The Problem With Carapace...
Broode
Join Date: 2002-11-22 Member: 9605Members
Join Date: 2002-11-22 Member: 9605Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Why it seems too powerful</div> It seems the carapace bug of versions past still exists....
First of all, I'd like to direct you to <a href='http://www.geocities.com/kitsune/104stats.htm' target='_blank'>this</a> site, a very accurate analysis of the damage done to health and armour in 1.04, and I will be using it as a primary source.
It would be hard not to notice the standard D>M>S order that you see in nearly every game nowdays, and likewise it would be hard not to notice the insane overusage of carapace that dictates this order. As we all know, its because carapace is just so darn effective, and most of us probably couldn't imagine killing marines without it. According to my <a href='http://www.geocities.com/kitsune/104stats.htm' target='_blank'>source</a>, it more than doubles the longevity of all five classes, with the fade reaping the most benifit at a 265% gain of lifespan over the non-carapaced model. We have all come to accept this as 'the way it is', and have built our tactics around it. If this continues, future versions could possibly be balanced around this assumption that all aliens can have more than twice of their intended life, throwing off the balancing process.
If you can remember back to 1.03, there was a large carapace bug that stopped a large percentage of damage reaching the aliens, completely overpowering fades and throwing off the midgame. Thankfully, 1.04 came along, fixed the bug and fades and other carapaced aliens were put back to their rightful place.
Or were they?
What follows is what I believe is discrepancies in the numbers involving damage done to aliens at different carapace levels.
<b>NO CARAPACE:</b>
First of all, armour works by taking a certain percentage of damage away from the damage done to health, halving it, then subtracting the result from your armour value. For no carapace aliens, this percentage is 30%.
For example, a 10 damage lmg bullet would do 7 damage to health and 1.5 damage to armour.
As armour works by just halving the damage applied to it, the Effective Hit Points (ehp) of the armour can be found by doubling the armour value.
For example, a 70hp skulk with 10ar has 90ehp.
This value of 90ehp should take 9 lmg bullets (10 damage) to deplete, and indeed it does, as the <a href='http://www.geocities.com/kitsune/104stats.htm' target='_blank'>source</a> shows.
So far, we can see no problems with the system. It's all working as it should be.
<b>WITH CARAPACE</b>
According to the manual and various other sources, level 3 carapace should absorb 60% of incoming damage directly to the armour.
However, this does not change the fact that the ehp for the armour is still twice the armour value - it still negates the same 50% of incoming damage.
So, therefore, a 70hp skulk with 30ar would have 130ehp.
Theoretically, this level 3 carapace skulk would take 13 lmg bullets to kill. Why then, does it take 19?
19 bullets would equal somewhere between 180-190ehp. If the skulk should only take 130 damage, where does this extra 60 damage go?
As the health values shouldn't be affected by carapace, the theorectical skulk has 60armour ehp and the real skulk has 110-120armour ehp.
It appears that the armour is soaking up twice as much damage on carapace level 3 than it should. Using similar logic, carapace levels 1 & 2 both absorb about 50% more than they should do.
Where, then, does this extra damage negation come in? Is this truly how carapace is intended to work? If it is, I've just wasted several hours of my time writing this and going through the numbers. If that is the case I can say here that I believe that carapace is too powerful at the moment, and needs to be dulled down for the sake of more diversified gameplay. However, if this is not intended, then perhaps this has been the problem with carapace all along. Perhaps this is why carapace has always dominated. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into this.
First of all, I'd like to direct you to <a href='http://www.geocities.com/kitsune/104stats.htm' target='_blank'>this</a> site, a very accurate analysis of the damage done to health and armour in 1.04, and I will be using it as a primary source.
It would be hard not to notice the standard D>M>S order that you see in nearly every game nowdays, and likewise it would be hard not to notice the insane overusage of carapace that dictates this order. As we all know, its because carapace is just so darn effective, and most of us probably couldn't imagine killing marines without it. According to my <a href='http://www.geocities.com/kitsune/104stats.htm' target='_blank'>source</a>, it more than doubles the longevity of all five classes, with the fade reaping the most benifit at a 265% gain of lifespan over the non-carapaced model. We have all come to accept this as 'the way it is', and have built our tactics around it. If this continues, future versions could possibly be balanced around this assumption that all aliens can have more than twice of their intended life, throwing off the balancing process.
