Bio Engineer Archive

The other day I was considering why it is we can get pets that seem to break the CL system. Some of it is random or deals with other factors, however I think a large portion of it comes down to the way pets aquire their HAMs.

I will flat out state that if any of these ideas were followed, the levels of most of our creation would jump, quite significantly in some cases. I am not saying whether this is a good or bad thing, I simply want to open it up for discussion. Would this solve some of the obvious abuses without giving the system a complete overhaul?

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One of the most tweaked aspects of pets is their HAM bar. Because these bars are hit at roughly 50%/33%/17% (look familiar?), a pet with even HAM is actually wasting 50% of its total HAM. A pet with 10k health, 6.6k action, and 3.4k mind is the "ideal".

Considering a great deal of a pet's CL is based on its HAM, we can shave quite a few levels off by making uneven HAMs. This is great for those of us that want to make the most efficient pets. Unfortunately, it is likely a major contributer to any unbalanced pets.

How would the following affect our systems? Would they solve what some perceive as a problem? Would they hurt the profession too much? How do you personally feel about these?

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1) HAM experimentation remains the same. The change is that HAM contribution to CL is weighted to follow the 50/30/20 pattern that locations take hits. (Weighted HAM system)

Example: A current pet with 10k HAM would be the same in the current or system (1). A pet with 10k/7.5k/5k HAM would be a higher CL under system (1) than current because action and mind are less of a factor to the CL.

Consequences: This pet would have a lower CL than a straight 10k pet, but it is likely to be a little more realistic when compared to a wild creature. People don't feel like they have "wasted" HAM due to high action or mind.

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2) HAM experimentation remains the same, the combine stage is altered. In the final combine, the three HAM bars are averaged and each one is identical. The contribution of each bar remains as it is now. (Averaged HAM system)

Example: The experimentation would give me a 10k/7.5k/5k pet under the current system. With system (2) this pet would have a 7.5k HAM.

Consequences: HAM bars will be a little more realistic match for the pet's CL. There would be "wasted" HAM, but it forces the high HAM pets to have a high CL. Existing BE pets would be trivial to rebalance to match the new system.

The main bonus to this system is that you could focus on maxing int/clever if increasing physique isn't as important, and the HAM would not suffer an imbalance or weighting in the opposite direction of what we want.

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3) HAM experimentation remains the same, the combine stage is altered. Wild pets have a varience of roughly +/- 10% to their HAM. The HAM would be averaged as in system (2), however this sets a baseline at 90% and the HAM experimentation would affect how high or low below this mark the pet has. (Weighted-Average HAM system)

Example: Our 7.5k average pet of (2) uses 6.75k (90%) as a baseline. 10% of this is 750. Three stats give a total of 2250 between them. 10k/22.5k = 44%. 44% * 2250 = +1000 health. 7.5k/22.5k = 33%. 33% * 2250 = +750 action. 5k/22.5k = 22%. 22% * 2250 = 500 mind.

Our final pet has 7.75k/7.5k/7.25k. Still weighted slightly, but not to the extent currently possible. (A higher percentage could also be used.) This pet has the same CL as our one in (2), but a slightly skewed HAM.

Consequences: HAM bars match wild creatures, except weighted to our desires instead of random. The average HAM is still the same as in system (2), so this reduces the CL bonus of weighting, but gives a minor improvement over (2).

As with (2), we could focus on int/clever without as significant a HAM hit, although there would still be a slight imbalance to make us consider what is more important.

Message Edited by Seiryuu on 07-27-2004 01:39 PM

Objectively, if this were a problem we'd be seeing "too many" pets in the game, and we'd be seeing "too many" CH dabblers relative to masters.

I think the problem here is that Creatures are playing under the new combat system while other professions are playing under the old one. Once the rebalance hits, pets are going to become very necessary.

Further, I think the "unbalanced" BE pets are going to result in both CH and BE being hit with a hard nerf, because non-pet professions cannot accept pets as being this game's tanks, especially the melee professions.

So keep in mind I am putting this discussion out here with the idea that eventually pets will be better than people, or at least their equal, so BE pets are going to look comparatively better still.

I think the fact that a bio engineer can essentially do a "stat migration" on an animal to take advantage of things like this is mainly a positive for the game. It adds strategy, and means that pets can be more specialized which is a huge positive for bio engineers and our customers.

I agree.

I do like the idea of stat migration. What if pets started out balanced but we could later stat migrate them within a certain range of the base? (Including secondaries would be awesome, and I know for certain mine would be given high con/stamina.)

Has anyone ever seen a supposidly "grossly overpowered pet" that didn't involve merek harvester?

They aren't quite as bad a pet that has only kinetic, but yes. I don't like using Merek DNA because of the energy vulnerability. I like pets that can be used against creatures or NPCs. My twins (usually first or second generation) are relatively very powerful, to the point that I feel I am pushing into the gray area of game abusing. Were I to make further generations of them, I could get some seriously overpowered pets. No merek DNA in them at all, and usually only one or two non-essential vulnerabilities.

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Seiryuu wrote:
They aren't quite as bad a pet that has only kinetic, but yes. I don't like using Merek DNA because of the energy vulnerability. I like pets that can be used against creatures or NPCs. My twins (usually first or second generation) are relatively very powerful, to the point that I feel I am pushing into the gray area of game abusing. Were I to make further generations of them, I could get some seriously overpowered pets. No merek DNA in them at all, and usually only one or two non-essential vulnerabilities.

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Can you post the stats for such pets? Not asking for the recipe, just wondering what it is that you're considering to be so overpowered. My guess is that's it's really not, and that you have simply traded dps against effective ham, and skewed the ham towards health and away from mind, and towards kinetic and away from some of the other damage types, and I think it's hard to argue that this is "overpowered". This is altogether different than some of the "merek harvester-made" creatures where both the dps and effective ham is much much much much higher than their wild counterparts.

Here's a CL 35 wild animal for comparison:

Crimson Blurg

Ham: 9500

arnor: none

kinetic: 40

energy: 30

heat: 40

cold: 60

blast 25

dps: ~70

Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 07-27-2004 02:42 PM

Message Edited by ThGilsRooc on 07-27-2004 04:54 PM

Azu - reddish razor cat, CL 35

Ham: 10/6/6k
armor: light

kinetic: 55
energy: 41

heat: 74
elect: 68
acid: 47

cold: vuln
blast: vuln
stun: vuln

1.97 speed, 300-310 (~155 dps)

Ranged attack, Stun and Intimidate

Tusk is his "twin" gurreck, CL 34 with blast resists, although slightly less heat and elect. Similar in stats except 280-290 damage and Cripple/Dizzy.

I have three more that are in this range. All of them are first or almost first with second gen DNA to get the specials I want.

Seiryuu,

Nice, but we'd need to know the to-hit value, surely it's not 1.00, lol.

Oh, sorry. It's 0.45 I believe. I will have to double-check that later.

Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 07-27-2004 12:21 PM