Clarity on how stats are applied

[wwwJam]

The way that stats, or at least damage bonuses, are applied is rather unclear in-game. After a lot of testing, I've come to find how these upgrades seem to interact.
When I originally made this post, I thought all upgrade categories (weapon, tag masteries, elements, "all weapons" etc.) were multiplicative with each other. However, after much more testing, this appears to not quite be the case. Or rather, there are simply fewer categories than I thought.
TL;DR at bottom

My findings so far on how damage stats are applied-
-Meta (permanent) upgrades, at least for damage are multiplicative. You get what you pay for.
-Weapon upgrades, Tag Masteries, and "All Weapon" upgrades all stack in an additive manner regardless of their element. I simply call them General upgrades. As a whole, they're multiplicative with other categories.
-Overclocks are multiplicative with other upgrades, and additive with themselves, including OCs from other weapons. Weapon specific upgrades on the pause screen appear to reflect this change (though with oddly drastic increases/decreases that I'm not sure are correct), but not tag masteries, which currently remain their static multiples of 5, but their additional damage is indeed affected by OCs.
-Artifacts seem slightly mixed. In my testing, Gold Tipped Bullets and Pickled Nitra are additive with each other, but multiplicative with other categories. However, The Squint-EE5 act strangely. They appear to apply as if they were a General upgrade. From what I've been able to tell, they simply subtract 30% from those upgrades (which as far as I can tell won't be reflected in the pause screen). So, if a weapon had +50% total bonus damage from General upgrades, it now has 20%, and then you apply the other categories' bonuses. I have not been able to find the Pay2Win Console to test its interactions yet.
-Crits apply as you'd imagine. If you have a 200% crit bonus, or simply double damage, your shot will indeed deal double damage.

And some grade school math to illustrate all this-
Using the Deepcore for an example, whose base damage is 35. With the max meta damage boost of 48%, its damage is 52, and the game treats that as its base damage.
+35% damage from weapon upgrades: it's now 70 damage
+20% Kinetic tag damage: Now it's ~81
+20% Projectile tag damage: 91
+10% All Weapons damage bonus: ~96
---The above upgrades stack additively, even though they're technically in different "Categories," for a total of +85% damage. Were they multiplicative, it'd be 108, or even 111 if the tag elements mattered. Instead, they are all just "General" upgrades.
+High Calibur Rounds OC for 30% bonus damage: ~125.
+Side Arm OC from somewhere else giving 25% bonus damage: 149
---OCs stack multiplicatively with the other upgrades, but additively with themselves, these two adding up to a +55% bonus to the 96 that the previous upgrades ended on.
+Gold Tipped Bullets with 125 gold giving 25% bonus damage: ~186
+Pickled Nitra and you have 30 nitra giving 60% damage bonus: ~276
---Like OCs, artifacts (or at the very least GTB and PN) stack with other bonuses multiplicatively, but additively with themselves, for a total bonus here of +85%.
---The total actual % bonus of all of these so far is not a mere 225% as if it were all additive, but instead a 530% total
+And say you have 250% crit damage bonus: You hit for 670 when you crit. An effective total of 1288% damage.

I'd imagine the same principles apply to other stats (fire rate, reload speed etc.) but they're harder to quantify and some seem to hit diminishing returns. If you've done testing on this, please let us know.

So what does this mean? Basically just that Overclocks and Artifacts are much stronger than they may seem if you thought that they stacked additively. The Cryocannon's Frostburn OC's +15% bonus damage seems weak, but is likely a bigger boost overall than an epic +35% general upgrade that you might get if you chose to salvage it, provided you have other damage upgrades already. Gold Tipped Bullets "only" giving 20% damage for 100 gold is actually a much larger potential increase in damage than buying a +20% bonus to all weapons. And the Squint-EE5 are even MORE busted than you might have previously thought!

Why is this important to know? Because it's very easy to assume ALL upgrades are additive if you just spam weapon-specific upgrades to hit OCs faster. That's certainly what I assumed. This kind of info is important for making intelligent decisions with upgrades, especially once more artifacts and OCs are added in the future. It could make a huge difference in a person's run to know this stuff!

TL;DR: Most upgrades you'll find in a run stack in an additive manner, but Overclocks and (most) Artifacts are multiplicative with all those upgrades. This isn't clear in-game and it's easy to assume that all upgrades, OCs and Artifacts just stack additively. Some manner of clarity on this in game or just anywhere would be appreciated.

