Well, since someone was blaming me for your math shenanigans, I figured I should stick around for a while. Although it looks like I have my reading cut out for me; its going to take a while to get the feel of all the combat systems. Its like someone took four games and cut up the rule books and threw the pieces into a paper bag.
Well, since someone was blaming me for your math shenanigans, I figured I should stick around for a while. Although it looks like I have my reading cut out for me; its going to take a while to get the feel of all the combat systems. Its like someone took four games and cut up the rule books and threw the pieces into a paper bag.
Accurate. But more like the rule book has been out for 5 years and received a bucket of errata to keep up with about 100 supplemental books. So a giant book full of sharpe blackouts, post it notes, and more loose pages paper clipped than the original print. That poor spine...
More like a game that is already broken and adding more broken things to it lol. I really don't see the point in keeping on playing a broken game that is only getting worse.
More like a game that is already broken and adding more broken things to it lol. I really don't see the point in keeping on playing a broken game that is only getting worse.
The same reason people still play 2nd ed. AD&D today. Some people just prefer the old ruleset.
More like a game that is already broken and adding more broken things to it lol. I really don't see the point in keeping on playing a broken game that is only getting worse.
All rulesets are broken to some degree. Any game system will have to determine what it wants to be good at, the feeling or style it wants, and then what it will sacrifice to achieve those things.
Take the acc/def mechanic in STO, it creates a combat environment where incoming damage is increased massively when your def is low. Combined with the ability to remove a target's defense it leads to 'spikey' combat. That is a style choice being neither right nor wrong. One of the drawbacks of the system is the mechanic becomes very difficult for a player to easily determine exactly how much acc/def they want or to eye ball measure it's effectiveness. Typically learning about acc/def is a 'eureka' moment for a player (and should be in a tutorial somewhere!).
When I want complex tactical combat out of an RPG I go for a detail heavy system like DnD. When I want a quick n dirty RPG I go for something lighter and more open ended like savage worlds. Both are broken in ways and evoke a different feel.
All rulesets are broken to some degree. Any game system will have to determine what it wants to be good at, the feeling or style it wants, and then what it will sacrifice to achieve those things.
Take the acc/def mechanic in STO, it creates a combat environment where incoming damage is increased massively when your def is low. Combined with the ability to remove a target's defense it leads to 'spikey' combat. That is a style choice being neither right nor wrong. One of the drawbacks of the system is the mechanic becomes very difficult for a player to easily determine exactly how much acc/def they want or to eye ball measure it's effectiveness. Typically learning about acc/def is a 'eureka' moment for a player (and should be in a tutorial somewhere!).
When I want complex tactical combat out of an RPG I go for a detail heavy system like DnD. When I want a quick n dirty RPG I go for something lighter and more open ended like savage worlds. Both are broken in ways and evoke a different feel.
I could be very wrong but as a fairly casual player, it seems to me that:
Acc, CritH, and CritD influence YOUR Acc/CritH/CritD.
Rapid also influences all weapons. I think Pen does although I haven't tested it.
Thrust influences your whole game play.
All of the above improve things by SCALING amounts as well, meaning that they benefit someone with more damage more (or more maneuverability more in the case of Thrust).
Dmg (and PvPDmg?) for whatever reason influence your single weapon by a flat, non-scaling amount. (This is also funny because it beams that as worthless as Dmg is, it's even more worthless the more weapon slots your ship has because the opportunity cost of another mod that boosts all weapons is exponentially higher, the more slots you have.)
The solution given current defense levels cannot be to have a mod only affect the weapon in its on because that would only enhance the supremacy of accuracy.
Dmg needs to boost ALL of your weapons and needs to do so by a scaling amount. It also ideally DOES need to boost white damage and should NOT be boosting special abilities or it will create a balance issue.
It seems to me that the best route would be for Dmg to boost weapon rate of fire. Not as a proc like Rapid but as a passive, stacking boost to weapon rate of fire.
If you enhance damage across weapons and as a percentage then that enhances special abilities. Whereas a passive, stacking haste buff would pretty much just enhance white damage. (It would not influence most beam or cannon ability upgrades because the ability cooldown remains. At most, it might upgrade torpedos where the torpedo cooldown is currently longer than the cooldown on torpedo upgrades.)
Treating Dmg as haste would also boost the value of CritH but, basically, more Dmg would then increase the value of CritH. Which is how mods should work ideally.
In an ideal situation, the more you have of any one stat mod, the more it enhances the value of other stat mods. This creates an incentive for diversification without a punishment or diminishing returns needed. Ideally, rather than diminishing returns on a stat to disincentivize overstacking a stat, you want each stat to provide increasing returns on stacking other stats. The more Dmg you have, the more you want CritH and Acc. The more Acc you have, the better the results you'd get from Dmg and CritH. That's the ideal.
The current superiority of Accuracy is rewarding not diversifying. Diminishing returns for not diversifying is punishment from a psychological standpoint. Increasing returns from a positive interplay between stats is positive reinforcement for diversifying, which is the best approach behaviorally to pursue in terms of systems design.
All rulesets are broken to some degree. Any game system will have to determine what it wants to be good at, the feeling or style it wants, and then what it will sacrifice to achieve those things.
Take the acc/def mechanic in STO, it creates a combat environment where incoming damage is increased massively when your def is low. Combined with the ability to remove a target's defense it leads to 'spikey' combat. That is a style choice being neither right nor wrong. One of the drawbacks of the system is the mechanic becomes very difficult for a player to easily determine exactly how much acc/def they want or to eye ball measure it's effectiveness. Typically learning about acc/def is a 'eureka' moment for a player (and should be in a tutorial somewhere!).
When I want complex tactical combat out of an RPG I go for a detail heavy system like DnD. When I want a quick n dirty RPG I go for something lighter and more open ended like savage worlds. Both are broken in ways and evoke a different feel.
Also, a broader solution to the defense side of this is something I've been advocating awhile:
MMOs need defense per second.
The failure to do this has underprivileged damage per second and, against weak mobs or in PvP, burst damage.
However if you start making defense an over time stat, you can encourage sustained damage over burst where it counts.
Also by having resistance, armor, etc. calculated per second, you can limit overpowered attacks and make it so that no single attack can kill anyone AND so that no one can die in UNDER X seconds, which might actually make PvP more strategic instead of being a proving ground for twitch keybinders.
