Fencer Archive
Thread: Important TC Patch Info 11/26/2003
well, they removed the HAM cost changes from TC for some more internal balancing. Hopefully Raph will be able to give us more details as he knows more =)
Until game time,
Johni Flek
Eighth Direction
City of Reality - Dantooine, Bloodfin
Sir_Voor wrote:
Here is the fix:
Current new HAM system: ( Move cost * 25 =__seconds till recovery )
My suggestion for the new HAM system (RegenerateAttribute / Move cost * 30 =__seconds till recovery )
From what I can tell, that is incorrect about the current system. Here is the current system
Move costs / 25 = Ham RETURNED per second for 25s.
Currently the 25s is static, all attacks return the ham back over a period of 25s.
Here is an example:
Example: A Mon Cal Rifleman shooting 1 per second, 100 mind costs, he has 1300 mind
Mind:0 modifier (1300 mind)
Mindreturned Per second: 0
1st shot:100 mind cost, time: 0
Mind: -100 modifier (1200 mind)
mind returned per second: 4 (100mind/25 second = 4 mind per second)
2nd shot: 100 mind cost, time: 1s since first shot
Mind: -196 modifer (1104 mind). (got 4 mind back form first shot)
Mind returned per second: 8 (4 from 1st shot (24 returns left), 4 from 2nd shot (25 left)
3rd shot: 100 mind costs, time 2s since 1st shot
Mind: -288 modifier (1012 mind). (got8 mind back, 1st and 2nd shot, and lost 100 on shot 3)
Mind returned per second: 12 (4-1st shot, 4-2nd shot, 4-3rd shot)
4th shot: 100 mind costs, time: 3s since 1st shot
Mind: -376 modifier (924 mind) (got 12 back from the previous shots, and lost 100)
Mind returned per second: 16
Skip to 10th shot: 100 mind costs: time 9s since 1st shot
Mind: -820 modifier (480 mind)
Mind returned per second: 40 (15 '4 point seconds' left to return the Mnid of shot 1)
Ass you can see, as you get closer to 25 seconds of special use, the return of points from previous shots gets closer to the amount of 1 shot. After 25s, you -modifier should stablize near a limit. All shots after the 25s, should only vary your HAM slightly, if at all.
The most your shots will drop should be (Attack HAM Costs/2) *(25/speed of attacks)
So for the above rifleman attacks, (100 /2) * (25/1) = 1250. This riflemans mind should only drop -1250, leaving him with 50 points.No lower than that.
--Rorrimot
Uhm I may not have percieved this right, but whatI did get was that we won't e able to spam specials and the heal up anymore. But wasn't one of our issues that we relayed upon specials to et near the other melee classes dam range? Because we couldn't fully use our speed due to the one-second speed cap.
And it still doesn't resovle our problem with to high HAM cost in comparison to the other melee classes (we never got the HAM lowering that they got)
Oh and an other thing (I know this is the wrong thread, so ignore it if you want) But whenwill the fencer changes take effect? I'm talking about the issues aderessed in Raphs Just to keep you informed thread.
I have a some observations and questions about the HAM usagechange.
Observations:
I think the DEVs are being farsighted about this, more so than many people on this thread are giving them credit. They do play this game, and the implications of this change run deep. One of the most important implications is that medics will no longer be able to heal damage done to yourselfby the use of specials. This cures a lot of problems with the ease of leveling medic. In the past one has been able to "spam" specials such as /tumbleToStanding, or /itimidate. Meanwhile their medic friend just macro-heals them. This will no longer work.
Also, the use of armor will play a very interesting role here. Normally armor affects your regeneration rate, as well as your special move costs. If you regenerate the damage caused by specials at the same rate regardless of how much it cost you, then using armor just got easier. One can expect to recover from the heavy use of specials at a much faster rate without removing their armor.
Questions:
I do have a question abot the regeneration however. If the regeneration rate of our max value is faster than our damage regeneration, what happens to the current value of our stats when they are regenerating? Do they increase proportionally as the max value goes up, or do they remain the same (leaving out the normal effects of damage regeneration). Or possibly is the amount of damage you have constant?
Let's take a person wearing armor with a high encumbrance, this encumbrance gives him a 1 constitution so his health regeneration rate is negligible. His health starts at 1000, and he executes an action that reduces both his current health and his max health by 200. Let's say this action kills his foe so now he starts regenerating. 25 seconds later his max health is back to 1000, what is his current health? Hopefully the answer is (and it's truly the only good answer) that it has returned to 1000 at the same rate as the max value returned to 1000.
