Bio Engineer Archive

Physkoris,

The reason why you are having such a tough time is that you really are making CL 10 critters. In the wild, CL 10 animals have around 1k of HAM, do 100 damage, and generally have 0's in most resists. You can trade 0's for vulnerabilities, nerf down the damage a bit, and get the "to-hit" value down to its lowest level, and that will give you some room to boost the HAM and perhaps have a little kinetic resist, but your creature will still be relatively meager because, well, it's CL 10 in the end.

The much stronger CL 10's you are comparing your animals to are a result of a bug in the CL calculation. The bug has to do with calculating resistances and vulnerabilities, particularly with respect to "effective resists". These creatures basically have no business being calculated as CL 10. That is the problem you are facing. You are not doing anything "wrong" per-se, you just haven't learned how to effectively take advantage of the CL bug (sad as that may be).

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Physkoris wrote:

Thanks..

I didn't want to know a recipe. I'm just having a hard time getting what others consider a Tank. I really don't understand what went wrong. I made a 45% Kinetic (rest vuln) DNA template. ALL of the stats but dependability (600) were under 100. So.. I figured this would produce much lower than CL 10.. So I experimented 1 point in physique, prowess and mental.. hoping to boost my HAM. What I got was a CL 11 pet with crappy HAM.

The thing that is just baffling me is how others can fit all this stuff into a CL 10 rating while my CL 12 ratings suck. I can't imagine it's the DNA I'm using.. LOL, I think that I'm just bugged or something. I don't know.. I might be overlooking something else, but still.. Very discouraging to sample DNAand then craft for 2 hours and end up with pets that are useless.

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Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 01-04-2005 04:30 PM

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Physkoris wrote:

A creature level 10 tank is defined by what?

Kinetic resists? HAM? Light armor?

I've been trying to find the "recipe" to get one of these made but I'm having no luck. I've made a 40% Kinetic resistance pet with vulnerabilities at all other stats and was able to get it to CL 10. However it had a HAM of 1k or less for each stat. This is hardly tank material I'm guessing.

The only thing I can think of is really high HAM. I made a kwi once that was CL 16 and it had 10k/8k/8k HAM, as well as some kinetic resistances. And of course I made it by accident.. and of course have no idea what samples I used. It seems like the harder I try the worse I do.. I mean honestly how hard is it? I feel like I'm searching for the cure to cancer..

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I consider a Level 10 pet something like this: HAM 6-11k / 4-8k / 2-6k, 40-60% Kinetic. You won't get this combined with light armor, as this will skyrocket the CLby about 10 levels, Zadokk can tell you a story.

Important is to use something with high HAM and high kinetic resist in the first two slots, most commonly people put in a famous endorian creature here This alone already results in 48% kinetic. Also important is to use something with really low cleverness in mental and psych slot (usually a 2. gen sample) and something with not too high power in the agg slot, though I have found that low cleverness is more important than low power. I already achieved around 200 damage on a Level 10 tank-pet. Very important is that the combination of all slots should cancel out every resistance except kinetic, thoughone more resistancenot being vulnerablewon't screw it up, as long as it's not energy resist. For low budget I use to make Lvl10-pets from VD/VD/HP/HP/HP - whenever I'm ending up with Lvl 11 here, these are good candidates to get resampled and used for one or more of the last three slots for tank pets.

Hope this helps - I didn't want to post a concrete recipe because I think it will be more fun to you to figure out one by yourself.

Message Edited by Sinhero on 01-04-2005 09:29 PM

On the first page here I found two recipes for a lvl 10 "tank" pet. You might ave to go back to the next page, but not farther than that.

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Aynianu wrote:

My advice is to read the FAQ, and keep it there while experimenting with dna yourself, seeing what happens when certain dna goes in certain slots etc. There is a lot of info in the FAQ, and its all explained in more detail than id expect anyone answering your questions here would achieve.

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The Guide&FAQ is prerequsite to understanding whatyou're basically doing but it doesn't give you any hint on how to make a tank pet like he was asking for.

Some more useful info for newcomers in this thread: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=bio-engineer&message.id=87847

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Physkoris wrote:

Thanks..

