Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: A couple things noted from Talth's creature list
I just glanced down the list and I'm fairly sure that the 'Sentry hermit spider' and 'Spineflap queen' didn't used to have any kind of poison. I'll have to check these today for my be/ranger but if this is correct then it would appear that special attacks don't add as much to the CL rating as expected especially since we only used to see poison appear on CL20+ critters in the past. Either that or damage over timeattacks are considered weak by the devs now that they cannot be fatal.
The average ham appears to have increased by around 1000-2000 points on the whole for CL30 and under critters when kinetic resistance (or energy resistance) isn't present
Here's something very interesting...
Leviasquall - Kinetic 15% /Cold Elect 30% / Energy Stun Restraint 5% / vul. Stun (CL19) 5000-5160 HAM
Wood Mite R.G - Kinetic 25% / Energy 15% / Restraint Cold Acid Elect 5% / vul. Blast Stun Heat (CL18) 2500-2900
So here you have a difference of exactly 1 CL point but one is focussed towards HAM while the other is focussed towards resistances. I'd say using this we can start building up some solid ideas of just what HAM and resistances mean for CL expenditure. (should the leviasquall be both 5% resistant AND vulnerable to stun damage?)
Leviasquall has 6 resistances and 1 vulnerability to a very uncommon damage type. The Wood mite royal guard has 6 resistances and 3 vulnerabilities to semi-common damage types. One approach here might be to assign 'points' to what a resistance is. Here's a quick summery of the two critters. The very common damage types are assigned 3 points per resist, lesser types get 2 points and the almost never used types like stun and cold get 1 point. Vulnerabilities get a fixed 10 points which are then multiplied by the x3 or x2 weights I mentioned.
- kinetic 45
- elec 30
- cold 30
- energy 15
- restraint 5
- stun -10
- total =115
- kinetic 75
- energy 45
- restraint 5
- cold 5
- acid 10
- elec 10
- blast -10
- stun -10
- heat -20
- total = 110
The Levisquall comes out with a higher total protection compared to the Bark Mite RG however the difference is very much negligible, so in the end it does indeed come down to the HAM itself which is really where you can blatently see a difference. It looks from my wieghting system that the resistances are very much even as you'd expect from this new system.
That could mean that as noted earlier on 2000 points of HAM is roughly equal to around 1 CL point when your talking about, now this doesn't mean that you can make a CL10 critter with 10l of HAM, naturally that would be totally stupid. This would also suggest that you get basically a HAM point quota for each CL rating, Looking around you see that CL10 critters can get around 2000 HAM, CL20 can get around 5000. That to me says that you can get roughly x200 of the CL value for the HAM itself, this does seemto rise bit by bit as we're seeing for every +CL10 your getting a bonus of an additional +1000 for the HAM in general. You can see this pattern continue across the board at the moment.
- CL10 = average of 2000 HAM
- CL20 = average of 5000 HAM (+1000 bonus)
- CL30 = average of 8000 HAM (+2000 bonus)
- CL40 = average of 11000 HAM (+3000 bonus)
- CL50 = average of 14000 HAM (+4000 bonus)
This does obviously vary depending on what kind of resistances you go for. A good case in point is the Torton from Rori which is CL24. In this case your looking a critter which as very weak resistances so they gain benefits from a high HAM to compensate.
Stun 45% / Kinetic Energy Blast Restraint 10% / vul.Heat Cold Acid Elect
- stun 45
- kinetic 30
- energy 30
- blast 10
- restraint 10
- heat - 20
- cold -10
- acid -10
- elec - 10
- total = 75
A total of 75 appears a bit lower than the usual 100 found at CL20ish range. When you do the math you come out with an estimated HAM of 6200 and of course the Torton actually has 6100-7000. The math was basically 1400+(24x200) if you want to double check it.
Now assuming that these rules are correct I wonder what kind of stats you could focus into a CL50 clone....
First off we have 14000 HAM to spend and 500 resistant stat points. Since kinetic protection is high for PvE pets thats where to focus plus CHs seem to love armor but lets see if it's really worth it.
- kinetic 90% (270)
- energy 90% (270)
- heat vulnerable (-20)
- acid vulnerable (-10)
- cold vulnerable (-10)
- blast vulnerable (-10)
- stun vulnerable (-10)
- restraint vulnerable (-10)
- elec vulnerable (-10)
- total = 460
... now this is assuming that the cost for kinetic and energy doesn't rise along with the resistance, frankly i personally think that the closer you get to that glorious 100% kinetic resistance the more expensive things get. So I'd say given that you can most probably get around 70-80% without going over your quota and still keeping that nice meaty 14k HAM.
But can you make the old 75% CL35 critters when you have roughly 300-350 stat points to spend and give them light armor?
... so yes ifthis system is correct you can indeed create a pre-nerf 'Graul Mauler' typeas long as you have control over making them very very very vulnerable to other damage types.Soyes, I just I was wrong that you'd 'NEVER' see CL30ish again but I'd say you'll never see them in the wild again.