If not, we would still be doing damage to ourselves by using our specials which then defeats the main reason for adding this change. Another scenario is the same player as above executes the same action and thengets hit for 100 points of damage, after which point an auto-strike kills the foe. So now his health is at 700/800. 25 seconds later his health should be at 875/1000, it increased proportionally with his maximum health, or it should be at 900/1000 the damage he took stayed constant, and the health regenerated to the max value was applied to the current value.
meyer1215 wrote:
IdrisTycho wrote:
I have a some observations and questions about the HAM usagechange.
Observations:
I think the DEVs are being farsighted about this, more so than many people on this thread are giving them credit. They do play this game, and the implications of this change run deep. One of the most important implications is that medics will no longer be able to heal damage done to yourselfby the use of specials. This cures a lot of problems with the ease of leveling medic. In the past one has been able to "spam" specials such as /tumbleToStanding, or /itimidate. Meanwhile their medic friend just macro-heals them. This will no longer work.
Also, the use of armor will play a very interesting role here. Normally armor affects your regeneration rate, as well as your special move costs. If you regenerate the damage caused by specials at the same rate regardless of how much it cost you, then using armor just got easier. One can expect to recover from the heavy use of specials at a much faster rate without removing their armor.
I've been thinking that they will eventually tie the regen stats in to effect the 25s of special regeneration. If they dont, I dont think ANYONE will have more than the race min OR the min needed to use armor. Willpower (and the other 2 stats) will be near useless. But, I could be wrong.
Questions:
I do have a question abot the regeneration however. If the regeneration rate of our max value is faster than our damage regeneration, what happens to the current value of our stats when they are regenerating? Do they increase proportionally as the max value goes up, or do they remain the same (leaving out the normal effects of damage regeneration). Or possibly is the amount of damage you have constant?
Special costs show up as a - in the modifier column, just like buffs are a + there. Damage says the same. if you have 20 damage with -500 in special costs, you would have 20 after 25s (not counting regular regeneration).
Let's take a person wearing armor with a high encumbrance, this encumbrance gives him a 1 constitution so his health regeneration rate is negligible. His health starts at 1000, and he executes an action that reduces both his current health and his max health by 200. Let's say this action kills his foe so now he starts regenerating. 25 seconds later his max health is back to 1000, what is his current health? Hopefully the answer is (and it's truly the only good answer) that it has returned to 1000 at the same rate as the max value returned to 1000.
Modifers are applied to both min and max of your health. meaning, if you are 900/1000 (100 damage) and use a 200 HAM specail. You would drop to 700/800. After 25 secs you would be back to 900/1000 (again, not counting any regular regen you get). If you look at your total screan in control C, special costs NEVER change the damage amount.
Actually modifiers are only applied to the max health, in the same manner as armor encumberance, with the obvious exception that your current health can't be more than your maximum. My interpretation of IdrisTycho's scenario is that starting at 1000, he does his special move and his max drops to 800. Since his current can't be higher then the max, it also drops to 800 but ONLY for that reason. After 25 seconds his max is back to 1000, but his current health is still tied to his constitution, so it would probably still be near 800. So he's right, this isn't really a big advantage.
However, as I was saying in a post earlier in this thread, let's say you've ALREADY sustained 200 damage, so you're at 800/1000. If you execute your special move now, your max changes to 800 but your current remains the same, and therefore you've suffered almost NO penalty for the move. Special moves do NOT affect your current health unless the max happens to go below your current.
If not, we would still be doing damage to ourselves by using our specials which then defeats the main reason for adding this change. Another scenario is the same player as above executes the same action and thengets hit for 100 points of damage, after which point an auto-strike kills the foe. So now his health is at 700/800. 25 seconds later his health should be at 875/1000, it increased proportionally with his maximum health, or it should be at 900/1000 the damage he took stayed constant, and the health regenerated to the max value was applied to the current value.
900/1000, damage stays the same.
/agree
... your current health doesn't increase in the same 25s timeframe - it's still linked to your constitution.
IdrisTycho wrote:
OrionsByte wrote:
I take that last /agree back...
Is this something you have tested Orion? If so, I truly believe they need to change it to be consistent with the reasons for adding this change in the first place. Namely, the player no longer needs to be a medic to execute special attacks.
No, I'm not on TC so I'm not testing this, I'm just going by what I've read from other posts. I also disagree with your assumption that the point was to eliminate the need for medic skills. The point is simply to make special moves less painful and less helpful to your enemies.