If you can remember back to 1.03, there was a large carapace bug that stopped a large percentage of damage reaching the aliens, completely overpowering fades and throwing off the midgame. Thankfully, 1.04 came along, fixed the bug and fades and other carapaced aliens were put back to their rightful place.
Or were they?
What follows is what I believe is discrepancies in the numbers involving damage done to aliens at different carapace levels.
<b>NO CARAPACE:</b>
First of all, armour works by taking a certain percentage of damage away from the damage done to health, halving it, then subtracting the result from your armour value. For no carapace aliens, this percentage is 30%.
For example, a 10 damage lmg bullet would do 7 damage to health and 1.5 damage to armour.
As armour works by just halving the damage applied to it, the Effective Hit Points (ehp) of the armour can be found by doubling the armour value.
For example, a 70hp skulk with 10ar has 90ehp.
This value of 90ehp should take 9 lmg bullets (10 damage) to deplete, and indeed it does, as the <a href='http://www.geocities.com/kitsune/104stats.htm' target='_blank'>source</a> shows.
So far, we can see no problems with the system. It's all working as it should be.
<b>WITH CARAPACE</b>
According to the manual and various other sources, level 3 carapace should absorb 60% of incoming damage directly to the armour.
However, this does not change the fact that the ehp for the armour is still twice the armour value - it still negates the same 50% of incoming damage.
So, therefore, a 70hp skulk with 30ar would have 130ehp.
Theoretically, this level 3 carapace skulk would take 13 lmg bullets to kill. Why then, does it take 19?
19 bullets would equal somewhere between 180-190ehp. If the skulk should only take 130 damage, where does this extra 60 damage go?
As the health values shouldn't be affected by carapace, the theorectical skulk has 60armour ehp and the real skulk has 110-120armour ehp.
It appears that the armour is soaking up twice as much damage on carapace level 3 than it should. Using similar logic, carapace levels 1 & 2 both absorb about 50% more than they should do.
Where, then, does this extra damage negation come in? Is this truly how carapace is intended to work? If it is, I've just wasted several hours of my time writing this and going through the numbers. If that is the case I can say here that I believe that carapace is too powerful at the moment, and needs to be dulled down for the sake of more diversified gameplay. However, if this is not intended, then perhaps this has been the problem with carapace all along. Perhaps this is why carapace has always dominated. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into this.
Comments
Your probably right about the Carrapace data, but I personnally like it the way it is now and dontt hink it should change. Maybe someone whos knows for certain how its programmed can comment on this...
BTW, I almost always go regeneration or redemption, NEVER carrapace myself. I get Redemption if im gorg or skulk (its like respawning without delay and you can suicide rush 2x often), and regen if im fade , lerk or onos. I only get carrapce if im in REALLY heavy fighting and theres def chambers everywhere. Therefore, I dont have too much to base my opion on I guess.
I totally agree about the over effectiveness of cara though - it's just too useful too often. Almost every other ability has its uses and situations where it is of little help, but cara gives a concrete 'across the board' increase in effectiveness. Never leave home without it!*
I'd like to see a boost to all aliens base 'hit points', and a reduction in the benefits of cara to even things out a little, but we need to wait and see what 1.1 has in store really.
<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'> * Don't bother listing your elite regen/redemp strats here; yes - there are exceptions.</span>
Anyhow about the carap being too strong I really don't know. In my experience uncarapaced aliens especially skulks and lerks are <b><u> rediculessly </u></b> weak (There is no problem killing 3 skulks and still be able to kill another with pistol during early game), however the carapaced aliens can be extremely strong and thus hard to kill.... Maybe by upgrading uncaraped aliens and downgrading carapaced would solve the problem?
Regards,
Savant
I only use carapace on a skulk though, redemption is totally useless in my opinion, you have less of a chance do any real damage if by chance redemption actually works. Redemption for gorges, carapace for skulks, regen/cara for lerks and fades, and redem/regen for onos. Those are probably the best combos. If you really wanna hold on to your fade, then you could have redem, but that limits its effectiveness alot.
My thoughts exactly.
