Ignoring target's armor rating is the weakest form - it subtracts value from the far end of the target's diminishing returns curve.
Hull penetration rating is better, but it starts at the near end of its own diminishing return curve. So while a little goes a long way, each subsequent gain does a heck of a lot less. I've consider a single k-13 console on some builds, but stacking them rapidly tapers off to blech. Overall I find 1 point invested in the captain skills system to be more than enough to reach the point of the curve where I don't care to exert myself for more.
"Reduces target's resistances by fixed percentage"/"grants you hull penetration as a fixed percentage" are the strongest implementation of the concept, as they don't diminish in either direction. Though if you have enough, you zero the target's resistances and anything beyond that point is wasted.
Elachi Crescent weaponry has a 2.5% chance to ignore 100% of a target's shields, and 50% of target's damage resistance (maximum once per 5 seconds per weapon). I loaded a Tal Shiar adapted battle cruiser with 4 turrets and 4 single cannons of those (a.k.a. maximum proc configuration, similar to "protonic Kool-Aid" drain builds) and the procs come up often enough and are devastating enough it regularly kills smaller ships while their shields are still up .
Unfortunately, this is largely not accurate.
There are various powers - Subwarp Sheath, the Xenotech Engineering consoles, the Hull Penetration skill, and so on - that describe different effects (ignore % of target's Armor, Hull Penetration, Armor Penetration, and similar things), that all have the same exact functionality - they make targets that you hit with affected damage sources (generally only weapons) act as if they are more debuffed than they actually are by the amount listed.
The fact that there are various terms here, and that some of them use % (which is incorrect) while others do not, is something I intend to update shortly.
Having a skill of 100 hull penetration (which you can accomplish by purchasing all 3 ranks of the skill from the tree) grants you "10 Armor Penetration". As a note, the description of the skill in-game is completely accurate to its actual functionality- Borticus did a very solid job during the skill revamp to ensure that skills have as precise and accurate descriptions as possible, so that you know what you are purchasing. If you hit a target that has nothing affecting its resistance, when your weapon damage goes to calculate what happens due to the target's hull resistance, it treats the target as having a debuff of 10 resistance. If the target instead has a debuff of 41.5 resistance (from being hit by a Fire on My Mark 3 as an example), your weapon treats the target as having a total debuff of 51.5 instead of a total debuff of 41.5, as non-weapon sources of damage, or anyone else hitting the target would treat it.
If you have 3 sources of Armor Penetration (Subwarp Sheath at max throttle (15 Armor Penetration to all weapons), a [Pen] modifier on your weapon (10 Armor Penetration for that specific weapon), and 100 skill in Hull Penetration (10 Armor Penetration to all weapons)), that weapon will act with a total of 35 Armor Penetration. If it hits a target that has 3 debuffs that total to a debuff magnitude of 65, it acts as if the target has a total debuff of 100.
All of these sources respect the same resistance curve as damage resistance debuffs, as they are functionally damage resistance debuffs in the math. The main difference between Armor Penetration and damage resistance debuffs is that Armor Penetration lives on you and only affects your damage to the target, while damage resistance debuffs live on the target and affect any incoming damage to that target.
The curve here is correct; but you need to keep things in mind when evaluating it. Hull Penetration skill has a 10:1 ratio to Armor Penetration - having 100 skill (which is the amount you get from purchasing all 3 ranks of the skill) gets you 10 total armor penetration. Additionally, all of your Armor Penetration magnitude is added to the magnitude of all of the target's debuffs before that curve is applied.
Here are examples of how this math plays out:
If you have a target that has no shields and you fire a shot that would do exactly 1000 damage before resistances, it does 1000 damage (because nothing is affecting the target's resistance).
If you have a target that has no shields and Fire on My Mark 3 (a 41.5 magnitude debuff) applied to it, and you fire a shot that would do exactly 1000 damage before resistances, it does 1408.139 damage.
If you have a target that has no shields and your weapons have 10 Armor Penetration (from the Pen mod, as an example), and you fire a shot that would do exactly 1000 damage before resistances, it does 1099.893 damage.
If you have a target that has no shields, Fire on My Mark 3 (a 41.5 magnitude debuff) applied to it, and your weapons have 10 Armor Penetration (from the Pen mod, as an example), and you fire a shot that would do exactly 1000 damage before resistances, it does 1502.365 damage.
Again, THANK YOU. Being told I'm wrong is trivial compared to finding out what is right straight from the horse's mouth. And I'm very happy to hear they will be some sort of uniformity of terminology pass coming .
Interesting information. This sort of raises the value of the [PEN] weapon modifier.
Now I can only ask the developer if this armor penetration "magnitude" has the same effect on all targets, or if the target's high damage rating (or magnitude) can render armor penetration less useful.
And that begs the question what sort of armor rating the various enemies in this game generally have?
Interesting information. This sort of raises the value of the [PEN] weapon modifier.
Now I can only ask the developer if this armor penetration "magnitude" has the same effect on all targets, or if the target's high damage rating (or magnitude) can render armor penetration less useful.
And that begs the question what sort of armor rating the various enemies in this game generally have?
The resistance buffs on a target do not impact the effectiveness of resistance debuffs.
Most enemies do not have significant resistance ratings, although some do, notably the Crystalline Entity, and some use powers that increase their resistances for a short duration.
The resistance buffs on a target do not impact the effectiveness of resistance debuffs.
Most enemies do not have significant resistance ratings, although some do, notably the Crystalline Entity, and some use powers that increase their resistances for a short duration.
But what I am wondering is if the various armor penetrations and their "magnitude" struggle against diminishing returns when applied to different targets and their "damage resistances", or if they always provide a flat damage debuff. I know you said "1000 damage before resistances" but I just would like it confirmed.
For example, let's say we still do that 1000 damage before resistances and have an armor penetration magnitude of 50 (~1500 damage). Would this be 1500 damage against an unshielded Borg Queen Sphere as it would a weaker Borg Drone?
