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Nadion Inversion - post 3/23/2016 Patch
iusasset
Member Posts: 118 Arc User
I originally posted this in the Skills Feedback thread, but I think it deserves its own discussion.
On Holodeck, we (by which I mean those of us who frequent the /r/stobuilds discussion forum) derived the following formula to describe how Nadion Inversion effects weapons power drain (bolded function is for NI):
1-(((1/(1+[WepPow Cost Reduction%]))*(1/(1+[WepPow Resist%]+(1+(0.01*([Ins])))))
So on Holodeck, I had 6 ranks in Power Insulators, which gave me an [Ins] value of 84. I know most Engineers who knew about this interaction were running 3 ranks in Power Insulators, for an [Ins] value of 54.
Running with 84 gets us:
1-(1/((2.84)*(1+[WepPow Cost Reduction%]))); assuming no other sources of WepPow Resist% (by which I mean stuff like Marion/DEM) or WepPow Cost Reduction% (by which I mean Emergency Weapons Cycle; Weapons Systems Efficiency; etc.), that translates to (1-0.35211...), or 64.79% weapons drain reduction.
Running with 64 gets us:
1-((1/((2.64))*(1/1))=(1-0.3787...)=62.13% weapons drain reduction.
Now, on Tribble, I have 213 Drain Expertise (+100 from Skills, and another +112.5 from Consoles). I'm getting 41.25% weapons drain reduction from the tooltip. If I remove my Consoles (-112.5, to 100 Drain Expertise), it drops to 30% weapons drain reduction, a difference of 0.1125.
Well, it's clear that each point in [DrainX] translates to 0.001 increase in weapons drain reduction, so that's less than what you get from Holodeck. But there's more!
So at 0 [DrainX], you'd expect NI to offer 20% weapons drain reduction. On Holodeck, assuming you have 0 investment in [Ins], you would expect NI to grant the following:
1-(1/2) = 50% weapons drain reduction.
So basically, we've gone from NI granting (1+((0.01)*[Ins])) to (0.2+((0.001)*[DrainX])) - a two-fold reduction in effectiveness (and why, even at considerably higher [DrainX] than I ever had [Ins], I'm still looking at a difference of 64.79% on Holodeck to 41.25% on Tribble).
Was such a drop intentional? Seems to me that if the 0.001*[DrainX] function remains the same, NI's base effectiveness might need to be increased - unless, of course, it was intended that NI's effect on weapons power reduction doesn't match what is currently experienced on Holodeck?
Apologies if any of the above is unclear, I know it's kind of stream-of-consciousness, and not my best organized effort.
I will note that it would seem NI is as (or more) effective at subsystem power drain, however, so that's good!
---
TL;DR:
On Holodeck, NI WepPow Resist starts at +1, gains +0.01 per [Ins]
On Tribble, NI WepPow Resist starts at +0.2, gains +0.001 per [DrainX]
Effect: On Tribble, NI is significantly less effective for WepPow Resist than on Holodeck - both before and after investment in comparable [Ins]/[DrainX].
---
Edited since I mucked up the transcription of the formulae the first go around.
On Holodeck, we (by which I mean those of us who frequent the /r/stobuilds discussion forum) derived the following formula to describe how Nadion Inversion effects weapons power drain (bolded function is for NI):
1-(((1/(1+[WepPow Cost Reduction%]))*(1/(1+[WepPow Resist%]+(1+(0.01*([Ins])))))
So on Holodeck, I had 6 ranks in Power Insulators, which gave me an [Ins] value of 84. I know most Engineers who knew about this interaction were running 3 ranks in Power Insulators, for an [Ins] value of 54.
Running with 84 gets us:
1-(1/((2.84)*(1+[WepPow Cost Reduction%]))); assuming no other sources of WepPow Resist% (by which I mean stuff like Marion/DEM) or WepPow Cost Reduction% (by which I mean Emergency Weapons Cycle; Weapons Systems Efficiency; etc.), that translates to (1-0.35211...), or 64.79% weapons drain reduction.
Running with 64 gets us:
1-((1/((2.64))*(1/1))=(1-0.3787...)=62.13% weapons drain reduction.
Now, on Tribble, I have 213 Drain Expertise (+100 from Skills, and another +112.5 from Consoles). I'm getting 41.25% weapons drain reduction from the tooltip. If I remove my Consoles (-112.5, to 100 Drain Expertise), it drops to 30% weapons drain reduction, a difference of 0.1125.
Well, it's clear that each point in [DrainX] translates to 0.001 increase in weapons drain reduction, so that's less than what you get from Holodeck. But there's more!
