Some problems with the combat code:

[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.

[Furniture]

The way I see it, this is something that is blatantly not working the way it should be. The way it stands, there is no reason to try to increase a characters AC in game and that is a huge flaw. I understand that established servers have their own makeshift balances around this to make it work, but that still leaves this flaw intact. Maybe theres a way to rewrite this and give older servers a way to keep the old code for their servers?

Also I am not understanding this correctly about the STR. Do you mean that if you lower mobs strength, AC will parse with significant damage reduction in regards to the different armor types that I originally parsed with?

The way I have been doing it as of late is by adding a huge bonus to player AC directly in the code. That seems to be working thus far, but for high end game I'm not sure how it would work out.

Kegz from the sleeper says that he will be releasing his fix sometime. Hopefully he has a good solution

[jsr]

Yes STR is opposed to AC in the calculation. If you reduce mob strength you will see an improvement in mitigation.

Basically; STR + Offsense - AC - Defense = mitigation.

In my opinion, you're exaggerating the extent of this issue when you say things like 'there is no reason to try to increase a characters AC in game and that is a huge flaw'.

[Furniture]

Originally Posted by jsr

Yes STR is opposed to AC in the calculation. If you reduce mob strength you will see an improvement in mitigation.

Basically; STR + Offsense - AC - Defense = mitigation.

In my opinion, you're exaggerating the extent of this issue when you say things like 'there is no reason to try to increase a characters AC in game and that is a huge flaw'.

While this makes sense, when increasing or decreasing a mobs strength by large amounts, I have seen absolutely 0 change in mitigation. (From Mobs). I'm not sure why that was happening as I didnt spend a whole lot of time with it. (just in game changed mobs STR to 1 or 999). It seems to work pretty well for client attacks though

[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.

[wtbmacestun]

kegz used the code i posted in the forums and defined acdiv in the sql table so you could adjust it until it was right. I think, i cant remember, but i think he had it set at 20. just play around with it and it will work. you dont have to revamp anything unless youve completely reedited the stats of mobs so they seemed normal. in which case you fucked up your server instead of fixing the problem to begin with.... which i would guess is every server including p99. One of the reasons why kegz and i wanted to fix this on his server before messing with mob stats and other settings.