Or is armor penetration calculated against the target's innate resistance. Like 10% (1100) damage against the Borg Queen but 50% (1500) damage against the Borg Drone?
The effectiveness of armor penetration depends on what it is calculated against, or so I presume. For instance, I always thought that Subwarp Sheath applied a -15% debuff against "% damage resistance" at max throttle, whereas [PEN] modifier, Attack Pattern Beta, Intel - Vulnerability and so forth would apply a (-) minus damage resistance.
If it is applied against armor rating, then the effectiveness of armor penetration would suffer from the diminishing returns curve related to armor rating versus (%) percentage yield. A target with very high rating would presumably thus only yield significantly lower damage as opposed to a target with low rating, where each rating yields a high percentage of damage resistance.
I guess my curiosity is as to how you actually apply the formulas for armor penetration, armor rating and damage resistance. The formulas that I have laid out for you are basically in the eyes of a human for a human. That is to say, where armor penetration applies a % debuff against % damage resistance. This is how most common humans would understand it. As a programmer one has to think about three aspects of information sharing and communication: human-to-human interaction, human-to-machine interaction and machine-to-machine interaction. Humans tend to use the shortest way of communication when conveying information where Apples equals Apples.
As such, what actual formulas you apply in game for the computer/client to interpret and process may very well be different to what you display in the GUI for us players to see, interpret and process.
For example, Pedal to the Medal applies its % damage boost after everything. As such it actually yields 10, 20 or 30% damage just as the humans would interpret the percentile yield. They see 2000 end damage and would expect Pedal to the Medal to apply 30% more damage, and thus 2600 damage.
Tactical consoles, on the other hand, are calculated against base damage and their actual yield is different from Pedal to the Medal. However, when a person reads 20% extra damage per console he or she would not think it to be toward base damage but rather that those 20% means 2000 + 20% damage = 2400 and not 500 base damage + 20% = 600 damage.
Of course, you cannot lay out the entire complexity of your formulas but it would be interesting to know what actually constitutes armor penetration, hull rating and armor penetration and their relation to each other. As in, how do they multiply, divide, add and subtract against one another... in simple terms without it having to be an essay.
The resistance buffs on a target do not impact the effectiveness of resistance debuffs.
So in that I'm not wrong/understood Borticus correctly. If you have enough penetration to give you +15% damage (~18 rating or 180 skill), you always do +15% damage. The target still applies their mitigation percentage and if they have the same rating, the two cancel out.
As someone who despairs at the runaway DPS in this game, hearing all the various penetration and "reduce their armor" effects are all summed before being run through the curve regardless of how they are written is GREAT news.
Most enemies do not have significant resistance ratings, although some do, notably the Crystalline Entity, and some use powers that increase their resistances for a short duration.
Isnt that the same effect? you need x amount of damage to kill the enemy. You could increase the HP or the Resistance, but the Amount of damage you need at the end will be the same. So at the end, increasing resistance or hp would result in the same effect of increasing the enemies lifetime. The difference might be that some people will not see that its the same effect with higher resistance
Isnt that the same effect? you need x amount of damage to kill the enemy. You could increase the HP or the Resistance, but the Amount of damage you need at the end will be the same. So at the end, increasing resistance or hp would result in the same effect of increasing the enemies lifetime. The difference might be that some people will not see that its the same effect with higher resistance
I would say it is not the same because armor penetration only goes up to a certain point (~100 magnitude at best), whereas different targets' HP at different difficulties can vary beyond 100%. In other words, the level of increases is not linear per se. One could say that they do not increase at the same level of magnitude.
Isnt that the same effect? you need x amount of damage to kill the enemy. You could increase the HP or the Resistance, but the Amount of damage you need at the end will be the same. So at the end, increasing resistance or hp would result in the same effect of increasing the enemies lifetime. The difference might be that some people will not see that its the same effect with higher resistance
I would say it is not the same because armor penetration only goes up to a certain point (~100 magnitude at best), whereas different targets' HP at different difficulties can vary beyond 100%. In other words, the level of increases is not linear per se. One could say that they do not increase at the same level of magnitude.
No you could debuff an enemy by way more than -100 resistance magnitude. Just use 2x Attack Pattern Beta 3 and you already have the -100 resistance magnitude. In case you have a team everyone using the available abilities debuff values of -350 and more are easy possible.
But for the killing time, you have X amount of hull (+-resistance) you need to melt. For this you will need Y amount of time.
If the enemy has just more hp and you're doing your normal damage or the enemy has resistances, less hp which result in you doing less damage per shoot its at the end the same if its balanced correctly. Increasing the resistance is just equal to increasing the hp but less visible
so lets say you have 1000 hp and you're doing 100 damage per shoot, you will need 10 shoots to kill the enemy.
in the second case you have just 900 hp, but you're doing only 90 damage per shoot, its the same effect, you will need 10 shoots to kill the enemy.
in both cases, increasing the hull (1001 hp for the first case will result in 11 shots) or increasing the resistance in the second case (doing less damage => 89 damage per shoot => 11 shoots) will have the same effect
Isnt that the same effect? you need x amount of damage to kill the enemy. You could increase the HP or the Resistance, but the Amount of damage you need at the end will be the same. So at the end, increasing resistance or hp would result in the same effect of increasing the enemies lifetime. The difference might be that some people will not see that its the same effect with higher resistance
It "looks" the same... but it's not. Welcome to the multi-variable calculus of game design . Because while increasing HP or resistance both increase time-to-kill, they have VERY different effects when you factor in flat magnitude healing.
A 40,000 hp with 0% mitigation and a 30,000 with 25% mitigation might both take 30 seconds to kill, but if you start applying 10k of healing every 10 seconds one of them is immortal and the other goes down in under a minute.
