Several bugs and issues with Intel Revamp boff abilities

anubis77c

In the last day or so, I've uncovered multiple issues and bugs with the Intel changes so I'll consolidate them here.

1. Evade Target Lock
This ability increases its disable time with the user's control skill and should be reduced by the target's control skill. The target is not able to reduce the amount of time disabled regardless of control resist. For example, if my tooltip reads "disables target for 8 seconds" and I apply it to another player ship, that player is disabled for the full 8 seconds even if they have 400+ control skill.

Additionally, this disable does not get cleared by any team ability - eng team, sci team, tac team, or intel team. It should be cleared by engineering team at the very least. Boost Morale (command specialization active ability) is the only thing that clears this right now.

It also is not cleared by control effect immunities or cleanses, for example the reputation trait "Evasive Tactics" which should in theory provide 6.3s of immunity to controls, when affected by a disable, root, repel, or hold. The Personal Trait Fresh from R&R also does not clear this. I will test Smuggler's Luck when I have time.

2. EMP Probe / Ionic Turbulence
Speaking of control effect immunities, these two also are not cleared by evasive tactics or others as well. It does appear that control resist does work with these at least, but I will do some further testing to confirm and update here.


3. Attack Pattern Lambda 2 and 3
These abilities apply an accuracy *increase* to the target you are attacking, instead of reducing it after the patch. AP Lambda 1 however does correctly reduce the accuracy of the target.

Additionally, the Lambda stealth debuff is still too high. All that has changed is the order of abilities - instead of Intel Team 3 + Lambda 1, pvp ships are now using Intel Team 1 + Lambda 3 instead for nearly the same result. Excluding ships buffed by a teammate's T5 Nebula console, it is still impossible even with all perception boosting gear in the game equipped to target someone who has all stealth gear equipped. This is broken and to be completely honest, Lambda should not apply a perception debuff at all, let alone -450.

Alternatively, a solution to the stealth/perception/etc problem would be to rework the trait "Fresh from R&R" to only apply to standard team abilities, like Tactical/Science/Engineering, and not specialist team abilities like Intel and Pilot teams. Player ships activate Intel team, which lasts 9 seconds, every 10 seconds, which is a horrible idea as long as it is so easy to build up such high stealth numbers. One of the two needs to be adjusted.

Also, can the perception increase from this attack pattern be applied immediately? Why should an energy weapon have to fire in order to get the perception and accuracy buff?

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Everything else looks good so far. I have some further testing to do but I will update it I find anything.

strathkin

Nicely put together summary!

anubis77c

Additions since last time (I knew I would find more haha)

Both Ionic Turbulence and EMP Probe are listed as now gaining the effects of secondary deflectors as control abilities. This would imply that Inhibiting Secondary Deflector's delayed 4 second radiation damage proc would apply to these two abilities.

However, neither of them work with secondary deflectors - of any kind (I tested all 3 variants, excluding the solanae)

I've also tested since last time, EMP Probe's disable is cleared with engineering team and the duration of the disable is resisted by CTRLX. Perfect!

Ionic however is not cleared by anything, is not resisted by CTRLX, but luckily the duration is only 2 seconds. Ionic needs to have a counter.

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Patch Notes from 3/24/22 read
"Intelligence Team may no longer be activated if you are under the effects of an ability which disables Cloaking Devices "

This has always been the case, so what was changed? Intel team can still be activated during holds and disables, while under the effects of Plasma Emission Torpedo etc. It already couldn't be activated while within a Gravity Well or immediately after a Charged Particle Burst, so that's not new.

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Evade Target Lock
Just to reiterate this one, the disable from this ability scales up drastically with CTRLX, and benefits from control amplification (caster's skill tree), but interestingly not the rep trait "enhanced sensors (18% control effectiveness) or the personal trait "psychological warfare" (20% control effectiveness). I have been able to use ETL on other players that completely disables them and locks out their entire tray for up to ***19 seconds***

It is still not cleared by anything or resisted by the targets control skill, hardened sensors, or immunities to controls like evasive tactics/fresh from R&R/smuggler's luck.

This is a HUGE issue right now in the pvp community.

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I would've thought they would monitor the intel abilities since the revamp just launched, but we're almost two weeks from then and these bugs from my original post are all still present, any chance of acknowledging them so we know they are being worked on?

Thanks for reading.

anubis77c

Bump… still bugged

strathkin

Hopefully @borticuscryptic is reading this yet he sadly like many CRYPTIC DEVELOPER hasn't logged in for 2.5 years or so; I do wish we see them post a little more often!

While I do realize they likely READ the forums a lot, still it is sometimes nice for them to reply a bit more--they can't to everyone understandably, yet is something Cryptic could improve on for sure!

You could try replying to his twitter thread at https://twitter.com/BorticusCryptic and while he doesn't allow messaging like most DEV's.

