Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

this may not be a "bug" but I didn't know where else to put it. example: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/934930081138110603/EFCD19F414D1688BC83FCBDB283124C184FEFF57/ Chain shot did not work like that historically -- you'd load both halves of the chain shot entirely into the same cannon, or just load a chain into a cannon, and fire that all at once from one cannon. If you tried to load a chain down two cannon barrels what would happen is that one side would fire minutely before the other (inevitably due to differences in fuse, powder, etc.) and whip around and slaughter whoever was working the cannons. here's a good mythbusters clip on chain shot:

giveitem shp_up_cannon_imperial giveitem shp_up_cannon_chainshot giveitem shp_up_cannon_thunderer giveitem shp_up_hull_reinforced giveitem shp_up_sails_cottonweave You can't equip them though except at neketaka, and "giveitemandequip" doesn't seem to work. Giveplayership [tab] lets you give alternate ships but you can't switch except in neketaka Ahhh Setactiveship shp[tab] spoilers: the player ship is by far the best ship

I came into this thread looking to nitpick and I can't really, that looks like an excellent summary. Im not 100% sold on the attack speed calculator changes being a huge issue, but mostly because I feel like there are so many other moving parts we don't have yet that it's hard to judge. Similarly, the penetration system might need looking at, but that's secondary to & part of things like getting the weapons and weapon modals sorted out.

I think injuries may also give a morale penalty. And you can only carry a maximum of 50 medicine at any one time which seems low given the rate it's consumed.

There does seem to be something weird with Morale. At first I didn't realize I had to move food over to the like "actively using" box, so I bought a bunch of food then sailed around ship hunting and before too long I was at base-value 1 morale; even switching over to only +morale or +0 morale food/drink, I still kept getting morale hits, often significant ones. It feels like with a full crew you burn through food very fast. I like the idea of bulk purchasing, I'm never gonna buy one unit of water.

Interesting. Going by that calculator, the hat that gives +20% reload speed is roughly equivalent to a bonus of 7 dex.

Is there a reason why you're doing ranged and melee in separate threads?

Can we get pictures of the Eder / Pallegina / Aloth minis?

I'll just repost my comments from SA: The main problem I had with it was that the rules of the game were a little hard to figure out -- the text kept referring to "wind" but I couldn't figure out if there was an actual wind element going on or if that was pure flavor. I'd have a better feel for it if I could buy different kinds of cannon at the shop. I non-ironically think that adding actual wind mechanics to the minigame would both improve clarity and make it a better minigame.

Is "diminishing returns" the correct term? Each extra point of the stat gives a 3% bonus relative to the base value, so all stats in PoE have a linear effect. So 10points give 0%, 15points give 15%, 20points give 30% and so on. Each point gives another 3% of base value, no matter how much points you already have. Of course, when you have more modifiers than just the stat, the final number will change by a different number than 3% per point compared to base value. All effects refer to "+X% of base value". If it was "+3% of the current value per point", the increase would be exponential and more points give a bigger bonus with each extra point. Yeah, it's a matter of framing; linear increase relative to base values, but diminishing returns as percentage of total damage. This becomes important when you're weighting different stats against each other; for example, in the first game, if you had a character with 20 Might but 10 Per and 10 Dex, going from 20 to 21 Might would increase your overall damage by much less than going from 10 to 11 Dex or 10 to 11 Per would, with the net result that it's better to raise your stats in rough parity than to go whole-hog stacking one stat at the expense of others. Good question! I'm having a hard time parsing all this new math in this thread because I can't quite figure out how it translates into concrete game advice -- i.e., does this mean dumping stats is a better or worse idea than it was before, is stacking buffs the new hotness or the new wimpiness, are the punitive modals not as bad as they seem if you're already in heavy armor, etc.

Also: what does this mean for the dex vs might/str/res debate? Both Dex and Str give diminishing returns, but the diminishing returns on Dex are much stronger?

It does seem a little kludgy in that there's an obvious imbalance between a Devoted with an Estoc and a Devoted with a Greatsword, but basically yeah if you pick Devoted you want to make sure you pick a weapon with multiple damage types.

SO what does that mean for guns vs bows? This is the only thing I care about. Basically if you use guns, wear armor?