Isnt that the same effect? you need x amount of damage to kill the enemy. You could increase the HP or the Resistance, but the Amount of damage you need at the end will be the same. So at the end, increasing resistance or hp would result in the same effect of increasing the enemies lifetime. The difference might be that some people will not see that its the same effect with higher resistance
It "looks" the same... but it's not. Welcome to the multi-variable calculus of game design . Because while increasing HP or resistance both increase time-to-kill, they have VERY different effects when you factor in flat magnitude healing.
A 40,000 hp with 0% mitigation and a 30,000 with 25% mitigation might both take 30 seconds to kill, but if you start applying 10k of healing every 10 seconds one of them is immortal and the other goes down in under a minute.
Big difference.
the second one will get a bit less hull reg than the first one, but since the damage mitigation works for the newly healed hull too it will end up with the same. A hull heal is just increasing the cap hp at the end aka the amount of hull you have to melt, nothing more.
In your example the second one will get technically way more than the first one, but if you heal them with the same amount in relation to the damage they will recieve its the same again.
after 60 seconds in your example you will have 100k hp for the first one getting normal damage and 90k hp with 25% mitigation for the second one, so the second one will need way more damage to kill him. just because you left the relation between hull/resistance
In sto it was once per minute or so that they will reg 3% (or was it 6%) for the enemies to reg. sometimes you could see it at the taccube in isa. But these are all numbers and you could factor them in. i tried to make it as easy as possible to explain
Isnt that the same effect? you need x amount of damage to kill the enemy. You could increase the HP or the Resistance, but the Amount of damage you need at the end will be the same. So at the end, increasing resistance or hp would result in the same effect of increasing the enemies lifetime. The difference might be that some people will not see that its the same effect with higher resistance
It "looks" the same... but it's not. Welcome to the multi-variable calculus of game design . Because while increasing HP or resistance both increase time-to-kill, they have VERY different effects when you factor in flat magnitude healing.
A 40,000 hp with 0% mitigation and a 30,000 with 25% mitigation might both take 30 seconds to kill, but if you start applying 10k of healing every 10 seconds one of them is immortal and the other goes down in under a minute.
Big difference.
Good example of significant difference.
And once we go to dynamically changing hit point or resistance values, things get even more interesting. if a certain temporary buff grants bonus resistance to an enemy, it might be possible to remove that buff with a Subnucleonic Beam or other buff-stripping power.
I think in general it's sensible that Cryptic relies more on innate high it points and low healing values for their NPCs, because otherwise, DPS would become definitely more improtant - there could be enemies that with insufficient DPS, you can't possibly beat, because they heal faster than you deal damage. (Some inexperiencend players certainly manage to fall into that trap already, when the enemies reset a while after combat ends.)
But I think the game would greatly benefit from more enemies using temporary hull resistance and shield hardness buffs that can be removed. It greatly increases the value of buff-stripping abilities, and rewards "smart" play.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
No... If you're taking 1,333 damage per second felt after mitigation and have 40,000 hp, while the other guy is taking 1,000 damage per second after mitigation with only 30,000k hp the you both die at the same time. Same time-to-kill against the same damage output from the attackers. But if you're both also getting 1,000 heals per second you die because of that additional 333 digging into your 'capital' and while the other guy won't die, ever.
Buckets-full of hit point tanks are more resistant to spike damage. Mitigation (and +incoming heal%) tanks are more durable against steady damage and way more efficient in longer fights. Mitigation multiplies the effectiveness of incoming heals as long as you're alive at all to receive them.
No... If you're taking 1,333 damage per second felt after mitigation and have 40,000 hp, while the other guy is taking 1,000 damage per second after mitigation with only 30,000k hp the you both die at the same time. Same time-to-kill against the same damage output from the attackers. But if you're both also getting 1,000 heals per second you die because of that additional 333 digging into your 'capital' and while the other guy won't die, ever.
Buckets-full of hit point tanks are more resistant to spike damage. Mitigation (and +incoming heal%) tanks are more durable against steady damage and way more efficient in longer fights. Mitigation multiplies the effectiveness of incoming heals as long as you're alive at all to receive them.
and why should you heal both with the same amount aka increase the hp for both with the same amount of hp? than you will have way more hp you have to kill on one at the and than you have on the other.
if you heal the first one with 10000 hp every 10 second but the second one with resistance only by 7500 it will be the same again.
you have both values and if you increase one more than the other, sure one will be superior to the other and things will change. the more heal you apply the more hp both get, the initial difference will be minor. and thats what you havent calculated in right now
and why should you heal both with the same amount aka increase the hp for both with the same amount of hp?
Because flat magnitude heals don't care how much hp or mitigation the target has. They just heal X. And a LOT of the heals in this game are flat magnitude rather than % of target's HP (modified by some values on the caster, but that' still independent of the target's abilities).
Engineering team does more for a ship with an emphasis on high mitigation than it does for a ship with high HP when the TTK is the same. That generally makes mitigation strategies better (outside of extreme spikes).
The NPCs have been given the weaker of the two options available to content designers looking to keep the TTK from withering down to nothing with runaway DPS creep. Not saying this is wrong or right, only that it is, and there's some spin off effects from it, like NPC-to-NPC healing being really bad/ineffectual in many cases.
My argumentation was for NPCs because that was the starting point (the crystaline entity).
NPCs dont have much heals at all, thats why your healing argument isnt that important for them and for them it stil count that its equal at the end if you increase hitpoints OR resistance for them to make them last longer.
And at the end, npcs need more of a real mechanic for the fights than fire randomly heals or so, especially in stfs. If you want a healing stage, why not add something like that, let them start to heal and if you dont do xyz they continue till amount of z is done or something like that you could see in other games too
I think in general it's sensible that Cryptic relies more on innate high it points and low healing values for their NPCs, because otherwise, DPS would become definitely more improtant - there could be enemies that with insufficient DPS, you can't possibly beat, because they heal faster than you deal damage.