EDIT:
What I'm talking about would make more sense for shields, which should have a frequency. That could be better balanced AND would make more Trek sense.
It would enable some interesting diversification for things like shield haste, make transphasics relevant, and enable a major overhaul of Borg ground and remodulation mechanics that don't strictly rely on more shields being better.
Currently, shields behave too much like a second set of armor.
I could be very wrong but as a fairly casual player, it seems to me that:
Acc, CritH, and CritD influence YOUR Acc/CritH/CritD.
Rapid also influences all weapons. I think Pen does although I haven't tested it.
Thrust influences your whole game play.
All of the above improve things by SCALING amounts as well, meaning that they benefit someone with more damage more (or more maneuverability more in the case of Thrust).
Thrust and Pen seems to be useless doing nothing. Not tested rapid but if it works like Spr its also useless as it locks out your main Bridge powers for 5 seconds lowering your overall damage.
I could be very wrong but as a fairly casual player, it seems to me that:
Acc, CritH, and CritD influence YOUR Acc/CritH/CritD.
Rapid also influences all weapons. I think Pen does although I haven't tested it.
Thrust influences your whole game play.
All of the above improve things by SCALING amounts as well, meaning that they benefit someone with more damage more (or more maneuverability more in the case of Thrust).
Dmg (and PvPDmg?) for whatever reason influence your single weapon by a flat, non-scaling amount. (This is also funny because it beams that as worthless as Dmg is, it's even more worthless the more weapon slots your ship has because the opportunity cost of another mod that boosts all weapons is exponentially higher, the more slots you have.)
The solution given current defense levels cannot be to have a mod only affect the weapon in its on because that would only enhance the supremacy of accuracy.
Dmg needs to boost ALL of your weapons and needs to do so by a scaling amount. It also ideally DOES need to boost white damage and should NOT be boosting special abilities or it will create a balance issue.
It seems to me that the best route would be for Dmg to boost weapon rate of fire. Not as a proc like Rapid but as a passive, stacking boost to weapon rate of fire.
If you enhance damage across weapons and as a percentage then that enhances special abilities. Whereas a passive, stacking haste buff would pretty much just enhance white damage. (It would not influence most beam or cannon ability upgrades because the ability cooldown remains. At most, it might upgrade torpedos where the torpedo cooldown is currently longer than the cooldown on torpedo upgrades.)
Treating Dmg as haste would also boost the value of CritH but, basically, more Dmg would then increase the value of CritH. Which is how mods should work ideally.
In an ideal situation, the more you have of any one stat mod, the more it enhances the value of other stat mods. This creates an incentive for diversification without a punishment or diminishing returns needed. Ideally, rather than diminishing returns on a stat to disincentivize overstacking a stat, you want each stat to provide increasing returns on stacking other stats. The more Dmg you have, the more you want CritH and Acc. The more Acc you have, the better the results you'd get from Dmg and CritH. That's the ideal.
The current superiority of Accuracy is rewarding not diversifying. Diminishing returns for not diversifying is punishment from a psychological standpoint. Increasing returns from a positive interplay between stats is positive reinforcement for diversifying, which is the best approach behaviorally to pursue in terms of systems design.
I don't think you saw Hawk's answer. It's a bonus to overall damage.
I don't think you saw Hawk's answer. It's a bonus to overall damage.
Well, weapon haste/weapon cooldown reduction would be more effective as a scaling benefit nevertheless. And if it works as a % cooldown reduction, it would enhance slow weapons by a big enough margin that they might become more popular.
For example, if each Dmg mod reduced the cooldown on rate of fire by 5%...
- More damaging weapons of equal speed would gain more than less damaging weapons.
- Slow weapons would see more benefit as 5% of their recharge.
- Fast weapons would definitely only see a white damage gain.
My 5% is just an example but after playing with numbers it seems most reasonable assuming that rather than being additive (which could get insane with instant or negative fire rates), you're talking an exponential curve with each mod making rate of fire 95% of what it was previously.
Using that...
White quality dual heavies with no skills do 384 DPV and 256 DPS. That's a rate of 1.5
Now if we imagine an escort with 6 weapons, all Dmgx3... That's a reduction to 0.595 rate.
That takes a 384 DPV weapon up to 645 DPS. However, it doesn't upgrade weapons special (same cooldown) and while it may be a significant white damage boost, it doesn't influence specials.
5% (and with the exponential curve I mentioned) is a fairly balanced number because you'd have to imagine the possibility of a ship with 8 weapons with Dmg x4 mods in each. In that case, you'd have a 64% reduction, which would make something like the Avenger brutal. 883 white damage per shot. (A rate of 1.5 times 0.95 to the 32nd or a firing rate of 0.29 seconds per shot.) Still, that's assuming an Avenger with ALL damage mods and you'd only be getting around 6000 spacebar damage with it while getting less damage from specials, which seems like a fair tradeoff in this case.
In general, I like Dmg being "dumb" damage, which is what weapon haste does. It should have less potential for boosting specials and more potential for boosting spacebar/white damage. It should be something a weak player wants to stack and you should need skill to get more out of the other mods.
Well, weapon haste/weapon cooldown reduction would be more effective as a scaling benefit nevertheless. And if it works as a % cooldown reduction, it would enhance slow weapons by a big enough margin that they might become more popular.
It would be more effective, but if the goal is to address a perceived weakness relative to Acc, that sounds far too powerful in a way numbers-fiddling can't address. Acc's benefit varies based on the defense of the target, and it saturates in a way that rapidly degrades its benefit. Your cooldown reduction would not have any first-order saturation reduction, which would make it superior to Acc in every way as an effect, even factoring in the enhanced critical overflow, which could only be balanced by reducing its numerical effect down to trivial levels.
It also seems to me conceptually mismatched with the intent of Dmg buffs, because it inadvertently benefits the secondary non-damaging effects of attacks with those effects very strongly.
If Dmg is a global buff, I don't see how cooldown reduction could be better, except in the literal sense of it would be a heck of a lot better than a global damage increase. And almost anything else actually.
It would be more effective, but if the goal is to address a perceived weakness relative to Acc, that sounds far too powerful in a way numbers-fiddling can't address. Acc's benefit varies based on the defense of the target, and it saturates in a way that rapidly degrades its benefit. Your cooldown reduction would not have any first-order saturation reduction, which would make it superior to Acc in every way as an effect, even factoring in the enhanced critical overflow, which could only be balanced by reducing its numerical effect down to trivial levels.