<!--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-->Umm, you have a dated link there dude. You want the 104E stats on this page here. I think you'll find the numbers come more in lines with what you expect.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hmm, it seems I have overlooked that page, but the numbers are still iffy. Level 3 carapace skulks can now take 160 damage, which is still an extra 30 damage disappearing. And, with these new stats, the skulk and the onos are the only ones that are not doubled in effectiveness, and it still means the insane boost of 224% to the fade's lifespan.
And dizzy.souls, I did factor in upgrades in my calaculations, but the numbers weren't any different so I didn't bother to mention it (dont forget; 3 def chambers + 1 upgrade is 44 res, arms lab + 3 upgrades is 165 res, not to mention the minimum 6 minutes research time; theres gonna be level 3 carapace aliens vs vanilla marines for a long while).
You said you thought 13 bullets should kill when it takes 19? well, (13 / (100% - 70%) ) =18.6 rounded up to 19, which explains why it takes 19.
Here's a quick breakdown by level
Level 0 carapace : 70% of damage goes to health, 15% goes to armor
Level 1 carapace : 10% of damage negated, 54% of damage goes to health, 18% to armor
Level 2 carapace : 20% of damage negated, 40% of damage goes to health, 20% goes to armor
Level 3 carapace : 30% of damage negated, 28% of damage goes to health, 21% goes to armor
Edit: Or at least, this is how it all worked last time I checked, I doubt it's changed since then.
Edit 2 : The "Carapace bug" was when the negation would still work even after all of the armor was gone, which was fixed a while back so that the negation stops when the armor hits 0.
Especially if 10, 20, and 30% of the damage is negated for each increase in level above 0 respectivly. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
it's just <i>too</i> good for aliens.
265% better life expectancy? anyone who wouldn't want that HAS to be insane! hell, i'd take it even! <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
i wonder what NS would be like if there was no carapace upgrade and all the aliens are as strong as if they had it on all the time w/o the damage <b>negation</b> though, that stuff just seems whack... maybe Movement or Sensory would be even, and defence second! <!--emo&:0--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wow.gif'><!--endemo-->
We've all played long enough now to <b>know</b> what tricks they'll try & pull, be able to <b>guess</b> what areas they'll try & ambush or drop on you from, and we're <b>aware</b> of map & vent layout. Personally, I don't think cara should be nerfed. One cara'd Skulk (bad players not withstanding) vs one unupgraded marine is now about 60-40 to the Skulk. That's a good ratio IMO.
Possibly a help for the uncara'd ones? Or make the other two upgrades more worthwhile? By and large, I'll take cara for even Gorge, because why warp out, when I can just KILL the marine? And if there's a group, well, I was obviously not playing the Gorge right, and I was too close to large teams of marines, and also the Skulks weren't defending right. (Yes, the Kharaa are <b>meant</b> to be on the defensive, remember?)
Oh, and Lerk is just a cara necessity. Sad, but true.
- Shockeh
Armor should NOT negate damage.How would you like it if a marine with armor could negate damage from the kharaa?I have a strange feeling that 90% of the people claiming that the negation bug is a feature and that it is NECESSARY,will NOT support it for the marines.
To all saying that the skulk is too weak at 130 HP without the bug : half life engine enforces maps with a LOT of CQB areas.The skulk is a CQB creature,with a 75 damage weapon.All you have to do.This shouldnt be a probelm.Compare the amount of medium range areas in NS maps(marine advantage) to CQB areas(kharaa advantage).THEN tell me its unfair.
This is a VERY serious bug and should be immediately fixed.
What are YOU talking about?When im a fade it takes ages for the marines to kill me.
Regards,
Savant <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Just restating what you said because you are correct. These are the current damage levels in the final version of 1.04, not the ones stated in the first post.
About armor negating damage, I am not sure about, since I never really tested it, but I think this happens in other mods as well (but as I said, I am not sure). Its also a bit more relistic, because not ALL bullets will hit your flesh, sometimes the armor will actually work and stop the bullet from ever touching you.
*cough*
motion tracking
unlimited jetfuel
legs immune to damage when attacked from below
atleast a part of a marine is immune to damage when crouched
The thing is, should a marine know how to properly take advantage of the "features" in the game he will win against carapaced skulks a lot more than carapaced skulks will win against him in a duel. I'd rather be a marine for any battle except one with a lot of people crammed into a small room than a skulk. Including close quarters.
But I agree with the idea that uncarapaced aliens need a bit of work