AC = misses? & disconnects

[sotonin]

We immediatly noticed that after giving mobs AC on our server there was a LOT more missing during combat.

This concerns me because in EQLive, AC affects damage mitigation only. If a uber mob has extremely high ac you will simply hit them for 1dmg each time. You won't miss entirely. Misses on the other hand are determined by weapon skill and level difference of you and the mob.

At least this is the trend I always noticed.

The second issues, If a player gets disconnected or locks up. They are not able to log on immediately. It usually takes up to 5-10 minutes before they can. Sometimes i get bugged and have to reboot the server to get back on. While other times moving my character to another zone solves it.

Basically what happens is when they get to server select and click the enter our server, it gives a client crash error and exits the client.

My thoughts on this is that it is the EQEMU's version of the eqlive error message that says "Sorry you currently have an active character on this server and must wait" ... Although it doesn't say this.

If this is the case is there any way to properly disconnect LD players so they dont hang in game for long, or at all. Because sometimes i'm assuming characters can get bugged and stay in game after a disconnect for indefinate time.

[KhaN]

Do you added "ACFail", "ACRandom" and "ACReduction" in variables table to tweak how AC is managed ?
So far, i can say that make now more than one month EQA use AC on mobs, and we have zero problems.

[sotonin]

Ya. i set those up. there still seems to be a abnormal amount of misses.

Whats a reasonable combination of those 3 variables to get a fairly good result?

[KhaN]

Well, it depend on the result you want, on EQA, we use ACFail=5, ACRandom=0, ACReduction=0, but im not sure this would be apprioriate for an EQLive server :/

[Tangeleno]

As far as I knew AC did only effect mitigation, but if the damage was reduced to 0 it would count as a miss. So the way combat worked is as follows

Attacker rolls to hit
Defender rolls for dodge, parry, riposte, block and what not.
Attacker rolls for damage
Damage mitigation is applied
If the damage is 0 or less it counts as a miss
If the damage is 1 or greater it counts as a hit.

Like I said this is just what I read on boards and such

[sotonin]

Ya. i'm 99% sure thats a bit off.

The way it seemed to work. even on uber high ac mobs. is you still swing and attack as much as on normal mobs. You just connect for 1 dmg.

So if damage<=0 with mitigation, damage = 1

The hit miss thing was entirely based on skill and level.

Again, maybe i'm wrong. but after the 3 years i played eq that's what i seem to recall.

[animepimp]

Thats probably how it works on live, but the AC code here just doesn't do it. If the damage is reduced to 0 it sends to the client that you missed. It probably wouldn't be very hard to change to stopping at 1. Scorp's AC code isn't really meant to emulate live because no one really knows how it actually works on live.

[Scorpious2k]

Changed it to leave 1 damage,

Should be in the next cvs dump.

[sotonin]

Thats cool Scorp. I have another question now.

I've been fiddling with monster AC and stuff lately. And i just can't get it the way i want it.

If i set the monsters AC up near where a players AC of equal lvl would be, the fight is extended quite a bit., But most of the fight is either party missing. Even though they have equal lvl and very close to nearly the same AC.

I adjusted the AC on all npcs to less than a normal player would have. And now attacks vs mobs appear decent, but the creatures can still barely hit the players.

Since i can't really change the ac of the players.... I'm kind of at a loss here.

I've tried modifying those 3 variables, ACfail ACreduction and ACrandom.

But they just dont seem to work =\

Right now i think i have my ACfail at 5%, the others at like 2 and 3

I just don't get how i can do this. I want monsters to hit my players more often and miss less, it's not much of a challenge right now

[Scorpious2k]

Try playing with the NPC's mindmg/maxdmg values. Since AC is the reduction of damage, increasing the amount of damage would increase the chances of more hits and for greater amounts.

Remember too, that AC only protects from melee hits, you have to adjust other values for mobs to resist magic.

[sotonin]

hmm. interesting.

So i should perhaps use some formula to fill in the blanks of some blank dmg npcs with a lvl based formula?

Has anybody devised such a formula? Like the one i used to hand out mob AC?

AC = ((level*(level/2))+5)