Bio Engineer Archive

Well after wondering about the new CL system and having the CHs moaning about how this, that and the other has been nerf'd I decided to go out and make some comparasons between the current versions of species on Endor (since there's a nice mix of different types up there) and the Endor versions of the TC. The animals in question are:

• Borgle Life sapper (CL23)


• Arachne Warrior (CL40)


• Blurrg (CL50)


• Gurreck forest stalker (CL30)


• Arachne Webmaster (CL50)

So what you have here is a nice cross section of recently changed, totally new andcurrently overpowered species. Here's a quick look at them one by one so you can get a taste for what is happening. I'll draw my own conclusions afterwards.

Borgle Life Sapper

These were recently dropped from CL55 to CL23, without having a master scout on the TCI dunno if the special attacks have changed however when the initial change was put in the BLS lost it's strong disease attack and was left with just a posture down one. That alone was indications that special attacks must have some bearing on the CL rating but this is of course an assumption. Here is a link to an image with the stats before and after. The current stats for this species is on the left and the new stats on the right.

http://c4software.net/img/swg/cl_change/blsppr_change.jpg

The key things of note is that the light armor has been lost and it has a new vulnerability to blast damage. They're still mainly acid resistant but the kinetic resistance is the same however energy resistance has been raised to 30% from it's original 20%.

Arachne Warrior

These if you recall where one of the more tasty species until they were added to the extinct list and for CL40 it's understandable why it was fairly popular since it was resistance to almost everything by at least 55% plus it had light armor. This has now changed a fair bit.

http://c4software.net/img/swg/cl_change/awarrior_change.jpg

Here we see a significant reduction to all of the major damage types which are namely energy and kinetic. They did however maintain their light armor but only at the cost of being vulnerable to electricity and blast damage.

Blurrg

As everyone knows these recently go increased to CL50 from CL30ish, this lead to a major increase in their resistances making them utterly invulnerable to apair of damage types.

http://c4software.net/img/swg/cl_change/blurrg_change.jpg

While the general 'flavour' of the blurrg is maintained they are now longer 100% to heat and cold. However they are still exceptionally high in resistance to these but again the 20% resistances to energy and kinetic are unchanged. The interesting is that the only really notable thing here is that the invulnerability has been lost and the blast and restrain has been only slightly dropped to a meager 5%.

Gurreck forest stalker

These are fairly new and I picked them out cause when i first saw this I was very impressed by the resistances. 65% to a wide variety of damage types with the oddity of only 30% kinetic resistance but a huge 80% energy resistance. Needless to say when I've been giving these suckers a very wide birth ever since even though they haven't any light armor but with stats like that they don't really need any. Alot has changed now and thank god since it's only CL30.

http://c4software.net/img/swg/cl_change/forgrrck_change.jpg

It's had an almost 50% reduction to all of the resistances and some vulnerabilities thrown in. The 20% resistances to a wide variety of damage types still remains though.

Arachne Webmaster

If there was ever a peice of good evidence that the old CL system was a joke then this would be it, a species so overpowered for their rating that the devs put them in the extinct list. Originally with medium armor and minimum of50% to almost every type of damage these were incredibly tough to kill. How the might have fallen..

http://c4software.net/img/swg/cl_change/awebmaster_change.jpg

Again the common damage types are lower than 50%, the medium armor has changed for light armor and it now has a number of vulnerabilities to semi-common damage types.

So what we appear to be dealing with now is a very weighted resistance system which is mainly where the changes have been made. Damage and HAMs are more or less the same and some CL ratings have increased or decreased a bit from early indications. For a bio-engineer we have a new skill to learn and that is the point of this topic, getting people familar with what is going on before this goes live.

The key things which increase a CL rating

Clearly what you're finding is that the common damage types like energy and kinetic (and in some respects blast damage) so much so that you're finding even a 50% resistance can dramatically increase the CL rating as almost nothing under CL50 can even get around 30% resistance to these two without being generally weak on the whole. Another thing to note is that total invulnerabilities are going to be reserved for mobs which are generally weak elsewhere but high CL ratings as well. Someone on another topic asked if they could make something 100% kinetic resistant, I'd say yes you can but you're never going to be able to make it a tamable clone as there is a progressive increase to how much the CL is rasied the closer and closer you get to near invulnerability and for kinetic damage that is seriously amplified.

