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Boarding Party bug?
mattjohnsonva
Member Posts: 4,974 Arc User
So I was told this guy was hacking, able toput your tray powers on CD for 8 min. I went to fight him to see as I didn't believe it and it seemed to be true. Took screenshots and then questioned him, he claims it is Boarding party with 2 doffs. If this is legitimate then it is totally and massively OP, there is nothing you can do, you can't even fire back. If it's a hack then I have his details and the screenshots for Cryptic to take action.
Here is a screenshot, look at the tray powers.
Comments?
Here is a screenshot, look at the tray powers.
Comments?
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
Also note that the CD of your abilities aren't reset upon respawn. I think this is the same mechanism by which abilities on CD remain on CD even through respawn; BP doesn't just slow down the CD recharge rate, it literally adds seconds onto the clock, and these seconds can't be wiped away by most effects.
There have been people complaining about it on the forums. It's generally considered as hugely OP but highly situational; as someone else put it, one of the most critical-success or critical-failure powers out there.
possible short-term fix: eject warp plasma makes his skill points wasted
As for why exactly it's happening, I can't say that I immediately know by just looking at the symptoms.
It's on our radar to review and find a fix for. Until then, beware of Boarding Parties. (Honestly never thought I'd say that...)
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Uras'Kalan/Uras'Kalan are the two DOFFs (Fed/KDF - careful - same name) that give a 40% chance to give each shuttle a Point Defense Turret. Security - Assault Squad Officer.
With the two of them - you can launch a bunch of shuttles that can shoot down targetables aimed their way or in their way (mines/torps) - giving them a better chance to get to the target and...
...oh Bort posted...
...and give them that chance to do something they're not supposed to be doing.
Great news Bort, thanks for looking into this as always.
I'll take this opportunity to shamelessly beg for you to look at this thread if you have a few spare moments. In that thread, you will be like Prometheus bringing fire to Humankind.
It's kind of along the lines of what can happen in SB24 - only worse.
In SB24, you can get nailed by 9-12+ shuttles (if you try or if you're just mesmerized seeing so many coming at you). Even if you hit the TT as they land, it's as if the TT simply can't handle that many BPs on you. You'll keep getting hit by the BP procs even though it doesn't show there are any BPs left. Depending on how many you get hit with and how fast you die, this can persist after respawn.
It's not entirely the same as the DOFF'd BPs thing - with the SB24 BPs, the counter will keep resetting. One could see where if you were to add it all up though, you might start seeing the overall CD numbers folks are getting from the DOFF'd BPs.
The DOFF'd BPs appear to be doing that...but after a hearty bowl of Wheaties or something.
As far as avoiding them, the armed ones can make that a little more difficult. Crew limitations will obviously play a role in it - not too many can be launched from that decloaking BoP at point blank range.
But...how about the Bortasqu' Boarding Party Party Boat! 3600 crew to spare...bringing you a party when you least expect it!
Those abilities do result in "longer" CDs, but only for as long as the debuffs are in effect. When the debuffs go away (whether it be through a cleanse, time, or respawn), the CDs go back to close to their original values. BP's mechanism appears to be different.
If I understand it correctly, we can think about it like this:
There's an internal cooldown timer for each ability. This timer regulates how long it is until the ability can be used again. I'll call the internal unit of the timer "timer-seconds", because it doesn't exactly match up to real-time.
When you activate an ability (say, EPtS), the base CD of the ability is added.
In this case: CD = 45 timer-seconds (ts).
Normally, 1s real time = 1ts lower on the timer. This is the base (100%) cooldown recharge rate. Suppose 15s pass in real time. Then:
CD = 45 ts - 15s * (1ts / s) = 45ts - 15ts = 30ts.
The CD timer you see in the UI reports the time until the ability recharges with the current cooldown recharge rate.
30ts / (1ts / 1s) = 30s. This is what you see in the UI.
Debuffs like SNB and the SS doff reduce the cooldown recharge rate while they are in effect. Essentially, time passes slower as far as the recharge rate is concerned.
Say we get hit by the SS doff. For 10s, our CD recharge rate is halved; 1s of real time = 0.5ts reduction on the CD timer. With 30s left on the timer, this halved recharge leads us to calculate:
Real time left to recharge: 30ts / (0.5 ts / 1s) = 60s. This is what's shown on the UI.
Suppose that we let 5s real time pass while we're affected. The internal cooldown timer is:
30ts - 5s * (0.5 ts / 1s) = 30s - 2.5ts = 27.5ts.
And the timer shown on the UI is now at:
27.5ts / (0.5 ts / 1s) = 55s.
Then suppose we let 5s real-time pass. The internal cooldown timer is:
27.5ts - 5s * (0.5ts / 1s) = 27.5ts - 2.5ts = 25ts
The SS doff's debuff has worn off, so the CD recharge rate isn't affected any more; we're back at 1s = 1ts. Thus, the UI shows:
25ts / (1ts / 1s) = 25s left for the ability to recharge.
This shows how abilities like SNB and SS temporarily increase the UI-displayed CD while they're in effect, but when they wear off the UI-displayed CD returns to normal.
However, BP works off a completely different mechanism. Instead of slowing the CD recharge rate, they literally add seconds onto the clock. There's no debuff that can be cleared; the additional timer-seconds on the CD timer simply have to be waited out. Hence, why BP's added CD stays even after respawn; although debuffs like SNB and the SS doff are cleared, the CD timers of all abilities are not set to 0.