I didn't want to know a recipe. I'm just having a hard time getting what others consider a Tank. I really don't understand what went wrong. I made a 45% Kinetic (rest vuln) DNA template. ALL of the stats but dependability (600) were under 100. So.. I figured this would produce much lower than CL 10.. So I experimented 1 point in physique, prowess and mental.. hoping to boost my HAM. What I got was a CL 11 pet with crappy HAM.

The thing that is just baffling me is how others can fit all this stuff into a CL 10 rating while my CL 12 ratings suck. I can't imagine it's the DNA I'm using.. LOL, I think that I'm just bugged or something. I don't know.. I might be overlooking something else, but still.. Very discouraging to sample DNA and then craft for 2 hours and end up with pets that are useless.

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The "TANK" Pet of hot debate (Arthur just called it a bug, and the dev's in one breath say that pets should fall into a certain level based on certain criteria, yet in the next breath said things are working as intended, so as such I disagree with it's "bug" nature for now.) is a CL10 with 60% Kinetic, and around 10K health. You'll have lower Action and Mind, though with the right experimentation you can get those around 6 or 7K each and still maintain the level limit. You didn't ask for recipes, so I won't post one, but I've made pets with 9K/8K/8K 60%Kin/40%Blast/Vuln to the rest that came in at level 10. Damage can be low, in fact it should be, these are meat shields, not uber weapons. Damage ranging in the 50-60 area is acceptable. That's a "Tank", at least by most definitions I've seen, to answer your original question.

However, if you DO want the exact recipe I used for the tank I listed, give me a PM and I'll let you know. I'm sure that it's on the forums somewhere anyway, so no sense double posting it.

I will say this much, to help you out.. you're not going to get the pet at level 10 off the first DNA Template. It's a generational approach.

Message Edited by MusicManZarick on 01-05-2005 11:18 AM

Thanks for the update. I personally, as a CH, don't see it as "undercutting" my skills, considering that I can use more than 1 of them, whereas someone without skills can not, but that's a matter of personal opinion. Any of these that I have made, have been duly noted that there is a chance of them being "nerfed" (fixed is more like it, I guess) when they are sold. Surprisingly it's been CH's that have bought the ones I sell, so unless they are buying them to destroy them, which isn't likely at my prices, they must agree with the concept. But once the dev's "change" the issue that allows these pets, and it officially becomes an "exploit" to make them afterwords, I won't be making any more even if I find a way to do so. That's just me, though, maybe it's wrong to "cash in while you can" on it, but given that I haven't had this character long enough to have made the millions of credits that the majority of the playerbase supposedly has, I gotta earn money somehow. When chef's are offering 75cpu for the same resources I need, I can't compete with that unless I have the capital to back it up, after all.

Welp, I'll open a can of worms and give you a peek inside.

The level seems to take into account everything, but has different weights for each of the pet attributes. Here's a simplistic view of what I’ve seen / read so far. In the below list the *’s denote weight.

Hardiness(Health)**
Fortitude(Armor/Health)*****
Dexterity(Action)**
Endurance(??)
Intellect(Mind)**
Cleverness(To Hit / Mind)****
Dependability(CL??)**
Courage(Attack Speed)**
Fierceness(??)**
Power(Damage)*****
Kinetic Resist****
Energy Resist****
All other resists***
Attack Speed**
To Hit****
Damage*****
Health**
Action**
Mind**

The level 10 tanks play on this simple weight system. You already got the resists part down, so I‘ll just touch on the other parts. In the experimentation phase the items that have the most effect on level are not experimented on. So, few to no points in to hit, and damage. With experiment points going into what’s left (Physique, and Psycho). I have recipes that call for “maxing out” both physique and psycho to get to CL10. The CL of the DNA seems to have no discernable effect on the final outcome as far as level is concerned.

Another counter intuitive thing in the CL process is that a template that is not experimented on will generally produce a pet that has a higher CL than a pet that have 4-5 experiment points in the low weight spots. This seems to suggest that the CL can be lowered through experimentation or lack of in certain areas.

Confused yet? I think I am.

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ArthurDentOnBria wrote:

The much stronger CL 10's you are comparing your animals to are a result of a bug in the CL calculation. The bug has to do with calculating resistances and vulnerabilities, particularly with respect to "effective resists". These creatures basically have no business being calculated as CL 10. That is the problem you are facing. You are not doing anything "wrong" per-se, you just haven't learned how to effectively take advantage of the CL bug (sad as that may be).

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Back to the drawing board...