The Bears Pit: Maps, Mods and Editors

Messages:53
Registered:December 2008
Location: Ohio, USA

So I have a machine gun here. Base AP cost for semi auto is 7. Cost is 3 for burst, and it has 4 rounds/5 AP autofire. Nothing particularly weird. I have a reflex sight on it and a rod+spring, reducing overall AP costs to 5/5/6. As an aside, I'm not sure why sometimes you put a reflex sight on a 7 AP gun and it goes to 5, and sometimes to 6. Maybe has to do with the specific shots/4 turns number that the semi-auto AP cost is derived from?

Anyway, I kick the gun into autofire with my auto fire specialist and crank the APs all the way up. I almost crapped my pants as he unleashed enough bullets to reduce a tank to a tattered pile of wreckage (metaphorically, not in the game). After testing it, I realized that I was somehow getting something like 3 bullets per AP, maybe more, as I found myself with 36 rounds at 12 AP. How is the maths worked out in that formula? I know a rod+spring is supposed to improve autofire rates by 80%.

Edit: In the words of the God of 1337, "ZOMG!" I just realized something. The rod+spring is in the editor under "AP reductions". So.............100%-80%=20%. That means the gun is autofiring for 1/5 as much AP as normal, resulting in it spitting out 5x more lead than normal. It makes sense now.

4 shots/5 AP * 5 = 4 shots/1 AP. With the base amount of shots it gets for the 6 AP, plus the six AP I added to get to 12, at a rate of 4 bullets per AP (!!!) it came out to 36.

Is this intended????? It seems to send autofire horribly out of balance with everything else - as with auto weapons expert/tracers/laser/foregrip I put the majority of 36 shots on target, for a meagre 12 AP. I don't even want to know what that soldier's carcass looked like. Realizing I'm probably not the first guy to bring this up, what's up with this Serious snafu here?

Edit: Edit: I got that backwards. Burst fire is an 80% redux (which explains how it gets down to equalling the cost of semi-auto) and full auto is 50%. So the equation doesn't quite match up, but based on the mechanics of this, I'm guessing the burst fire 80% reduction might influence this somehow? Either way, using a simple rod+spring upgrade made my machine able to belch death at a truly absurd rate. And based on a 4 shots/5 AP weapon roughly working out to 1000 rounds per minute in the 'real world', the rod+spring gun is acting at around 3,000 RPM. Seeing as my mercenary is not walking around with a GE Minigun, and while his strength IS very high, he is, in fact, not a T-800, nor does he say "Astalavista, baby." Anyone on the 1.13 team got the answer on this one?

[Updated on: Sat, 20 December 2008 15:32] by Moderator

Corporal

Re: Autofire weirdness[message #204538]

Sat, 20 December 2008 21:25

usrbid

Messages:1502
Registered:December 2008

Don't forget that there is a cumulative auto fire penalty for each shot fired. If you are standing far enough away from the enemy you can get a 1% to hit chance very quickly.

For example: 1=50%, 2=42%, 3=36%, 4=28%, 5=20%, 6=12%, 7=4%, 8=1%, 9=1%, 10=1% etc.

So short burst hit more than one long one. That said you will get lucky hits down the sequence of long autos, and that one additional hit may get the enemy from critical to dying and take him out of the picture.

I noticed that the reflex sight does strange (to me) things. For example without it my auto started at lets say 5 bullets, save game, attach reflex, auto now starts at lets say 8 bullets with one less AP. It appears that when the gun is faster it also adds to the amount of bullets I start my auto as well.

Sergeant Major

Re: Autofire weirdness[message #204559]

Sun, 21 December 2008 07:11

Messages:53
Registered:December 2008
Location: Ohio, USA

Usr, you're a genius.

There is no 'base cost' for auto fire that can be reduced by an item. For example, Burst fire for many weapons costs 3 AP, which is added to the semi auto cost, and the ready cost. An 80% reduction to this cost would reduce it to 1 AP, along with a 30% general cost reduction would logically reduce burst costs 110% which explains why (most) guns with reflex sights + rod&spring end up with burst costs being the same as single shot. Of course if someone with the source code can correct me if I'm wrong here, I'd appreciate it. But this is how it seems to work.

Here is the issue I'm noticing, now. I am testing this right this moment. I have an empty MG36 RAS - ap costs 6/9/10 for semi/burst/auto. In XML editor, the burst cost is 3. So I attach a reflex sight. Costs go down to 5/7/8. So the semi-auto fire gets reduced by 1AP. The burst/auto is reduced by 2. This would suggest that the burst cost (3) is being reduced by 20% (defaulting to reducing it by 1) and the cost it is added to is reduced by 1. So you have a base cost of 5 and the burst cost drops to 2. Of course, you could argue it's possible that the game just reduces the 9 by 20%, producing a result of 7 because it ends up rounding to a reduction of 2.

However, when adding a rod+spring to the same gun (no reflex sight) the firing costs reduces to 6/6/7. burst fire gets an 80% reduction - and 20% of 3 is .6, so it looks like the game rounds it to 6. This alone is a minor balance issue, as the addition of a rod/spring completely eliminates the bursting cost for the gun. The base cost to autofire is the cost to burst +1, so that remains static.

