Bio Engineer Archive

I've been working with this the past few days in the process of trying to fill an order for two Krayt hunters with very specific reqs (not trying to use the bug, but trying to avoid it). Other BE's have helped develop this theory on the board here, whether they knew it or not

There are two types of resists in the game, special and effective. I have no idea why, I have no idea how the game treats them differently in reducing damage. But, what I believe is the case is that the effective resist is a single number that effects all resists on a creature, unless overwritten by vulnerability or a "Special" resist. Some creatures have only effective resists, such as nearly all of those dath lizards, and some mereks, and a few other things. I suspect they did this as a shortcut to reduce the data load from a creature, but it could also be an artificat of an earlier creature tracking system or perhaps there is even a logical answer for why two types of resists are necessary.

This single number is directly related to the fortitude of the creature. It is modifiable by the BE experimentation process. However, the single effective resist number is either not factoring into the CL, or it is factoring inin a single, less critical way (weighted like cold resistance, for example). Because of this, the CL's of creatures that have used any of these creatures DNA have had their CL's appear lower than what they really are.

When a creature is made using even one of these effective resists,they get overwritten by the special and vulnerabilities. So it is possible that using a merek deathshead in a creature will have zero effect on the CL, because all of the other dna used had the specials and vulns to overright the stat. However, wherever those effective resists were used counted as a zero for that slots resist value - this is why my stun resists a few night ago were coming back 30's instead of 70's like they were calculated as being - I was mixing effective and special resists through the creature.

I believe the hot "fix" has gone through all creature BE's made, and looked for the effective resist value. If it sees an effective resist value, we can't call the creature. It may not even matter if the effective resist is visible in the final stats, it is still hiding in the background.

What this means is that ANY creature made with a Kamurith or Merek or one of the others with effective resists are not callable. Possibly even if none of the stats are affected, and possibly even if only one sample used had that effective resist to transmit through the creature.

It is also possible that I've got this slightly wrong - it may only be creatures whose kinetic resist is influence by the effective resistance value that they are smacking down.

The wayto verify this is to check your creatures and see if any of those which can be called have an effective resist value showing through, or if they have an effective resist value showing through on kinetic.

I'm at work and can't check it right now.

As we feared, they nerfed without logic. Perhaps if we had been more unified in our approach to this we could have avoided this stupid "solution".

Just to make this point clear, because I didn't before...

The detemination of what is or is not a legal pet has NOTHING to do with its final stats. Only whether it was made from DNA with an effective resist number in it.

Second generation clones are also screwed, because I believethey get an effective resist numberwhen made in the first generation - thats why all those 0's become 4's.

I seriously doubt that.

Doesn't matter anyway, This "fix" is broken and the devs have already said so. What is invalid today is a bug they are working to fix.

Thats fine that you seriously doubt it, but do you have any actual reason to doubt it, outside of the fine upstanding work our devs have done so far with the system?

We are the ones who need to figure this out, because they have proven themselves incapable of doing it alone.

a note on special protection vs effectiveness:

They come from armor. Experimentation on one doesnt normally effect (or has a much smaller effect on) on the other. Optional parts (layers, krayt scales) move an attibute from effectiveness or even vulnerability to special protection.

The biggest difference between them, concering player armor is that when you get an effectiveness slice it will not effect the special protections.

I am not surprised that creatures use the same system

I forgot to add one point, they protect you equally. It makes no difference if a protection is in Effectivness or in SP. Same protection against the damage.

Until they fix it I'm not going to waste my time and just have to figure it all out again tomorrow.

They said the patch is broken, I'll wait until they say it's fixed before I start chasing nonBE geese.

---

Mattakar wrote:

can be called have an effective resist value showing through, or if they have an effective resist value showing through on kinetic.

---

i've made creatures that had effective resists and kinetic effective resists showing when you examine them when they are called. I"ve only been able to check with one person I gave these pets to so far, but his lvl 9 Kwi is callable but then his HAM is also low (in the 900's).

---

RedDragonLord wrote:

The biggest difference between them, concering player armor is that when you get an effectiveness slice it will not effect the special protections.

---

The biggest difference for a BE is that they are not additive. If I use 2 samples of special protect 40 in kinetic in physical andmental with 3 samples of effective protect 40 in kinetic in the other 3 slots, then my final creature will have a special protect 18 vs kinetic. If I had used 5 samples of special protect 40 to kinetic, I would have ended up with special protect 40 to kinetic. If I had used 5 samples of effective protect 40 to kinetic, I would have ended up with 41-43 effective protect to kinetic. This is a huge liability to the creature making process, especially since our samples do not indicate special vs effective protect on them. The lesser issue is that we cannot experiment up special protect so for pretty much all considerationseffective protect of the same level is always better for us than special protect.Especially nasty since the DNA crafting bug we've been fighting with for the past few weeks is connected to effective resist which is the more useful.

A clarification note on resist types - It deals with the armor level.

Effective = Resist at base/stated armor level.

Special Protection = Resists at one armor level higher than listed.

Vulnerability = Either one less or no armor (not exactly sure which).

So, If we had a creature or piece of armor that was classified as light armored with 40 kinetic resist in special, it would treat kinetic attacks as facing medium armor with 40%. If this were in effective, it would be light and 40%. Finally, if it were a kinetic vulnerability it would be treated as no armor. I cannot recall if I have ever seen a resist number attached to a vulnerability, so I think the damage just goes straight through.

This is why there is a tremendous advantage to having a resist in the special protection categoryand an equally tremendous detriment to having vulnerability to the attack type your are facing.

As far as the issue at hand, I'll be done with work and logging in shortly so should be able to investigate that as well. Thanks for putting your idea out for us to chew on

Its not quite right, fortunately. I didn't use many creatures with the straight resists, because they were typically very low.Almost everything of mine is callable. Of the creatures that aren't, they all had the straight effective resists in the DNA in at least one slot, from what I remember. However, some of them that I used that DNA in were ok. and I made a creature using Kamurith DNA in one slot and it was callable.

Thanks for the info on resists. I had no idea. There is probably some relation in your description to the oddity of effective resist laden creatures losing those resists when they get light armor.

Almost everyone is running around with armor piercing weapons, but now I'm curious if our armor 1 special 60% kinetic creatures are getting the benefit of Armor 2, 60% kinetic when fighting monsters (which don't pierce armor). Has anyone parsed combat records to see how damages are really being reduced?

Well it doesn't matter really, to get an ar1 60% pet you have to get it from special protections because that's the only way to get it to stick at 60%. Or even 40% for that matter.

I have yet to see an effectiveness resist on kinetic able to be experimented past ar1 to 60%.