Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

Treads too much on Perception which is already the "crit build" stat." I'lm a little worried as is that there are gonna be resolve/dex/per builds that go crazy with the empowered criticals all the time. In a vaccuum, I'd just say combine Resolve and Constitution into one stat and just have five stats.

My only issue with this proposal as such is that it seems like a weird ass set of bonus criticals/grazes and they still haven't de-nerfed Perception's criticals, so I'm not sure how many different simultaneous critical hit systems the game really needs. It seems likely to make combat really swingy. If they're gonna go this route I'd prefer something like: 1) All empowers are half-strength of what they are now; you start each fight with two of them 2) Resolve has a chance to either give (or remove, depending) an empower every five seconds or so of fight time 3) you still get to choose when you use the bonus empower 4) empowers used to refresh spells give you a single spell cast of your choice back, not all your casts The idea has merit I just dont like (yet another random element) added in on top of the attack roll mechanics.

Nice. I will think about it. Although can already say that I crit way less often than the enemies on PotD. So it will actually buff them more than the player)Btw it's important to remind that base acc is now lower than in PoE1. My lvl 6 single-class evoker has +15 acc from level, while it would be 20+3*5 in PoE1. And MinimumRollToGraze is now 25, compared to 16. P.S. if you want to try +0.5 crit damage/duration sooner, you can edit the following in bb_global.gamedatabundle: CritDamageMult: 1.25 -> 1.50 CritEffectDurationMult: 1.25 -> 1.50 Hah, fair point! I mostly play the beta on Veteran -- it feels like the valid "testing" difficulty, at least for me. I don't really have time to test PoE right now (too much else on my plate this week) but I suspect that on non-PotD difficulties at least, a crit boost plus an accuracy boost would significantly help both with spell durations and with "crit build" setups (which tend to be good choices for hybrids like ciphers since crits benefit spells and damage both).

On paper at least all the suggestions in this mod look great. As usual with Maxquest posts I'm having a hard time finding anything to disagree with! One minor point: statistically, giving powers an accuracy boost but a shorter duration is six of one/half a dozen of the other, but there is an increase in reliability etc. Maybe also try modding in a critical bonus to damage and duration of 50% instead of 25%?

I don't know yet if Deadfire is gonna be too complicated or not. That sounds crazy -- if I haven't figured it out yet, doesn't that mean it's too hard? No, not really, because the rules can be as complicated as the tax code so long as the boil back to simple principles. For example, in PoE 1, the formulae for counting the relative benefit of stat points were extremely complex, but boiled back to "advance stats evenly, don't spike things too much", and it worked out. If once the balancing and rules changes are figured out and settled down everything is reducible to some rules of thumb, that's all that's necessary.

Another thing I'm wondering about, but don't have a firm opinion on yet, is the split between ranged and melee damage. If you discount scepters and wands (as obviously imbalanced due to dual weild bonuses), there's a big disparity both in DPS and max-alpha terms between melee and ranged weapons. That's not necessarily bad because there are other factors balancing range and melee (not having to move; being in melee range) but it does mean that melee ciphers gain focus faster than ranged ones do. Again, not necessarily a problem, but part of the picture.

You have more patience than I do -- I haven't bothered to play ciphers in the current patch, I'm waiting for a balance patch to hit. I'd also add the decreased critical benefit from high Per -- a bonus 50% critical to duration is a big chunk vs a 25% bonus -- and the general relative weakness of the focus mechanic now that everyone else is also per-encounter rather than per-rest. I'm also still a little unsure how the stat system generally is going to shake out, but you're better qualified to comment there than I am. I'd also add that a lot of CC is "double nerfed" in the current beta -- not only with longer cast times generally, but also in longer "casting time categories" than in the prior game -- for example, Whisper of Treason went from Fast to Average cast *category* on top of the general increase in casting times, etc. That said, one thing that is upcoming: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3807509&pagenumber=389&perpage=40#post480964979 I'm pretty sure that won't be enough of a change by itself but it will help a bit, and shows they're listening. I suspect you're fundamentally correct and they are going to have to move ciphers to *very* short cast times and give them an accuracy bonus and a few extra power choices in order to bring them back up to parity.

