore, its firing cycle can be expressed as C: 2.0 / F: 3.0 / R: 0.6 / N: 15