Dev Clarification Needed

antoniosalieri

Need to hear from a dev of some kind on this one.

Is it intended that beam power overcapping has no ceiling ?

Simple question... answer it and... if its not intended fix it ... if it is let me know so I can go play something else.

captainbailey

antoniosalieri wrote: »

Need to hear from a dev of some kind on this one.

Is it intended that beam power overcapping has no ceiling ?

Simple question... answer it and... if its not intended fix it ... if it is let me know so I can go play something else.

Before you run away crying can I have your stuffs?

antoniosalieri

captainbailey wrote: »

Before you run away crying can I have your stuffs?

Didn't say I was deleting my account just going somewhere else till its fixed. lol

If they say its intended its only a matter of 4-5 patches before they break it anyway.

Also your not a dev. :P

virusdancer

I'm not a Dev (nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express)...the last thing from Cryptic (surprised at who posted it myself) earlier this month was the following regarding overcap...

crypticgeko wrote: »

"But doesn't Cryptic tell us this isn't the case?" I'm not sure that's a sentence, so I'm not sure how to respond. But I think I understand what you are referring to.

You cannot get weapon power past 125 with batteries or powers. The power levels are pretty hard capped. That is, any power (say, a beam) that calculates damage based on your current weapon power level will never deal damage based on anything more than 125.

If you activate a buff that gives you more than 125 power, the power is still there, and you can draw from it. So, lets say:

• You are at 50/125.
• You activate a buff that gives you 50 power.
• You will be at 100/125.
• Weapons fire based on 100 weapon power.
• If multiple weapons are fired, power will start to drain, and all weapons will subsequently deal less power.

However, let say:

• You are at 100/125.
• You activate a buff that gives you 50 power.
• You will be at 125/125.
• Weapons fire based on 125 weapon power.
• If multiple weapons are fired, power will start to drain. However, you still have 25 unclaimed power from your buff, so that fills in. Your weapon power level wont drop below 125 until you deplete that buff. Once that happens, then power levels will drop below 125 power.

I'm pretty sure its working how its supposed to, but I haven't looked at that math in a long time. So there could be a problem, but I'm pretty sure its WAD. Haven't really thought about whether that should be changed or not.

...which doesn't directly answer your question, but I'm not a Dev...so I couldn't answer it anyway.

crusty8mac

Surest way to not get an answer is to call the devs out.

antoniosalieri

Thanks for digging it up virus... I think you know what I'm talking about though. I doubt the Devs have any clue.

Power over capping for some reason is working different with different types of weapons. Beams also at one time had a hard cap somewhere in the overcap amount... damn if I remember what that is. These days of course I am seeing overcapping hitting what I assume has to be getting close to the 200 mark... which is plain stupid.

antoniosalieri

crusty8mac wrote: »

Surest way to not get an answer is to call the devs out.

There is no way to get answers out of them I don't think.

rudiefix1

if I remember correctly there used to be a cap at 150

virusdancer

antoniosalieri wrote: »

Thanks for digging it up virus... I think you know what I'm talking about though. I doubt the Devs have any clue.

Power over capping for some reason is working different with different types of weapons. Beams also at one time had a hard cap somewhere in the overcap amount... damn if I remember what that is. These days of course I am seeing overcapping hitting what I assume has to be getting close to the 200 mark... which is plain stupid.

Part of that working differently is just the way drain mechanics work. You can do the same overcap for Cannons as Beams, but the Cannons won't drain enough for it to matter - it would be wasted. While for the Beams, yeah - you can be looking at 80 drain if things get out of sync and the first weapon is no longer considered the "free" weapon.

From there, well - it gets complicated and definitely would need a Dev reply...because "obviously" that drain was factored into balancing them, right? One would think/assume/etc... so if we're at the point now (and yeah, we're at it) where one can ignore that mechanic, are they still balanced?

Thing is, imho, that's happened in so many places across the board with the game. X was balanced by A, but A's so easily countered now...X is no longer balanced. That's just my personal opinion, though...and I tend to be very opinionated on core balancing (to the point I generally prefer talking about it in vague manners rather than getting into subjective discussions on X, Y, and Z).

Once they retrofit the Cruiser Commands to other boats, once folks slip in some of those new consoles (Tac, Eng, and Sci), pick up the 6th DOFF, etc, etc, etc...

...yeah, I'm over in Champions Online at the moment punching mobs in the face trying not to think about what S8's going to mean.

So yeah, all in all - it would be nifty to have a little reassurance form the Devs one way or the other...which gets into the next part:

crusty8mac wrote: »

Surest way to not get an answer is to call the devs out.

antoniosalieri wrote: »

There is no way to get answers out of them I don't think.