Pretty much that.Or to be more specific (from auto-attack perspective): - it is almost useless if your current PEN-AR = -2 (50%->100% going through); or -4 (25%->50%) - it is good if your current PEN-AR = -3 (25%->75%) (that's a x3 damage increase; and in this case it's ok to have your recovery doubled) - it is bad in other cases, meaning that enabling this modal actually decreases dps, by up to x2 times Ah I forget about the -3 case, and yeah it is x3 not x2 my bad Yet this is too situational to use. Why one number diff makes so much difference in damage It would be marginally useful if the AI scripting was smart enough to switch you back and forth when it was optimal. As it is though since the AI scripting can't handle weapon switching and only the most detail-oriented of players would bother, it's useless. Even with good AI it's not as effective as other modals, though.

Dibs on the scottie

My galaxy-brain take is starting to be that morale should play a bigger role in the actual ship combat. Historically, skill of the crew was the #1 factor and morale the #2. Ships were rarely, if ever, actually sunk in combat -- it happened but not frequently at all.

Eh, I much prefer a game that somewhat somehow resembles actual sailing to "shove yet another card based minigame in for no reason." If they're going to have a mini-gwent I'd prefer it be a tavern game not a ship combat simulation.

I don't think this is the case; if you shoot a perpendicular enemy you sometimes get "raking" hits which seem to do more damage. You're right that they can get it release-ready with a few tweaks. I'd still like more depth to the minigame -- there's a lot of potential there that's just being left on the table -- but they could tackle things like wind and ammo in a later patch. Hell, I wouldn't really mind an expanded ship combat DLC if they really got in depth with it. Double barrelled "chain shot" cannons really bug me though. They're an immersion breaker. That may be a me problem not an everyone else problem though.

Nah, I expect one more balancing pass fairly soon (taking into account general feedback so far), then probably one final patch day of release. That's about how it worked last time from what I remember. Mostly because of the past few posts Sawyer has made on SA and on his frog helms fan club blog which implied there were some significant balance changes upcoming. i don't think he'd mention them unless they were coming reasonably soon (next few weeks). I do think they're listening, but yeah, we might not get the concerns we're voicing addressed fully until release (or possibly thereafter).

Not to mention that all of the deep and detailed discussions that we have here on the official Obsidian forums NEVER get any participation or feedback from Obsidian because they only discuss on other forum boards. It makes me wonder what the point of having a beta was in the first place. Things we've identified as being a concern: Resolve not having a use - 'fixed' by trashing Might and making one or the other a true dump stat for many and a massive headache for any hybrid. Dual wielding being 45% better than anything else - 'fixed' by slowing down all combat recoveries. A better solution could have been to reduce penetration and damage but keep the speed. Multiclassing, especially of two melee powerhouse types being decidedly better - 'fixed' by reducing the benefits of many abilities such as berserker rage, lightning strikes and flames of devotion. Sure that makes them weaker but it makes single classes as weak if not more so. Power levels affect some abilities massively and others are untouched but both are non-described in game and only by trial, error and taking notes can you determine what might be the effect. Early abilities being much more powerful than their higher level upgrades - Consider Constant Recovery; the free ability is much better than the higher level upgrade. Swap that around and single vs multi gets a little more balanced. More things that I can't recall If the game was going to be based on the game elements from PoE then that'd be fine but they are massively changing everything and it does not appear that they are doing a very good job of it. I suspect that (given the holidays) we're still within the dev cycle loop on a lot of this stuff. So far each beta has introduced new stuff for feedback but we've only seen one round of changes. It's about time for the next balancing pass, so let's see what happens then.

