My take on AP/JHP dilemma

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Magus
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Re: My take on AP/JHP dilemma

Post by Magus »

It is somewhat low, indeed, but as I mentioned in the opening post, one of the goals was to avoid making arbitrary decisions.
I think that with the mod, the sweet spot is around 20-25% penalty to DR (FMJ), but it'd take some graphs, possibly 3-dimensional, to visualize all the details.
Considering game lore, AP should probably peak in effectiveness against Combat Armor and its variants, since PA/APA are top tech with limited availability.
The mod is open to changes, but the requests would have to be backed either by some serious math+graphs, or field reports.

Lastly, I think in the latest sfall changes they allowed to get uncapped to hit chance, which means that we can apply the same 1-parameter ammo logic to AC mod as well. I think I'll bake it in sometime later.
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Cyrus
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Re: My take on AP/JHP dilemma

Post by Cyrus »

Very well. Sounds ok to me.

Yes next sfall should allow much easier hit chance changes.
Bear
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Re: My take on AP/JHP dilemma

Post by Bear »

Hello everyone and specially Magus.

First of all, amazing work with tweaks in general and DR mod formula in particular. This is an exact approach I wanted someone to finally take. The multitude of combat parameters is the heavy legacy of games like Might and Magic (and previous table games). When, in essence, fewer number of parameters would do just fine.

In this regards I don't even thing armor needs all three parameters (AC, DT, DR) attached to it. Well, maybe AC may stay as a counter for opponent accuracy but DT and DR are definitely redundant.
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Re: My take on AP/JHP dilemma

Post by Bear »

Magus wrote: Wed Nov 14, 2018 10:30 pm To change as little as possible, vanilla DR mod was chosen to be this parameter.
Great choice. I understand ammo also have AC mod parameter. How do you use it? Ignore it completely? Reset to zero for all ammo types?
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Re: My take on AP/JHP dilemma

Post by Magus »

Uhm, the formula is explained right in the post from which you took the quote.

Edit: I misread the previous post. Currently, AC mod is unchanged, ammo provides vanilla bonuses/penalties. I have no strong opinion about whether it needs changes or not. Thoughts are welcome, but no promises so far.
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phobos2077
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Re: My take on AP/JHP dilemma

Post by phobos2077 »

I am so delighted to see someone finally using the hook scripts tweaks we added so long ago to allow for just this kind of scripted formula. Actually having someone do the work of implementing it, in full, is great. Now someone else can just use the script as a reference. I was just thinking about moving YAAM to script and tweaking it a bit.

But on the topic, I wonder - why did you feel you need to write your own solution, if you already played with YAAM and EcCo, which was supposed to solve just this problem? Based on my memories, I felt the formula, combined with tweaked resistance values of armor and critters, worked pretty well.

I see that your solution is probably even simpler than YAAM (which was simpler than Glovz), as it just uses one value instead of 4, which is great. With YAAM you basically had this table of which armor type should protect against which type of bullet, mimicking how armor classes in real life are categorized to protect against different ammo calibers. Which allows these values to make some kind of sense to the player. So as result, we have these sudden increases in the damage curve (if we plot damage drop over ammo DT against a given armor), which make sense (at least to me).

One issue was that if you add damage bonus to JHP and it didn't penetrate, you still get the damage bonus. Which doesn't make sense anymore (lore-wise). So one person suggested to tweak it to have JHP lose it's damage bonus, if it didn't penetrate the armor. This tweak should, in theory, add more incentive to player to switch between AP/JHP. Anyway, I'll have to test this in a spreadsheet damage calculator before.
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Magus
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Re: My take on AP/JHP dilemma

Post by Magus »

Well, the first post was supposed to address that question.
To summarize, I guess YAAM/Glovz changed too much and achieved too little. In the end, they are still juggling arbitrary numbers trying to fit them into a semi-broken formula.
I did play with YAAM and EcCo. I think the numbers never really "clicked", and I saw some strange results. But, for the most part I wasn't even sure what kind of damage I should expect.

People keep saying that this implementation is so simple. Although it wasn't that simple for me to implement back then, I take it as as a compliment :). The idea is indeed simple enough, and the math for the damage can be done in your head, which helps set user expectations.
 
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phobos2077
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Re: My take on AP/JHP dilemma

Post by phobos2077 »

 
Magus wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 8:15 am Well, the first post was supposed to address that question.
To summarize, I guess YAAM/Glovz changed too much and achieved too little.
I've read that. But I don't see specifically why you think YAAM achieved "too little". It makes AP ammo useful. I'm just curious, what specific issue motivated you to do your own formula?
Magus wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 8:15 am In the end, they are still juggling arbitrary numbers trying to fit them into a semi-broken formula.

This is very true for Glovz, but not (in my opinion) for YAAM, which mostly replaces the old formula. Numbers have clear meaning. DMG mult/div do what they say. Ammo DR/DT mod is reducing damage resistance after damage threshold, just like it says. Some UI/text adjustment may be needed, but if you read the mod's description, you can have a pretty good idea what damage to expect just comparing this value to armor DT values.
Magus wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 8:15 am Although it wasn't that simple for me to implement back then, I take it as as a compliment
There's a lot of code involved into re-creating the whole damage formula in script, which I thought would probably be the case. However, the core formula itself seems to be the most simple of all available.

As far as I understand, basically your formula offers a more linear damage curve (ammo DR against a given armor) compared to YAAM, and is even easier to understand because it has only 1 parameter. I can see it's being preferable by some, but I wouldn't say it's the only one that "achieves enough".
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Re: My take on AP/JHP dilemma

Post by Magus »

phobos2077 wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 8:32 am I'm just curious, what specific issue motivated you to do your own formula?
It's hard for me to come up with specific details, as you can see the first version was released back in 2018, so it's 4-5 years since my last playthrough with YAAM. All I can say is, I vaguely remember not liking some numbers and not understanding most of them.
phobos2077 wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 8:32 am This is very true for Glovz, but not (in my opinion) for YAAM, which mostly replaces the old formula. Numbers have clear meaning. DMG mult/div do what they say. Ammo DR/DT mod is reducing damage resistance after damage threshold, just like it says. Some UI/text adjustment may be needed, but if you read the mod's description, you can have a pretty good idea what damage to expect just comparing this value to armor DT values.
Even if agreed on that, it'd be still "juggling random numbers to fit non-broken formula".
As far as I understand, even under YAAM formula, it's easy to make up an uber ammo.
phobos2077 wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 8:32 am As far as I understand, basically your formula offers a more linear damage curve (ammo DR against a given armor) compared to YAAM, and is even easier to understand because it has only 1 parameter. I can see it's being preferable by some, but I wouldn't say it's the only one that "achieves enough".


Maybe, we'd need some tables/plots to understand it properly.
I was thinking about making some anyway (I think certain protos could use a little tweaking to shift AP ammo closer to the sweet spot, which I think is near FMJ), but never have time for this.
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phooey
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Re: My take on AP/JHP dilemma

Post by phooey »

Hello, I made a rough spreadsheet of FO2tweaks weapon damage mod here. Only some of the weapon though, not all. Maybe later.

Anyway, I hope this is useful and let me know if I miss something.

Cheers,

phooey
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