The Energon Pub

I just want to clarify a couple of things real quick while I am eating my lunch here at work.

1. My goal right now is to finish developing all the tools needed by the staff to manage every aspect of the game. They now have control over armors, weapons and the news bulletins on the HMW homepage. The rest will be done very, very soon. After that I will move on to a HUGE project on the site (actually I've already started it). The HMW Staff are not commenting or responding to any speculation at this point as we know that the gossip abounds and we don't want to feed it.

2. HMW is not a priority for me and I'm not messing with it anymore (Although I am still very much involved). Mkall is working on some fixes.


That's pretty much it.

Even mentioning your working on something means gossip is going to start flying.

You should know that by now.

Original Sin wrote:Even mentioning your working on something means gossip is going to start flying.

You should know that by now.

The gossip started flying the second I came back

I'm focusing more on the big picture of Seibertron.com now though and just wanted to clarify that everything is under control and I'm not just sitting here twiddling my thumbs.

Omega Sentinel wrote:I just want to clarify a couple of things real quick while I am eating my lunch here at work.

1. My goal right now is to finish developing all the tools needed by the staff to manage every aspect of the game. They now have control over armors, weapons and the news bulletins on the HMW homepage. The rest will be done very, very soon. After that I will move on to a HUGE project on the site (actually I've already started it). The HMW Staff are not commenting or responding to any speculation at this point as we know that the gossip abounds and we don't want to feed it.

2. HMW is not a priority for me and I'm not messing with it anymore (Although I am still very much involved). Mkall is working on some fixes.


That's pretty much it.

Answer your PMs!

Jeep! wrote:Answer your PMs!

LOL...Gotcha. Sent

Can Jeep still has is pretty panel?


All he does is moan about it



Now, as to speculation...


V2 DEVELOPED IN SECRET!! OMFGZ SHENANIGANS!!!

Omega Sentinel wrote:After that I will move on to a HUGE project on the site (actually I've already started it).

I'm just going to assume it's the long promised and apparently forgotten Transtopia galleries.

This site is seriously lacking in a dedicated section for creativity, and there are so many members on this site who are creative and have a lot to show off.

Jeep! wrote:

Tammuz wrote:the problem with that is that it will still be open to abuse from over amping, we need to standardise the stats so that every point gives the same amount of improvement. that's what i set out to do with the weapons and for most part did, but that's also why i aked mkall to give every stat a tactic to feed, that doesn't seem to have happened as we've now got more than 8 tactics but less than 16...

Some might not have a feeder stat, in that they might just happen without a scale. I'd like to see avoid relegated to do that, as it doesn't scale with its feeder stat. Something else could use speed then.

depends on what you mean by scale, avoid definetly needs looking at though it definetly activates alot more when fed high speed, but yeah having half fed and half not fed will be a bit crappy.

Tammuz wrote:

Jeep! wrote:

Tammuz wrote:the problem with that is that it will still be open to abuse from over amping, we need to standardise the stats so that every point gives the same amount of improvement. that's what i set out to do with the weapons and for most part did, but that's also why i aked mkall to give every stat a tactic to feed, that doesn't seem to have happened as we've now got more than 8 tactics but less than 16...

Some might not have a feeder stat, in that they might just happen without a scale. I'd like to see avoid relegated to do that, as it doesn't scale with its feeder stat. Something else could use speed then.

depends on what you mean by scale, avoid definetly needs looking at though it definetly activates alot more when fed high speed, but yeah having half fed and half not fed will be a bit crappy.

What I mean is that avoid happens, and that's it. You can't avoid better, you just avoid. So the feeder stat only boosts the chances of it happening, not the magnitude of its effect. Repair, however, is better the more intelligence is being fed into it, in addition to having the repair stat increasing its liklihood of kicking in at any given time. The latter scales, the former doesn't, and if it doesn't scale it doesn't need a feeder stat.

