Damage Formulas

[Rolina]

Ideas, revisions, and discussions of damage formulas will occur between coders in this topic.

[leaf]

Well since it seems this is where this conversation should be taking place now...

Ah, I knew my math would be off.  But yes, that's the general idea.

As for the base damage psy, I think we could pull it off.  Lower the initial base damage, for starters.  Also, classes themselves need some balancing.  Lowering the base PP% could work well, for starters.  Then there's staffs... they increase the base damage, however, I could just pull something like ankhs, and have them have a sort of inverted formula compared to ankhs (actually, I think I might like that more... keeps things properly proportional).

If you want more info on the weapons and my balancing thing, check the first post of the weapons idea thread.  It provides balance for both unleashes, as well as ideas to make weapons more than just 'this has more oomph than that'.  Alternatively, we could tweak the formula here and there to keep it from getting too powerful... Multiplying multipliers, for example, may not be the best of ideas, but if we were to use an additive kind of thing... Say...

(Class PP% Mod + Level/100)

Edit:  Okay, let's see what this formula is shaping up to be...

Damage = Base * (Class PP% Mod + Level/100) * ((200+Staff Mod)/200) * (Attack/resistance modifiers) * (range penalties, if applicable) * ((200-Ankh Mod)/200)

So, going with 200 as the base damage, slayer is the class, and you JUST learned Grand Gaia, thus are level 54.  Now, let's assume you hacked the game to let you wield staffs, and have a 200 weapon power staff (thus, the staff mod is 40% that - 80), and your opponent has no ankh...

Base is 200
Including class and level:  348
Adding only staff mod: 280
Including both: 487
Using the OLD formula, where the number was multiplied: 517

That makes the power 487, before power and resistance are applied.  It's more than a 200% increase, BEFORE applying power and resistance.  Needless to say, it needs tweaking to work right.  But it's a start.

Well, the reason the damage is so over the top is because you're using a staff in this calculation. With just the class and level, the 348 was pretty fair imo (if still a tad low). With a mage type character (say 180% PP) running spark plasma at lv50, it would end up doing 414 damage before power/resistance. A staff would utterly break it after that, though.

So... let's try this:

Damage = Base * ((1+Class PP% Mod)/2 + 3*Level/200) * ((400+Staff Mod)/400) * ((400-Ankh Mod)/400) * (Attack/resistance modifiers) * (range penalties, if applicable)

Should place a greater focus on level, while still making the PP% bonus matter. Also would make staffs and ankhs only modify by a 20% max, but the damage difference even there is pretty significant. You gotta remember, this is the game that doesn't let you boost your stats beyond 50% of their original value; even modifiers that seem fairly small end up having a large impact. Oh, and I moved the ankh modifier for consistency's sake.

For grand gaia:

Base damage: 200
PP% bonus: (1+1.2)/2 = 1.1
Level: 54
Damage after class and level: 382
Damage after staff bonus (max 1.2x), class, and level: 458

For spark plasma:

Base damage: 180
PP% bonus: (1+1.8)/2 = 1.4
Level: 50
Damage after class and level: 387
Damage after staff bonus (max 1.2x), class, and level: 464

Well, considering that grand gaia had a higher base and is at a higher level, and that a grand gaia user probably won't be able to equip a staff... I actually think this works out fairly nicely. I didn't like the way it took 10 levels for the same effect as just equipping two djinn in the formula you had before. Obtaining a new djinni already greatly boosts your party's power in so many ways, so I didn't want to see that increase too much more. With this formula, psynergy growth is mostly driven by level, but the PP% bonus still matters; the sorcerer class gets 30% more out of their attacks than the slayer class does.

[Rolina]

Heh, that's not bad.  That works quite well.  With this, we've also got a way to make Mia have some oomph in her attack spells, or well, whoever our healer is.  Probably, we'll have two people who can wield staffs and ankhs, so it'll be a choice of offense or defense for them.  Of course, this depends on the final build of the characters...

Okay, so we've got that.  How about the summon damage formula?

I'm assuming something similar to what you had before, in terms of base damage.  We'll keep the 2% per djinn thing going on... Question is, how are we going to do this?  Primary and Secondary versions for the summons, plus non-elemental?  I mean, that's how I'm going to do it in my personal hack, but this is the community hack we're talking about... I guess we need to have a general consensus for how we're gonna do it...  I figure we could just do them as they are now, with a bit of tweaking, but...

[leaf]

Well, you know my opinions on having too many options... A lv4 summon is really as high as you need to get to be useful. In fact, I'd argue that by capping it at lv4, it made summons in general more versatile, as you had to choose between loosing a lv3 early or waiting a full turn to be able to use the lv4. With that, it could still be worthwhile using a lv3, even with the reduced base, even if you would do more damage and it would be more efficient if you used the lv4. However... if you make it so that there are many levels of summons, you will probably end up making most of them worthless, and/or encourage summon rushing even more.

If you're providing summons with effects, those effects need to be more useful than just casting a psynergy or using a djinni with the same effect (especially the latter), since you could be spending those djinn to dish out a more powerful summon and just use the other effect separately. But at the same time, the effects can't be too useful or you risk breaking the game. Iris was an extremely costly summon in GS2, but had the greatest efficiency of any summon and carried an amazing effect... but outside of the battle arena, she wasn't very useful, due to being so hard to get out. Iris is at least excusable, though... she does have a use, albeit limited, and if her cost was lower, she would be broken. Charon is probably the ultimate in overly costly summons, as the effect isn't even that good, and it has poor efficiency.