Excellent point! Even if it takes a new player half an hour to beat a boss, eventually they should be able to.
Not trying to argue , just clarifying as I hadn't conveyed it fully on the first try.
Totally agreed that a little more vigorous "will to live" on the part of the NPCs would be nice to see! When that's in the form of active ability use and buffs rather than Buckets-O'-HP, then you also create hooks for the PC's buff stripping abilities to be used by cagey players.
You don't want a casual game like STO to maul the casuals too badly, but you still want people playing on a little higher plane to feel vindicated learning how the game works and that using abilities in clever ways is of value. Gets into the psychology of retention, but there it is.
I think in general it's sensible that Cryptic relies more on innate high it points and low healing values for their NPCs, because otherwise, DPS would become definitely more improtant - there could be enemies that with insufficient DPS, you can't possibly beat, because they heal faster than you deal damage.
Excellent point! Even if it takes a new player half an hour to beat a boss, eventually they should be able to.
even in advanced and elite? because you know, higher difficulties and so on
and to be fair, if you could beat everything without much effort yea its not really challenging, for the higher difficulties there should be always the possibility to fail that you have to work for something. thats basically how the old no win scenario worked back in the days and at least for me it was a lot of fun doing it
I think in general it's sensible that Cryptic relies more on innate high it points and low healing values for their NPCs, because otherwise, DPS would become definitely more improtant - there could be enemies that with insufficient DPS, you can't possibly beat, because they heal faster than you deal damage.
Excellent point! Even if it takes a new player half an hour to beat a boss, eventually they should be able to.
even in advanced and elite? because you know, higher difficulties and so on
and to be fair, if you could beat everything without much effort yea its not really challenging, for the higher difficulties there should be always the possibility to fail that you have to work for something. thats basically how the old no win scenario worked back in the days and at least for me it was a lot of fun doing it
No, not on Advanced or Elites, of course. But new players wouldn't dare enter those anyway (or, if so, at their own peril). But yes, it cannot be that new players would eventually become 'stuck' (or at least so frustrated they'd quit). I recall, right after DR, there were a few Vaadwaur mission with bosses in them even regular players found (nearly) impossible to kill. That should, ideally, never happen: an average player should be able to do those, even if it takes a bit longer.
Everything Advanced or Elites is fair game, though, and Cryptic should feel free to throw everything and the kitchen sink at those willing to be a glutton for punishment.
Yeah, Subwarp Sheath is great for Cruiser builds. I never use it with front facing ships since I definitely have a tendency to 'park and shoot' in those style ships.
The biggest problem with it is that it scales by your speed, so it can be rendered moot by tractor beams or other hold effects. I tend to use it most on ships were I can slot Polorize Hull, Attack Pattern Omega or something similar to make sure my speed stays high. My engineer uses it on her Galaxy Dread and I slot a couple DoFFS to reduce recharge time for Evasive Maneuvers just to make sure I can keep the speed up.
It's funny though, the trait comes with the Science Pilot Escort and it's an absolutely horrible trait for that ship. It works if you slot the ship with single beams and never stop moving, but if you load it with cannons or dual beam banks, it's a pretty worthless trait. Odd that they included it with a Pilot Escort, but that's STO for ya!
Why is the trait worthless if you slot cannons? I use it on my temporal raider with dual cannons all the time and burn through everything in sight. You don't stop moving just because you got cannons on.
The resistance buffs on a target do not impact the effectiveness of resistance debuffs.
So in that I'm not wrong/understood Borticus correctly. If you have enough penetration to give you +15% damage (~18 rating or 180 skill), you always do +15% damage. The target still applies their mitigation percentage and if they have the same rating, the two cancel out.
The idea is accurate - if you have no other sources of Armor Penetration, and the target has no resistance debuffs, 10 Armor Penetration will always increase the damage you deal to hull (or hitpoints on ground) by a damage source affected by this Armor Penetration to by ~9.99%.
I have bolded two components of the above because those are very important in the larget context. In a significant number of actual gameplay scenarios shields exist, other players or NPC's will do damage to the same target, you will do some sources of damage that do not benefit from Armor Penetration, and other debuffs and sources of Armor Penetration will be relevant, which will change the increase it has on overall damage output.
If you have a target that has no shields and you fire a shot that would do exactly 1000 damage before resistances, it does 1000 damage (because nothing is affecting the target's resistance).
If you have a target that has no shields and Fire on My Mark 3 (a 41.5 magnitude debuff) applied to it, and you fire a shot that would do exactly 1000 damage before resistances, it does 1408.139 damage.
If you have a target that has no shields and your weapons have 10 Armor Penetration (from the Pen mod, as an example), and you fire a shot that would do exactly 1000 damage before resistances, it does 1099.893 damage.
If you have a target that has no shields, Fire on My Mark 3 (a 41.5 magnitude debuff) applied to it, and your weapons have 10 Armor Penetration (from the Pen mod, as an example), and you fire a shot that would do exactly 1000 damage before resistances, it does 1502.365 damage.
If you have a target that has no shields and you fire a shot that would do exactly 1000 damage before resistances, it does 1000 damage (because nothing is affecting the target's resistance).
If you have a target that has no shields and Attack Pattern Omega III (a 37.5 magnitude buff) applied to it, and you fire a shot that would do exactly 1000 damage before resistances, it does 730 damage.
If you have a target that has no shields and your weapons have 100 Armor Penetration, and you fire a shot that would do exactly 1000 damage before resistances, it does ~1923.077 damage.
If you have a target that has no shields, Attack Pattern Omega III (a 37.5 magnitude buff)) applied to it, and your weapons have 100 Armor Penetration, and you fire a shot that would do exactly 1000 damage before resistances, it does ~1403.846 damage.
You will note that 1403.846 /730=~1.923 and that 1923.077/100~=1.923 - in both cases, the 100 Armor Penetration value (which could come from a skill of 1000 (one thousand) to Hull Penetration, if that was achieveable) is the same percentage increase. It is a different flat increase because other numbers have changed, but its relative impact on the math has not changed by changing the value of buffs on the target.