Jeep! wrote:
What I mean is that avoid happens, and that's it. You can't avoid better, you just avoid. So the feeder stat only boosts the chances of it happening, not the magnitude of its effect. Repair, however, is better the more intelligence is being fed into it, in addition to having the repair stat increasing its liklihood of kicking in at any given time. The latter scales, the former doesn't, and if it doesn't scale it doesn't need a feeder stat.

well that's not entirely true, SPD does affect the chance of avoid kicking in we know maxing the feeder stat doubles the effectiveness of the tactic so while maxing strength would mean you'd need half as many rams to kill an opponent, maxing speed would effectively double the avoid rate.

Tammuz wrote:

Jeep! wrote:
What I mean is that avoid happens, and that's it. You can't avoid better, you just avoid. So the feeder stat only boosts the chances of it happening, not the magnitude of its effect. Repair, however, is better the more intelligence is being fed into it, in addition to having the repair stat increasing its liklihood of kicking in at any given time. The latter scales, the former doesn't, and if it doesn't scale it doesn't need a feeder stat.

well that's not entirely true, SPD does affect the chance of avoid kicking in we know maxing the feeder stat doubles the effectiveness of the tactic so while maxing strength would mean you'd need half as many rams to kill an opponent, maxing speed would effectively double the avoid rate.

That's what I'm saying, it increases the RATE. It doesn't increase the actual effectiveness of ONE AVOID. All the other current tactics have the effectiveness of each activation boosted by their feeder - a successful avoid is no different if there's 1 speed or 100 speed behind it.

Jeep! wrote:

Tammuz wrote:

Jeep! wrote:
What I mean is that avoid happens, and that's it. You can't avoid better, you just avoid. So the feeder stat only boosts the chances of it happening, not the magnitude of its effect. Repair, however, is better the more intelligence is being fed into it, in addition to having the repair stat increasing its liklihood of kicking in at any given time. The latter scales, the former doesn't, and if it doesn't scale it doesn't need a feeder stat.

well that's not entirely true, SPD does affect the chance of avoid kicking in we know maxing the feeder stat doubles the effectiveness of the tactic so while maxing strength would mean you'd need half as many rams to kill an opponent, maxing speed would effectively double the avoid rate.

That's what I'm saying, it increases the RATE. It doesn't increase the actual effectiveness of ONE AVOID. All the other current tactics have the effectiveness of each activation boosted by their feeder - a successful avoid is no different if there's 1 speed or 100 speed behind it.

look at the bigger picture;

if you double the feeder of ram or repair you double the effectiveness, so over the course of the mission you'll do double the damage

if you double the feeder of Avoid you'll avoid twice as many attacks (and apporiximately twice as much damage) over the course of the mission

My point is, it doesn't need a feeder stat. Line up the rate increase the tactic itself gives per point to be equal to what a point each of speed and avoid are now, then you've freed speed up to be used by another tactic, allowing for a number of tactics which isn't divisible by eight.

but then one point in avoid woud be worth twice as much as a point in any other tactic. you might aswell say have ram not fed by str and have it just do the damage 10str does now as base.

Tammuz wrote:but then one point in avoid woud be worth twice as much as a point in any other tactic. you might aswell say have ram not fed by str and have it just do the damage 10str does now as base.

No, because ram can scale. Avoid can't. It can only happen more or less often.
And I'm only trying to explain how there can be more than 8 tacitcs, but less than 16, and there still be one tactic per stat.

I understand what you're saying jeep, but you made a big assumption that's warped your view of the maths

i'm trying to explain that avoid is scaled.

and if you end up with half and half then those that are fed can't be balanced with those that aren't

for example if we rip of avoids feeder it activates at the basal rate of the rest of the tactics, as soon as you start feeding the others avoid becomes rubbish(which know becuase it used to be like this back in the day, when avoid was just an afterthought tactic), if we do what you suggest and make the non fed rate the same as a maxfed avoid rate is now then the rest of the tactics have to fed to maximum aswell to be useful.

or we could arbitarily make the nonfed activation rate somewhere in between, but then we end up with both situations as up to the point where the fed tactics get fed to that amount Avoid would be kick ass powerful and once the fed tactics get past that point avoid would be an after though.