JamJamz just offered (as in recently) this reply to somebody asking about contacting Devs yesterday...

captjamjamz wrote: »

Many of us read the forums -- so an idea posted in the forums will more than likely be read by some of us. Not all of us post, or have twitter accounts, but, a few of us do.

We generally leave most of the community interaction to the PR pros, like Bran.

You can find us in-game on occasion, sometimes publicly displayed as a "dev" with a nameplate in chat that's colored pink with the <DEV> prefix. Others tend to avoid that -- thus avoiding a spam of private messages. If you see me on, feel free to ask question -- be aware that I may not be able to answer some, 'tis the nature of the development world.

Always be aware that just because we don't respond, doesn't mean we didn't read it; sometimes we simply don't have time, or can't answer a question for a variety of reasons.

If you add one of us on Twitter, you can usually find other developers through who we're following, some of us don't post on the forums. I must say, I feel pretty lucky working for a studio that even allows us to talk to the community, the vast majority don't!

ussultimatum

To be honest I was shocked by that post from Captain Gecko.

Not necessarily the information contained within, but simply that he had actually posted here in the PvP forms on one of the more "hidden mechanics" in this game.


I'm not really sure what to make of it, now that we have something of a confirmation.

Does it make sense to have an over-capping mechanic that only benefits 2 out of 6 available energy weapon types - and only benefits one particular skill (FAW)?

Does it make sense for there to be 30k and 40k DPS outputs in PvE with Single Beam Arrays?

tonyalmeida2

ussultimatum wrote: »

To be honest I was shocked by that post from Captain Gecko.

Not necessarily the information contained within, but simply that he had actually posted here in the PvP forms on one of the more "hidden mechanics" in this game.


I'm not really sure what to make of it, now that we have something of a confirmation.

Does it make sense to have an over-capping mechanic that only benefits 2 out of 6 available energy weapon types - and only benefits one particular skill (FAW)?

Does it make sense for there to be 30k and 40k DPS outputs in PvE with Single Beam Arrays?

Why would overcapping only benefit 2/6 energy types? I read the thread on tetryon perhaps not wai, but the others? What weapon types are you thinking it benefits vs not benefits?

khayuung

SBAs were the most underrated weapons in the game. As were the class that lives by them (cruisers).

The devs said they were going to do it.

Guess they actually did. And as usual, when they do, it goes to the other extreme...

But lets not overhype. Based on fleet parses, BFAW does roughly 11-13k dps to a single target while the other 3-5k is fluff damage.

CRF with DHcs does 9-11k to a single target. So there is a 20% disparity between weapon types. It should be closer.

antoniosalieri

tonyalmeida2 wrote: »

Why would overcapping only benefit 2/6 energy types? I read the thread on tetryon perhaps not wai, but the others? What weapon types are you thinking it benefits vs not benefits?

He is talking about beams themselves....

The only weapons that benifit from this apparently "intended" mechanic.

Are

Single Arrays
and
Dual beam banks.

See what we are saying... Nothing else is able to over cap to 200 power settings.

If cannons did this ... the nerf cry would be epic.

tonyalmeida2

antoniosalieri wrote: »

He is talking about beams themselves....

The only weapons that benifit from this apparently "intended" mechanic.

Are

Single Arrays
and
Dual beam banks.

See what we are saying... Nothing else is able to over cap to 200 power settings.

If cannons did this ... the nerf cry would be epic.

Okay. I see what you are saying now, the way he phrased it made it seem like it affected the actual energy types differently, which outside of the thread on tetryon, didn't make sense.

antoniosalieri

khayuung wrote: »

SBAs were the most underrated weapons in the game. As were the class that lives by them (cruisers).

The devs said they were going to do it.

Guess they actually did. And as usual, when they do, it goes to the other extreme...

But lets not overhype. Based on fleet parses, BFAW does roughly 11-13k dps to a single target while the other 3-5k is fluff damage.

CRF with DHcs does 9-11k to a single target. So there is a 20% disparity between weapon types. It should be closer.

If that where the case I would agree... however it isn't really a FAW issue... its a beam issue.

I know people that can hit around 8-10k per beam for the entire cycle...

With my sci ship with EPTW 1 and popping battaries I can get 5k hits with NO FAW at all running... just 125 power beams for multiple hits.

Its not really FAW that is the issue as i see it... its the fact that power draw for some reason treats one weapon type different.

omgrandalthor

i don't seam to get a boost when i put my wep power to 125 then use a skill that puts it over that like my red matter capacitor with my beams...

antoniosalieri

omgrandalthor wrote: »

i don't seam to get a boost when i put my wep power to 125 then use a skill that puts it over that like my red matter capacitor with my beams...

shoot at a stationary target and pay attnetion to the lowest number your weapon power drops to in a cycle...