This is different from the first example, because adding resistance debuffs or increasing your Armor Penetration will changing the relative impact of any one source because resistance debuffs and Armor Penetration are curved together.
The effectiveness of armor penetration depends on what it is calculated against, or so I presume. For instance, I always thought that Subwarp Sheath applied a -15% debuff against "% damage resistance" at max throttle, whereas [PEN] modifier, Attack Pattern Beta, Intel - Vulnerability and so forth would apply a (-) minus damage resistance.
If it is applied against armor rating, then the effectiveness of armor penetration would suffer from the diminishing returns curve related to armor rating versus (%) percentage yield. A target with very high rating would presumably thus only yield significantly lower damage as opposed to a target with low rating, where each rating yields a high percentage of damage resistance.
...
Of course, you cannot lay out the entire complexity of your formulas but it would be interesting to know what actually constitutes armor penetration, hull rating and armor penetration and their relation to each other. As in, how do they multiply, divide, add and subtract against one another... in simple terms without it having to be an essay.
There are various powers - Subwarp Sheath, the Xenotech Engineering consoles, the Hull Penetration skill, and so on - that describe different effects (ignore % of target's Armor, Hull Penetration, Armor Penetration, and similar things), that all have the same exact functionality - they make targets that you hit with affected damage sources (generally only weapons) act as if they are more debuffed than they actually are by the amount listed.
The fact that there are various terms here, and that some of them use % (which is incorrect) while others do not, is something I intend to update shortly.
There are not different types of or calculations for Armor Penetration. There is no power that directly modifiers a target's resistance buffs. There are some powers that somewhat counter this by applying resistance debuffs, and some that let you specifically counter it to some extent vs any target by increasing your Armor Penetration, but those apply a positive value of a resistance debuff and make you treat your targets as if they had a higher value of a resistance debuff than they do.
In cases like this (and in my examples above), we have two (or three) values being adjusted.
Normal Resistance Buffs
Bonus Resistance Buffs
Normal Resistance Debuffs
These are three separate numbers that do not interact until they have been summed and curved.
The target's Normal Resistance Buffs (most sources of resistance, from skill points, armor, and similar), are all summed and then curved.
The target's Bonus Resistance Buffs (a few sources of resistance, such as the Ablative Generator console's active ability or the Dyson Tier 2 Reputation Trait Advanced Hull Reinforcement) are all summed and then curved.
The target's Resistance Debuffs and your relevant Armor Penetration are summed and then curved - note that your Armor Penetration is summed with the target's Resistance Debuffs in this step, and then the sum of the two is curved.
Those 3 things are then multiplied against the pre-resistance value of damage that is going to be applied against hull (or hitpoints).
In the context of having only one weapon on your ship, Subwarp Sheath at its maximum of 15, is functionally identical to having 1.5 Pen modifiers on your weapon. Intelligence Fleet 1 (ignoring the shield penetration, stealth, and perception component for the sake of this discussion), has the same exact impact on a any given weapon as a Pen modifier would. A skill of 100 Hull Penetration is also has an identical impact on a weapon's performance as a Pen modifier would.
That does not account for their stacking (which I explained above), but is meant to convey that all of those different sources, speaking strictly to their Armor Penetration component, do the same exact same thing applied the same exact way, with different magnitudes and additional functionality in some cases.
Why is the trait worthless if you slot cannons? I use it on my temporal raider with dual cannons all the time and burn through everything in sight. You don't stop moving just because you got cannons on.
There are not different types of or calculations for Armor Penetration. There is no power that directly modifiers a target's resistance buffs. There are some powers that somewhat counter this by applying resistance debuffs, and some that let you specifically counter it to some extent vs any target by increasing your Armor Penetration, but those apply a positive value of a resistance debuff and make you treat your targets as if they had a higher value of a resistance debuff than they do.
In cases like this (and in my examples above), we have two (or three) values being adjusted.
Normal Resistance Buffs
Bonus Resistance Buffs
Normal Resistance Debuffs
These are three separate numbers that do not interact until they have been summed and curved.
The target's Normal Resistance Buffs (most sources of resistance, from skill points, armor, and similar), are all summed and then curved.
The target's Bonus Resistance Buffs (a few sources of resistance, such as the Ablative Generator console's active ability or the Dyson Tier 2 Reputation Trait Advanced Hull Reinforcement) are all summed and then curved.
The target's Resistance Debuffs and your relevant Armor Penetration are summed and then curved - note that your Armor Penetration is summed with the target's Resistance Debuffs in this step, and then the sum of the two is curved.
Those 3 things are then multiplied against the pre-resistance value of damage that is going to be applied against hull (or hitpoints).
It is so nice to see that said out loud and put fairly clearly.
So in fact the places where I was wrong were chiefly because I believed some things actually did what they say they do. Either about an effect subtracting from target's resistance (they don't) or having a fixed percentage effect (they don't). Because proper language exists but hasn't been used uniformly. And here I thought the use of different language in some places was supposed to convey meaning.
Coming at this from a table-top design perspective: if you can't write text that explain the rules to a player, the rules don't function. And when rules text is outright misleading in the way it describes what the designer intends to happen... Yeah, not good.
There are various powers - Subwarp Sheath, the Xenotech Engineering consoles, the Hull Penetration skill, and so on - that describe different effects (ignore % of target's Armor, Hull Penetration, Armor Penetration, and similar things), that all have the same exact functionality - they make targets that you hit with affected damage sources (generally only weapons) act as if they are more debuffed than they actually are by the amount listed.
The fact that there are various terms here, and that some of them use % (which is incorrect) while others do not, is something I intend to update shortly.
Yeah, Subwarp Sheath is great for Cruiser builds. I never use it with front facing ships since I definitely have a tendency to 'park and shoot' in those style ships.
