Fencer Archive

I'm a Squad Leader. My wife is looking for a new profession, and I've suggested that she go melee, since I, as a Squad Leader Commissar,give +25 Melee Defense to all group members. I mentioned this to another player the other day and he seemed to indicate that there is a melee defense cap and didn't believe a Master Fencer would see a real benefit from grouping with me. Was he pulling my leg?

excellent question. i would like to know, too but i don't have the answer.

Bump

I jsut answered this question in another thread here about 30 seonds ago, but I'll answer it here as well since it's actually the flipside of the other post which asked about caps on accuracy.

At least of the time of this post, there is no cap, hard or soft, on Defense or Accuracy. They are in direct opposition to each other so if one isn't capped, the other doesn't need to be.

The reason some persons claim there to be a "cap" is that is it possible to get one of those scores high enough that it is nearly 100% assured of working versus a very low opponent... therefore getting it any higher doesn't produce a noticeable difference.

I'll give anexample. Let us first create a hypothetical situation where all of the external modifiers that impact whether or not a hit lands all balance out to an even push; and the only determining factors were Accuracy versus Defense. At this point the chance to land a hit is 50%, and the chance to miss is 50%.

If you, as an attacker, were to have +50 accuracy that would bring your base chance to hit up to 100%. If your opponent had no Defense, then you already have a 100% chance to hit... getting more Accuracy than +50 would produce no better results. Therefore you have hit what I refer to as a "virtual cap" versus that opponent.

Let's say your opponenthad +20 Defense. This is subtracted from yourbase chance to hit (100%in the above scenario) for an ending result of an 80% chance to land a hit.This means your Accuracy "virtual cap" for this opponent has raised from +50 to +70. If you brought your Accuracy up to this +70 then your chance to hit would be brought back to 100%, but adding more Accuracy at this point would not improve your chances. However, let's say the next time you meet up the same opponent has upped his Defense to +65. Your +70 Accuracy would only grant you a total 55% chance to hit.

This could be flipped around the other way as well. If you have a Defense of +50, then you have a 0% chance of being hit by an attacker with +0 Accuracy. More Defense would not help, so you have again hit a Defense "virtual cap" versus that attacker at that time. If your attacker only had +20 Accuracy, then you would needa +70 Defense to have a 0% chance of getting hit. Since a Master Fencer has an Accuracy of more than +100, you would need more than +150 Defense before you reached the Defense virtual cap against such an attacker.

In short: 50 + Accuracy - Defense (+/- External Modifiers) = Chance of hit.

No "hard" caps (a fixed point where more accuracy or defense is ignored by the game mechanics regardless of opponent's ability). No "soft" caps (a fixed point where more accuracy or defense give diminishing returns.) Only a "virtual" cap (a point where you can no longer reap benefits versus a particular opponent's skill.)

Hope this helps.

perfect. that makes perfect and easy-to-understand sense.

thanks again!


[begins building the Lyahpar temple...]

Thankyou for that well explained response! I feel so much better about my Squad Leader's +25 Melee Defense bonus now.