Then do it again after popping a battary and see what the lowest number is at that point.

omgrandalthor

Yea when you hit a bat it wont drop as far both my dhc and beams do this the dhc drop further down because they have a fast fire rate and a higher drain on them but both i can keep above 100 while doing a alpha strike. The extra power goes into a pool

hereticknight085

There is an upper limit to weapon power overcapping. It's been in place as long as I can remember and is still there as far as I know.

According to a number of tests that I've run with a plethora of cruisers and other ships, the power overcap has a ceiling of ~150-155. Reason I know this is because... ah hell, I'll just describe one of my tests.

Ship: Odyssey Tactical Cruiser

Power Setting: 100/50/25/25

Visible Power Levels: 125/82/57/67

Actual Power Levels (taking skills and equipment into account): 131/82/57/67

So in this test, I hit an EPtW2 (which gives me a boost of 33 power to weapons), and then fired off 8 BAs simultaneously. According to in-game tool-tips, this should result in a drain of 80 power.

So my weapon power levels SHOULD be at 164. And yet after firing off 8 BAs, my power stabilized at around 70-75 during the firing cycles. Which means that at most my actual weapons power could not have been any higher than 150-155.

I did similar tests with differing numbers of BAs, ranging from 3 to 7 BAs. I always had EPtW2 active, and always fired all the BAs simultaneously. Here are my results:

8 BAs Resulting Firing Cycle Power Level: 70-75 (for some reason it shifted between those two numbers throughout the firing cycle, same phenomenon occurred during all the other tests)

7 BAs Resulting Firing Cycle Power Level: 80-85

6: 85-95 (an odd outlier, still haven't figured that one out yet)

5: 100-105

4: 110-115

3: No visible change


So I can only conclude that since each BA is supposed to drain 10 energy if fired with other weapons, that the power overcap ceiling is 150. To confirm this, I redid the test with 8 BAs on my engineer. And here's what I did:

Odyssey Tactical Cruiser, same settings, etc, only this time I hit Chevron Sep (+10 power to weapons, bringing the base up to 141), EPtW2 (+33, base is now theoretically 174), EPS Overcharge 3 (+30 power to all SS, base is now theoretically 204). Then I fired off 8 BAs. Result: 75-80 power during cycle.

That answer your question anton?

antoniosalieri

With omega amp I have been able to keep my power in the 90s. Not sure I'm doing anything else different. Perhaps I should do some more testing when I log in next.

captainedna

ussultimatum wrote: »

Does it make sense for there to be 30k and 40k DPS outputs in PvE with Single Beam Arrays?

Of course ...borg npcs are a threat and people need to eliminate them fast.Its not normal to beat infected elite in over 30 seconds...that's already considerated a fail.

antoniosalieri wrote: »

If cannons did this ... the nerf cry would be epic.

Cannons ,escorts and BoPs ...all need nerf .We all know this lol

antoniosalieri

omgrandalthor wrote: »

Yea when you hit a bat it wont drop as far both my dhc and beams do this the dhc drop further down because they have a fast fire rate and a higher drain on them but both i can keep above 100 while doing a alpha strike. The extra power goes into a pool

Power is returned 100% at the end of a cycle... so this reasoning does not apply. Cannons over cap but the limit seems to be around 130-140... where as beams yes I am pretty sure mine are capping closer to the 200 mark... as i have said I have managed to make a 8 beam cruiser never drop the needle any lower then the mid 90s. IMO that is severely broken... and why people are now upset about dem... 16 shots of dem per cycle with FAW... with almost every strike at full power... yes its why STFS are getting completed in 2min... and why PvP is full of faw boats.

omgrandalthor

well take a2b off the faw ships and beam ships beams will go back to doing less damage i just did a a2b run and it basically doubled my damage...

omgrandalthor

and while on a2b my power hardly dropped!

antoniosalieri

Indeed... never mind the cool down stuff... A2B is adding more weapon power which really seems to have no limit right now.

Combo EPTW with ATB and the amount of full power hits is pretty much total.

rck01

antoniosalieri wrote: »

Indeed... never mind the cool down stuff... A2B is adding more weapon power which really seems to have no limit right now.

Combo EPTW with ATB and the amount of full power hits is pretty much total.

Don't forget the Leech. It is now a standard part of any respectable beam boat load out.

RCK

antoniosalieri

rck01 wrote: »

Don't forget the Leech. It is now a standard part of any respectable beam boat load out.

RCK

Good point.

I know we say crazy things like 200 weapon power and most people likely don't take it that serious. I mean how long can you keep your power that high right ?

