Carbineer Archive

Cool. Thanks Volsted!

I posted this to the ranged weapon forums earlier today, but then figured you melee types might also find it useful since some of your weapons have AP ratings. And in any case it can't hurt to know as much as you can about how the combat engine works. So without further ado...

How Armor Works in the PvE Game

I initially posted this to the ranged weapon forums, but then figured you melee types might also find it useful since some of your weapons have AP ratings. And it never hurts to know as much as you can about how the combat engine works. So without further ado...

How Armor Works in the PvE Game

ah, cool. Yes that does help. hehe, wonder if the devs know about that little glitch with the vunerabilities yet.

All I can say is wow. Man that looks like alot of work. Thank you for it all, you definitly gave me a better handle on the combat system and it looks like you found a bug in the math in thier code with the armor and resistance thing. I wish there was a way for this to be reported, maybe a corrospondant could move this along to the devs

Incredible work and very well organized. Thank you for your efforts and skill.

Aiea

Very nice post, you seem to have put a lot of time in this one!!

Question: how do you put url's in your post (that are clickable)?

Excellent post.

If a critter has a certain vulnerability, the armor piercing rating of the weapon being used should be taken into account.

I would recommend that everyone do a /bug and report it. I know I will. It is conterintuitive to assume that a critter with resistance would suffer more damage than one that is vulnerable.

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NeitzDecus wrote:
If a critter has a certain vulnerability, the armor piercing rating of the weapon being used should be taken into account.

I would recommend that everyone do a /bug and report it. I know I will. It is conterintuitive to assume that a critter with resistance would suffer more damage than one that is vulnerable.

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Just to put things in perspective:

I have a T21. It is AP3. It has been sliced to 145-403 damage. It is a huge honkin' gun that looks like the muffler and exhaust manifold from a '72 Buick.

For the AP damage bonus from my T21 to be totally negated by a non-vulnerable MOB, it would have to have one of the following sets of characteristics:

1) No armor and 48.8% Energy Resistance
2) Light armor and 36% Energy Resistance
3) Medium armor and 20% Energy Resistance
4) Heavy armor and no Energy Resistance

So from my perspective, "No armor, and vulnerable to energy" REALLY means "No armor, and 48.8% resistant to energy." (Or "light armor and 36% resistant to energy," etc.)

Yes, I'd say this is a definition of "vulnerable" which is at considerable variance from the way the word has been traditionally defined.

at least us fencers don't really have to worry about it. If our stun baton was AP1 or more, it would not be much more powerful than right now, since mostly it is used when creatures are used when they are vulnerable to stun.

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Rooksarii wrote:
My insticts would tell me that a creature vulnerable to a weapons type of damage should be considered AR0 to that damage type, and receive the superior weapon AR damage increase at the very least. Though it would be nice to get a bonus for superior AR AND vulnerability situations, in the form of an extra bit of damage.

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Here's what I think may be the situation. (This is just a guess. I could quite easily be wrong.)

It looks as though the listings in the Vulnerability field should have numbers. Like Resistances, e.g. 5% Vulnerability to Cold, 15% Vulnerability to Acid, etc. It doesn't work this way currently, but it looks like that was their intention.

If so, the Vulnerabilities would probably work like "negative resistances". If you look at Vulnerabilities in that light, a 5% Vulnerability vs. Energy would be like a -5% Energy Resistance. And if you plug a negative resistance into the "Resistance" field of the RAF equation, you get:
RAF = [(1.25)^N] * [1 - (-0.05)] = [(1.25)^N] * (1 + 0.05) = [(1.25)^N] * (1.05)

IF Vulnerabilities worked this way, they'd work like you expect: Something that was vulnerable to Cold would take more damage from Cold-based weapons than from other weapons. And the more Vulnerable it was, the more extra damage it would take.

Sadly, they don't work this way at the present time. But perhaps we can lobby for changes.

u must have had a lot of time on your hands inorder to figure that stuff out. my hat is off to u.

UPDATE

This will be of particular interest to you pistol types.

As I mentioned in my initial post, I wasn't sure how the damage calculations worked in the cases where the AP value of the weapon was lower than the AR value of the critter. In cases where AP is greater than or equal to AR, the formula works as described in the intial post in this thread. But further investigation was necessary to determine how it worked in cases where AP was less than critter AR.

Yesterday I bought a DLT20a Rifle, which is AP0. I went hunting for either Grondas or Violent Krahbu, both of which have Light armor (AR1).

As before, there is Base Damage, and there is Floaty Damage. Floaty Damage is calculated by multiplying the Base Damage by a Resistance and Armor Factor (RAF).

I found some Violent Krahbu. In addition to having Light armor (AR1), they also have 15% Energy Resistance. I'll spare you the gory details and the boring math. Here's what I found out:

When you shoot an AR1 critter with an AP0 weapon, the Base Damage is halved before any resistances are applied. That is to say, if you shoot something for 100 points of Base Damage, only 50 points get through. This is before resistances are factored in, so the damage may be reduced further. In the specific case of the Violent Krahbu:
RAF = (0.50) * [1 - (0.15)] = 0.425

Test data below:

Base      Floaty      RAF
--------------------------
282        120       0.425
250        107       0.428
188         80       0.425
263        112       0.426

Some statements made by the Devs lead me to suspect that the RAF formula for cases where AP is less than AR will be:
RAF = [(0.50)^N] * (1 - Resistance)

where N = AR of critter minus the AP of the weapon.

Compare this with the RAF formula from the initial post in this thread.

At this point, the above formula is an educated guess based on test data and based on some comments from the Devs. Further testing is required to see if reality and theory are in reasonable congruence.