Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Publish 7 Update
I was hit with a few tinges of guilt for having to drop out of the Correspondents position on such short notice, so I left from work early today so that I could try and sneak in some time on Test Center and find out info on a few of the community concerns. I have been waiting on a follow up from TH on the armor issue, but have pieced together the answer on my own, I think. I'll start with the good news first.
From what I have seen, the latest Combat experimentation system upgrade looks pretty sweet. I was only able to build an Adv R3, Adv Probot, and Adv LE before the server went down, but what I saw looked pretty nice. The Adv R3 is as follows.
Adv R3 (03/02/04) Adv R3 (03/09/04)
330 HAM 1700 HAM
70 - 80 Damage 130 - 140 Damage
1.5 Speed 1.5 Speed
0.35 To Hit 0.37 To Hit
Both Adv R3 where maxed out results with 100% Effective Experimentation and 600 Combat rating.
The Adv Probot looked as such.
Adv Probot (03/02/04) Adv Probot (03/09/04)
990 HAM 1100 HAM
110 - 130 Damage 149 - 159 Damage
1.5 Speed 0.75 Speed
0.35 to Hit 0.38 To Hit
Both Adv Probots had 100% Effective Experimentation and a 524 Combat rating. With a maxed out combat rating of 600, I think the Probot could hit 160 - 170 Damage. The Speed increase is a significant improvement and more than makes up for the lack of increased HAM.
I was unable to complete the Adv LE and examine the droid before the server went down, but with 100% Effective Experimentation, the Adv LE has 2200 HAM. If the server isn't down to long, I should be able to log back on and check on a few other droids before I have to head out.
Now for the bad news. As many of you are aware, the Armor Rating has disappeared on all newly built droids along with previously built droids. Unfortunately, this is not a bug. The Light and Medium Armor Ratings on all droids have been removed to fit more in line with Level 10 pets. Here is a quote from the Correspondents forum that I recieved through TH that addresses some of the reasons why the armor was changed.
Originally, armor had high ratings but could only absorb a very finite amount of damage before becoming useless. Now, armor has a lower value, more in keeping with it's level 10 creature rating for these droids, but the amount of damage it will absorb total is infinite. The armor never goes away. It always supplies that level of damage reduction.
I didn't realize until not too long ago that droids followed a different armor model than any other creatures in the game. They still were working on an armor paradigm that was set way back in early Beta and nothing else in the game worked that way. After the creature balance pass, droids were set to have their maximum crafted armor capability to be the same as a level 200 creature. The only saving grace about it was that the armor degraded over time and eventually became useless. It was still way overpowered though when compared to everything else. Droids now have armor ratings comparable to the rest of the creatures in the game. Their maximum armor rating is now in the level 30-35 range which is still fairly powerful.
Droid Armor has been paradigm-shifted/nerfed. No more ratings. It goes from 4% to 20% max, zero armor rating.
Jenden has reported that the resistance values change after the droid is stored. This is a bug, but the bug is that the resistances shift to a higher value. I haven't been able to work out the new armor system, but a Level 1 Armor module now provides 4% resistances and a Level 6 module produces 20% resistances. Stacking now seems to follow the same Rating stacking system as Item Storage and other level based modules. (IE 2 Heavily Experimented Level 3 or 2 un-Experimented Level 4 Armor Modules = 1 Level 6 Module.)
The loss of the Armor rating is a rather big loss, but to keep combat droids in line with Level 10 pets it was a required nerf. I would suggest working with the next Correspondent, who I'm guessing will be TK421, to see if a compromise can be made on the Armor system. My suggestion would be to change the stacking system so that the Resistances are doubled or at least increased by half. (IE 2 Level 6 Armor Modules = 30% to 40%)
I'll try to add a bit more info before I have to take off. I'm going to attempt to put in a few more hours on TC, time permitting.
Crap, and this nerf is retroactive?
Man, there are gonna be a lot of seriously pissed-off droid owners after this patch.
Guess I won't be completing that run of Probots that I had in the works. The old ones are going to totally suck after this nerf is applied - 820 HAM, 2.4 attack speed, and 80-odd damage? Yeah... definitely need to stock up on those like the Devs told us to. 
Lonkley wrote:
So, this whole "degrading armor" thing...
Does that mean armor has been busted since launch, and all this time it was supposed to be degrading?
Either that, or it's been degrading but not being reported correctly in the /examine window. I've seen no evidence of decaying armor though... one would think one would be able to tell when one's probot suddenly becomes one pile of junk...
maybe one of the people who wrote the code couldhavestayed late at work for the number of hours that you took off work to simply give us that information. /gasp
sorry. i had to say it.
thanks much drashk. this is excellent information. if it weren't for you and people like you, this profession would be impossible to play.
Drashk wrote:
Droid Armor has been paradigm-shifted/nerfed. No more ratings. It goes from 4% to 20% max, zero armor rating.
Virtanis wrote:
Drashk wrote:
Droid Armor has been paradigm-shifted/nerfed. No more ratings. It goes from 4% to 20% max, zero armor rating.
This is a HUGE nerf. HUGE.
It's not even the new ones...
I seriously am stunned that it's applying to droids already crafted.
This makes every probot I've sold in the last months obsolete - not to mention the 200 deeds I have.
If they must nerf it for the future, so be it - but the old pets were already bad enough, haven't they suffered enough?
Is there no way to do this while preserving the armor on pre-viously made droids, the one good thing about our old pets?
Audio
I believe one thing that isn't being mentioned is that while the armor is changing sharply the HAM levels for droids is also being increased a great deal. Probots that go from AR2 40% to AR0 20% aren't staying at 820 HAM but are going up to something in the 2200(?) HAM range, it seems. What the Devs are doing is trying to make the droids and creatures more similar in stats.
Now what I don't know is how this will effect existing droids. If all the old Probots drop to AR0 20% but remain at 820 HAM then I suspect lots of people will be upset.
Message Edited by Icarus-6 on 03-09-2004 05:00 PM
I take it back. Drashk has stated that HAM is increasing a great deal. The R3 gets 5x it's original health and the Advanced LE repair is getting something on the order of 10x (which is neccessary since it's moving to a combat capable slot).
Not sure what is up with the Probots at the moment. I thought I read elsewhere that the HAM on them was a great deal higher now but Drashk's post refutes that. Of course it also doesn't agree with the model of the R3 and the Advanced LE (having significantly fewer HAM than either when it should probably have a great deal more) so I suspect the HAM on it isn't currently correct.