Ah, and you've allowed too much maths to warp your actually looking at the game. Avoid gets less powerful as the levels progress, as the frequency of tactic attacks (which it's useless against) increases, which, when weighed up with its tiny bonus, renders it almost useless. It's filler, really. So making it more powerful won't unbalance the game.
Plus, again, I''m merely exploring the possibility of unfed tactics. They would allow Mkall to add extra tactics without upsetting the 'one stat, one tactic' approach we need. Avoid's a perfect example of the kind of thing that could be done in that manner because it's a known and immutable effect. It's an on/off switch, not a variable dial like the others. And it would prove a suitable basis for designing new tactics which don't need to be fed.

now you're just feeding my own information back to me JP. I know it gets less effective the higher the levels go, against a maxed out duel tactic, fully fed avoid activates at just 24% time,

and your suggestion wasn't making more powerful at higher levels it would just make more powerful at lower levels. and without a feeder giving it just and arbitary activation rate will just make it rediculousy powerful at low levels and workable at high levels, or workable at lower levels and an afterthought at higher levels

which is why it needs to work against every thing which i've told you and OS and Mkall, and pretty much everyone whose ever asked me about it.

and it's not just an on/off switch, you have to think of it in relative damage; ram does damage, repair reverses damage, avoid negates damage.

Have we clearly deduced, then, that I think that this is a possibility? Because I'd like to stop arguing in favour of something I'm not in favour of. For the record, it's undeniable that avoid is incredibly poor at the higher levels. Removing it from the 'main' tactics in faovur of something better, something scaleable (properly scaleable), and having it as one of what might be several 'back-up' tactics would be something I'm up for doing. Increasing its low-level use, however, that's a no no.
As for it 'negating' damage, at low levels it negates about 5% per avoid (nothing special) and at higher levels, it merely postpones, it doesn't negate.

Jeep! wrote:Removing it from the 'main' tactics in faovur of something better, something scaleable (properly scaleable), and having it as one of what might be several 'back-up' tactics would be something I'm up for doing.

how does having a set of decent proper tactics, and then a set of backup after thought tactics balance?

Jeep! wrote:As for it 'negating' damage, at low levels it negates about 5% per avoid (nothing special)

go look a t a low level strafe or repair, they're pretty **** too. the damage on a low level ram is far outstripped by the stun affect.

Jeep! wrote:and at higher levels, it merely postpones, it doesn't negate.

which having it work against everything would solve.

Tammuz wrote:

Jeep! wrote:Removing it from the 'main' tactics in faovur of something better, something scaleable (properly scaleable), and having it as one of what might be several 'back-up' tactics would be something I'm up for doing.

how does having a set of decent proper tactics, and then a set of backup after thought tactics balance?

Because the main ones would be balanced with each other, and the lower tier ones would be balanced with each other. Then distribution of the tactics would be Main/Lower/Lower, allowing for a far greater diversity in viable set-ups. Pipe dream? Aye.

Jeep! wrote:As for it 'negating' damage, at low levels it negates about 5% per avoid (nothing special)

go look a t a low level strafe or repair, they're pretty **** too. the damage on a low level ram is far outstripped by the stun affect.

You and I have already agreed that the stun effect needs to go the way of Alpha Strike.

Jeep! wrote:and at higher levels, it merely postpones, it doesn't negate.

which having it work against everything would solve.

Not sold on the idea of it working against everything. Remove speed as a feeder, have the payouts be proportional to base xp, and we're set.

Jeep! wrote:

Tammuz wrote:
which having it work against everything would solve.

Not sold on the idea of it working against everything. Remove speed as a feeder, have the payouts be proportional to base xp, and we're set.

that wouldn't work as i've already said in my last but one post. you'd end up with avoid activating at a staggering 12% of the time at high levels

it would be even worse than it is now!

Hence the desire to see it relegated to a lower function, and replaced with something better.

when yolu get your three tactics fair enough, but seeing as thats about as likely to happen as V2, how about we try to fix it so it's viable, huh?

ahh hail the no reset!