It also seems to me conceptually mismatched with the intent of Dmg buffs, because it inadvertently benefits the secondary non-damaging effects of attacks with those effects very strongly.
If Dmg is a global buff, I don't see how cooldown reduction could be better, except in the literal sense of it would be a heck of a lot better than a global damage increase. And almost anything else actually.
I really don't think it would be too powerful if it's done as a described in longform.
5% additive reduction would be too powerful, absolutely.
Instead I'm suggesting that weapons rate of fire be:
Weapons Rate * 0.95^X, where X = number of Dmg mods.
More or less. There's a bit of complexity I'd add into the calculation to account for what happens if someone has no Dmg mods.
Effectively, one mod increases Haste by 5%, two by 9.75%, three by 14.3%. Dmgx4 across 8 weapons would increase haste by 80.7%.
That doesn't affect specials.
The large point of lots of Dmg mod is to create a low skill DPS baseline that doesn't require or benefit people skilled with bridge officer abilities. My guestimate is that the net result would cap out at less than 7000 white damage.
Then you can have starter dungeon gear that is Dmg heavy and as skill level improves through raiding, wean people off Dmg towards gear that provides less "Dumb Damage" but which provides a higher total damage when used skillfully.
If I've misunderstood your math, please correct me. You say in your original post:
White quality dual heavies with no skills do 384 DPV and 256 DPS. That's a rate of 1.5
Now if we imagine an escort with 6 weapons, all Dmgx3... That's a reduction to 0.595 rate.
I'm assuming thats 384 damage per volley and 256 DPS rating, implying a cycle time of 384/256 = 1.5, which seems to agree with your statement above. Now you say imagine 6 weapons all with (hypothetical) Dmgx3, given how I originally understood your proposal that would reduce cycle time from T to T * 0.95 ^ stacks, or in this case 1.5 * 0.95 ^ 18 = 1.5 * 0.397 = 0.596, which also matches your statement above. So far so good. That would mean the DPS of a 384 volley would be 384/0.596 = 644, which is in close agreement with your numbers to this point. Its worth noting that at this point DPS has increased from 256 to 644, a net increase to x2.52 times original DPS.
5% (and with the exponential curve I mentioned) is a fairly balanced number because you'd have to imagine the possibility of a ship with 8 weapons with Dmg x4 mods in each. In that case, you'd have a 64% reduction, which would make something like the Avenger brutal. 883 white damage per shot. (A rate of 1.5 times 0.95 to the 32nd or a firing rate of 0.29 seconds per shot.) Still, that's assuming an Avenger with ALL damage mods and you'd only be getting around 6000 spacebar damage with it while getting less damage from specials, which seems like a fair tradeoff in this case.
Continuing the calculation, here we have 32 stacks, which would make the above cycle time drop to 1.5 * 0.95 ^ 32 = 1.5 * 0.193 = 0.291. Now while that agrees with your number above, I don't see where the 64% comes from. More alarmingly, while the 18 stack version implied a 2.51x damage multiplier, the 32 stack version implies 5.16x damage multiplier.
As you say, its rising exponentially. Because of that, the question becomes where to balance the benefit, because it is accelerating. Consider looking at the behavior of this function: (1/(0.95^stack) - 1)/stack. That is the estimated linear benefit per stack, given a number of stacks. It starts off small: about 0.05 (+5%). In other words, your speed multiplier is acting kind of like a 5% buff per stack. But by 12 stacks it is acting like about 7% per stack, and by 24 it is acting like 10% per stack. By 32 it is acting like 13% per stack, over two and a half times as strong per stack as it started off at. Not only is that accelerating benefit relative to a linear Dmg buff, its far and away more powerful than Acc which decelerates its benefit rapidly.
Because the more you have the stronger each additional stack becomes, it doesn't promote stacking diverse mods: the opposite could easily be true where for large enough ships the stacking effect overwhelms the benefits of slotting diverse. If there is a counter-balancing force, I'm unaware of what it is and it is not identified in your suggestion.
If I've misunderstood your math, please correct me. You say in your original post:
I'm assuming thats 384 damage per volley and 256 DPS rating, implying a cycle time of 384/256 = 1.5, which seems to agree with your statement above. Now you say imagine 6 weapons all with (hypothetical) Dmgx3, given how I originally understood your proposal that would reduce cycle time from T to T * 0.95 ^ stacks, or in this case 1.5 * 0.95 ^ 18 = 1.5 * 0.397 = 0.596, which also matches your statement above. So far so good. That would mean the DPS of a 384 volley would be 384/0.596 = 644, which is in close agreement with your numbers to this point. Its worth noting that at this point DPS has increased from 256 to 644, a net increase to x2.52 times original DPS.
Continuing the calculation, here we have 32 stacks, which would make the above cycle time drop to 1.5 * 0.95 ^ 32 = 1.5 * 0.193 = 0.291. Now while that agrees with your number above, I don't see where the 64% comes from. More alarmingly, while the 18 stack version implied a 2.51x damage multiplier, the 32 stack version implies 5.16x damage multiplier.
As you say, its rising exponentially. Because of that, the question becomes where to balance the benefit, because it is accelerating. Consider looking at the behavior of this function: (1/(0.95^stack) - 1)/stack. That is the estimated linear benefit per stack, given a number of stacks. It starts off small: about 0.05 (+5%). In other words, your speed multiplier is acting kind of like a 5% buff per stack. But by 12 stacks it is acting like about 7% per stack, and by 24 it is acting like 10% per stack. By 32 it is acting like 13% per stack, over two and a half times as strong per stack as it started off at. Not only is that accelerating benefit relative to a linear Dmg buff, its far and away more powerful than Acc which decelerates its benefit rapidly.
Because the more you have the stronger each additional stack becomes, it doesn't promote stacking diverse mods: the opposite could easily be true where for large enough ships the stacking effect overwhelms the benefits of slotting diverse. If there is a counter-balancing force, I'm unaware of what it is and it is not identified in your suggestion.
I may have had amath error somewhere but if each Dmg causes the total to be 95% of the previous value then the result should be inverse scaling. To a point where the value from 8 Dmgx4 weapons is around a 2% gain per mod. Posting from my phone right now but I'll take a look at the formula and show my work later.
