Pistoleer Archive

Ok, I just did a fair amount of testing and here's what came of it, including the reason we're all seeing different results:

The setups - 2 pistoleers (myself and my friend Sumo) with DX2's. 3 DX2's between us, 2 sliced one brand new/unsliced (I made it on the spot for more variety). 1 SR Combat pistol. 1 FWG5.

I had seen I wasn't getting AP bonusses on the mobs I was fighting with my DX2. I wanted to find out if it's me or my gun thatwas bugged, so I asked my friend Sumo to go shoot something and tell me what his combat numbers are and his overhead numbers are. For those that don't know, combat "spam" is the damage number that you do as you shoot the gun, it does not include any bonusses nor penalties. The number that appears over the head of the mob is the actual damage you did after factoring in armor rating, armor piercing, and resists. Anyway, Sumo shoots a Krabhu and tells me the numbers. Sure enough, he's getting the 25% bonus of AP1 vs AR0 (overhead number was 25% higher than combat spam).

So I take his gun and shoot some random mob, a gurcat I think it was. No AP bonus. Same on a couple other mobs. I give him his gun back as well as one that I make there on the spot. He shoots the new gun at a vrelt, no AP bonus. Then he shoots a vynock with it and he gets the 25%. We did some more gun swapping and a lot of shooting of various mobs and found that it wasn't gun nor player dependent, it was completely target dependent.

So we go back and forth shooting several different types of mobs trying to figure out what they have in common or different. Then we notice... All the mobs that give us the AP bonus don't show any resist information. In other words, they are are all AR0 with no resists at all. Everything else we had been shooting was AR0 and had resists to something, but never to acid. I didn't have access to anything with AR0 and some acid resist so that's the one thing we couldn't test. However, we're both creature handlers so we were able to test out a few other combinations. I pulled out an AR2 with 20% acid resist (arachne warrior). The overhead number was 40% of the battle spam, which is exactly what it should be. AP1 vs. AR2 reduces damage to 50% and then another 20% acid resist takes that down to 40%. Perfect. I pull out an AR1 with 100% acid resist. This shows no overhead damage which again is correct, it's immune. And finally we tried against an AR1 with 0% acid and the overhead matched the battle spam, again as it should be, AR1 cancels out AP1.

So the AP of the DX2 works fine in every case EXCEPT against AR0's that have resists to anything, even wiht no acid resist. In that situation, the gun acts as if it is an AP0 weapon. DX2 against AR0 with no resists, against AP1 with whatever resists, and against AP2 with whatever resists all work exactly as they should.

These experiments should be easily repeatable by anyone that would like to try. I encourage you to do so and find any other case where the numbers don't seem to add up.

Oh, SR Combat pistol (AP1, energy based) and the FWG5 (AP0, heat baed)worked fine against all creatures tested although I didn't test it against any AR1 nor AR2 (sorry, it's 4 am and I'm tired ). If I get time tomorrow, I will try to test the same things with a DXR6 (the carbine version of the DX2 with AP1 and acid damage).

Anyone know a good way to get the devs attention on this since I've managed to narrows this down extensively?

keep this thread bumped and then the corespondant will add it to his next report.

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IdunoUduno wrote :
Anyone know a good way to get the devs attention on this since I've managed to narrows this down extensively?

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Unless you work at SOE headquarters and you have some pression powers, the answer is NO

nice test

VERY nice testing here, and way to track down the root of the problem.

you get my /bump

You may want to post your finding in the "TestCenter" forum because that is what the head of QA reads.

Wonderful find.

Nice work! I like seeing good thorough testing being done. *WE* need to figure out how this game works, because the Devs are doing a poor job and don't even know what's wrong with their own game, so we have to tell them.


Unfortunately... Info on this was posted, with extensive testing, on the weaponscrafting forum a couple weeks ago. It has been discussed on some other forums as well. So far no response from the Devs on it.

What it comes down to is:
If a mob is vulnerable to your weapon's damage type, damage done is what you'd get with AP0 vs AR0

- It doesn't matter if it's an AP2 laser carbine against an AR0 mob.
- It doesn't matter if it is a DX2, a Scatter Pistol, a Laser Carbine, a T21.
- It doesn't matter what the damage type is (heat, acid, etc...)

This affects every gun in the game that is AP1, AP2, or AP3.

What it results in is (hypothetical situation):

- YOU: AP1 energy weapon, AP1 acid weapon
- TARGET: AR0, 10% acid resistance, vulnerable to energy

You're better off using the AP1 acid weapon because the mob is NOT vulnerable to acid, you'll correctly get the 25% damage boost for AP1 vs AR0, and only lose 10% due to resistance. The energy weapon against a vulnerable mob, evne though an AP1 energy weapon, will do 0% bonus damage.

Interesting...

Knowing is half the battle

One thing you should know, ifa creature has vulnerability to a damage type then weapons that do that damage type ignore its AR. So if you have an AR3 creature with acid vulnerability (0% resist) your gun would not be reduced by armor at all and SHOULD do the 25% bonus dmg (which it correctly ignores the AR but does not do the 25% bonus currently.)

Nice work, Iduno!

Wow, good info. Thanks for taking the time to research this.

YetiIronfist, thanks for the added information. I went out and did some more tests and verified exactly what you posted, at least with pistols. The tests I added were:

SR Combat (AP1, energy) vs. Delirious Merek Avenger (AR1, energy vulnerable, 50% resist to everything else)

Result - combat spam was the same as overhead damage. The gun is being treated as AP0

DX2 (AP1, acid) vs. Delirious Merek Avenger

Result - 50% damage reduction in spam vs. overhead. This is working correct, AP1 cancels AR1 and 50% resist comes into play

DX2 vs Kliknik Queen (AR2, 35% heat/col, 20% kinetic/energy/blast/restraint, vulnerable to stun, acid, elec)

Result - Overhead matched spam, which is not correct. The DX2 is being reduced to AP0 against a vulnerability.

SR Combat vs Kliknik Queen

Result - Overhead was 40% of spam. This is correct as AP1 vs. AR2 gives a 50% reduction, then another 20% reduction from resists.

So as YetiIronfist posted, vulnerabilities are working in that they are reducing the creatures AR to none (AR0), but it's also incorrectly lowering the guns AP to none (AP0). I guess the real trick here still is to get the devs aware of it since this is a major flaw in the combat system.

IdunoUduno:

Nice follow up tests! What I had seen in game had lead me to believe that what I had read in other forums before about this was correct, but always nice to have some more solid evidence! We've certainly been wrong about some things before until we got around to running good tests

As for getting it fixed... I'm not optimistic. The issue has been reported for weeks.

In fact, the community here finds a HUGE number of bugs, and in many situations performs tests to characterize their behavior, and then even suggests fixes.

But SOE has no idea because they've spent a MONTH trying to find someone qualified for the job of reading online forums. How hard can than be!? If they weren't looking for someone that would take minimum wage to do the job they would have been done weeks ago. It's obvious they're cutting corners on staff from the fact that they have such inexperienced Devs.