What this means, though, is that the 50% reduction to AP cost to auto fire from the rod+spring is dedicated to the #rounds/5 AP statistic that determines how fast your gun auto fires, which means that beyond the 'base cost' you should be getting twice as much AP per shot. So with a 5 shots/5 ap weapon you should be getting 10 shots/5 AP, or 2 shots per AP (which is way a lot, imho). However, when I have a reflex scope and rod/spring in my FAMAS (5 shot/5 ap weapon) I'm starting off at 7 shots, and 6 AP. Adding an AP adds 5 shots and 7 shots per AP alternatively, for a steady 12 shots/2 AP or 6 vs. 1 AP average. This seems a bit, well, crazy. I take off the reflex sight and I'm still getting 5 shots per 1 AP I sink in to auto fire, (which is, interestingly, 20% less).

So....is the mod development team aware of the maths in this? Is this how it is intended to be? I can't imagine that it should be working this way, as I've felt the mod team has done a spectacular job with the firearms in the game maintaining a fine balance that keeps the game fun and keeps enemeis challenging, while giving the players fun techonlogy but not letting them get out of hand.

Anyone got some answers? Thanks in advance.

Corporal

Re: Autofire weirdness[message #204637]

Mon, 22 December 2008 10:10

usrbid

Messages:1502
Registered:December 2008

I completely agree, the reflex sight or rod & spring attachments blow the shots per 5 AP out of proportion. Sometimes you get almost double the rounds with less (!) AP.

If e.g. a reflex sight reduces the time to make a single shot, then the game shouldn't increase the amount of shots fired in auto mode for the same cost, it should start fresh with that new cost and calculate the rounds per 5 AP from there, somehow that calculation gets confused by the reduction in AP for semi auto.

Another thing somewhat related which I noticed is that full auto costs always 1 more AP than whatever the burst cost is, if I am not mistaken. So in theory there is no way to make full auto start at the same cost as burst. I was thinking about that, if the weapon is burst capable, then to get from burst to full auto is moving the switch one position further, should be the same cost as to go to burst mode, well at least this is how I understand it.

On those lines burst should not be the same cost as semi auto as you need to flip the switch on the side of the weapon, so in my understanding burst should always be one more than semi auto. But I think it would be ok to have burst and full auto start at the same APs.

Anyway, the game is not reality, but it would be cool if we could have a discussion around that and if someone would fix it assuming that we all agree.

Sergeant Major

Re: Autofire weirdness[message #204783]

Wed, 24 December 2008 04:51

Messages:53
Registered:December 2008
Location: Ohio, USA

Well, if 5 rounds vs 5 AP (FAMAS) is about ~1000-1100 RPM, then the 6 rounds vs 1 AP I achieve with the SAME FAMAS is about ~6000-6600. Also, I can empty an entire C-Mag in one turn, and do 12-round bursts for 8 AP, so it's sort of unrealistic AND unbalancing in game terms.

Not to mention that having a burst fire cost that equals the semi-auto cost is the same. Maybe Starwalker will see this post and provide his $.02. I'm pretty poor this holiday season.

Corporal

Re: Autofire weirdness[message #204784]

Wed, 24 December 2008 05:26

Messages:2016
Registered:January 2003
Location: Australia :D

Considering that burst fire used to have one of the worst bugs in the game, I find it ironic that it is now the opposite!

Lieutenant

Re: Autofire weirdness[message #204790]

Wed, 24 December 2008 09:33

Messages:53
Registered:December 2008
Location: Ohio, USA

Technically this is less of a 'bug' and more of 'unintended side-effect' of the way the calculations are put together.

The burst and auto fire work precisely correct as the code describes, which is to take the designer-input values from the attachments and apply them to the item.

Said values simply resulted in too much benefit.

Side note: What was this bug you describe?

Corporal

Re: Autofire weirdness[message #204792]

Wed, 24 December 2008 10:16

Messages:2016
Registered:January 2003
Location: Australia :D

The infamous burstfire bug.

Basically it meant that every second shot from a burst/auto capable gun would miss its intended target 100% of the time. So if you had a gun that fired 6 bullet's then you would only ever get a max of 3 that hit and then the 5th bullet would have a very low chance as the CTH values still dropped per bullet fired.

This would happen from a distance of 1 tile or more.

Lieutenant

Re: Autofire weirdness[message #204869]

Thu, 25 December 2008 11:38

Messages:53
Registered:December 2008
Location: Ohio, USA

In what era of JA2 did this happen? *scratches head*

Corporal

Re: Autofire weirdness[message #204871]

Thu, 25 December 2008 11:45

cougar

Messages:254
Registered:March 2000

Up to 1.12. But if I remember correctly it was fixed by a member/team of the community earlier than that.

Master Sergeant

Re: Autofire weirdness[message #204877]

Thu, 25 December 2008 12:28

Messages:2016
Registered:January 2003
Location: Australia :D

There was a fix for the 1.06/7 version and then a subsequent fix for the 1.12 (even though supposedly fixed in the 1.12 patch) by the community. Since then the CTH engine in 1.13 is so much cleaner it actually works well Smile

Lieutenant

Re: Autofire weirdness[message #205020]

Sat, 27 December 2008 20:52

Messages:53
Registered:December 2008
Location: Ohio, USA

Weird. I kid you not, I've played every JA2 version from release on up, and I've never had the slightest issue with this (at least, I think I'd recall if I found myself missing an absurd amount when I knew I should be hitting)

Maybe I just didn't notice...and I was just that good. Mwahaha!

Corporal

Re: Autofire weirdness[message #205073]

Sun, 28 December 2008 12:41

Messages:2016
Registered:January 2003
Location: Australia :D

Lol or perhaps you followed the trend and played the headshot game Wink

It wasn't exactly something that was obviously noticeable as when 3 rounds hit it was often a kill anyway (especially with the Jackhammer or the CAWS).