[badgerfroth]

Good to know, thanks

[RazielBG]

Finally an answer.
I assumed this was the case, but I could find no information anywhere whether different category upgrades multiply or stack between categories.
However, is it true also for the different element upgrades?
for example does dmg to all weapons add or multiply with cold damage.
Because if it's the later then i guess the cryo cannon's burn means you get increased benefits in spreading over cold and fire damage rather than focusing on 1.

[null]

Devs of Rogue Genesia sort of solved that problem, by displaying total multiplier you would have if you pick an upgrade.

It doesn't explicitly state what's multiplicative and what's additive, but it gives you the tools required to figure it out on the fly.

[wwwJam]

Originally posted by RazielBG:

Finally an answer.
I assumed this was the case, but I could find no information anywhere whether different category upgrades multiply or stack between categories.
However, is it true also for the different element upgrades?
for example does dmg to all weapons add or multiply with cold damage.
Because if it's the later then i guess the cryo cannon's burn means you get increased benefits in spreading over cold and fire damage rather than focusing on 1.

In my experience, the various Tag Masteries are all lumped together. Using my own example, if you have a +20% projectile damage and +20% kinetic damage for a weapon that can benefit from both, it is still a total of +40%, not 44% it'd be if it were multiplicative.
As an aside there, I don't think the Frostburn OC adds fire damage. It simply allows it to inflict burn. It's similar to the Wave Cooker's lvl 18 OC that lets it inflict slow (which is just the chill/freeze effect). It doesn't give it cold damage, just gives it the debuff.

However, I haven't looked into the "All Weapons" upgrades. My initial assumption is they were Tag Masteries, but they oddly actually don't show up on the stat sheets at all currently. Not damage, not reload speed, nothing. In fact, I think I had an odd experience where a few All Weapons upgrades actually weren't having an effect. I'll try and do some testing later today to see how they affect damage (since the other stats are harder to quantify), along with more testing for different elements just to be sure.

Originally posted by null:

Devs of Rogue Genesia sort of solved that problem, by displaying total multiplier you would have if you pick an upgrade.

It doesn't explicitly state what's multiplicative and what's additive, but it gives you the tools required to figure it out on the fly.

That sounds like a decent solution, though it'd be a difficult to apply this answer to Tag Mastery upgrades. It seems this already happens on the stat sheet AFTER picking an upgrade, as a lot of times I see bonuses there that aren't multiples of 5%, stuff like 291% or whatever. I need to do more testing with that as well.

[SvenS2]

Thanks for sharing. Would be nice to have this thread pinned.

[Xnian]

Originally posted by wwwJam:

However, I haven't looked into the "All Weapons" upgrades. My initial assumption is they were Tag Masteries, but they oddly actually don't show up on the stat sheets at all currently. Not damage, not reload speed, nothing. In fact, I think I had an odd experience where a few All Weapons upgrades actually weren't having an effect. I'll try and do some testing later today to see how they affect damage (since the other stats are harder to quantify), along with more testing for different elements just to be sure.

I've been assuming that the all weapon upgrades just add to your permanent upgrades on the left side of the screen.

[wwwJam]

Originally posted by Xnian:

I've been assuming that the all weapon upgrades just add to your permanent upgrades on the left side of the screen.

It seems to be the case, but in a weird way. It seems that +all weapon upgrades are added to the stat sheet in a multiplicative fashion. I have the permanent damage upgrade maxed to 48%. I found a +15% all weapons damage upgrade, and it boosted it to 70%. Initially this looks weird, but it's multiplying a 148% total by 1.15, for a result of 1.702.

However, from my testing it seems this bonus is additive. I was using the Subata, which with perma upgrades has 62 base damage. With 70% bonus from only weapon upgrades, it came to just about 106 damage (it should be 105.4, but close enough. Being additive with the perma upgrade wouldn't work out).
But adding that all weapons bonus only brought it to 115. If it were properly applying to the perma upgrade, it'd make the Subata's base damage 71, and giving a 70% bonus on that would come to around 121. But 6 damage is just vanishing into the ether. Unless it's only being additively applied to the weapon bonuses: 62x1.85 gives us the 115 we're looking for. So then why does it change the permanent damage bonus if it's not correct? Odd.

Furthermore, I appear to have been dead wrong about tag masteries being multiplicative. I swear I tested extenstively across various weapons, but, in several tests now with the Subata and Deepcore, adding a tag mastery only seemed to give an additive bonus with the weapon specific upgrades. I feel like a damn fool now and need to amend the OP. I'd hate to provide false info.

OCs at the least are definitely multiplicative though. Of that I'm certain so far. And what it seems to do is multiply all bonuses, separately across the categories, by the effective amount.