Amor is actually a very touch and go kinda thing from what I can see. It's basically not seen on anything below CL30 on the whole but I don't know if this is by design or because it adds a fixed CL increase (perhaps it adds +15 or something to the current CL total) we honestly won't know this because given mylong trip around naboo, correlia and endor I never saw something with light armor very much and medium armor has only appeared on the AT-STs which I saw around the Factional base south of the Lake Retreat (yup, no more heavy armor)

This does actually fit with the original intention of what the armor was. Light was basically a hardened get thin lair which is why some animals can have it since they can possess a carapace. Medium armor was supposed to be something like strengthened metal which is why it's now used for droids and the AT-ST. While heavy armor is basically the equivilnet of inches thick hull metal used for AT-AT and large vehicles. I honestly don't expect to see any wild animals with heavy armor anymore unless they are totaly huge so that their thick hides are like hull metal.

How to get as much into a CL as possible

Well it's clear that you're looking at trade offs here, if your strong at one thing you need to be weak elsewhere. When this comes to clones which will be made to order we'll have two general types. Those for PvE and those for PvP. Naturally the PvE clones will be focussed towards energy and kinetic protection. These are very common so if you want ot raise them as high as you can you need to give the clone vulnerabilites to things which are less common in PvE combat. Things like acid damage, cold damage ect.. since these are however less common you'll need alot more vulnerabilites or weaknesses the more you raise the kinetic and energy resistance.

There is a benefit for these damage types having less effect on the CL rating, you can make some very handy PvP clones for those more exotic weapons used by players such as BHs and commandos. For example, when this goes live you'll find that the reasonably mid-range Spitting rawls are actually 100% acid resistant. This surprized me until I realised that it was forced to be vulnerable to heat, cold, stun and electricity. It's fair to say that if something is invulnerable to one less common damage type then it needs to be vulnerable to TWO other equally common types if they want to keep the pet from starting to enter the CL30+ range.

If someone is going to want armor (assuming we are allowed to give it to clones under CL40)then you're going to find it can ONLY be used by a CH an it'll lack any real resistances elsewhere. This is because of the flexibility of the armor which is basically like giving the pet 25% protections for all damage types which are AP0. Given the choice I think resistances will be better for the CL1 to CL40 range and simply use the armor to beef up the higher end clones.

One special thing to note here, increasing the HAM is actually a more cost effective method of making a tougher pet than simply giving it resistances. The current AT-ST is now:

• Medium armor


• 35% kinetic/energy


• 100% heat/cold/stun (lesser damage types please note)


• 15% restraint/electricity/acid


• vulnerable to blast

...however.. it's ham is now 53k!! This of course assuming that it's still CL125 then you might say your able to get roughly 200-300HAM for every CL rating. Thus it might be technically possible to have a non-ch pet with 2000-3000 HAM as long as you leave resistances out of the equasion however this is simply an assumption which I can't confirm without seeing CL ratings to compare with the HAM. I do know that CL50 species are still around 10k HAM so I might not be far from the truth.

Bumped for Tasek

nice work, lets hope we really do have this kind of control over creatures.

Thats some nice analysis. you might want to take a look at the Hilltop Gurreck Prowler, a much tougher bugger.

Also somewhere on the CH boards we have started a comprehensive listing (not anywhere near comprehensive as of yet) of new and changed critters on TC.

Thanks folks, don't worry about whoever is doing the1-staring. I dont.

I rejoin SWG and the first post I read about BEs is from good ol Tal-N. Thanks once again for an insightful post. Floating this bugger to the top

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Tal-N wrote:
Thanks folks, don't worry about whoever is doing the1-staring. I dont.

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Thanks for all your info TAL-N I know people have issues with you. I dont care about popularity all I care about are the facts and ideas. Keep up the good work!

Bump 4 TAL-N

thank you Tal-N for your very insightful post. You must have gotten trolls who 1 stared you. I gave you 5 stars!

what I want to know is..

will you be able to make:

A Black GSP

9+k ham

75%+ kinetic resistance.

AR1

With a good bleed attack.

and have it be tameable and useable for a master CH.

Awsome post Tal!

5 star! Thanks for your work on this!!!

Great post mate!

Nice work. FYI, for anyone that hasn't noticed, I finally got Ranger Tracking 3 so I can see both special attacks on Creatures. I've gone through and started compiling a list of creatures with the stats since these will be of much interest to the BE profession now. You can find the list on My website below.