Very intelligent question, I had to read it twice to understand it though!
No, the damage relates to what it would do in one tick of battle. So, using the example of an Officer - it would do its two stars of damage per tick, lukily it fires all 3 ticks which is always nice.
May I advise using IRC?
You can easily throw questions out there and meet the community who play. Posting on forums is fine but it means we can reply in real time and you may get more out of it:
Simply click the 'Live Chat' link on your menu ingame.