Pistoleer Archive
Thread: Action Cost Question: How to calculate Special Move costs
I’m wondering how the costs to Action are actually calculated. I know that the pistols HAM cost, the special move modifier and the character’s Quickness ability all factor in. I have yet to be able to determine the mathematical formula nor have I been able to figure out exactly how Quickness figures in numerically. To help in this, I’ve gathered some data for those that are better at math than I am.
Case 1: I’m wearing armor and have wounds bringing my Quickness to 459. I fire 3 pistols at a group of Diseased Vrelt, each shot using Body Shot 2. I then recorded the Action cost to me (the little green negative number that floats above my head and doesn’t change throughout a battle). SAC is the pistol’s Special Attack Cost, SMC is the Special Move Cost (posted in Prima’s Guide and I believe the FAQ) and Case 1 is the observed Action cost.
Case 2: Everything is the same except I take off my armor, raising my quickness to 697. Case 2 is the Action cost for this test.
Gun SAC SMC Case 1 Case 2
DX2 45 1 64 52
Scout 22 1 31 25
FWG5 37 1 50 42
Initial Observations: The type of creature and Armor rating seem to not matter, as a BS2 with my DX2 costs 64 points of Action whether I’m attacking a Gronda, a Sharnaff or a Durni.
Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
A great question, and one I've been trying to wrap my mind around.
I had originally thought that there was some baseline value, such as 500, which would allow you to fire your weapon with the exact action cost of the weapon and the special that you used. If you were lower than that, you received higher HAM, if you were higher, you would get less HAM. Even when I buff myself over 2000 for quickness, I still get some HAM hit from specials, so that seems to work out.
If that's the case, I'd expect that the math would work out like:
BaseWeaponActionCost * SpecialActionCost * ( BaselineValue / Quickness ) = ActionCost
Repeat for Health and Mind. If the equation is
The hardest part I have is determining what my HAM cost is. I've noticed that HAM costs float over my head in different colors. I had assumed that the colors were representing the highest HAM being hit, so if action was highest, that was what was being hammered the most. If I got some weird interim color, I'd be hitting two bars equally. So, if I buff my quickness and strength really high, only blue numbers float above my head.
Darn, a quick Tab and Enter fat finger submitted before I was done.
So, I'd guess the equation, if correct, would be based on some baseline value (like 500) to figure how you fire your weapon.
Unfortunately, I don't have much control over buffs rather than making really inferior A packs to try things out.
This is a really excellent question -- it's something that I've been interested in as well.
In my experience the reduction in HAM cost you get from higher Quickness is so small that it's not worth increasing it because you'd be better off putting those points in Action and Stamina.
I'll try to help you test it as well and share my data here.
I like where you’re going, Zerona. So I tried to determine what the baseline was, using my scout blaster, bs2 with armor and then without armor. For this test I assumed that the HAM cost was the sum of costs to all three HAM abilities and showed green since Action was hit the most.
When I fired with my armor on, the cost was –32. Solving for the baseline gave me 200. Plugging the values of my SQF without armor into the formula, I predicted that the HAM cost should be –13. It turned out to be –26, which I thought was very odd. I double-checked my math and there was no missing factor of 2 as far as I can see.
I also ran the test with my DX2 and it seemed to have totally different values for the baseline: 228 with armor and 427 without armor.
In short, I agree with the idea of a baseline… perhaps the equation is a bit more complex as there appears to be at least a missing variable or two.
I’m still testing as well, and trying to figure this out.