(Can somebody double-check my work? This is based off what little I've seen as well as how the abilities are described in tooltips.)
Somebody gets hit by X1 number of BPs.
They then get hit by SNB.
They get hit by X2 additional number of BPs.
They then get hit by Bio-SS.
They finally get hit by X3 additional number of BPs.
Does the system correctly handle the SNB and Bio-SS debuffs dropping off?
On that note here's a suggestion for a new Explosives Expert DOff:
A big explosion that causes direct hull damage 5 seconds after the Boarding Parties hit the ship.
I see you have Tac Team and didn't use it... are you also saying that no longer Clears Boarding Parties
And we just checked in a fix for it.
Boarding parties are still capable, on their own, of putting one or more category of power into cooldown for upwards of 45sec or so. But the interaction of this debuff, coupled with abilities like Subnucleonic Beam and the Bio-SS Doff, will no longer send the cooldown debuff's magnitudes hurdling off into the stratosphere. The effects of each will be applied, and stack in an additive manner, instead of multiplying one another.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
www.divisionhispana.com
speeking of which, something else needs to go back on your radar. brels with those rom doffs still can be completely invisible, removing the multiplier and changing it to be additive was not enough to fix that.
Not only do we get a fix, this is one of the funniest posts I've read all week!
Zing!
I think it should? Last time Sax hit me with his combo, the UI cooldown timer correctly updated when SNB/SS effects wore off.
But I'll hold off on further speculation until we see how Bort's fix works out. Thanks for looking in to it, Bort!
Good rule of thumb.
If it takes multiple powers used in sequence to create an effect that is clearly ridiculous, it's most likely not only a bug but an exploit.
Just like the bug that must not be named, or the Romulan Ground boff fiasco.
Bort, I'm kinda confused by your post. Any chance you could enlighten me?
AFAIK, SNB and the like have always been "multiplicative" effects on cooldowns as shown in the UI. They effectively reduce the rate at which real-time translates into recharge-time for the CD timers, like I laid out in my previous post; the UI calculates the amount of time it would take for the ability to recharge at the current CD recharge rate, which results in a new CD that's a multiple of the old, pre-SNB CD.
From what you've said, I can see two ways that you've addressed this. One is to update the UI to reflect the actual time it would take for the ability to recharge, taking into account when CD-recharge-reduction debuffs wear off. Thus, SNB wouldn't "multiply" the entire CD, including what BP added; it would instead "add" some number of seconds to what the UI displays. This would be purely a UI update, and would not actually affect the time it took for the ability to recharge.
Example: If an ability is 15s away from recharge, and SS doff's affect is applied with 10s duration, then the UI calculates that the 30s it would take for the SNB to wear off would only translate to 5s reduction on the timer. After the SS doff's effect wears off (10s real time), the CD timer would still have 10s left; thus, the UI updates the display to show 20s, the actual time it would take for the ability to recharge assuming debuffs wear off as normal.
BP-added time is treated like normal CD time, so the UI would also 'add' up to 5s onto the displayed cooldown all abilities, including those affected by BP, when the SS doff's effect hits.
The other way that I could think of, given your comments, is to treat BP-added time as part of a separate timer that's not affected by SNB or related effects. This would actually change how BP interacts with SNB; the "time" added by BP wouldn't be "multiplied" by SNB at all.
Example: Suppose I have an ability that's ready to use. BP's effect kicks in and bumps it up to 15s recharge time. I get hit with SNB; BP's extra time isn't affected by SNB, and the displayed CD remains at 15s.
Compare this to an ability that was used and had 15s on its CD timer. Suppose BP kicks in again and adds 15s. If I get hit with an SS doff, the effect applies only to the 15s that was originally on the cooldown timer; the UI shows 2 * 15s + 15s = 45s instead of 2 * (15s + 15s) = 60s.
I don't think the latter's what you mean, but I'm afraid I'm still confused by your post. If you could be so kind as to explain the mechanics of what's going on, I (and probably the rest of the PvP community) would be very grateful!
I would expect it to work in a way that each ability applies their cooldown manipulation based on the unmodified cooldown time - instead of looking at the MODIFIED cooldown (in other words, the one that you get by applying the previous powers) it looks at the UNMODIFIED one (the cooldown as it was before the abilities were applied).
In other words-- *reads post more carefully* Okay, I think you may have done it right in the latter example, but it's a bit hard for me to keep track of. Even more so since I don't know exactly what each of these things does. :P
But basically, the effects are each calculated based on the original cooldown, and the UI displays the sum. If one of the effects expires, its contribution to the displayed cooldown is reduced - but, as you said above, the cooldown itself remains unchanged. How the system appears to work so far is that the calculation is multiplicative, not additive - it's applied based on the modified cooldown. And it seems to ignore the fact that some of the effects may have expired.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
This is true, One you have a 5 sec immunity after hitting tt, two you have hard counters like shockwave other mines or general weapons fire, and three you still us tt ,st,et.... The process of actually landing a bp on a target these days take a dedicated build and is very valuable to alpha strike if the escort or in this cause cruise's pilot is commandant.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=560901
MT - Sad Pandas
Last edited by darkfader1988; 02-20-2013 at 03:47 PM.
Sorry if its totally off-topic, any word on the Subterfuge Boffs and B'rel cloak being fixed?
Woulda been shorter to just say this.
And I'm afraid I'm not going to go into the details at this time, as doing so would necessitate telling everyone how to pull it off. I'd rather not hand out that information while it's still an active bug on Holodeck.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"