Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Why pet crafting is borked
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Halthron
Thu Apr 28, 2005 2:10 pm
#1
This was the first day I gave CU pet crafting a try because I knew it was screwed up. Since it went live in this way, I resolved to figure out why.
This will assume you understand how pet crafting worked two days ago.
There are two reasons why petcrafting is currently screwed up. The first are the abnormally high fortitude and cleverness stats. The second, and most important, are the resists.
It has long been believed by some that while fortitude did not play a role in determining pet level, other than a bonus for armor, cleverness did play a role. How much wasn't exactly sure but it wasn't unusual for me to has a normal non-CH pet with about 6k mind and put a single point into mental and end up with three more levels.
I believe that the exceptionally high mind on a number of creatures now is a contributing factor to the high levels being seen. But, I don't think that's entirely all.
I also believe that the current system of resists is playing a larger role.
Resists don't work like they did in the past but they don't work like SOE advertised either. The level calculation works just like we're used to but the problem is that now, there are bigger numbers involved with some of the resists.
Essentially, every resist that we knew as "special" wasn't modified. Fitting but true. It seems it was only the effective resists that were changed. Let me give some examples:
A berserk Kahmurra used to have 20% Special Kinetic and 5% in each of Bl/He/Co/El/Ac. It now has 20 in Kinetic with 261 in each of Bl/He/Co/El/Ac.
A huf dun has 25% kinetic special protection with 10% in each of En/Bl/He/El/Ac. It now has 25 in Kinetic and 348 in each of En/Bl/He/El/Ac.
While I have other example I could give, letthe last be the Bol. These guys used to have 35% kinetic with 20% En/He/Co/Ac. They now have 35 in Kinetic with 2087 in En/He/Co/Ac.
How easy is it going to be to whack down the resists when you're starting with over 2k in a value?
I believe that it remains possible to build pets with the borked DNA, it will just require coming from a different direction until this is fixed. As a test, I used some berserk Khamurra DNA, which has a fortitude of 1000, to build a non-CH pet. Here is the DNA I used:
sludge panther in Phy & prow
gubber
berserk kahmurra in psych
cor butt drone
Essentialy some stuff I was curious about then started thinking about this.
The template turned out entirely normal, with everything vulnerable except Kin & blast, which went up a bit when placed in the skin. I neglected to write down the exact stats. but there wasn't anything out of the ordinary.
The resulting pet was a level 9 squall with 1845/1037/552.
I have no plans to convert the pets in my datapad until we learn if this is the system the devs intended.
This will assume you understand how pet crafting worked two days ago.
There are two reasons why petcrafting is currently screwed up. The first are the abnormally high fortitude and cleverness stats. The second, and most important, are the resists.
It has long been believed by some that while fortitude did not play a role in determining pet level, other than a bonus for armor, cleverness did play a role. How much wasn't exactly sure but it wasn't unusual for me to has a normal non-CH pet with about 6k mind and put a single point into mental and end up with three more levels.
I believe that the exceptionally high mind on a number of creatures now is a contributing factor to the high levels being seen. But, I don't think that's entirely all.
I also believe that the current system of resists is playing a larger role.
Resists don't work like they did in the past but they don't work like SOE advertised either. The level calculation works just like we're used to but the problem is that now, there are bigger numbers involved with some of the resists.
Essentially, every resist that we knew as "special" wasn't modified. Fitting but true. It seems it was only the effective resists that were changed. Let me give some examples:
A berserk Kahmurra used to have 20% Special Kinetic and 5% in each of Bl/He/Co/El/Ac. It now has 20 in Kinetic with 261 in each of Bl/He/Co/El/Ac.
A huf dun has 25% kinetic special protection with 10% in each of En/Bl/He/El/Ac. It now has 25 in Kinetic and 348 in each of En/Bl/He/El/Ac.
While I have other example I could give, letthe last be the Bol. These guys used to have 35% kinetic with 20% En/He/Co/Ac. They now have 35 in Kinetic with 2087 in En/He/Co/Ac.
How easy is it going to be to whack down the resists when you're starting with over 2k in a value?
