Doctor Archive
Thread: Zalor, any news on excessive 'critical failures'?
Two things about critical failures have always bothered me: frequency of occurrance and lack of noticable skill mods on crit reductions.
A Dev Team member or rep said, on this forum, a couple of months ago that critical failures were set at about 3%. If he or she is correct in that believe, then there's a critical failure bug. I say this because many posters have stated on the Doctors Board that they are seeing much higher crit failures. Estimates range from about 10% to 20%. So what's the real story?
Secondly, there's a lack of *noticable* reudction of critical failures, relative to skill levels or mods. I am a master doctor, but my critical failure rates are no less than they were when I was a mid-level medic.
Has there been any new development in these area?
I'm all for having bad luck, but if its meant to be 3% then something is seriously wrong. As a novice doc I don't have much money to spend on materials, so wasting them isn't funny
Has anyone noticed that when making enhance packs you fail a TON more than making any other medicine (well I rarely make cure poisons, dizzy stims etc. so not sure about them),
But for instance when trying to make a schematic for enhance health D (or any enhance for that matter), using 1 experimentation pt at a time, I will get "good success", or "failed", or "crit failed" at least once or twice during the experimentation on every pack. It usually takes me about 8-10 enhance pack making (if that makes sense) to get all "great success" in order to make a schematic. I never make a schematic if I have even one less than all "great successes".
Now compare that with making schematics for stim B's, C's, D's, Ranged stims etc. Sometimes I get a bad run with a couple failures and crits, but I can also usually make 3-4 in a row with all great successes.
Then we come to "amazing success". This REALLY needs to be raised. I hand made 6 stim B's tonight (using up old crates of small numbers of components).
I have 10 experimentation pts and as I said I experiement 1 pt at a time. Therefore I "experimented" 60 times and got ONE amazing success. Meanwhile I crit failed twice at the point where you put your resources in the boxes and accept, losing all the components. And crit failed once, and failed once during experimentation.
It seems to me that crit fails, and amazing successes, being at the end of the scales, should happen equally. IE: if i'm going to crit fail 5 times out of 50 then I should ALSO get an amazing success 5 times out of 50.
This is certainly NOT the case.
Lowenblade wrote:
A Dev Team member or rep said, on this forum, a couple of months ago that critical failures were set at about 3%.
Huh? I've never seen any responses like that from te Dev Team, and definitelyh not on this forum. I think the last Dev post we had here was TH trying to bump an issues thread of mine (the wrong one, in fact 
) and a Dev asking about CMs who decided to drop Cm for Doc and why. I read Dev Tracker religiosuly and I don't ever remember seeing that kind of statment bandied about, but I also have a very bad memory.
My understanding is that fail rates have to do with your Assembly skill level and the OQ and Mal traits of the resources used, as well as the rating on stations and tools used (to a much lesser extent).
Secondly, there's a lack of *noticable* reudction of critical failures, relative to skill levels or mods. I am a master doctor, but my critical failure rates are no less than they were when I was a mid-level medic.
Mine are definitely better than they were at mid- or low-level Doc. Are you really sure there is no difference?
Has there been any new development in these area?
It's on the issues list. As always, though, if I hear anything, you'll hear about it stickied on the top of the forum. If I don't hear anything then you don't.
/shrug
In my experience amazing successes doesnt affect the final result one bit. Because the quality of resources used sets the limits on the final product.
Im not sure of this but didnt some dev state somwhere/sometime that amazing sucesses should be able to push the results a little bit over the resource limit?
Adv. Bio. critical failure at beginning 3 times, critical failure during experimentation about 7 times. I went and started experimenting 1 box at a time instead of 2 and next one came out okay so maybe something there, or maybe just bad run of luck.
Enhanced D - 5 critical failure in a row at the beginning (on assembly where resources go poof when you fail). worked on 6th try still using same resource and crafting station. Experimented one box at time since I didn't want to take a chance and experiment came out okay.
Const. Wound-B : 0 assembly failure, 5 critical failure at experiment.
I figured it wasn't my lucky night so stopped making scheme at that point.
For what its worth, Critical failures seem to be VERY streaky due to the subpar RNG (Random Number Generator).
I use 14.xx+ crafting tools and have a 42.xx+ Food/Chem station in my house and I regularly get 3-4 crit failures in a row and then won't have any for another 40 or 50 crafts and then get some more back to back to back again.