The biggest problem with it is that it scales by your speed, so it can be rendered moot by tractor beams or other hold effects. I tend to use it most on ships were I can slot Polorize Hull, Attack Pattern Omega or something similar to make sure my speed stays high. My engineer uses it on her Galaxy Dread and I slot a couple DoFFS to reduce recharge time for Evasive Maneuvers just to make sure I can keep the speed up.
It's funny though, the trait comes with the Science Pilot Escort and it's an absolutely horrible trait for that ship. It works if you slot the ship with single beams and never stop moving, but if you load it with cannons or dual beam banks, it's a pretty worthless trait. Odd that they included it with a Pilot Escort, but that's STO for ya!
You don't stop moving just because you got cannons on.
You do if you like to maintain optimum firing positions in PvE (arc & range). Something I for example like to do all the time.
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Yeah, Subwarp Sheath is great for Cruiser builds. I never use it with front facing ships since I definitely have a tendency to 'park and shoot' in those style ships.
The biggest problem with it is that it scales by your speed, so it can be rendered moot by tractor beams or other hold effects. I tend to use it most on ships were I can slot Polorize Hull, Attack Pattern Omega or something similar to make sure my speed stays high. My engineer uses it on her Galaxy Dread and I slot a couple DoFFS to reduce recharge time for Evasive Maneuvers just to make sure I can keep the speed up.
It's funny though, the trait comes with the Science Pilot Escort and it's an absolutely horrible trait for that ship. It works if you slot the ship with single beams and never stop moving, but if you load it with cannons or dual beam banks, it's a pretty worthless trait. Odd that they included it with a Pilot Escort, but that's STO for ya!
Why is the trait worthless if you slot cannons? I use it on my temporal raider with dual cannons all the time and burn through everything in sight. You don't stop moving just because you got cannons on.
I *do* stop moving when I have DHC's fitted. Which is to say, I can melt thru stuff just fine, but it *does* mean you have to make a huge U-turn afterwards, and try again on the rest. Maybe my piloting skills are lacking, but that feels awkward to me.
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Unfortunately, this is largely not accurate.
There are various powers - Subwarp Sheath, the Xenotech Engineering consoles, the Hull Penetration skill, and so on - that describe different effects (ignore % of target's Armor, Hull Penetration, Armor Penetration, and similar things), that all have the same exact functionality - they make targets that you hit with affected damage sources (generally only weapons) act as if they are more debuffed than they actually are by the amount listed.
The fact that there are various terms here, and that some of them use % (which is incorrect) while others do not, is something I intend to update shortly.
Having a skill of 100 hull penetration (which you can accomplish by purchasing all 3 ranks of the skill from the tree) grants you "10 Armor Penetration". As a note, the description of the skill in-game is completely accurate to its actual functionality- Borticus did a very solid job during the skill revamp to ensure that skills have as precise and accurate descriptions as possible, so that you know what you are purchasing. If you hit a target that has nothing affecting its resistance, when your weapon damage goes to calculate what happens due to the target's hull resistance, it treats the target as having a debuff of 10 resistance. If the target instead has a debuff of 41.5 resistance (from being hit by a Fire on My Mark 3 as an example), your weapon treats the target as having a total debuff of 51.5 instead of a total debuff of 41.5, as non-weapon sources of damage, or anyone else hitting the target would treat it.
If you have 3 sources of Armor Penetration (Subwarp Sheath at max throttle (15 Armor Penetration to all weapons), a [Pen] modifier on your weapon (10 Armor Penetration for that specific weapon), and 100 skill in Hull Penetration (10 Armor Penetration to all weapons)), that weapon will act with a total of 35 Armor Penetration. If it hits a target that has 3 debuffs that total to a debuff magnitude of 65, it acts as if the target has a total debuff of 100.
All of these sources respect the same resistance curve as damage resistance debuffs, as they are functionally damage resistance debuffs in the math. The main difference between Armor Penetration and damage resistance debuffs is that Armor Penetration lives on you and only affects your damage to the target, while damage resistance debuffs live on the target and affect any incoming damage to that target.
The curve here is correct; but you need to keep things in mind when evaluating it. Hull Penetration skill has a 10:1 ratio to Armor Penetration - having 100 skill (which is the amount you get from purchasing all 3 ranks of the skill) gets you 10 total armor penetration. Additionally, all of your Armor Penetration magnitude is added to the magnitude of all of the target's debuffs before that curve is applied.
Here are examples of how this math plays out:
Now I can only ask the developer if this armor penetration "magnitude" has the same effect on all targets, or if the target's high damage rating (or magnitude) can render armor penetration less useful.
And that begs the question what sort of armor rating the various enemies in this game generally have?
The resistance buffs on a target do not impact the effectiveness of resistance debuffs.
Most enemies do not have significant resistance ratings, although some do, notably the Crystalline Entity, and some use powers that increase their resistances for a short duration.
But what I am wondering is if the various armor penetrations and their "magnitude" struggle against diminishing returns when applied to different targets and their "damage resistances", or if they always provide a flat damage debuff. I know you said "1000 damage before resistances" but I just would like it confirmed.
For example, let's say we still do that 1000 damage before resistances and have an armor penetration magnitude of 50 (~1500 damage). Would this be 1500 damage against an unshielded Borg Queen Sphere as it would a weaker Borg Drone?
Or is armor penetration calculated against the target's innate resistance. Like 10% (1100) damage against the Borg Queen but 50% (1500) damage against the Borg Drone?
The effectiveness of armor penetration depends on what it is calculated against, or so I presume. For instance, I always thought that Subwarp Sheath applied a -15% debuff against "% damage resistance" at max throttle, whereas [PEN] modifier, Attack Pattern Beta, Intel - Vulnerability and so forth would apply a (-) minus damage resistance.
