Damage per minuteDPM
Damage per minute: how much a gun deals over a sustained exchange, alpha multiplied by how often it can fire.
Also known as DPM, sustained damage.
DPM is the sustained counterpart to alpha. It answers what a gun produces if it never stops firing, which is what decides a long brawl where both vehicles are trading in the open.
DPM = alpha x 60 / reloadIt is a ceiling, not a measurement. Nobody fires on cooldown for a full minute: aiming, repositioning and waiting for a target all cut into it, so a gun with the best DPM on paper often loses to one that hits harder per shot.
Crew skills, equipment and consumables all raise it, which is why the figure shown for a stock configuration and the figure a fully equipped vehicle reaches can differ by a fifth or more.
Related terms
Alpha damageThe damage a single penetrating shell deals, before the plus or minus 25 percent the game rolls on every shot.ReloadThe time between one shot and the next being ready, or for a magazine gun the time to refill the whole magazine.Rate of fireHow many shells a gun can fire in a minute, the reciprocal of its reload time.Damage per gameDamage per game: the average damage dealt per battle, the most quoted measure of personal output and the one most sensitive to which vehicles are played.