Ok. So following my proposal for Dmg as weapon haste, I'll show my math... Imagine a 1.0 rate for simplicity.
So one Dmg mod makes the normal rate 95% of its normal rate. This is a 5% reduction.
1 x 95% = 0.95
So two Dmg mods makes the normal rate 95%^2 of its normal rate. This is a 9.75% reduction.
1 x 95%^2 = 0.9025
So ten Dmg mods makes the normal rate 95%^10 of its normal rate. This is a 40.13% reduction. Average reduction per mod is now just over 4%.
1 x 95%^10 = 0.5987
With this kind of curve, more Dmg is never bad if you lack skill. But while Dmg will increase your autofire by causing you to fire more, it won't enhance your specials.
CritD/CritH/Acc will enhance your specials so each stack of Dmg creates an opportunity cost.
So the idea is that if most of your damage is from autoattack and you stack Dmg, you do respectable DPS but it's fairly hardcapped because you'll miss a lot and be Crit-starved, which eats up specials especially.
The better you are at using specials, the bigger a percentage of total DPS comes from those. If more than half your damage comes from specials, this is the tipping point where Dmg would lose value relative to other mods you could have on the same gear because Dmg wouldn't boost specials at all as a haste modifier.
So the idea is that straight Dmg could carry a bad player and that as your skill improves, you will learn to get higher DPS by trading out Dmg for other mods that DO scale with specials.
I may have had amath error somewhere but if each Dmg causes the total to be 95% of the previous value then the result should be inverse scaling.
It won't be, if your intent is to decrease cooldown and thereby decrease firing cycle time in the way you describe, because cycle time has a hyperbolicly increasing effect on damage output. While the cooldown time decreases appear to be decreasing, the hyperbolic effect of being in the denominator overwhelms that.
Consider: 1, 0.5, 0.25, 0.125, 0.0625, 0.03125... That sequence is decreasing, and you might say that each step has less of an effect than the previous, which is correct. The problem comes when that number isn't the true measure of the effect, but just a component of a larger effect:
1/1, 1/0.5, 1/0.25, 1/0.125... These numbers aren't increasing in slower steps, they are increasing geometrically fast upward: 1, 2, 4, 8... Since damage output is inversely proportional to firing cycle time, that ultimately dominates the net effect.
In order to have the effect you describe, you would have to decrease cooldown time a different way: Cooldown = BaseCool/(1+Buff). Because what happens is when net DPS is damage/cycletime, then the cooldown buff gets flipped: damage / (BaseCool / (1 + Buff) ) = damage / BaseCool * (1 + Buff). And that's just another way of saying (Base DPS) * (1 + Buff). Buff now has a linear, and not accelerating, impact.
This assumes, of course, there's no activation delay in cooldown.
Ok. So following my proposal for Dmg as weapon haste, I'll show my math... Imagine a 1.0 rate for simplicity.
So one Dmg mod makes the normal rate 95% of its normal rate. This is a 5% reduction.
1 x 95% = 0.95
So two Dmg mods makes the normal rate 95%^2 of its normal rate. This is a 9.75% reduction.
1 x 95%^2 = 0.9025
So ten Dmg mods makes the normal rate 95%^10 of its normal rate. This is a 40.13% reduction. Average reduction per mod is now just over 4%.
1 x 95%^10 = 0.5987
Careful. You are using the word "rate" incorrectly, and I believe it is leading you astray. What you want to say is that one Dmg mod reduces the cycle time to 95% of normal, which means the *rate* of fire increases to 1/0.95 = 1.05x normal. Two Dmg mods reduce the cycle time to 0.95^2 times normal or 0.9025 times normal, which means the firing *rate* is now 1/0.9025 = 1.11x normal. Ten Dmg mods reduces cycle time to 0.95^10 = 0.5987x normal, and thus the firing *rate* is now 1/0.5987 = 1.67x normal.
If you actually meant to say that the *rate* was 0.95^10 or normal, then the rate would be lower, and damage would be dropping not rising. Rate is inversely proportional to the numbers you're calculating, but you aren't comparing the actual rates, you are comparing the cycle time reductions directly and calling it rate. That masks the true impact of your suggestion.
Careful. You are using the word "rate" incorrectly, and I believe it is leading you astray. What you want to say is that one Dmg mod reduces the cycle time to 95% of normal, which means the *rate* of fire increases to 1/0.95 = 1.05x normal. Two Dmg mods reduce the cycle time to 0.95^2 times normal or 0.9025 times normal, which means the firing *rate* is now 1/0.9025 = 1.11x normal. Ten Dmg mods reduces cycle time to 0.95^10 = 0.5987x normal, and thus the firing *rate* is now 1/0.5987 = 1.67x normal.
If you actually meant to say that the *rate* was 0.95^10 or normal, then the rate would be lower, and damage would be dropping not rising. Rate is inversely proportional to the numbers you're calculating, but you aren't comparing the actual rates, you are comparing the cycle time reductions directly and calling it rate. That masks the true impact of your suggestion.
Games I've played before referred to cycle time as weapon rate or weapon speed. But yeah.
To the previous poster: There is a hardcap on this because the max possible damage mods is 4 (number of mods, maybe with a 0.5 for epic?) x 8 (number of weapons). You don't need to consider what would happen if this scaled infinitely. You just need to consider, basically, the Fleet Avenger as the pinnacle example here since 5 fore weapons, cannons, and 8 slots is going to be your max autofire option. But it scales exponentially down in value because each Dmg is worth less than the previous one.
I just did an estimate (using natural logs) of what it would take to get cycle time to instant. Actually, that would take infinite Dmg mods under this proposal. But to eliminate 99% of cycle time would take 90 Dmg mods. Even allowing for epic weapons with Dmgx4 [Dmg/Acc], you would need 20 weapons slots all equipped with Dmgx4 [Dmg/Acc] mods to hit a 99% cycle time reduction. Since it's not possible to have more than 8 weapons slots, that isn't a practical problem. With 8 weapons slots, the most you could manage would be an 84% cycle time reduction with Epic Dmgx4 [Dmg/Acc] and that's assuming that Cryptic didn't set a haste cap.
