Rifleman Archive

The only defensive bonus you would not get is the dodge bonus. All other defensive bonuses, such as melee/ragned mitigation, melee/ranged defense and defense vs. states, you would receive no matter what weapon line you picked it up in and what weapon you were holding in combat.

Dodge applies to Pistols and 1 Handed Weapons (does not include lightsaber)
Counterattack applies to Carbines and 2 Handed Weapons (does not include lightsaber)
Block applies to Rifles and Polearm Weapons (does not include lightsaber)
Light Saber Block applies to ALL Lightsabers.

EDIT: There is a cap on all defensive mods of +125. So there is no difference between having ranged defense +200 and ranged defense +125.

Message Edited by RozhlokLightningskull on 07-26-2004 04:19 PM

although this has already been well answered, I thought I'd add this to help you understand what's happening in combat.

when a shot is fired, or a blow swung, a number of things start happening. let's look at ranged combat first:

you shoot. your accuracy mods are applied TO the shot. your target's ranged defense is applied AGAINST the shot. if your accuracy, weapon range modifiers, posture modifiers (example, bonus to firing from prone), and movement modifiers PLUS a random combat roll MINUS your oppenent's ranged defense modifier is greater than 'zero', you hit your target.

ranged defense, therefore, is a 'primary defense.' this defense prevents hits from landing.

you hit. your opponent makes a roll to block/dodge/counter. if the roll is successful, then (in the case of dodge), your opponent is NOT actually hit. status effects (like bleeds) can usually be applied DESPITE your opponent's success or failure.

block/dodge/counter are 'secondary defenses.' this defense turns hits into misses.

you ACTUALLY hit, bypassing your opponent's secondary defenses. your damage is rolled. your opponent's ranged mitigation reduces the range of your damage roll. then THAT damage is reduced by armor. then THAT damage is applied to the target.

now, with melee combat, a few more things come into play:

you swing. again, accuracy is weighed against melee defense. you hit, and the roll for dodge/block/counter is made. however, a melee combatant can use a skill called 'Center of Being.' when this state is active, dodge/block/counter is greatly enhanced (with a few exceptions). assuming you land a hit and bypass secondaries, damage is applied differently than in ranged combat.

again, mitigation is applied (this time melee instead of ranged). however, before armor is considered, damage is reduced by the % of your (weapon style) toughness. for a master TKA/brawler, this means a 62% reduction in melee damage. after this is applied, armor is factored in, dropping the remaining damage further.

ranged/melee defense works no matter what weapon you use, and mitigation works (depending on what form of attack you are facing, ranged or melee). as was said before, secondary defenses (and CoB and toughness, for melees) are applied according to what weapon you are wielding.

dodge: pistols and 1hand weapons
block: rifles and pikes
counter: carbines and 2hand weapons
'defensive acuity' (supposed to be a combination of dodge, block, and counter, explained below): TKA



that's the basics of attack and defense. now for some of the exceptions.

dodge seems to be working fine. when you dodge, there is an animation of stepping to the side (or rolling, if you're not standing). this has caused problems in the past, as you could be running and a dodge animation would 'freeze' you for an instant. as far as I know, this animation lock-up has been fixed.

block isn't working up to par. when it DOES work, it reduces the damage of a successful hit by 50%. rifles have noticed a number of problems with it working, though, and pikes are saying that block doesn't work outside of CoB. also, combat spam shows rifles counterattacking, which is an error that could come from a number of causes.

counterattack is supposed to allow a hit for full damage and to RETURN that amount of damage to the attacker. personally, I haven't seen anything that confirms this, but I haven't spent much time testing counterattack myself.

defensive acuity does not work as it was intended. even with CoB in effect, TKA's haven't been able to show a substantial working secondary defense. a master TKA is supposed to dodge/block/counter, and they simply aren't.



I hope this helps, and if anyone has good combat data to support/explain block/counter/def acuity, I'd appreciate knowing more. we're still running tests on these abilities on TC, and we expect to see changes as combat bugs are addressed.

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lammergeier wrote:

you hit. your opponent makes a roll to block/dodge/counter. if the roll is successful, then (in the case of dodge), your opponent is NOT actually hit. status effects (like bleeds) can usually be applied DESPITE your opponent's success or failure.

block/dodge/counter are 'secondary defenses.' this defense turns hits into misses.

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Do we know that the secondary defenses actualy involves a second roll? Another possible system would be to use it to bump up the min hit number. For example you say that if the end result is 1 or higher it's a hit. Lets say you have +80 Block. Instead of making it a second roll they could just have it as part of the first roll.

What they would do is say if in your to hit roll you get from a 1-80 then it's a hit but falls in the Block range activating the secondary defense. If your end result is 81+ you get an actual hit.

The reason I ask is because on my Novice Rifleman on TC I'm getting an awful lot of MOB's using secondary defenses to negate my attacks. Many more than my live character. Which would seem to indicate either a major difference in code between live and TC, or that accuracy plays a part which would seem to indicate the alternate theory of secondary defenses.

waste:

we need more testing to confirm this. the data is still really soft.

on the plus side, I've brought this to QA, and they're really interested in getting some combat logs to work with.

so far, the way I presented combat is in line with the way I've described it. BUT it needs more testing, and QA's and devs are the only ones who can really assert or deny the results we're seeing.

look for me ingame, and let's compare skillmods with a coding observer.