I believe that it remains possible to build pets with the borked DNA, it will just require coming from a different direction until this is fixed. As a test, I used some berserk Khamurra DNA, which has a fortitude of 1000, to build a non-CH pet. Here is the DNA I used:
sludge panther in Phy & prow
gubber
berserk kahmurra in psych
cor butt drone
Essentialy some stuff I was curious about then started thinking about this.
The template turned out entirely normal, with everything vulnerable except Kin & blast, which went up a bit when placed in the skin. I neglected to write down the exact stats. but there wasn't anything out of the ordinary.
The resulting pet was a level 9 squall with 1845/1037/552.
I have no plans to convert the pets in my datapad until we learn if this is the system the devs intended.
Message Edited by Halthron on 04-29-2005 12:11 AM
LloydPickering
Thu Apr 28, 2005 2:27 pm
#2
It sounds to me that all they need to do would be convert special resists to register in the new system, and scale the resist part of the calculation to change from 0-100 to 0-max_resists.
That would solve the problems with the resists.
As for the high cleverness, perhaps they could scale that relating to CLs of the donor...it may not be as pretty, but it would work.
They must have done something like this already with wild creatures as the creatures we kill don't come out with insane levels.
As it stands I am worried about the backlash from CHs demanding money back for pets that are unusable because the devs havn't sorted out a conversion formula.
That would solve the problems with the resists.
As for the high cleverness, perhaps they could scale that relating to CLs of the donor...it may not be as pretty, but it would work.
They must have done something like this already with wild creatures as the creatures we kill don't come out with insane levels.
As it stands I am worried about the backlash from CHs demanding money back for pets that are unusable because the devs havn't sorted out a conversion formula.
Halthron
Thu Apr 28, 2005 11:39 pm
#4
I agree that missing specials are a problem, unfortunately, between what I've seen and what I've read (ie, I have no proof), I'm leaning toward the opinion the devs may have intentionally removed them to stop people us from crafting 100 health gnorts with strong poison & intimidation to make up for the states professions lost.
droid327
Fri Apr 29, 2005 2:36 am
#5
Halthron wrote:
I agree that missing specials are a problem, unfortunately, between what I've seen and what I've read (ie, I have no proof), I'm leaning toward the opinion the devs may have intentionally removed them to stop people us from crafting 100 health gnorts with strong poison & intimidation to make up for the states professions lost.
If thats true, thats very short-sighted on the part of the devs - specials were the only thing besides HAM, damage, and resists that defined a pet, and the only parameter that wasnt on a "get as much as you can" basis. Trying to get a certain combination of specials was often the trickiest part of keeping within HAM and resist levels for hitting your target CL.
Also, wild creatures seem to not be doing special attacks either, that i have seen, so its not just a pet balance issue. That really waters down upper end creatures like gorax, krayt, kimo that used to have nasties like force strike and plague strike...
Halthron
Fri Apr 29, 2005 3:07 am
#6
Which would fit if they couldn't easily remove the abilities from just some animals.
Halthron
Fri Apr 29, 2005 3:47 am
#7
Sampling MH
The MH in question has a health of 6144.
Hard: 354
Fort: 1k
Dex 69
End: 513
Int: 71
Cle: 1k
Dep: 1k
Cour: 515
Fier: 106
Pow: 287
Kin 75, 3391 on Bl/He/Co/Ac, rest vulnerable. No specials
I hate to say it but 60% of what we know about specific DNA has been invalidated. Which means we have to redo the SWG Creatures database. Not that we should do that until SOE decides if they're going to fix the critters to fit the system they said would exist or not. They said there would be no special resists, they're quite wrong.
The MH in question has a health of 6144.
Hard: 354
Fort: 1k
Dex 69
End: 513
Int: 71
Cle: 1k
Dep: 1k
Cour: 515
Fier: 106
Pow: 287
Kin 75, 3391 on Bl/He/Co/Ac, rest vulnerable. No specials
I hate to say it but 60% of what we know about specific DNA has been invalidated. Which means we have to redo the SWG Creatures database. Not that we should do that until SOE decides if they're going to fix the critters to fit the system they said would exist or not. They said there would be no special resists, they're quite wrong.
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