And that would lead to insane spacebar damage and very weak BO abilities because of the opportunity cost of other mods. A skilled player would still readily do more damage than that. Dmg would be the mod that benefits unskilled players more. You would never be up against a skilled opponent who would have Dmgx4 Acc/Dmg epics in every slot because a skilled player could do more with diversified mods and a truly skilled player would still benefit from no Dmg. It's just that the average player would benefit from some Dmg under my proposal and the worse you are, the more Dmg you'd want.
But it scales exponentially down in value because each Dmg is worth less than the previous one.
There's only two possibilities: your math is wrong but you are unable to see that, or there exists a game mechanic that I am unaware of and you're not mentioning that somehow changes the calculations in a way that makes your first post wrong and yet makes this statement correct.
Since I'm not qualified to distinguish between the two, I'm unable to help you further. Hopefully someone else will step in and clarify more authoritatively.
There's only two possibilities: your math is wrong but you are unable to see that, or there exists a game mechanic that I am unaware of and you're not mentioning that somehow changes the calculations in a way that makes your first post wrong and yet makes this statement correct.
Since I'm not qualified to distinguish between the two, I'm unable to help you further. Hopefully someone else will step in and clarify more authoritatively.
I am not sure that our maths disagree at this point.
My point is that this only magnifies white damage several times its base value at worst. It cannot magnify specials or procs. There is a hard cap on the effect because you cannot have more than 8 weapons and 4.5 Dmg mods with all epic gear at the extreme.
A skilled player will magnify damage more than several times over with straight Acc or Acc/CritD combos through effective use of specials.
This buff to Dmg is deliberately an OP boost if fully utilized but it can't buff the best players because it scales in no way with procs or abilities. It merely would boost weaker players closer to more skilled players who aren't using Dmg.
A skilled player can hit 27k DPS in Mk XII gear. probably higher but I know this was possible before power creep was a huge issue. By my estimates, over half of this number could be chalked up to running 8 x Accuracyx3 when coupled with player skill.
At the high end of competitive DPS, 8x Accuracyx3 is therefore worth 13.5k DPS
Now looking at my proposed new Dmg mod on a Fleet Avenger. Ignoring traits/passives and without use of skills, white damage on a fleet Avenger is going to be 1676 DPS.
Now, my estimate for where Dmgx4 [Dmg/Acc] Epic gear would take an Avenger works out to 10,475 DPS.
So the maximum possible gain of my Dmg-as-haste using a perfect combination of Epic gear is around a gain of 8800 DPS. This is gear that you will almost certainly never see (we're talking thousands of dollars worth of revenue or years of time to get all epics of a specific type like this). But we're assuming it's real and it's on a Fleet Avenger which will do maximum white damage.
A poor player will gain 8800 DPS by stacking Dmg-as-haste. A great player however will LOSE well in excess of 13.5k DPS by stacking Dmg in place of accuracy.
See... Accuracy remains superior under my proposal, if you have the skill to use it. Dmg would provide a massive buff that requires no skill but the more skill you have, the more Dmg creates an opportunity cost vs. stacking accuracy.
If you spam spacebar, Dmg wins. If you're moderately skilled, a balance is the sweet spot. If you're highly skilled, you want all Accuracy.
It would be more effective, but if the goal is to address a perceived weakness relative to Acc, that sounds far too powerful in a way numbers-fiddling can't address. Acc's benefit varies based on the defense of the target, and it saturates in a way that rapidly degrades its benefit. Your cooldown reduction would not have any first-order saturation reduction, which would make it superior to Acc in every way as an effect, even factoring in the enhanced critical overflow, which could only be balanced by reducing its numerical effect down to trivial levels.
It also seems to me conceptually mismatched with the intent of Dmg buffs, because it inadvertently benefits the secondary non-damaging effects of attacks with those effects very strongly.
If Dmg is a global buff, I don't see how cooldown reduction could be better, except in the literal sense of it would be a heck of a lot better than a global damage increase. And almost anything else actually.
It seems like you picked up some math somewhere. Also I'm not sure if you're using Google Translate or not so most of your post I'll just have to ignore.
But I think I can help you a bit on Acc. I don't think you know what it does. Regardless of the defense of the target with the exception being that defense is greater than accuracy any incremental accuracy increase will be of greater benefit than previous increments. It just keeps getting better. And because you can not actually catch anyone's defense purely by adding accuracy there is never any other stat that can compare to it.
Period. There's no more discussion there.
If, and only if, you shut down a target's defense using other means will you see that accuracy loses some value vs other mods. And at that point it is very simple to calculate what mods would be best for whatever it is you intend to do in that situation.
And cool down reductions? Please just stop. There's been enough of that already.
It seems like you picked up some math somewhere. Also I'm not sure if you're using Google Translate or not so most of your post I'll just have to ignore.
But I think I can help you a bit on Acc. I don't think you know what it does. Regardless of the defense of the target with the exception being that defense is greater than accuracy any incremental accuracy increase will be of greater benefit than previous increments. It just keeps getting better. And because you can not actually catch anyone's defense purely by adding accuracy there is never any other stat that can compare to it.
Period. There's no more discussion there.
If, and only if, you shut down a target's defense using other means will you see that accuracy loses some value vs other mods. And at that point it is very simple to calculate what mods would be best for whatever it is you intend to do in that situation.
And cool down reductions? Please just stop. There's been enough of that already.
I'm not talking about ability cooldowns. I'm talking about weapon rate of fire.
But I think I can help you a bit on Acc. I don't think you know what it does. Regardless of the defense of the target with the exception being that defense is greater than accuracy any incremental accuracy increase will be of greater benefit than previous increments.
The only thing I know about Accuracy is the formula posted by adjudicatorhawk. According to adjudicatorhawk's posted formula, one of you is mistaken, unless I'm reading the formula completely wrong.
If the difference is positive (Hit is larger than Miss), the chance mirrors the negative case:
Chance = ChanceNeutral * 2 - ChanceNeutral / (1 + Difference)
As Acc increases (and Difference increases as a result), chance to hit increases from Neutral towards 2* Neutral asymptotically. Its a classic diminishing returns formula. And since offense is judged based on damage output which is directly proportional to hit chance, that's a true diminishing return. Would you like to take a swing at explaining your statement, since it appears to be inconsistent with the math.
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I missed you.