If it is applied against armor rating, then the effectiveness of armor penetration would suffer from the diminishing returns curve related to armor rating versus (%) percentage yield. A target with very high rating would presumably thus only yield significantly lower damage as opposed to a target with low rating, where each rating yields a high percentage of damage resistance.
I guess my curiosity is as to how you actually apply the formulas for armor penetration, armor rating and damage resistance. The formulas that I have laid out for you are basically in the eyes of a human for a human. That is to say, where armor penetration applies a % debuff against % damage resistance. This is how most common humans would understand it. As a programmer one has to think about three aspects of information sharing and communication: human-to-human interaction, human-to-machine interaction and machine-to-machine interaction. Humans tend to use the shortest way of communication when conveying information where Apples equals Apples.
As such, what actual formulas you apply in game for the computer/client to interpret and process may very well be different to what you display in the GUI for us players to see, interpret and process.
For example, Pedal to the Medal applies its % damage boost after everything. As such it actually yields 10, 20 or 30% damage just as the humans would interpret the percentile yield. They see 2000 end damage and would expect Pedal to the Medal to apply 30% more damage, and thus 2600 damage.
Tactical consoles, on the other hand, are calculated against base damage and their actual yield is different from Pedal to the Medal. However, when a person reads 20% extra damage per console he or she would not think it to be toward base damage but rather that those 20% means 2000 + 20% damage = 2400 and not 500 base damage + 20% = 600 damage.
Of course, you cannot lay out the entire complexity of your formulas but it would be interesting to know what actually constitutes armor penetration, hull rating and armor penetration and their relation to each other. As in, how do they multiply, divide, add and subtract against one another... in simple terms without it having to be an essay.
So in that I'm not wrong/understood Borticus correctly. If you have enough penetration to give you +15% damage (~18 rating or 180 skill), you always do +15% damage. The target still applies their mitigation percentage and if they have the same rating, the two cancel out.
As someone who despairs at the runaway DPS in this game, hearing all the various penetration and "reduce their armor" effects are all summed before being run through the curve regardless of how they are written is GREAT news.
Sure. They get buckets full of HP instead
Isnt that the same effect? you need x amount of damage to kill the enemy. You could increase the HP or the Resistance, but the Amount of damage you need at the end will be the same. So at the end, increasing resistance or hp would result in the same effect of increasing the enemies lifetime. The difference might be that some people will not see that its the same effect with higher resistance
ingame: @Felisean
I would say it is not the same because armor penetration only goes up to a certain point (~100 magnitude at best), whereas different targets' HP at different difficulties can vary beyond 100%. In other words, the level of increases is not linear per se. One could say that they do not increase at the same level of magnitude.
No you could debuff an enemy by way more than -100 resistance magnitude. Just use 2x Attack Pattern Beta 3 and you already have the -100 resistance magnitude. In case you have a team everyone using the available abilities debuff values of -350 and more are easy possible.
But for the killing time, you have X amount of hull (+-resistance) you need to melt. For this you will need Y amount of time.
If the enemy has just more hp and you're doing your normal damage or the enemy has resistances, less hp which result in you doing less damage per shoot its at the end the same if its balanced correctly. Increasing the resistance is just equal to increasing the hp but less visible
so lets say you have 1000 hp and you're doing 100 damage per shoot, you will need 10 shoots to kill the enemy.
in the second case you have just 900 hp, but you're doing only 90 damage per shoot, its the same effect, you will need 10 shoots to kill the enemy.
in both cases, increasing the hull (1001 hp for the first case will result in 11 shots) or increasing the resistance in the second case (doing less damage => 89 damage per shoot => 11 shoots) will have the same effect
ingame: @Felisean
It "looks" the same... but it's not. Welcome to the multi-variable calculus of game design
A 40,000 hp with 0% mitigation and a 30,000 with 25% mitigation might both take 30 seconds to kill, but if you start applying 10k of healing every 10 seconds one of them is immortal and the other goes down in under a minute.
Big difference.
the second one will get a bit less hull reg than the first one, but since the damage mitigation works for the newly healed hull too it will end up with the same. A hull heal is just increasing the cap hp at the end aka the amount of hull you have to melt, nothing more.
In your example the second one will get technically way more than the first one, but if you heal them with the same amount in relation to the damage they will recieve its the same again.
after 60 seconds in your example you will have 100k hp for the first one getting normal damage and 90k hp with 25% mitigation for the second one, so the second one will need way more damage to kill him. just because you left the relation between hull/resistance
In sto it was once per minute or so that they will reg 3% (or was it 6%) for the enemies to reg. sometimes you could see it at the taccube in isa. But these are all numbers and you could factor them in. i tried to make it as easy as possible to explain
ingame: @Felisean
And once we go to dynamically changing hit point or resistance values, things get even more interesting. if a certain temporary buff grants bonus resistance to an enemy, it might be possible to remove that buff with a Subnucleonic Beam or other buff-stripping power.
I think in general it's sensible that Cryptic relies more on innate high it points and low healing values for their NPCs, because otherwise, DPS would become definitely more improtant - there could be enemies that with insufficient DPS, you can't possibly beat, because they heal faster than you deal damage. (Some inexperiencend players certainly manage to fall into that trap already, when the enemies reset a while after combat ends.)
But I think the game would greatly benefit from more enemies using temporary hull resistance and shield hardness buffs that can be removed. It greatly increases the value of buff-stripping abilities, and rewards "smart" play.
Buckets-full of hit point tanks are more resistant to spike damage. Mitigation (and +incoming heal%) tanks are more durable against steady damage and way more efficient in longer fights. Mitigation multiplies the effectiveness of incoming heals as long as you're alive at all to receive them.
and why should you heal both with the same amount aka increase the hp for both with the same amount of hp? than you will have way more hp you have to kill on one at the and than you have on the other.
if you heal the first one with 10000 hp every 10 second but the second one with resistance only by 7500 it will be the same again.
you have both values and if you increase one more than the other, sure one will be superior to the other and things will change. the more heal you apply the more hp both get, the initial difference will be minor. and thats what you havent calculated in right now
ingame: @Felisean
Because flat magnitude heals don't care how much hp or mitigation the target has. They just heal X. And a LOT of the heals in this game are flat magnitude rather than % of target's HP (modified by some values on the caster, but that' still independent of the target's abilities).