Wait, so the problem is that having an optimal build is more complicated if you can reach 0 recovery? Not so much "more complicated" vs "less complicated" as intuitive vs. counter-intuitive. The problem with dramatic breakpoints is that they're inherently counter-intuitive and players have to learn the breakpoints, they can't just approximate by knowing the general rules.

We can't be sure without access to the full game, of course—however the change to how speed bonuses work from the first beta build to the second has been broad and significant, which suggests it was done for the purpose of preventing 0 recovery. I don't think 0 recovery per se would lead to any more meta-gaming than anything else. Now that 0 recovery is impossible and speed bonuses never stop adding to your power, albeit with diminishing returns, it pays to use meta knowledge to stack as many of them as possible. I'll pump dex, DW (regardless of how much the bonus is; the point is that DW is the only style that offers a speed boost and other styles have no way to close the gap), multi-class into a Fighter for the extra speed from the DW style talent, and pump Alchemy to abuse Potions of Deftness. I have no mechanical reason not to, because—especially in absence of DR—faster attack speed linearly translates to higher DPS (up until the point where adding damage or penetration adds more DPS than another speed increase, provided that a bonus to damage and/or penetration is available to you at that time.) Even if DW was nerfed to balance*, in the end hardcore players would use meta knowledge to calculate which combination of equipment and abilities led to the highest DPS and pursue it. The difference is that with 0 recovery reachable, you know you can max out on speed with any style and the choice becomes meaningful, as different styles require you to sacrifice different things for 0 recovery. As it is now, since it's impossible to max out on speed, you're encouraged to pursue the path that leads to the highest stacking of speed bonuses. * given two options to balance things out, I'll always choose the one that leads to my having shorter recovery. I just don't enjoy watching my men pause between attacks for more than 1-1.5s tops. That's true, sure, but . .hrm. Let me compare with the stat system. Generally speaking, it's pretty clear that the idea in the first game was that it was disadvantageous to stack any one stat to crazy levels, because you got diminishing returns from each stat in proportion; each point of Might, Dex, and Per gave about the same boost, but there was a decreasing marginal utility sorta thing, such that if your Might was already high you'd generally be better off adding to Dex or Per, if your Per was already high you'd be better off adding to Might or Dex, etc. The exact formulas were complicated but you didn't have to know the exact math to know the general "diminishing returns" thumbnail rule. The problem was that the possibility of reaching zero recovery broke that rule -- instead of the general "diminshing returns" thumbnail, instead, to get an optimal build, you have to have a lot of meta-game knowledge about which magic items exist for your build that will let you reduce recovery to just the right flatline of zero while maximizing your damage and math starts getting involved and it's just a lot more complicated. Making sure that recovery reduction similarly happens on a diminshing-marginal-returns sortof way so that characters never flatly hit *zero* recovery, that seems like a good way to prevent that same break-point issue, so that the system remains relatively intuitive for most players. (I made a lot of arguments against the original Penetration system for the same reason -- I really hate harsh break points, they make things really unintuitive and hard to explain and always seem to lead to metagamey play). Plus, side note, but not all weapons even use "recovery"; it seems like in Deadfire "reload" replaces "recovery" for guns and crossbows. So with zero recovery as the dominant build, you have the same issue the first game had where guns and xbows are inherently deprecated.

Are we sure it's going to be completely impossible even in the full game with full-game items? That said. . . I'd prefer the bonus for dual weilding be reduced to 20% or 30% or whatever works out to parity, rather than the current 50%, yeah. Honestly, being able to reach zero recovery led to degenerate strategies in the first game; the "solution" to character design was to reach zero recovery with the heaviest-hitting weapons that could still get you to zero, so it led to a lot of metagamey strategies like deliberately NOT giving dex to rogue characters because you were planning on hitting zero recovery with items instead later. Ideally there wouldn't be an absolute "floors" any character can reach in any ability, because such leads to metagamey strategies. Break points are to be avoided.