Systems Designer - Cryptic Studios
Twitter: @JeffAHamilton
Well, since someone was blaming me for your math shenanigans, I figured I should stick around for a while. Although it looks like I have my reading cut out for me; its going to take a while to get the feel of all the combat systems. Its like someone took four games and cut up the rule books and threw the pieces into a paper bag.
Accurate. But more like the rule book has been out for 5 years and received a bucket of errata to keep up with about 100 supplemental books. So a giant book full of sharpe blackouts, post it notes, and more loose pages paper clipped than the original print. That poor spine...
The same reason people still play 2nd ed. AD&D today. Some people just prefer the old ruleset.
All rulesets are broken to some degree. Any game system will have to determine what it wants to be good at, the feeling or style it wants, and then what it will sacrifice to achieve those things.
Take the acc/def mechanic in STO, it creates a combat environment where incoming damage is increased massively when your def is low. Combined with the ability to remove a target's defense it leads to 'spikey' combat. That is a style choice being neither right nor wrong. One of the drawbacks of the system is the mechanic becomes very difficult for a player to easily determine exactly how much acc/def they want or to eye ball measure it's effectiveness. Typically learning about acc/def is a 'eureka' moment for a player (and should be in a tutorial somewhere!).
When I want complex tactical combat out of an RPG I go for a detail heavy system like DnD. When I want a quick n dirty RPG I go for something lighter and more open ended like savage worlds. Both are broken in ways and evoke a different feel.
I could be very wrong but as a fairly casual player, it seems to me that:
Acc, CritH, and CritD influence YOUR Acc/CritH/CritD.
Rapid also influences all weapons. I think Pen does although I haven't tested it.
Thrust influences your whole game play.
All of the above improve things by SCALING amounts as well, meaning that they benefit someone with more damage more (or more maneuverability more in the case of Thrust).
Dmg (and PvPDmg?) for whatever reason influence your single weapon by a flat, non-scaling amount. (This is also funny because it beams that as worthless as Dmg is, it's even more worthless the more weapon slots your ship has because the opportunity cost of another mod that boosts all weapons is exponentially higher, the more slots you have.)
The solution given current defense levels cannot be to have a mod only affect the weapon in its on because that would only enhance the supremacy of accuracy.
Dmg needs to boost ALL of your weapons and needs to do so by a scaling amount. It also ideally DOES need to boost white damage and should NOT be boosting special abilities or it will create a balance issue.
It seems to me that the best route would be for Dmg to boost weapon rate of fire. Not as a proc like Rapid but as a passive, stacking boost to weapon rate of fire.
If you enhance damage across weapons and as a percentage then that enhances special abilities. Whereas a passive, stacking haste buff would pretty much just enhance white damage. (It would not influence most beam or cannon ability upgrades because the ability cooldown remains. At most, it might upgrade torpedos where the torpedo cooldown is currently longer than the cooldown on torpedo upgrades.)
Treating Dmg as haste would also boost the value of CritH but, basically, more Dmg would then increase the value of CritH. Which is how mods should work ideally.
In an ideal situation, the more you have of any one stat mod, the more it enhances the value of other stat mods. This creates an incentive for diversification without a punishment or diminishing returns needed. Ideally, rather than diminishing returns on a stat to disincentivize overstacking a stat, you want each stat to provide increasing returns on stacking other stats. The more Dmg you have, the more you want CritH and Acc. The more Acc you have, the better the results you'd get from Dmg and CritH. That's the ideal.
The current superiority of Accuracy is rewarding not diversifying. Diminishing returns for not diversifying is punishment from a psychological standpoint. Increasing returns from a positive interplay between stats is positive reinforcement for diversifying, which is the best approach behaviorally to pursue in terms of systems design.
Also, a broader solution to the defense side of this is something I've been advocating awhile:
MMOs need defense per second.
The failure to do this has underprivileged damage per second and, against weak mobs or in PvP, burst damage.
However if you start making defense an over time stat, you can encourage sustained damage over burst where it counts.
Also by having resistance, armor, etc. calculated per second, you can limit overpowered attacks and make it so that no single attack can kill anyone AND so that no one can die in UNDER X seconds, which might actually make PvP more strategic instead of being a proving ground for twitch keybinders.
EDIT:
What I'm talking about would make more sense for shields, which should have a frequency. That could be better balanced AND would make more Trek sense.
It would enable some interesting diversification for things like shield haste, make transphasics relevant, and enable a major overhaul of Borg ground and remodulation mechanics that don't strictly rely on more shields being better.
Currently, shields behave too much like a second set of armor.
I don't think you saw Hawk's answer. It's a bonus to overall damage.
Sorry for the double post I'm on a phone. A guy yesterday started a thread with a google doc and a list of mods.
Well, weapon haste/weapon cooldown reduction would be more effective as a scaling benefit nevertheless. And if it works as a % cooldown reduction, it would enhance slow weapons by a big enough margin that they might become more popular.
For example, if each Dmg mod reduced the cooldown on rate of fire by 5%...
- More damaging weapons of equal speed would gain more than less damaging weapons.
- Slow weapons would see more benefit as 5% of their recharge.
- Fast weapons would definitely only see a white damage gain.
My 5% is just an example but after playing with numbers it seems most reasonable assuming that rather than being additive (which could get insane with instant or negative fire rates), you're talking an exponential curve with each mod making rate of fire 95% of what it was previously.
Using that...
White quality dual heavies with no skills do 384 DPV and 256 DPS. That's a rate of 1.5
Now if we imagine an escort with 6 weapons, all Dmgx3... That's a reduction to 0.595 rate.
That takes a 384 DPV weapon up to 645 DPS. However, it doesn't upgrade weapons special (same cooldown) and while it may be a significant white damage boost, it doesn't influence specials.
5% (and with the exponential curve I mentioned) is a fairly balanced number because you'd have to imagine the possibility of a ship with 8 weapons with Dmg x4 mods in each. In that case, you'd have a 64% reduction, which would make something like the Avenger brutal. 883 white damage per shot. (A rate of 1.5 times 0.95 to the 32nd or a firing rate of 0.29 seconds per shot.) Still, that's assuming an Avenger with ALL damage mods and you'd only be getting around 6000 spacebar damage with it while getting less damage from specials, which seems like a fair tradeoff in this case.