So at 0 [DrainX], you'd expect NI to offer 20% weapons drain reduction. On Holodeck, assuming you have 0 investment in [Ins], you would expect NI to grant the following:
1-(1/2) = 50% weapons drain reduction.
So basically, we've gone from NI granting (1+((0.01)*[Ins])) to (0.2+((0.001)*[DrainX])) - a two-fold reduction in effectiveness (and why, even at considerably higher [DrainX] than I ever had [Ins], I'm still looking at a difference of 64.79% on Holodeck to 41.25% on Tribble).
Was such a drop intentional? Seems to me that if the 0.001*[DrainX] function remains the same, NI's base effectiveness might need to be increased - unless, of course, it was intended that NI's effect on weapons power reduction doesn't match what is currently experienced on Holodeck?
Apologies if any of the above is unclear, I know it's kind of stream-of-consciousness, and not my best organized effort.
I will note that it would seem NI is as (or more) effective at subsystem power drain, however, so that's good!
---
TL;DR:
On Holodeck, NI WepPow Resist starts at +1, gains +0.01 per [Ins]
On Tribble, NI WepPow Resist starts at +0.2, gains +0.001 per [DrainX]
Effect: On Tribble, NI is significantly less effective for WepPow Resist than on Holodeck - both before and after investment in comparable [Ins]/[DrainX].
---
Edited since I mucked up the transcription of the formulae the first go around.
Post edited by iusasset on
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Comments
What Nadion Inversion does on Tribble is that it makes explicit what was already happening on Holodeck - Nadion Inversion, in addition to increasing resistance to subsystem power drain, also decreased weapons power drain when firing energy weapons, in much the same way that the Fleet Spire Cores do.
I can't find the post, but I know Borticus had admitted before that this weapons drain wasn't working properly - or, at least, not working as expected.
Based on the patch notes as well as empirical investigation on both Tribble and Holodeck, I suspect that the weapons drain resistance component was re-worked entirely. But this reworking has led to considerably reduced effectiveness (again, this is what I'm pointing out in my post - NI's effects aren't any different in kind, but they are considerably different in magnitude, and lead to a significant and noticeable decrease in Engineers' outgoing energy damage while NI is active on Tribble as opposed to on Holodeck.
I reached the same conclusion on this.
There are more "hidden/unexpected" nerfs of ENG chars...
BTW ENG captain skills are worthless for torpedo boats
The power drain caused by firing weapons was always intended to not be resistible. Nadion Inversion was bypassing this design by being bugged. The same bugged state was also causing it to resist positive power-related effects (such as Leech) while it was active. It's important to fix bugs when we find them, so we did.
In order to compensate for the loss in functionality that people were using the bugged NI for, we added Weapon Power Cost reduction.
We knew it was likely to be somewhat less effective than it previously was, and we're willing to consider increasing it a bit. But it's probably best to assume that the Weapon Power Drain functionality of NI (which, remember, was the result of a bug) will likely be a bit diminished when all is said and done.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Personally, I hope that NI's base WepPow Resist can be tuned (increased from the 20% currently on Tribble) so that we're not seeing *such* a big discrepancy in end effectiveness, because right now the gulf is pretty wide (I agree that *some* reduction, as you imply we should expect, would be okay). If you need any additional data on players' end to make sure this gets tuned properly, let me know, I'd be happy to pool what I can (I know a lot of fellow Engineering captains who were aware of NI's functionality and could get their Holodeck #s for you).
no, they don't do that; borticus already said as much nearly a year ago before the forum changeover (so don't go asking me to look for the post)
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Wow, thank you for the in depth explanation Bort. I would have never expected this behaviour, nor did anything feel wrong to me in my main character who is a engineer. Kudos to your hard work finding and smashing this one on the test server.
Actually can I make a request of you. Once this new season 11.5 goes live, could you potentially do a dev blog, or interview with priority one, and explain or the major bugs you found with this skill tree revamp, and what discoveries surprised you. Of course it would only be the ones that you fix.
Because, I would find this very interesting, and I am sure the community would find this interesting to. As i am sure there would be some bugs that even the community had no idea about, and just thought of the bug as normal behaviour.
Was the description for Nadion Inversion updated at some point to reflect that bug then, because it says "Nadion Inversion reduces any power drain to your any of your [sic] power system, including power drain from enemy attacks, or from firing multiple weapons."?
Follow-up if it was updated: Doesn't its inclusion in the in-game description make it an expected feature instead of a bug, and (I would argue) means you should preserve its performance as much as possible during the skill update (which you seem to be doing, so cool)?
Follow-up if it wasn't updated: What was that supposed to mean otherwise?
Seconded. Given how long this issue has been around, lots of people, myself included, have internalized this as being 'Working As Intended' and a more mild retuning would be appreciated.