Engineering team does more for a ship with an emphasis on high mitigation than it does for a ship with high HP when the TTK is the same. That generally makes mitigation strategies better (outside of extreme spikes).
The NPCs have been given the weaker of the two options available to content designers looking to keep the TTK from withering down to nothing with runaway DPS creep. Not saying this is wrong or right, only that it is, and there's some spin off effects from it, like NPC-to-NPC healing being really bad/ineffectual in many cases.
NPCs dont have much heals at all, thats why your healing argument isnt that important for them and for them it stil count that its equal at the end if you increase hitpoints OR resistance for them to make them last longer.
And at the end, npcs need more of a real mechanic for the fights than fire randomly heals or so, especially in stfs. If you want a healing stage, why not add something like that, let them start to heal and if you dont do xyz they continue till amount of z is done or something like that you could see in other games too
ingame: @Felisean
Excellent point! Even if it takes a new player half an hour to beat a boss, eventually they should be able to.
Totally agreed that a little more vigorous "will to live" on the part of the NPCs would be nice to see! When that's in the form of active ability use and buffs rather than Buckets-O'-HP, then you also create hooks for the PC's buff stripping abilities to be used by cagey players.
You don't want a casual game like STO to maul the casuals too badly, but you still want people playing on a little higher plane to feel vindicated learning how the game works and that using abilities in clever ways is of value. Gets into the psychology of retention, but there it is.
even in advanced and elite? because you know, higher difficulties and so on
and to be fair, if you could beat everything without much effort yea its not really challenging, for the higher difficulties there should be always the possibility to fail that you have to work for something. thats basically how the old no win scenario worked back in the days and at least for me it was a lot of fun doing it
ingame: @Felisean
No, not on Advanced or Elites, of course.
Everything Advanced or Elites is fair game, though, and Cryptic should feel free to throw everything and the kitchen sink at those willing to be a glutton for punishment.
Why is the trait worthless if you slot cannons? I use it on my temporal raider with dual cannons all the time and burn through everything in sight. You don't stop moving just because you got cannons on.
The idea is accurate - if you have no other sources of Armor Penetration, and the target has no resistance debuffs, 10 Armor Penetration will always increase the damage you deal to hull (or hitpoints on ground) by a damage source affected by this Armor Penetration to by ~9.99%.
I have bolded two components of the above because those are very important in the larget context. In a significant number of actual gameplay scenarios shields exist, other players or NPC's will do damage to the same target, you will do some sources of damage that do not benefit from Armor Penetration, and other debuffs and sources of Armor Penetration will be relevant, which will change the increase it has on overall damage output.
To expand on my earlier examples:
You will note that 1403.846 /730=~1.923 and that 1923.077/100~=1.923 - in both cases, the 100 Armor Penetration value (which could come from a skill of 1000 (one thousand) to Hull Penetration, if that was achieveable) is the same percentage increase. It is a different flat increase because other numbers have changed, but its relative impact on the math has not changed by changing the value of buffs on the target.
This is different from the first example, because adding resistance debuffs or increasing your Armor Penetration will changing the relative impact of any one source because resistance debuffs and Armor Penetration are curved together.
As I mentioned in my original comment:
There are not different types of or calculations for Armor Penetration. There is no power that directly modifiers a target's resistance buffs. There are some powers that somewhat counter this by applying resistance debuffs, and some that let you specifically counter it to some extent vs any target by increasing your Armor Penetration, but those apply a positive value of a resistance debuff and make you treat your targets as if they had a higher value of a resistance debuff than they do.
In cases like this (and in my examples above), we have two (or three) values being adjusted.
Normal Resistance Buffs
Bonus Resistance Buffs
Normal Resistance Debuffs
These are three separate numbers that do not interact until they have been summed and curved.
The target's Normal Resistance Buffs (most sources of resistance, from skill points, armor, and similar), are all summed and then curved.
The target's Bonus Resistance Buffs (a few sources of resistance, such as the Ablative Generator console's active ability or the Dyson Tier 2 Reputation Trait Advanced Hull Reinforcement) are all summed and then curved.
The target's Resistance Debuffs and your relevant Armor Penetration are summed and then curved - note that your Armor Penetration is summed with the target's Resistance Debuffs in this step, and then the sum of the two is curved.
Those 3 things are then multiplied against the pre-resistance value of damage that is going to be applied against hull (or hitpoints).
In the context of having only one weapon on your ship, Subwarp Sheath at its maximum of 15, is functionally identical to having 1.5 Pen modifiers on your weapon. Intelligence Fleet 1 (ignoring the shield penetration, stealth, and perception component for the sake of this discussion), has the same exact impact on a any given weapon as a Pen modifier would. A skill of 100 Hull Penetration is also has an identical impact on a weapon's performance as a Pen modifier would.
That does not account for their stacking (which I explained above), but is meant to convey that all of those different sources, speaking strictly to their Armor Penetration component, do the same exact same thing applied the same exact way, with different magnitudes and additional functionality in some cases.
Unfortunately a lot of people do...
It is so nice to see that said out loud and put fairly clearly.
So in fact the places where I was wrong were chiefly because I believed some things actually did what they say they do
Coming at this from a table-top design perspective: if you can't write text that explain the rules to a player, the rules don't function. And when rules text is outright misleading in the way it describes what the designer intends to happen... Yeah, not good.
Excellent. The sooner the better.
You do if you like to maintain optimum firing positions in PvE (arc & range). Something I for example like to do all the time.
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I *do* stop moving when I have DHC's fitted.