In general, I like Dmg being "dumb" damage, which is what weapon haste does. It should have less potential for boosting specials and more potential for boosting spacebar/white damage. It should be something a weak player wants to stack and you should need skill to get more out of the other mods.
It would be more effective, but if the goal is to address a perceived weakness relative to Acc, that sounds far too powerful in a way numbers-fiddling can't address. Acc's benefit varies based on the defense of the target, and it saturates in a way that rapidly degrades its benefit. Your cooldown reduction would not have any first-order saturation reduction, which would make it superior to Acc in every way as an effect, even factoring in the enhanced critical overflow, which could only be balanced by reducing its numerical effect down to trivial levels.
It also seems to me conceptually mismatched with the intent of Dmg buffs, because it inadvertently benefits the secondary non-damaging effects of attacks with those effects very strongly.
If Dmg is a global buff, I don't see how cooldown reduction could be better, except in the literal sense of it would be a heck of a lot better than a global damage increase. And almost anything else actually.
I really don't think it would be too powerful if it's done as a described in longform.
5% additive reduction would be too powerful, absolutely.
Instead I'm suggesting that weapons rate of fire be:
Weapons Rate * 0.95^X, where X = number of Dmg mods.
More or less. There's a bit of complexity I'd add into the calculation to account for what happens if someone has no Dmg mods.
Effectively, one mod increases Haste by 5%, two by 9.75%, three by 14.3%. Dmgx4 across 8 weapons would increase haste by 80.7%.
That doesn't affect specials.
The large point of lots of Dmg mod is to create a low skill DPS baseline that doesn't require or benefit people skilled with bridge officer abilities. My guestimate is that the net result would cap out at less than 7000 white damage.
Then you can have starter dungeon gear that is Dmg heavy and as skill level improves through raiding, wean people off Dmg towards gear that provides less "Dumb Damage" but which provides a higher total damage when used skillfully.
Dmg would become a skill level compensator then.
I'm assuming thats 384 damage per volley and 256 DPS rating, implying a cycle time of 384/256 = 1.5, which seems to agree with your statement above. Now you say imagine 6 weapons all with (hypothetical) Dmgx3, given how I originally understood your proposal that would reduce cycle time from T to T * 0.95 ^ stacks, or in this case 1.5 * 0.95 ^ 18 = 1.5 * 0.397 = 0.596, which also matches your statement above. So far so good. That would mean the DPS of a 384 volley would be 384/0.596 = 644, which is in close agreement with your numbers to this point. Its worth noting that at this point DPS has increased from 256 to 644, a net increase to x2.52 times original DPS.
Continuing the calculation, here we have 32 stacks, which would make the above cycle time drop to 1.5 * 0.95 ^ 32 = 1.5 * 0.193 = 0.291. Now while that agrees with your number above, I don't see where the 64% comes from. More alarmingly, while the 18 stack version implied a 2.51x damage multiplier, the 32 stack version implies 5.16x damage multiplier.
As you say, its rising exponentially. Because of that, the question becomes where to balance the benefit, because it is accelerating. Consider looking at the behavior of this function: (1/(0.95^stack) - 1)/stack. That is the estimated linear benefit per stack, given a number of stacks. It starts off small: about 0.05 (+5%). In other words, your speed multiplier is acting kind of like a 5% buff per stack. But by 12 stacks it is acting like about 7% per stack, and by 24 it is acting like 10% per stack. By 32 it is acting like 13% per stack, over two and a half times as strong per stack as it started off at. Not only is that accelerating benefit relative to a linear Dmg buff, its far and away more powerful than Acc which decelerates its benefit rapidly.
Because the more you have the stronger each additional stack becomes, it doesn't promote stacking diverse mods: the opposite could easily be true where for large enough ships the stacking effect overwhelms the benefits of slotting diverse. If there is a counter-balancing force, I'm unaware of what it is and it is not identified in your suggestion.
I may have had amath error somewhere but if each Dmg causes the total to be 95% of the previous value then the result should be inverse scaling. To a point where the value from 8 Dmgx4 weapons is around a 2% gain per mod. Posting from my phone right now but I'll take a look at the formula and show my work later.
So one Dmg mod makes the normal rate 95% of its normal rate. This is a 5% reduction.
1 x 95% = 0.95
So two Dmg mods makes the normal rate 95%^2 of its normal rate. This is a 9.75% reduction.
1 x 95%^2 = 0.9025
So ten Dmg mods makes the normal rate 95%^10 of its normal rate. This is a 40.13% reduction. Average reduction per mod is now just over 4%.
1 x 95%^10 = 0.5987
With this kind of curve, more Dmg is never bad if you lack skill. But while Dmg will increase your autofire by causing you to fire more, it won't enhance your specials.
CritD/CritH/Acc will enhance your specials so each stack of Dmg creates an opportunity cost.
So the idea is that if most of your damage is from autoattack and you stack Dmg, you do respectable DPS but it's fairly hardcapped because you'll miss a lot and be Crit-starved, which eats up specials especially.
The better you are at using specials, the bigger a percentage of total DPS comes from those. If more than half your damage comes from specials, this is the tipping point where Dmg would lose value relative to other mods you could have on the same gear because Dmg wouldn't boost specials at all as a haste modifier.
So the idea is that straight Dmg could carry a bad player and that as your skill improves, you will learn to get higher DPS by trading out Dmg for other mods that DO scale with specials.
It won't be, if your intent is to decrease cooldown and thereby decrease firing cycle time in the way you describe, because cycle time has a hyperbolicly increasing effect on damage output. While the cooldown time decreases appear to be decreasing, the hyperbolic effect of being in the denominator overwhelms that.
Consider: 1, 0.5, 0.25, 0.125, 0.0625, 0.03125... That sequence is decreasing, and you might say that each step has less of an effect than the previous, which is correct. The problem comes when that number isn't the true measure of the effect, but just a component of a larger effect:
1/1, 1/0.5, 1/0.25, 1/0.125... These numbers aren't increasing in slower steps, they are increasing geometrically fast upward: 1, 2, 4, 8... Since damage output is inversely proportional to firing cycle time, that ultimately dominates the net effect.
In order to have the effect you describe, you would have to decrease cooldown time a different way: Cooldown = BaseCool/(1+Buff). Because what happens is when net DPS is damage/cycletime, then the cooldown buff gets flipped: damage / (BaseCool / (1 + Buff) ) = damage / BaseCool * (1 + Buff). And that's just another way of saying (Base DPS) * (1 + Buff). Buff now has a linear, and not accelerating, impact.
