Ranger Archive
Thread: Camo Kits and Conceal: Let's do the Math
Nras recently stated that in his testing on TS, camo kits will work at 90% success rate against humanoids and 95% against creatures.
So, if I have a hunting party of 10run past 1 humanoid, conceal will be probably be broken once, potentially aggroing the humanoid.
But when was the last time you saw one humanoid all alone? Usually, you'll see 3 or more (at least). Am I correct in computing that10hunters running past 3 humanoids will break, on average,3 times in that one encounter?
What if the group has 15 or 20 members working their way past 7 encounters?
Unless there is some code which takes into account large groups and scales the checks down, that's what will happen.
I do have a few questions to throw out there; they may have been asked before:
- As it stands now, is concealment worthwhile for NON-masters? Is there any point in using the skill as you are working your way up the skill boxes?
- Just to throw some numbers out here, if I have a +50 camo skill and +100 maskscent, should I be using concealment or maskscent?
- Do camo/maskscent skill bonuses above +100 count for anything?
- And for pure stupidity, if I have a low camo skill bonus (+50) and I apply a camo kit to a Master Ranger (who has +100), whose number is going to be used when the checks are made? And is there any way, short of combat,for him to remove that lowly kit if he doesn't want it?
As long as everyone in the party is 40m away, no one will be aggro'd. Conceal/MS may be broken, but no one is aggro'd.
So, if 10 party members need to pass some nasty creatures or NPCs, and choose to do it without /conceal expect an 80% chance multiple mobs will aggro and attack multiple members. This will happen whether the party is 4m or 64m away, maybe even farther out.
Now, 10 party members pass a group of nasty creatures or NPCs with conceal active. They target the closest NPC and everyone makes sure they stay at least 40m away. While many members might have their conceal broken, no one will be aggro'd. If conceal is broken, walk directly away from the mob untill 64-80m away and wait 15 seconds for your ranger to reapply. seems like a much better scenario to me 
"As long as everyone in the party is 40m away, no one will be aggro'd."
Note with humanoids:
- There are currently several unresolved issues with them engaging without checking conceal at all.
Some humanoids seem to aggro at 64m before conceal is even checked, which is causing some issues.
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But yes... Your statement is correct, as long as the humanoid A.I.is behaving. 
Well, honestly... doesn't that make sense?
Camo, much easier to conceal the movement of just one person. Think about it, it's one guy that looks like a part of the landscape. Should be tough to spot. But if there aremorepeople in camo moving the same direction, it will look increasingly look like the landscape is moving, and then you look harder and spot figures.
Course, the more people there are, the less likely you are to really need camo to survive the encounter. I think that works out =)
As long as everyone in the party is 40m away, no one will be aggro'd. Conceal/MS may be broken, but no one is aggro'd.
I'm still trying to envision a practical application, then. If we set out to hunt, and I tell everyone "Great news, I have 900 camo kits on me, you can get as close as 40 meters without drawing an attack!" Ten of us run past 3 humanoids. Camo comes down for 3 of the 10. The guys aren't gonna stop everytime we run past a lair (that's even more dangerous than continuing to move). So I guessI just spam new camo kits while we're on the run, like a Combat Medic? What's the maximum range? 20 meters?
So, if 10 party members need to pass some nasty creatures or NPCs, and choose to do it without /conceal expect an 80% chance multiple mobs will aggro and attack multiple members. This will happen whether the party is 4m or 64m away, maybe even farther out.
80%? More than 64m away? Where'd you get these numbers? I can run from one side of a planet to the other and never get attacked once, if I'm careful. Hell, I can get closer than 64m and still do it. (And so can everyone else)
There are currently several unresolved issues with them engaging without checking conceal at all.
Some humanoids seem to aggro at 64m before conceal is even checked, which is causing some issues.
<sniff sniff> I smell next month's "Big Fix"! 
The devs are just trying to see how many months in arow they can get rangers to cheer for maskscent / conceal "improvements". I think the pool is up to about five hundred bucks.
My guess, without having access to the code, is the check for faction is separate from that for normal aggression. Kind of how swarming mobs ignore concealment -- it is a separate check without a condition for hidden states.
On a similar note, if you can get them to look into this, perhaps have them look at +5000 faction NPCs that are aggressive still attacking? They probably should not if you are that positive a faction with them. There really isn't a correspondent that this fits under, but it is the flip-side of the coin if the above is in fact the problem.
I think this was the point I made to Nras and we seemed to agree that conceal wasn't meant for large scale endeavers. It seems to be handy for the solo ranger to get past NPCs like tuskens but not much else. My 2 cr anyway.
jmatt wrote:
Nras recently stated that in his testing on TS, camo kits will work at 90% success rate against humanoids and 95% against creatures.
So, if I have a hunting party of 10run past 1 humanoid, conceal will be probably be broken once, potentially aggroing the humanoid.
But when was the last time you saw one humanoid all alone? Usually, you'll see 3 or more (at least). Am I correct in computing that10hunters running past 3 humanoids will break, on average,3 times in that one encounter?
What if the group has 15 or 20 members working their way past 7 encounters?
jmatt wrote:
Nras recently stated that in his testing on TS, camo kits will work at 90% success rate against humanoids and 95% against creatures.
So, if I have a hunting party of 10run past 1 humanoid, conceal will be probably be broken once, potentially aggroing the humanoid.
But when was the last time you saw one humanoid all alone? Usually, you'll see 3 or more (at least). Am I correct in computing that10hunters running past 3 humanoids will break, on average,3 times in that one encounter?
What if the group has 15 or 20 members working their way past 7 encounters?
I'm sure Nras tested this thoroughly (I'm not doubting him at all), but the results of his test are not necessarily the hard coded numbers. It could be 95% against humanoids and 98% against creatures, but we wouldn't know unless we performed a few thousand tests. So for all we know our chances could be much better than the numbers we're inspecting.
When I was only a Novice Ranger I went to Lok to meet some friends; the entire 2km trek my mask scent didn't break once. The next day we all went back to Lok and everyone's mask scent got broken every time we got even remotely close to an aggro mob.I hate to use the word "luck," but if I were recording my results as data then I would have two entirely different sets of numbers from each day.
Again I'm not doubting Nras, but without knowing the actual numbers (or equations) that are actually in the game's code there's no way to analyze this. Our chances could be better than we think, or they could even be worse than we think!
Oh, and something to keep in mind: The description of Wayfaring 1 says that camo used on another player isn't as effective as camo used on yourself. So you could have a 90% chance, but your buddies only have an 80% chance against humanoids.
TheBob wrote:
If you really need to pass close by nasty aggroing critters, walk or crawl. Running gives a penalty and crawling a bonus (assuming those modifiers are working...)
I remember them saying that crawling prone would give you a better chance of a successful conceal (and mask scent?), but if you stood your chances are reduced, walking is less success and running the least successful.
Maybe that's why we get to crawl fast when prone with Terrain Negotiation?