Pikeman Archive
Thread: Will someone explain what a speed cap is?
_____________________________ There's a superb guide at http://killyourpc.org/swg/speedguide.html with a nifty little tool for calculating your speed
If you take the example of a standard crafted LVA with a speed of 4.5 using polearmhit3 as an example (as it is the slowest attack), the calculation is:
weapon speed * special delay * (1-(polearm speed mod/100))
So a master pikeman without master brawler using a 4.5 speed LVA would get:
4.5 [weapon speed] * 2.5 [polearmhit3 delay mod] * (1-(75 [polearm speed mod]/100))
or
4.5 * 2.5 * 0.25
Giving a delay of 2.81 between attacks. That's effectively 10 polearmhit3's every 28 seconds
With master brawler getting an extra +5 to polearm speed the formula is:
4.5 * 2.5 * 0.2 = 2.25 delay
If you got lucky while out hunting Night Sisters, and looted a +10 polearm speed attachment, the formula changes to:
4.5 * 2.5 * 0.1 = 1.125 delay
Now we're getting very close to the cap (no attack can happen more than once per second)
So you go out shopping, looking at the skill attachment vendors and you find a +2 polearm speed attachment, so you add this to your armor/clothing (just make sure its not the same one as your +10 or the +2 will vanish as the attachments don't stack). Your speed calculation is now:
4.5 * 2.5 * 0.08 = 0.9 delay (rounded up to 1.0 delay by the game)
Which effectively means that you hit the speed cap (for crafted polearms) at +92 polearm speed.
For many looted weapons you're going to be looking at a weapon speed of 5.8 - 6.2. +94 polearm speed will see you to the speed cap for these weapons.
From experience, I can say that the difference between +75 speed and +94 is immense and if you are serious about pikeman I'd do everything you possibly can to get to at least +90 speed (although it is not cheap to do so).
Its worth playing around with your weapon stats using the tool at http://killyourpc.org/swg/speedguide.html to work out your speed
Hope that all makes sense and sorry for all the math
The "speed cap" just means that the fastest you can possibly attack is once per second. So even if you had a weapon that had a speed listed of .5, it would still attack at 1/second.
Mostly you see people referring to the speed cap in that they want to reach it. Acouple of things go into the speed calculation of your attacks, like the weapons speed, your speed bonus from the profession, and the delay associated with a special attack. So if you could get +100 in speed, you would fire any weapon at 1/sec. Hope that helps.
AgekVahoba wrote:
'Tis the truth, +100 and you will hit every 1 second, even with a 10.9 speed weapon.
Just remember, when you are acumulating your SEA's to hit this cap, you can not use more that +25. So, before you start, your Polearm (or any wep) Speed Mod must be ATLEAST +75 to successfuly hit the cap. +99 will get you close, but not quite there.
Well, that's not really true. That would be the case if you wanted to hit the cap for any weapon. But, all that you really need to do is hit 1 second with a polearm. So you just need to determine what our slowest delay mod is and what the speed on your pike is, then figure out how much speed you'll need to swing at once/second. So you don't really need +100 speed, unless you have a 15 second pike laying around somewhere that you are dying to use.
I'm not sure what the calculations are for pikeman, but I know for Rifleman at least you need +97 in speed to fire off any special at 1/sec with about a 7s speed rifle.
I'm pretty sure if you can pick up +25 in polearm speed you should probably be able to do hit3 at 1/second with most pikes. I'm sure antares will have this on a post somewhere...