This assumes, of course, there's no activation delay in cooldown.
Careful. You are using the word "rate" incorrectly, and I believe it is leading you astray. What you want to say is that one Dmg mod reduces the cycle time to 95% of normal, which means the *rate* of fire increases to 1/0.95 = 1.05x normal. Two Dmg mods reduce the cycle time to 0.95^2 times normal or 0.9025 times normal, which means the firing *rate* is now 1/0.9025 = 1.11x normal. Ten Dmg mods reduces cycle time to 0.95^10 = 0.5987x normal, and thus the firing *rate* is now 1/0.5987 = 1.67x normal.
If you actually meant to say that the *rate* was 0.95^10 or normal, then the rate would be lower, and damage would be dropping not rising. Rate is inversely proportional to the numbers you're calculating, but you aren't comparing the actual rates, you are comparing the cycle time reductions directly and calling it rate. That masks the true impact of your suggestion.
Games I've played before referred to cycle time as weapon rate or weapon speed. But yeah.
To the previous poster: There is a hardcap on this because the max possible damage mods is 4 (number of mods, maybe with a 0.5 for epic?) x 8 (number of weapons). You don't need to consider what would happen if this scaled infinitely. You just need to consider, basically, the Fleet Avenger as the pinnacle example here since 5 fore weapons, cannons, and 8 slots is going to be your max autofire option. But it scales exponentially down in value because each Dmg is worth less than the previous one.
I just did an estimate (using natural logs) of what it would take to get cycle time to instant. Actually, that would take infinite Dmg mods under this proposal. But to eliminate 99% of cycle time would take 90 Dmg mods. Even allowing for epic weapons with Dmgx4 [Dmg/Acc], you would need 20 weapons slots all equipped with Dmgx4 [Dmg/Acc] mods to hit a 99% cycle time reduction. Since it's not possible to have more than 8 weapons slots, that isn't a practical problem. With 8 weapons slots, the most you could manage would be an 84% cycle time reduction with Epic Dmgx4 [Dmg/Acc] and that's assuming that Cryptic didn't set a haste cap.
And that would lead to insane spacebar damage and very weak BO abilities because of the opportunity cost of other mods. A skilled player would still readily do more damage than that. Dmg would be the mod that benefits unskilled players more. You would never be up against a skilled opponent who would have Dmgx4 Acc/Dmg epics in every slot because a skilled player could do more with diversified mods and a truly skilled player would still benefit from no Dmg. It's just that the average player would benefit from some Dmg under my proposal and the worse you are, the more Dmg you'd want.
There's only two possibilities: your math is wrong but you are unable to see that, or there exists a game mechanic that I am unaware of and you're not mentioning that somehow changes the calculations in a way that makes your first post wrong and yet makes this statement correct.
Since I'm not qualified to distinguish between the two, I'm unable to help you further. Hopefully someone else will step in and clarify more authoritatively.
I am not sure that our maths disagree at this point.
My point is that this only magnifies white damage several times its base value at worst. It cannot magnify specials or procs. There is a hard cap on the effect because you cannot have more than 8 weapons and 4.5 Dmg mods with all epic gear at the extreme.
A skilled player will magnify damage more than several times over with straight Acc or Acc/CritD combos through effective use of specials.
This buff to Dmg is deliberately an OP boost if fully utilized but it can't buff the best players because it scales in no way with procs or abilities. It merely would boost weaker players closer to more skilled players who aren't using Dmg.
A skilled player can hit 27k DPS in Mk XII gear. probably higher but I know this was possible before power creep was a huge issue. By my estimates, over half of this number could be chalked up to running 8 x Accuracyx3 when coupled with player skill.
At the high end of competitive DPS, 8x Accuracyx3 is therefore worth 13.5k DPS
Now looking at my proposed new Dmg mod on a Fleet Avenger. Ignoring traits/passives and without use of skills, white damage on a fleet Avenger is going to be 1676 DPS.
Now, my estimate for where Dmgx4 [Dmg/Acc] Epic gear would take an Avenger works out to 10,475 DPS.
So the maximum possible gain of my Dmg-as-haste using a perfect combination of Epic gear is around a gain of 8800 DPS. This is gear that you will almost certainly never see (we're talking thousands of dollars worth of revenue or years of time to get all epics of a specific type like this). But we're assuming it's real and it's on a Fleet Avenger which will do maximum white damage.
A poor player will gain 8800 DPS by stacking Dmg-as-haste. A great player however will LOSE well in excess of 13.5k DPS by stacking Dmg in place of accuracy.
See... Accuracy remains superior under my proposal, if you have the skill to use it. Dmg would provide a massive buff that requires no skill but the more skill you have, the more Dmg creates an opportunity cost vs. stacking accuracy.
If you spam spacebar, Dmg wins. If you're moderately skilled, a balance is the sweet spot. If you're highly skilled, you want all Accuracy.
It seems like you picked up some math somewhere. Also I'm not sure if you're using Google Translate or not so most of your post I'll just have to ignore.
But I think I can help you a bit on Acc. I don't think you know what it does. Regardless of the defense of the target with the exception being that defense is greater than accuracy any incremental accuracy increase will be of greater benefit than previous increments. It just keeps getting better. And because you can not actually catch anyone's defense purely by adding accuracy there is never any other stat that can compare to it.
Period. There's no more discussion there.
If, and only if, you shut down a target's defense using other means will you see that accuracy loses some value vs other mods. And at that point it is very simple to calculate what mods would be best for whatever it is you intend to do in that situation.
And cool down reductions? Please just stop. There's been enough of that already.
I'm not talking about ability cooldowns. I'm talking about weapon rate of fire.
A little here and there.
The only thing I know about Accuracy is the formula posted by adjudicatorhawk. According to adjudicatorhawk's posted formula, one of you is mistaken, unless I'm reading the formula completely wrong.
As Acc increases (and Difference increases as a result), chance to hit increases from Neutral towards 2* Neutral asymptotically. Its a classic diminishing returns formula. And since offense is judged based on damage output which is directly proportional to hit chance, that's a true diminishing return. Would you like to take a swing at explaining your statement, since it appears to be inconsistent with the math.
I may be forced to appeal to higher authority.