Effects Of Armor Bug Fix In 1.03
matso
Master of Patches Join Date: 2002-11-05 Member: 7000Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, NS2 Community Developer
Master of Patches Join Date: 2002-11-05 Member: 7000Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, NS2 Community Developer
<div class="IPBDescription">No much, really...</div> In 1.03, an alien without armor will no longer get the effect of the carapace damage negation (30% at lvl 3).
The effect this has on the aliens mainly depend on their health to armor ratio - if they have more than twice as much health as armor, they will be slightly easier to kill.
The following list shows how many unupgraded LMG bullets it takes to kill an alien with various carap levels
Skulk: 10/14/17/18, down from 10/14/17/20
Lerk: No difference (has armor left when dead), takes 24 LMG hits to kill @lvl3 carap
Fade: No carap: 29 lmg shots. lvl 3 carap: 73, down from 75.
Onos: No carap, 70 LMG shots, lvl 3 carap: 120 LMG shots, down from about 130 LMG shots
I didn't bother checking anything but lvl 3 carap for Fade and Onos ... not much chance of having less than lvl 3 when you get them.
Note that a non-carap Fade dies with about 89 pts of armor left.
Conclusion? Well, skulks go down 10% easier, fades about 2% easier and an ono about 8% easier.
Basically, nothing much has changed.
The effect this has on the aliens mainly depend on their health to armor ratio - if they have more than twice as much health as armor, they will be slightly easier to kill.
The following list shows how many unupgraded LMG bullets it takes to kill an alien with various carap levels
Skulk: 10/14/17/18, down from 10/14/17/20
Lerk: No difference (has armor left when dead), takes 24 LMG hits to kill @lvl3 carap
Fade: No carap: 29 lmg shots. lvl 3 carap: 73, down from 75.
Onos: No carap, 70 LMG shots, lvl 3 carap: 120 LMG shots, down from about 130 LMG shots
I didn't bother checking anything but lvl 3 carap for Fade and Onos ... not much chance of having less than lvl 3 when you get them.
Note that a non-carap Fade dies with about 89 pts of armor left.
Conclusion? Well, skulks go down 10% easier, fades about 2% easier and an ono about 8% easier.
Basically, nothing much has changed.
Comments
If you find it takes more than 13 unupgraded LMG shots to kill a Skulk, you are a) missing or b) playing on a server where the bug has not been fixed.
I can't be <u>sure</u> if the bug was fixed in 1.03 because I haven't tested it explicitly. Flayra says it is though, so until somebody comes in here and shows me tests that say otherwise I'll believe him.
Basically, nothing much has changed.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'll take it.
When I first started playing this evening, I hadn't read about v1.03 patch and joined one of the patched servers without reading it. Stepped into a room with some turrets as a skulk and boom, dead, instantly. It didn't take me long to figure out they released a new patch, though I was surprised fixing the armor for aliens weakened skulks as much as it seems to have.
Kheras
10 damage = 4 health, 6 armour (3 after halving). Leaving it at 66 / 27 after one shot.
9 more shots (10 total) would remove its armour totally. Another 40 health, 27 armour. Leaving it with 26 / 0 after ten shots.
From here on, all damage is applied fully...IE...3 more shots to finish the kill at 10 damage each.
Total: 13 shots to kill a fully-healed Carapace 3 Skulk as of 1.03.
Pre-1.03 with the armour bug, 30% of all damage disappeared off the top with Carapace 3. Thusly, that 10-damage LMG shot would become 7 damage. Splitting the damage into 2.8 / 4.2 health and armour, respectively. The armour then halved to 2.1 damage.
So it would take 15 shots to remove the Skulk's armour, inflicting 42 points of health damage.
After this, it would take another 4 shots at 7 damage per shot (yes, 30% was still being absorbed after the armour was gone) to kill the Skulk.
Total: 19 shots to kill a fully-healed Carapace 3 Skulk as of 1.02.
The differences are even more pronounced for bigger Aliens.
200/150 (Fade) = 50 LMG shots 1.03; 72 LMG shots, 1.02.
So it all comes down to that 2nd hive. Marines have two hives, the aliens really have **obscenity** to work with. Aliens have two hives, marines still stand a good chance if they use teamwork and coordination, but aliens also using teamwork and coordination will probably out Umbra-Fade-DefenseChamber your **obscenity** ;p
I'd say it's MORE balanced, but it's gonna require more discipline from the alien team to win.
So, a pistol shot hitting a skulk with lvl 3 carap is first reduced 30% from 20 to 14 pts, then 60% of those 14 (9 pts) is absorbed by the armor, which gets reduced by 4 pts, and then the remaining 5 pts reduced health directly.
The armor bug was that you got the damage negation even after all armor was gone.
If you find it takes more than 13 unupgraded LMG shots to kill a Skulk, you are a) missing or b) playing on a server where the bug has not been fixed.
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... or c) carapace doesn't work the way you think it does.
Nothing beats having two computers and running your own private LAN game for these kinds of tests.
500 200
367 0
0 -916
That's 1617 calculated damage, which is pretty close to what my 1.02 test showed:
<a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=21&t=11597' target='_blank'>http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/in...ST&f=21&t=11597</a>
That lets them take 231% as much damage as was intended.
For fades:
200 125
117 0
0 -175
That's 500 damage, 154% what they intended.
I do not know about halfing of armour damage or ignored damage.
I do not know about halfing of armour damage or ignored damage.
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Right. Which kinda makes your ideas about how much damage the Kharaa is "supposed to" or "intended to" take kinda ... well, not very interesting.
But yes, the Fade takes roughly the exact same number of bullets to bring down, making it still have "Effectively" over 700 Hitpoints, or damage, being taken in
I tested it on Nano-Gridlock the moment it went live with 1.03 just to see for myself if the bug had been fixed.
However yes, it is true, the Skulk is very fixed, the Fade is very not fixed
Terminataur says the Flayra designed the human/alien armor systems to work the same way.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> In a PM when I annoyed flayra, I asked about the armor system. He said that the marine and alien armor system work the same.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Fam disagrees.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Carapace adds more armor, and also reduces the aliens vunerability to weapons fire. It is not meant to just up the max armor value, but also to reduce any damage. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
All in all, this is starting to annoy me.
[Edit: Onnnnnnn the other hand, mistakes can be made at times, especially when initial assessments are being taken on live servers when things are hectic. It seems that while their armor is up, they are still negating damage. That's not like human armor, to the best of my knowledge, but the numbers are strongly leaning towards that 30% off.]
In 1.03, carapace negates 10/20/30% damage only as long as there is armor remaining. When a lvl 3 carap Fade runs out of armor, it has only about 20 health left, so for a Fade, the 1.03 patch makes little difference.
It DOES make a bit more diff than the numbers say though, because armor is healed last. So when fighting backed up by def chambers, the armor may be gone while the fade is still at high health .. at which time a fade dies FAST.
I have the numbers at home ... but they look identical to 1.02 (already posted) until armor is gone, at which time the damage taken == damage from weapon. Very simple, so I didn't bother to post them.
Personally I find the negation of damage unbalancing. The difference in effective health is simply too great for the cost. 2 RP will double your durability, far outstripping the usefulness of Regen or Redemption. (Save for the Onos who does have some use for Redemption)
and um yeah HMG eats fades like thermonukes wipes out anthills even at long ranges...