I think I would like to see damage remain constant while the pool size changes. If I have 800/1000 health and I execute an action that costs 200 health, my new stats would be 600/800, if I then executed an action costing 100, my stats would be 500/700. If I allowed myself to regenerate 50 health my stats would be 550/750. etc. If a special move would cost more than the amount of health you have left, it fails, just like today.
I guess I'm having trouble seeing your point. How would this be better than what we have now? Right now if you execute a special move you lose health but do not get any modifiers. If I understand what you're suggesting, then upon executing a special move, you'd lose your health AND get modifiers on top of that. It's a double-whammy instead of an either-or. If what you're thinking is that both your current and max health would regenerate at the 25s rate, then what's the point of having a good constitution? Why would we need medics in the game at all?
I think what they're trying to do is migrate the special move penalty off of the DAMAGE side of things ENTIRELY. Think of it as fatigue... the more special moves you make the less strength you have. If you're stabbed in the ribs you're not going to be able to recover as fast as if you had just done a roundhouse. Two separate systems.
This would be simple and would keep the damage you have taken constant. It eliminates some of the complexity surrounding the regeneration questions. it would also means that a player can never achieve damage to himself which might otherwise occur when a player is using specials and then regenerating.
I'm still trying to understand your thesis. I'm not trying to belittle or attack you, I'm just trying to understand.
Ok, so a scenario, first using your system. Let's say I get in to a fight spamming 200-point specials, getting hit with 200 damage by the enemy after each one. For the sake of argument, let's say you regen 50 after each of these "rounds."
START: 1000/1000
Round 1:
After Special Attack: 800/800
After Enemy Attack: 600/800
After Regen: 650/850
Round 2:
SA: 450/650
EA: 250/650
RE: 300/700
Round 3:
SA: 100/500
EA: dead
Now using what I BELIEVE to be the proposed system. Same variables, but only the max value is affected by the special attacks and regens:
Round 1:
SA: 800/800
EA: 600/800
RE: 600/850
Round 2:
SA: 600/650
EA: 400/650
RE: 400/700
Round 3:
SA: 400/500
EA: 200/550
RE: 200/600
Round 4:
SA: 200/400
EA: dead
So see we lasted a little longer this way, because we weren't damaging ourselves with special attacks (except for the first one, and if they attacked first we would have been able to go another round).
I could be just misunderstanding what you're saying, if so, please correct me...
Although it may not longer be relevant since the next time this stuff appears it may be vastly different, but just to answer a question:
When I was experimenting with this I brought my constitution down to 300 (my racial minimum) which meant I healed at a miserably slow rate. I took some regular damage to get an idea of how long it took to completely regenerate my Health pool. I proceeded to spam HealthHit2 to a target that would not hit back. (I used HealthHit2 since it does no direct damage, and I could apply First Aid to fix my buddy before he died.) I spammed until just over 25 seconds had gone by. (No reason to go longer than 25 seconds as the first hit has fully regened at that point and you do not go lower.)
The end result was that by the time my max Health had completely restored from spamming specials, my current Health was right on top of it. Therefore, Health reduced as a direct result of lower the max Health resores as the max restores. Reasoning? Damage taken as a negative offset from max Health, and does not actually create a new "current Health" value, so to speak. If due to specials you reduced a 1000 Health to 500, and then took 100 damage from an attack, your "current Health" is (Max_Health - Damage) which makes it 400. Let's say you have regenerated your max Health all the way back to 1000, but you have only regenerated 30 damage back. You new current is still Max_Health - Damage, which is 1000-70 = 930.
The only time "Current_Health" acts like a an independant value is when a specials lowers the max health without going lower than the current health... the max value drops, but the current health remains steady.
The system is fairly complex, which is what made it so difficult to accurately describe.
Message Edited by Raphayl on 12-03-2003 04:43 PM
Thanks Raph, this makes sense, though I never would have expected health to be calculated from the "top down" rather than from the "bottom up." I guess that's what I get for bein' a know-it-all... LOL
Ok, rather than trying to reply to all of the points that you made, I will make my position clearer and then maybe you will follow it better.
Premises:
* Damage and wounds taken should remain constant, the damage taken and wounds sustained should only be relieved by the use of medical / meditative / regenerative skills.
* Damage taken should always affect the use of specials. An injured person fights less effectively than a healthy one. Therefor if you are trying to do a roundhouse kick after being stabbed in the ribs 10 times, you probably are not going to be able to pull it off.
* Specials should cause fatigue. It seems like SOE is deciding that fatigue means your health, action, and mind are reduced in their capacity. I do not disagree with this.