Thanks to doffs though...
EPTW 100% uptime
A2B another good 30+ power around 33% of the time.
Marion Total power drain resist for 8s every 45s (18% of the time)

Consoles...
Leech up all the time
and another +5 from the borg console

thanks to Faws Doubling of the proc chance.
The omega weapon amp is pretty much perma proced (and often will stack 3-5 high)
For another 30-50+ weapon power all the time. (as well as all the power drain resist it adds)

Now to top it off.... One new Cruiser with Weapon Drain Aura (and I assume more to come). -25% power drain... or in other words... power 8 beams for the price of 6. (or 5 if you are running some silly tier 5 rom plasma).

Take it all in total... and what you get is a real ton of hits at full power.

Now please don't anyone get me wrong... I do want to see cruisers out there. I even agree that cruisers have been sidelined for a good while longer then they should have been.

Really though when the games pressure dmg weapons have become the games spike dmg weapons something needs to be corrected. lol

twam

antoniosalieri wrote: »

Indeed... never mind the cool down stuff... A2B is adding more weapon power which really seems to have no limit right now.

Combo EPTW with ATB and the amount of full power hits is pretty much total.

Sounds powerful. Good thing there aren't any doffs making that ability over the top.

/joking

ivantomdisplay

Make sure u active powers in this order:
eptw, dem, aux2bat faw. This will make your weapons power go trough the roof. Add marion and omega amplifier, and you will rock!

mustafatennick

khayuung wrote: »

SBAs were the most underrated weapons in the game. As were the class that lives by them (cruisers).

The devs said they were going to do it.

Guess they actually did. And as usual, when they do, it goes to the other extreme...

But lets not overhype. Based on fleet parses, BFAW does roughly 11-13k dps to a single target while the other 3-5k is fluff damage.

CRF with DHcs does 9-11k to a single target. So there is a 20% disparity between weapon types. It should be closer.

Lol when was the last time you did pve I can get a c store nebula to lay down 10k dps and I suck

I've seen a BFAW scimi run 50k dps through certain points of stfs

No cannons can do that

Granted all this is aoe but it's still "DPS"

bpharma

I think porchsong or topset also mentioned that when they were testing with beam arrays that they were getting the initial drain down to 80 but when the first cycle was done and they were consistently firing it crept back up to 120s. They reasoned it was because while they should have had 200 weapon power or something silly like that it gets refunded during the cycle.

I'll try and find the post but it would tie in with what hereticknight said about the 155 cap. It drains from that initially taking you down to about 80 power. Then that extra 35 over the 155 cap (if you had 200 W power) starts getting refunded during your firing cycle bringing you up to a sitting 115.

Might be worth looking into but again I'll see if I can dig up the post. One reason you probably don't see it with cannons might be due to their firing cycle as beams are a ***** for firing as we all know, once you hit fire it's 4s before you can stop them firing at Monsieur FBP3. While DHC's have smaller firing cycles and generally are like a one night stand, shoot their load in the first second.

Edit here's what Porch saw:

porchsong wrote: »

Here is the definitive skinny on overcapping beams. There is overcapping. . .sort of. But, not as everyone thinks it is. We (and by we, I mean Tom (aka, hulk or Mal Reynolds) and Saxfire) spent hours working it out.

Overcapping works in that it will gain you weapon energy back WHILE you are in 4 second beam fire cycle. To explain let me break it down from base, and take the long way there. Let's say your max weapon power is 125 and only 125 (no overcapping). When you fire your beams, it goes into a 4 second beam cycle where your weapon power drops per weapon base drain. So, at full fire you will go down to 65 weapon power for the 4 second fire cycle, then climb back up in between next spray. But what is important here is that it will stay at 65 for full 4 second cycle.

Overcapping compensates for this based on your power transfer rate. Mine is 10.7 (go to esd space and look at your general section). So I will "gain" back 10.7 per second. And in a 4 second beam cycle, I "can" gain back 42.8--if I overcap to that amount or higher. So, if I know that with my plasmonic leech, eptw, A2B (if you go that route, I don't), batts, etc., all I need to do is get my overcap to 167.8 (125 base + 10.7 x4 = 42.8 power trans rate) and while firing beams, I will creep up 10.7 per second during the 4 second fire cycle. ANYTHING above 167.8 for me is wasted as I can't realize the benefit. If I were to vastly increase my EPS transfer rate, I could theoretically increase my overcap. So overcapping is simply higher primary firing--increasing per second during 4 second fire.

Tom and Saxie get ALL credit for this. They thoroughly tested it and it proved correct. So your dps gain is not from "overcapping" per se, but by seconds 2-4 of increased weapon power DURING 4 second fire cycle.

I hope I am explaining this properly.

As for John's a2b build Recluse--he is pissing me off with his dps, in a scratch-my-head sort of way. It is "partially" due to his a2b build, but mainly it is his piloting that is getting him the dps. We are not too far off in ISE with our recluses (me 25k, John 28-30k), but in PvP he is pulling away from me.