Right -- even accounting for that, Whisper and Puppet especially have excessively long cast times. For example, Whisper of Treason is currently an "average" cast category spell; in the original game, it was a "fast" cast spell. The net result is it's been functionally triple-nerfed: 1) once by the move from fast to average cast times 2) once by the lengthening of cast times generally 3) once more by the fact that all the ex-vancians are no longer per-rest, but the Cipher still has to build focus before casting. Net effect, in order to bring Cipher powers back to parity, you can't just shorten the cast times generally -- it's not enough to just make "average" casting speed a better category. Even if "Average" goes down to 4 sec / 2 sec, that's still six seconds total you're losing, for a ten-second duration effect (and you can't really lengthen crowd control longer than ten seconds or it gets annoying when it hits players). If you adjust that ten second duration time for the expected value of misses/hits/crits etc., you end up getting around 6-8 seconds of effect. Since Whisper and Puppet are single-target effects . . .functionally then even with improved casting times generally to 4 c / 2 r, you're functionally just trading six seconds of your own character's paralysis for (on average) about eight seconds of enemy charm. You're trading your own dude out for a crappier enemy dude. It's not worth it. Cipher CC powers need to be fast/instant casting across the board, generally.

I really disagree on puppet master and whisper of treason (and to a slightly lesser extent re: Mental Binding, since it's AoE): they need to be fairly quick casts, because 10 seconds is a relatively short duration, and there's a miss rate. I've shown the math elsewhere on the forum, but once you factor in miss rates, whisper and domination need a fast cast time to be worthwhile -- otherwise you're just trading your time for the enemy's at an even rate, and since PC time is more valuable than the time of a random monster, you need a really strongly beneficial time trade to make casting the power worthwhile. There's an additional factor too, which is harder to quantify; I mention it because I'm not sure how you did your testing and it might not be obvious without extended play of the class. The "ex-vancian" casters have to wait a lot less time before casting, while Ciphers have to build focus over the course of the fight, which takes time; they can't open the fight with their strongest powers in the way that a Wizard or Priest or Druid can. Because of that, I'd argue that cipher powers should be *very* fast-casting, to make up for the time lost autoattacking and waiting to build focus. (The same argument applies to an extent to Chanter invocations). That argument applies generally to all Cipher powers though, not just the specific crowd-control powers. Net effect, I'd actually argue that ciphers (and possibly Chanters) should have cast times similar to or better than their casting times in the previous game, even given the generally longer casting times in Deadfire. Everyone else moved to non-vancian, per-encounter casting, and Ciphers need something to balance that out or they'll be relatively much weaker. Fast casting seems thematic and appropriate and not unbalanced given the focus mechanic.

Scepters are strong because they get the dual-weild bonus to recovery time; most other one-handed ranged weapons have reload instead of recovery so don't. Overall (scepters and wands excepted) ranged weapons do less damage than melee weapons, significantly so, but you can min/max a ranged character more and you don't have to run around as much.

I like the instincts in this approach but the more I think about it the more nervous I am about carrying this analysis too far; you can't just trade AR for deflection or constitution, etc.; these things aren't perfectly fungible. So one approach to balacing these features would be to just set it so there are very few or no opportunities to trade anything else for AR / Penetration. The problem of course is that since this game has "money" there's only so much limitation like that you can do, since gear gives ar/pen and can be bought and sold.

The only way the modals make sense is if, much like casting times, they decided to start out with them being absolute **** deliberately because it's easier to balance up than balance down.

I really like the idea of opening up the penetration scale with more increments. I'm a little sceptical of a precise point for point breakdown because these values are all curved; going from 14 to 15 pen is very rarely going to do anything, going from 5 to 6 is usually going to do a lot. Dual Wielding currently has a 50% modifier from the first game; it was increased to that from an 20% or 30% original modifier due to the vagaries of the AR system; needs to be downtuned back and then we can see where the numbers boil out.

Where are the soulbound guns

That's what I thought, but what throws the wrench into things is the fact that multiple NPCs, including Kana and Od Nua, pin the events at the Endless Paths as happening two thousand years, or around 800 AI, roughly when the Darcozzi Paladini were founded. Perhaps the mistake I'm making is treating the Engwithans as the run-of-the-mill PROGENITOR CIVILIZATION, instead of just one of many ancient nations that happened to leave a very lasting mark on the world. It's precisely what I'm working on and why I asked these questions. Hahah, ok, yeah Yeah, it's possible there was more than one progenitor population, it's also possible that one or more of the reporters could be unreliable narrators, or have only small pieces of the puzzle. From the guidebook there are hints that some of the Gods may be much older than the rest, so there could very well be multiple "progenitor" races and even multiple cycles of god-making.

It's perfectly workable but not optimal -- bows are better at endgame, but with smart tactics you can finish the game with almost any build. The most current update of this build is the steam version, but even it isn't updated for the "deadfire pack" items which are still a bit buggy.