Some problems with the combat code:

[Furniture]

Update: I figured it out, also parses on a nice bell curve for distribution like in on live/classic, just have to fine tune it

[trevius]

As far as parses for lower level content goes, you may want to refer to this thread as well, which I believe mostly deals with chance for min/max hits based on level:

http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=35666

[game]

EpicEmu has a fix for this which will be released after more testing, you can read up on the changes on the forums, you may need to sign up to read it: https://epicemu.com/forum/ac-new-dam...ing-code-tests

The graphs show how the new code will reduce damage based on armor, so a full plate wearer will take less damage than a chain -> leather -> cloth -> etc. It factors in for the levels automatically and shifts the chance to miss making mobs chance to hit YOU scale with its level rather than be a flat % like most servers use now.

[AudioGarden21]

Here's an updated link to the EpicEmu fix mentioned above.

AC - Dynamic Hit Modification

[Furniture]

I ended up not actually fixing it and giving up.

This is still a major issue and this issue is known among eqemu players, causing them to not care about AC.

Its great that kegz has fixed the issue on his server, but that doesnt help anyone else.

Can anyone please share a working fix so we can all have AC function properly?

[jsr]

Str opposes mitigation, so.. You could run a query to reduce str

Update npc_types set astr = astr - 10 where level = (level you have issues with)

Do that, parse, if damage is still too high then repeat.


Backup tables first . And I'm not sure of implications of negative str

[jsr]

A good way to parse;

1.Copy a mob
2. Set min dmg to 1, max dmg to 20, str to the value you want to test
3. Set attack speed to -99 (fast)
3. Create an item with 999 regen and 9999hp . I use one of these for ac 10-1000 in increments of 10
4. Adjust regen cap in server rules to 999
5. /log on, equip item, spawn mob and attack.
6. #damage mob when you want to end fight.

I do this for mitigation testing, it is pretty fast. Gamparse will give you a breakdown of the # of huts at each dmg interval from 1-20. You can graph this to see where the bell curve is compared to live, and increase/decrease str until it is close to where you want it.

[KLS]

I'd like to revisit this, but I'd also like to start some discussion of what exactly we need to fix and how we're going to go about it.

1) AC doesn't have enough of an effect on actually mitigating damage.

-> Two ways to address this, we can either increase the effect of AC within our current formula or we can come up with a new one.

2) Hit chance has somewhat hard to predict scaling and can be kind of a nightmare to balance.

-> I don't think there's a way to really address this without redoing the existing formula which might be disruptive to servers that have balanced around the old (whacky as it may be) formula.

3) The order of avoid damage and check hit chance has always been swapped from what it is on live.

-> This is just a matter of rewriting a lot of the combat code to swap them.

[jsr]

IMO if the goal is to emulate live for mitigation, there are really two options;

1) Put together test scenarios and methods to perform some controlled parsing on live. This requires significant collaboration and effort to get sufficient data in the right way.

2) Look at AC on existing items, assign an expected PC level range to these items to derive a scaling factor per level, and design the inputs from mob stats (str/offense in existing code) to scale at the same rate.

Happy to clarify if this is unclear.

[moofta]

Originally Posted by KLS

-> I don't think there's a way to really address this without redoing the existing formula which might be disruptive to servers that have balanced around the old (whacky as it may be) formula.

Perhaps it could be set up as a define that you could enable/disable using cmake? So in effect you could choose between the two systems when compiling, opting out if you've already done the tweaking.

[Furniture]

I do admit I did exaggerate a bit, but the parse clearly shows in its current state trivial mitigation between banded and fine plate and to me that is definitely a huge flaw. Perhaps the issue all along was the STR of the mobs being too high, I will test and see how it goes, thanks.

[ChaosSlayerZ]

thats because the difference between banded and fine plate is insignificant in raw numbers - its what like 25-30 extra AC? It is a gain but its about maybe 5% improvement. Thats how EQ always was - stats are almost irrelevant unless you have a ton of them.
Not saying its good system, but thats just how it is.