* Fatigue Regeneration (regeneration of the costs of specials) should be fast. If I sprint 100m I will be tired but give me a half a minute and I can do it again. So fatigue should not be permanent, it should be something you can get back quickly, also fatigue should not cause damage, since sprinting 100m was probably more helpful for me physically than harmful.
* Regeneration of damage should be slow and only your constitution, stamina, and willpower should have an affect on this rate. It seems like SOE has drawn the line here and basically they are saying that fatigue regeneration as we are calling it is not affected by these tertiary stats, and instead regenerates at the same rate for all people, 25 seconds.
So to pull all of these premises together into one statement:
When a person executes a special, their current maximum HAM values are reduced by the normal amounts of the cost of those specials, along with that their current values are reduced the same amount; when a person regenerates from the use of specials, the current value and the max value both regenerate simultaneously; this regeneration happens over a 25 second period; when a person takes damage it reduces his current value only; and when a person is healed or regenerates damageit increases his current value only.
The problem with what you are proposing is that the damage does not remain constant, when a person with damage executes a special, since his current value does not go down, the damage he has sustained is effectively lost, and when he regenerates, he is effectively gaining damage. This means that a player could execute a sequence of specials, stop, regenerate his max value and then a medic could heal him back to full again. BUT, he would require a medic to get back all the damage he has done to himself due to his own specials.
I think we want to avoid having medics heal damage done by special use, and limit their healing to healing damage that was inflicted by an attack. This helps the combat professional who may have limited or no medical skills. The combat professional can use his skills, recover quickly and use them again, without having to wait for his current value to catch up with his max value. I have commented your proposal below to better explain why it might be in error:
START: 1000/1000
Round 1:
SA: 800/800
EA: 600/800 -- so far so good, the guy has 200 damage
RE: 600/850 -- this seems like a problem, the guy had 200 damage, now he has 250
Round 2:
SA: 600/650-- so now the guy has only 50 damage where did the 200 go? (fascetious)
EA: 400/650-- so now after being hit for a total of 400 damage he hasonly 250.. doesnt seem right
RE: 400/700 -- again he regenerates some but now has 300 damage
Round 3:
SA: 400/500 -- etc.
EA: 200/550
RE: 200/600
Round 4:
SA: 200/400
It's not that I don't understand what you are saying, its that I just don't agree that damage should change based on fatigue regeneration and special use. I think it should stay constant.The scenario you paintedfor my point of view isdead-on correct,admittedly the result may be worse but the fact is that the downtime after a fight will be shorter for a guy with no medic skills in my scneario. Lets stop the combat at round 3 assuming that this 3rd blow killed the foe and look at what will happen for mine and yours:
MINE:
Round 3:
SA: 100/500
Now the player has 400 damage and has 500 fatigue, once the fatigue wears off he will still have 400 damage which means his stats will be 600/1000. So he will have to find a way to heal or regenerate naturally the remaining damage. But he has quickly returned to a more playable state.
YOURS:
Round 3:
SA: 400/500
The player has won the fight and has 100 damage and 500 fatigue a much better result! However after the fatigue quickly wears off he has 400/1000. Which is a worse result than above. Note as well that in my case, the player took 400 damage and still had 400 damage, where as in your case he now has 600 damage.
While my solution may not make us better at using specials, it will reduce our down time due to using them. It also keeps the damage value constant which has the added benefit that the system would be simpler to understand, and probably simpler to implement.
Thanks if you made it this far, for having the patience to read all of this!
Radric Tycho, Eclipse, TKM / Fencer
LOL I wish I had waited until Raph had replied! Oh well, I still stand by my point of view. I think my system makes a lot of sense and is not complicated.
Thanks Raph, again you are right on top of things, kudos to ya!
--Radric
IdrisTycho wrote:
Ok, rather than trying to reply to all of the points that you made, I will make my position clearer and then maybe you will follow it better.
Thank you, I understand what you're saying now. The problem (as seems to be the case with me in general today) is that I was making a couple of assumptions. Basically I was thinking backward from what the system actually is/was. Rather than looking at it as maxminus damage, I was looking at it as two separate values that started from 0... So I wasn't thinking in terms of, I've taken 500 damage, so I should take that off of whatever my current max is... I was thinking, I started with 1000 and have taken 500 damage so I should have500 regardless of whether my max is 1000, 800, or whatever.
What you're saying, and what Raph said, makes perfect sense to me now (thanks, guys, for being patient with me ). I do, however, think it maybe makes things a bit TOO easy, so I'm looking forward to seeing how they decide to balance it out.
/bow