Ever since making Master I try to only use resources that are 700+OQ and 500+ mal (if available) yet hardly notice much difference from when I grinded out my Medic, Combat Medic and Doctor crafting trees when I used pure junk I had saved (sub-100 OQ stuff). THe only difference I have noticed is in my 'grinding' phase I would get 4-6 crit failures in a row. (My record is 10-ouch, lol )
Zarlor wrote:
Ever tried using -14.xx and -4x.xx tools and stations? Not sure about he station part, but I'm pretty sure the negative rated tool actually works better than the postivive rated ones probably due to a bug int eh crafting formula. I find Droid Crafters tend to work better than stations as well. But that's why all of this is part of the Experimentation issue. We really need clearer info on all of this so we can know if what we are seeing is really a problem that we can track down to something particular or if it is just bad luck.
Back when I was grinding I honestly didn't know what the ratings were even for (neither did most people, actually). I progressed through the -14.xx tools to -7.xx, -4.xx and then to the + ones as I, and others, slowly learned how to make better ones on my server. (This was long before I heard of swgcraft.com) In all honesty I can't say I remember much difference at all no matter what tool I was using. Then again I never scribbled notes on EVERYTHING I did (just almost everything
) It used to be a joke between me and my friends that when I absolutely HAD to make something in the field and only had enough resources for 1 or 2 tries that I'd invariably crit fail or fail on experimentation (or both).. lol
Not only critical failures but also the calculations on a plain success, there was one time when I was making enhance D's and I started at 276and I hit a modorate Success but instead of either staying at 276 or going higher it went down to 145 now someone explain what happened there? I don't know if it was just random or my eyes were playing tricks on me,. Also after a critical failure and you have 5 points left with your experimentation left you can't correct your failure even if I hit for a amazing success after a critical failure the critical failure can't be fixed.
Lowenblade wrote:
Two things about critical failures have always bothered me: frequency of occurrance and lack of noticable skill mods on crit reductions.
A Dev Team member or rep said, on this forum, a couple of months ago that critical failures were set at about 3%. If he or she is correct in that believe, then there's a critical failure bug. I say this because many posters have stated on the Doctors Board that they are seeing much higher crit failures. Estimates range from about 10% to 20%. So what's the real story?
Secondly, there's a lack of *noticable* reudction of critical failures, relative to skill levels or mods. I am a master doctor, but my critical failure rates are no less than they were when I was a mid-level medic.
Has there been any new development in these area?
HealingHands wrote:
Not only critical failures but also the calculations on a plain success, there was one time when I was making enhance D's and I started at 276and I hit a modorate Success but instead of either staying at 276 or going higher it went down to 145 now someone explain what happened there? I don't know if it was just random or my eyes were playing tricks on me,. Also after a critical failure and you have 5 points left with your experimentation left you can't correct your failure even if I hit for a amazing success after a critical failure the critical failure can't be fixed.
200cr says you Duration went up. Any experimentation that effects multiple stats (in this case effectiveness affects both Power and Duration) the "dice roll" is actually done for each stat seperately and applied to each stat seperately, but te response is the average of what yo saw on thos two. In this case you probably ahd a Great Success on Duration (increasing it), but a Failure on Power (reducting it) and they you were told the avearge of what happend (Moderate success).
The Crit Failure problem is by design. CritFails are supposed bo be critically bad, so if it was bad enough to takean experiemntation line down to 0% then any furhter experimentation ther will simply try to apply it's modifer to 0%. Sinceany number * 0=0, you can never improveon it. That is by design, but there is some rumer that some consideration might be going into making it so you can no longer experiment on a line that has Crit Fialed (or at leastthat has reached 05) in order to alleviate the confusion.
Zarlor, since you seem to have the ear of the dev's, I'd appreciate if you could ask them one question and get a firm answer.
It's regarding the quality of crafting tools and stations.
About 2 months ago, I saw a post by a dev (wish I could remember where or who), that stated that while quality of crafting stations was SUPPOSED to increase success rates on making things, that it was not working and hadn't worked since the game came out. He stated they knew it was bugged and "sometime in the future" it would be looked at and fixed.
Because they were not working properly, it made NO difference what quality tools/stations you used.
Now I keep hearing people touting their new better quality stations as if they NOW make a difference yet since I was aware of the statement by the dev that they made no difference, I've diligently read every patch note to see if they fixed them after I read that post.
There has been NO mention of tools/stations being fixed that quality does matter.
Therefore the question I'd like to you ask the dev's is, "Did you fix the crafting tool/stations so that quality does make a difference NOW". ie: did they fix the problem and just not include mention of it in any patch notes?