The more I think about it, what I'd suggest is: 1) a rotating "wind direction" indicator spinning around the central two ships indicator. This could move a bit every turn. If the wind is directly against you, you can't approach directly; otherwise, the more it's blowing from you to them, the faster you move towards them / harder it is for them to approach you. 2) Since you can move once and turn twice, have the first turn be a "tack port / tack starboard" every round that moves you forward half-distance and half-rotates you port/starboard (i.e., 45 degrees); if you pick "turn port/starboard" again you do a full 90 degree turn. Note that tack, turn, fire would then take a full round. Note also that you would be able to tack towards a ship directly upwind of you. 3) Make reloading the cannon take two rounds but improve to one round with a highly skilled cannon crew. 4) Make the cannon short range/ high damage, standard range/standard damage, high range/low damage for more strategic choice in ship gear. 5) Ditch the chain shot cannon (it wouldn't work!) and replace with three ammo types: standard ball (damages everything), chain (damages sails extra, normal crew damage, weak vs hull), and canister (high damage to people, normal damage to sails, weak vs hull). Have it take a standard reloading action to switch ammo types in a set of cannon. Ideally, let you load different ammo into different cannon (i.e., port side chain, starboard ball) but that might get wonky with the interface. 6) add permanent start-of-round options to "close and board" and "fleeeeeee" with some kind of damage penalty 7) Have jibing requiring some sort of crew skill check and if you fail you just sit there dead in the water with no movement at all. edit: 8} increase hull health and repair rate or decrease cannon damage generally, it's a bit easy to get sunk. Historically ships were almost never shot so full of holes they sunk -- they always surrendered first. A morale element maybe instead? 9) lower overall maintenance cost, it really adds up if you aren't just console-generating cash.

Oh, actually, two more things : 1) feedback on the AI system. Overall it's great but it could use some tweaks: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/95275-lets-gather-feedback-for-ai-customization-here/page-2 2) feedback On A Boat : https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/95874-ship-to-ship-combat/ mostly seems like the community is still working out its opinions here

That's actually believable, well, accepting the fiction that one dude can be manning a cannon at all. Historically, a skilled ship's crew could get down to firing the cannons about once every three minutes minimum, but there are a lot of steps in that process -- repositioning the cannon after the recoil, loading, firing, etc. -- and an extremely skilled crew could "fight both sides" running back and forth without much loss of speed -- i.e., the guy who's job it is to reposition the cannon, as soon it's in place, he runs over and repositions the other side's gun while the first gun is being fired by the firing guy, etc. There are a few obvious fictions; chain shot doesn't decapitate your crewmen, only one guy per cannon, etc. -- but the overall idea of fighting both sides is historically reasonable, at least for a skilled crew.

Ok, that's what I thought. I'd suggest depicting shoot / reload / shoot / reload for clarity, unless you add a time slider and a DPS calculator to turn this into a general attack calculator not a speed calc.

ahh, you have to do it in the "docked" screen? I kept trying while in town standing on the dock. Nice catch!

maybe a silly question but how is the calculator depicting the attack cycle for reloading dual-weilding pistols and blunderbi? Shouldn't it be shoot shoot reload, not shoot reload shoot (reload?) ? And is there one reload cycle for both weapons or two stacked reloads?

You can console command the cannons in your inventory with giveitem shp_[tab] . I'm not sure if there's a way to actually put them on your ship though. You can swap into one of the other ships via SetActiveShip [tab], but they're all demonstrably worse than the BB ship. The optimal range does change with each cannon type, but the damage goes up with range, so imperial long guns (the best) are a straight range and damage upgrade over thunderers (medium range and damage) which are better than dyrwoodan hog noses (what everyone has, worst range and damage). The chain shot cannons are sortof off to the side, I forget what their stats are because I got distracted by the inaccuracy.

Yeah this is an important point. I hope the UI will get one more solid pass and revision before release, but I don't expect granular UI updates while everything is still in flux.

Oh, and while I'm adding general recommendations: As per this thread: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/95939-chainshot-depicted-inaccurately/ Chain shot wasn't done with double barrelled cannons; it was just loaded into a single cannon. Also, each tier of cannon is a straight upgrade from the one below it -- hog nose, then thunderer, then imperial long guns. What I'd suggest instead, for increased realism and increased gameplay depth both, is mortars (short range, high damage, low accuracy), standard, then long range (low damage, high range, high accuracy). And then three different types of ammo: standard ball, chain shot (for sails/rigging), canister shot (for damaging crew).

Yeah, you could probably make it work with modern materials and like electronic timers and so forth but as an in-time-period thing it would never work without magic.

Double barrelled cannons were tried but they didn't work: http://www.americancivilwarstory.com/double-barrel-cannon.html