Still you can always reply to a tweet about the Intelligence Update to give updated feedback like here:

https://twitter.com/BorticusCryptic/status/1486456999583748096

How active they check replies to older Tweets is likely hit or miss, still you could try and offer Additional Intel Feedback.

Good Luck!

anubis77c

Thanks, I tweeted at the revamp news for console that was just posted. Seems console players will be getting the same bugged abilities right at launch with no changes.

anubis77c

Found another one.

Intel Spec, when set as Primary Specialization

Flanking crit severity bonus is coded as a negative value.

If you are flanking a target and expecting to get +15% crit severity for flanking attacks, you actually get -15% severity while flanking.

Hard to tell with the 5% crit chance, I'll conduct further testing. I would expect both chance and severity to be broken here though.

This one is no longer behaving this way, thanks!

anubis77c

Bump. Found another one.

Sometimes, when hit with Evade Target Lock (disable), even if you have Auxiliary to Dampers up and active, you will still get disabled through it. Since ETL has no counter, isn't cleared by anything, and isn't resisted by anything, it can be very frustrating to essentially be killed by random chance.

I'm looking into how to reproduce this, it seems to happen at random, maybe related to the way immunity to disable is written. The way it works, is that I am hit with a disable, which flashes on my screen for a split second, and it is then immediately cleared if the game detects that I have an immunity to disable active. However, sometimes that detection is not working. That's the behavior I'm seeing, obviously I have no knowledge of the code itself.

Here is a screenshot - of my only death in a pvp long match, caused by ETL disabling me despite having A2D active. (The disable is characterized by all abilities on my bar except team abilities being greyed out, as shown, and activating engineering team does not clear the disable from Evade Target Lock, even though it clears other disables). Note that "Boost Morale" from Command Specialization does clear this disable, as it clears all debuffs, but that is the only option.

anubis77c

Bump. All of the current issues with Intel abilities are still present in-game.

Additionally, since the patch 4/14/22, the pilot ability Reroute Reserves to Weapons 1 is now completely missing from any officers that had it, and any loadout that contained Reroute 1 now loads "Form Up 1" instead, the default LTC pilot ability.

There is no way to train officers in Reroute 1, and it can't be selected from the stations list if they already "know" it.

Here is the LTC officer abilites shown in the training screen - Reroute is gone:

anubis77c

Bump - all of these issues still present in the game.
Additionally, this patch was deployed to console, so it is no longer a PC specific bug - all platforms are now affected.

Anyone able to give an update on this? Is this in a QA or testing phase or still untouched? Can the changes for abilities with bugs like ETL be rolled back at least for now?

anubis77c

Bump, please don't forget about these. It's been over two months now.

All of these bugs still present, and with the release of the new Legendary Intel Vesta ship, many of these specifically affect sci/intel ships.

anubis77c

One additional bug to report.

When someone uses Evade Target Lock, it makes them untargetable to "all" enemies, not just the enemy the use ETL against. Is that intended behavior? Shouldn't it only affect a single enemy?

It also presents a balance concern, "untargetable" is a binary value - if that's the intended behavior, why not give stealth to the user like intel team does? As it stands right now, someone can use ETL against *anything* and become completely untargetable for 10+ seconds to all enemies on the map.

anubis77c

Bump

All bugs still present as of 6/7/22

anubis77c

Bump. Still no changes, not even listed in the known bugs on the patch notes this time.

Video showing the issues quite clearly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5LPV89gBsk

anubis77c

bump

anubis77c

Delayed update:

Here’s what has been fixed:

Evade Target Lock is now resisted by control expertise of the target

Lambda 2/3 now correctly subtract accuracy from targets hit

Lambda now grants self buff on activation instead of requiring a weapon to fire, a welcome improvement

Reroute Reserves 1 is back in the trainable skills list

Emp/Ionic don’t proc secondary deflectors but I understand that’s not an easy fix and likely will not work possibly ever - case closed

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Here’s what is still not working correctly:

Evade Target Lock still makes the user untargetable to both enemies and friendlies for as many seconds as are on the tooltip (since it’s a self buff).

Evade Target Lock is countered by tactical team, however being “disabled” prevents you from using tactical team. Tac team should be usable while disabled like every other team ability.

All ranks of lambda grant the same self buff now (I made a separate thread for this). Ranks 2 and 3 should be 350 and 450 perception respectively.

Intel Team is still able to be activated within gravity wells, plasma emission torpedoes, and other sources that should disable it. Note that the new Bozeman console fully prevents Intel team activations until the ship leaves the area of effect - the same way gravity well and emission clouds should work in theory. Additionally, is Intel team intended to stack with so many sources of stealth, like boffs (infiltrator and Pirate) , and exitus, and 100 stealth choice in the skill tree? It is possible to have far more stealth than perception which skews the balance quite badly in favor of stealth.

Thanks for reading.