Bounty Hunter Archive

Your evaluator tool looks nice, but it doesn't consider damage type / resists in the evaluation...

i.e.0% resists to acid damageversus 75% resists to heatdamagecan make aHUGE difference.

otherwise,a nice tool. thanks.

This is good information. I use the formula AvgDmg+AvgDmg*20/WpnSpd (AvgDmg being the end result of your damage formula). This formula encompasses the "front-end" damage of a weapon and stretches weapon performance out over 20 seconds, which I've arbitrarily assumed to be representative of a typical solo fight. I find that this formula is better for estimating weapon effectiveness, including HAM efficiency estimation - the heavy-hitting, slow weapons (e.g., power hammer) usually come out on top in terms of maximizing damage/minimizing HAM per unit time whereas fast, low damage OR high-variance (think sucky polearm w/ minimum less than 50) weapons essentially dish out as much HAM damage as actual damage (it's very skewed in the current system). I also do a bunch of other crazy things, like baseline to 30/30/30 HAM and include weapon ranges. Ya see, I'm a weaponsmith that likes to price weapons according to performance. I think I got my systemsetup pretty good, and I can tell you that some of the tier 1 and 2 weapons simply blow the high-end weapons away. Whoever is designing weapons needs to talk to the combat designer because these guys cleary have different system visions.

One thing I'd like to get an answer on - that I find missing in ALL these type games... I'm going for TKA master just because it suits my desired style - what is the DPS and SPD rating of the Basic Empty Hand? I can see these figures for ALL the other weapons in the game, but I want to know numbers for an UnArmed Fighter WITHOUT VibroKnuckles please.

Catlyn LeFay - Chilastra
Redrover - Test Center

Volsted,

All I was asking was that you include in your text mention of how critical special attacks are. Right now, a person would have to intuit how to bring special attacks into your formulas. An added paragraph specifically dealing with it would be far more vaulable.

Because as it is now, a player who didn't make that logical step would be choosing weapons based solely on the auto fire performance and not on their actual usage.

As a Pikeman, I'd just point out that you missed a crucial factor in weapon effectiveness: to-hit modifiers.

It turns out that every Long Vibro Axe (the most powerful pikeman weapon in terms of raw damage numbers)has at least -45 in all three range categories. The result is that if you use the weapon as soon as you're certified in it, you'll miss. You'll miss A LOT. Between Novice Pikeman and Master Pikeman, there are 50 accuracy points to be had - enough to make up for this stupid weapon's stupid mods, but by the time you hit master, you'll still be missing a lot because you'll be attacking things with better defenses.

A Vibro Lance, by comparison, has around -30 in all three mods.

A normal Lance can modifiers near 0 (perhaps better - been a while since I shopped for one).

The end result is that a character who just got his long vibro lance certification may find that he misses so much with the LVA that the basic (non-vibro) lance ACTUALLY does more damage per minute. Particularly against tougher monsters. Few things are more frustrating than missing 6 times in a row. Especially when you could have hit 6 times with your lance. And it's in situations like this that you're tempted to redo all the math and substitute "0 - 0" for the damage range on the LVA.

So at the very least you need to add one more thing to your list of 4 conditions:

5. Assume you never miss.

Perhaps you can multiply your number by your hit percentage to get the effectiveness of the weapon against a particular opponent?

--Insomnia

For those who want an easy calc when deciding what weapon to buy...

The max speed of a weapon you're buying (post slice) should be:

[lowest useful speed] = 100 / (100 - [speed skill mod] )

Volsted...

You're amazing! Fantastic work.

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InsomniaRado wrote:

...So at the very least you need to add one more thing to your list of 4 conditions:

5. Assume you never miss.

Perhaps you can multiply your number by your hit percentage to get the effectiveness of the weapon against a particular opponent?

--Insomnia

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Make it more complicated? But ... I'm still trying to figure out the first part

That is a good point, but calculating your hit percentage is so variable that even trying to come up with an "average would be meaningless.(it involves your +s to hit, the position of the attacker, weather the attacker is in motion, the position of the defender, weather the defender is in motion, the defenders defence bonus if any, skills like dodge and counterattack, effects such as intimidate and blind , and probably a few more things I haven't thought of)

I certainly hope Thunderheart doesn't base his melee balance solution on this calculation of yours, because if he does, you have just given him a reason to buff TKAs even more.

Yes. Let me, as the author of the original post, state explicitly:

The ratings assume 100% accuracy.

At the time I made my calculations and wrote that post, I made an assumption. That assumption was that melee weapons worked like ranged weapons, in that if you were at ideal range, you had about the same chance to hit your target as would I, as a Rifleman, from ideal range.

This is not true, as you all know, and as I know now.

If everybody hit with 100% accuracy, Pikemen would be extremely potent. But they don't. The potency of Pikemen weapons is counterbalanced by some fairly stringent accuracy penalties that the above numbers do not (and cannot, until someone comes up with a workable accuracy formula) include.

Please make sure that Thunderheart sees this, Gorecki. I would hate to think that I caused the Pikemen to get nerfed unjustifiably because the heavy accuracy penalty isn't considered in the above calculations.

If I were judge of the universe...

I would name you teh winnah.

good thread, but another interesting piece of info would be when ur speed+ cap would be when u use each special

I made an form that automatically calculates everything Volsted posted (kudos to his brilliance). If you give me somewhere to upload it or email me @ [email protected] I can give you a copy. All you have to do is plug in your weapon stats and you speed skill.

Great job Volsted!

One more thing, does anyone know the math used to calculate speed when combining specific specials with specific weapons. For example, I know I can swing a PH at 1 second if it's 5.0speed, however how fast can I swing that same sword using headhit3? This would be useful sincespecials are exclusivelyused during PvP.

~M