Now this is all assuming we have complete control over the resistances, given how much power that provides they we might find we're forced to only make minor changes to the base resistances that the dna sample provides. 
But then again, this system is balanced. While a 75% kinetic CL35 critter with light armor would totally own in PvE brawls it'd totally suck in PvP which is very fair. 
This is very good work Tal-N.
Do you think that there will be somekind of safety precaution against a creature having any single, or small selection of resists beyond a certain percentage. I haven't been on test but from what I can see of the new creatures listed on talth's site few creatures below cl 20 have resists better than 25 or 30, cl up to 30 seem to have up the 40's. Just looking at what data I've seen so far I wonder if there might be a limiter on resists, like the limiter that seems to exist on armor.
My other question for you is in two parts.
1) In your woodmite/levisquall comparison. Do you think that the cost of armor will be outweighed at any pointby the cost of hamm.One obviously had his normal hamm rating slashed almost in half, yetkept his rating.At what cost is hamm?
2) Moving on toyour webmaster example of resists the cost of the light armor was the 75, the equivilent of 25 resist in either kinetic or energy. This cost would seem to be a little low since armor is basically an extra resist of 50 against most attacks, this would make armor a no brainer for pets designed for hunting. But for PVP armoris of limited use because of the availablity of armor piercers. So the obvious alternative is to double the hamm or at least greatly increasing it, which hopefully we would have more of a free hand in.
So do you think that there would be a point where it is simply easier to increase the hits of a creature instead of it's resists?Especially at lower levels.(Costs of healing not withstanding.)
Keep this stuff coming, even if itturns outonly to beconjecture it is thought provoking to say the least.
Do you think that there will be somekind of safety precaution against a creature having any single, or small selection of resists beyond a certain percentage. I haven't been on test but from what I can see of the new creatures listed on talth's site few creatures below cl 20 have resists better than 25 or 30, cl up to 30 seem to have up the 40's.
Honestly I dunno, there isn't much evidence to suggest that there is a cap plus there the Spitting Rawl on Naboo is around CL19 and is 100% acid resistant so that doesn't seem to suggest any kind of cap on resistances based on the level. Vulnerabilities are also an odd thing since there are some species which have a large number of resistances (around 5 in some cases) while they are actually of a fairly high level. On the one hand it would seem like having 75% and light armor around CL30 is kinda overpowered, but as I said all it takes is for them to be sent into PvP and they'd be utterly destoryed because of all the different damage types. A commando would be able to quite easily burn down a CL30 critter within 12 seconds if it was heat vulnerable so the devs might see that as a fair trade off.
In your woodmite/levisquall comparison. Do you think that the cost of armor will be outweighed at any pointby the cost of hamm.One obviously had his normal hamm rating slashed almost in half, yetkept his rating.At what cost is hamm?
It's impossible to tell, clearly there's a HAM and resistance stat quota trade off in action here as you can see in several cases (only the arachne I have broken down but a quick glance at other critters looks like they suffered somewhere) clearly your looking at around a 50-75 stat penalty so that would bring something like a CL20 critter to a quota of only 25 which isn't really that great a trade off really. One mistake i think I made with this analysis is that I said a CL50 critter would have 500 when it might actually have a bit more or less. A CL20 critter has around 100, a CL30 has around 300 so the CL50 might have 500 or even more.
If the HAM can be traded for resistances I'd need to have a much larger cross section of species and alot more work to try and see a pattern. One thing I htink i saw is that the trade off isn't constant but is on a curve whereby the higher the original CL the larger benefits from trading resistances for HAM and vice versa.
Moving on toyour webmaster example of resists the cost of the light armor was the 75, the equivilent of 25 resist in either kinetic or energy. This cost would seem to be a little low since armor is basically an extra resist of 50 against most attacks, this would make armor a no brainer for pets designed for hunting. But for PVP armoris of limited use because of the availablity of armor piercers. So the obvious alternative is to double the hamm or at least greatly increasing it, which hopefully we would have more of a free hand in.
If I'm recalling correctly armor gives a 25% reduction in damage to non-ap attacks, no bonus to equal and 25% to higher. I might be wrong but the fact is that armor is very flexible stuff however it's also pointless given certain situations. I estimated a 75 point expenditude but recall that it might be higher in which case your looking at something which costs almost the whole perk from being CL50. I seriously doubt that you could double the HAM from giving up 75 points, you'd certainly regain that +4000 bonus which is almost equal to that protection and perhaps gain another 2000 but I doubt you could do much more. But since armor is added before the special protection instead of at the same time it can make the difference between 1000 points of damage first being lowered to 500 (assuming it's halfs the damage done being being non-ap1) and then it's lowered again by the special protection which will be over 50% so that brings it to 250.
However if you simply lose the armor and throw in some extra ham or increase the resistance by 25% in a certain area your simply not getting as significant protection because of how the damage and protections are calculated.
For what it's worth, I've gotten poisoned by sentry hermits a few times in the past couple weeks. The poison is really weak though, wears off within 1 minute or so and doesn't do much damage.
Case
I'm not sure they don't have any effect. Note that the Sentry hermit is CL 10 and only has mild poison while the Spineflap Queen is CL 19 and has medium poison. Look at 3 creatures that are CL 10 - Nuna, Fanned Rawl, and Spiked Krevol. All 3 have sthe same resists None/None/Stun. The Spiked Krevol has the lowest ham range seen and one special attack - Crippling Strike. The Nuna has the next highest ham range and no special attacks. The fanned rawl however has the highest ham range seen and 2 special attacks. I see 3 possible explanations - 1) The HAM range you get from holding the mouse over the ham bar of a targetted creature is not accurate enough to give us a clear picture of how this works. 2) There is actually a small variance in what can be found at any given CL. 3) Rather than special attacks helping to determine CL, allowed specials are determined by CL.
But does this new bit of math actually apply to the full range of critters. From what I can see there seems to be a resistance quota based on the CL rating much like there is a HAM quota as well. Please note that all CL10 and undercritters has stun vulnerability it seems.
- Nuna (CL10) no resistances and 825-925 HAM, no specials
- Womp Rat (CL10) no resistance and 820-880 HAM, intimidation attack
- Zucca boar (CL10) no resistance and 720-750, stun attack
..so at this level your seeing that the math doesn't work. By all accounts these should be around 2000 HAM but they clearly half that. However once you hit CL13 it does start to work. Even at CL11 the math for this system doesn't work so it almost seems like there's an intended limitation around CL10 because they're non-ch species. Now we know it works at around CL20 so lets skip that and go to CL30ish.
- Grizzled Dewback (CL27) Kinetic 35% / Energy 20% / Heat 40% / Blast Restraint 10% / vul. Stun Cold Acid Elect and 8000-8660, knockdown & dizzy
..now this is a bit higher in the HAM suggesting that the resistances as below quota, this CL27 critter should have an average around 7100. If you add up the resistances you come out with.. 215.This is almost double what you expect from CL20 and is a trend that continues, the Dragonets come out at 195, the Mountain squill at CL34 actually has a total of 300 and is pretty much dot on for what you expect a CL34 critter has for ham. The estimate gives you 9200 and the actual HAM range is 8900-10400. This suggestions that your average resistance quota for CL30 is indeed around 300 stat points. That explains why the Grizzled dewback has a HAM bonus because it's got resistances similar to a CL20 critter.
So does the CL rating mean that you have a resistance quota that is roughly the CL itself multiplied by 10? Well there only one way to check...
Now this hasn't taken armor into consideration yet, but lets test this on a species we all know and love.. the Arachne Webmaster.
Ok so it's CL50, meaning that the HAM should have an average around 14000. The resistance stat quota should be around 500 points too. So lets see if this applies...
(AR: Light) Kinetic Energy 35% /Heat Cold Acid 60% / Restraint 5% / vul. blast stun elec& 11252HAM
- kinetic 105
- energy 105
- heat 120
- cold 60
- acid 60
- restraint 5
- blast -10
- stun -10
- elec -10
- total = 425
... so overall a very impressive result considering that the armor hasn't been encounted before, the odd thing is that armor appears to negate the bonus usually given out for being a higher CL rating. Indeed a CL50 critter should get a nice meaty +4000 however if they get armor then they miss out. The fact that the arachne is 75 points short of the 500 mark could suggest a penalty to resistances as well however the HAM is also higher by a small amount so it's possible that they forfiet half of the 100 point quota gained from each 10 ratings you have. Without further details on more CL50+ critters it's hard to say if these rules continue to apply however they seem very accurate so far.
There may be another shift towards te "badd-ass" side of the scale at "tame cap."
Bug report the leviasquall... the vulnerable and resist thing is wacky.
-T
Message Edited by Traigus on 12-01-2003 03:55 PM
I can not speak of specifics, but here is what I have noticed. On Pikets, I think they all used to have armor, now the "Piket" doesn't. I have to go by conning, but they all have similar ham, but the "pikets" con dark blue without armor, the Longhorn I think are white and have light armor and many resistances. there is also a Piket that cons yellow that is loaded with armor and resistances. A baby has also been introduced, but has no armor and little value what I can see.
I have also noticed that creatures that assist one another which is most now, tend to have a higher CL for their actual toughness.
Female Kaadu, 1200 ham, CL 12
Male Kaadu, 2200 ham, CL 14
I can see trends and tendencies, but most of it looks like someone was shooting from the hip rather than using a calculator. Its a shame.
Well as stated the very low CL mobs which are under CL12 typically cannot have this system applied to them as the stats down this low appear very arbitary. The trouble is that there's isn't many cases where you have similar CL rated critters within a species that have social and antisocial AI. The Pickets spring to mind as being one of the species which vary within a species but the difference between their CL ratings is quite distinct so it'd not be very reliable to make a measure from. I do however doubt that their CL rating is raised by being social as there is every possibility of getting them isolated so that its just a one on one encounter.
I see that the rock beetle is listed as having 15% kinetic, which is correct for live servers. But, I'm 99% sure that my rock beetle on TestCenter only has 5% kinetic resists.
Talthazar, how did you make that list? Could we have some more information about it?