If you try to implement many versions of summons, and then also go implementing a bunch of new levels for summons, the end result is just you spending a ton of time making a bunch of summons no one will use except to try them out. Therefore, I'd like to actually keep the mono-elemental summons identical to how they are currently (except for the HP% bonus, which will universally be reduced to 2%/djinni), and just fix up the multi-elemental summons to be a bit more useful... maybe. I don't really wanna mess with the multi-elementals all that much, even, since making them stronger just encourages summon rushing. Simple global fixes are probably the best way to handle this.

[Rolina]

True.  I do wanna change Charon and Iris, though.  I don't think there should be light/dark themes as elemental summons.  It's the main reason I changed them to omni-elemental, since Light and Dark aren't so much elemental as they are thematic.  I figure that IF we do dark and light for omni-elemental, light provides beneficial secondary effects, and dark negative secondary effects (basically, how they work now - Charon's chance to insta-kill and Iris' healing effect (which will be nerfed)).

[leaf]

Yeah... just checked my messages and noticed this there.

After reading through damage formulas for base damage psynergy, Another stat you could use represent growth would be max PP. It grows with level/classes, can be boosted with weapons (and armor) already.

This is an idea Ehic had.  I figure that if we implement it, we could replace the Level and PP Percentile parts of the equation.  I don't think we should add Max PP to the formula without getting rid of something, though, otherwise we may make psynergy broken.

Sounds like a good idea. Change out the PP% and level parts of the equation for (1 + maxPP/c), where c would be some constant probably between 200 and 300.

[Rolina]

Yeah, hard to notice the messages, ain't it?  Just not used to looking there.  Same thing happens to me in both invisionfree and OMG.  I get emails for messages here, though, so I usually find out about them that way.

I'm surprised by how simple that idea sounds.  You can even boost it by--

Oh, wait.  Just realized, that means that maces will make base damage stronger if we're using my weapon rebalancing formula... Which wasn't the intent...

Maces were to raise fuel
Staffs were to raise attack
Ankhs were to raise defense

I think it's still doable, but we'll have to watch it closely when we're able to plug it in.  Luckily, fighter-types will be stuck with the hammer variant, while mages can use both hammers and maces.  Ideally, the boost that comes from maces will be less than that of... of... staffs...

Just realized.  If we do this, New Game+ mode will potentially make base damage broken as freaking hell.  It caps at 1999.  Stuff enough cookies in, and...

We'll have to have a cap in power.  I guess that's where c comes in, I'm not sure about that...

Regardless, we'll need some tweaking and experimenting.  And for that, we need the formula editor.

[Rolina]

Here's a suggestion - we could actually lower the cap for Max PP down to 999.  If we do that, it'll be comparable to the attack stat.  Another way to go about it is to halve the value - 1999/2 is 999.5... drop the .5 and it should work...

Damage = Base * [Max PP/2] * ((400+Staff Mod)/400) * ((400-Ankh Mod)/400) * (power/resistance modifiers) * (range penalties, if applicable)

A bit crude, and will definitely need a bit of tweaking...  What do you think?  The only issue I really see is that PP growths are quite a bit different than Attack Growths...  But then again, you DO have the Staff Mod available, not to mention the fact that power/resistance is also taken into consideration (and IIRC, has more impact on base damage than it does on EPAs)...  It might work...

[leaf]

IIrc, EPAs use (1 + (power-resistance)/400) and base damage psynergy and summons use (1 + (power-resistance/200)), giving EPAs a variance from 50% to 150% damage, and base damage a variance from 0% to 200%.

Anyway, c would take care of the problem on its own. We can set it to anything we need to. The current formula you have would give a 50x multiplier with just 100 PP, which I don't think was your intent.

Damage = Base * (1 + (MaxPP/c)) * ((400+Staff Mod)/400) * ((400-Ankh Mod)/400) * (1 + (power-resistance)/200) * (range penalties, if applicable)

When we know what kind of PP maxes the endgame will have, we can figure out what to make c.

[Rolina]

Nope, not my intent at all.  Used the wrong symbol... should have been a + between base and the Max PP mod, so that it acted more like an EPA in terms of damage.  Let me fix that then:

Damage = (Base + [Max PP/2]) * ((400+Staff Mod)/400) * ((400-Ankh Mod)/400) * (power/resistance modifiers) * (range penalties, if applicable)

Now, if we do that, then I think that should work.  At 100 MP, you have +50 power to a spell, not 50x.  We'd have to approach spells like they were EPAs as far as power is concerned...  Perhaps the weakest of the spells could simply be base damage of 0, thus it'd depend entirely upon stats, equipment, and the like.  As they get stronger, they gradually increase in power.

It'd be totally different than the current form, however, so we'd have to come up with the formula from scratch.

[leaf]

Ah yes. That would work. Quite well, actually. It would indeed completely change the system, though, which will mean a lot of reworking. What's interesting is that even the weakest spells would be able to dish out pretty substantial damage at higher levels. With 400 max PP, a 0 base spell would be able to do 200 damage. Higher level psys would need a pretty large base to be worth their higher PP costs. Depending on the target level of the hack, it may need to be adjusted to be maxPP/3 or maxPP/4. Or maybe somewhere in between there, like 5*maxPP/16. We'll just have to see.

[Rolina]

I figured we may need a hidden multiplier value for higher level spells so that they get a nice boost, depending if they are tier 2 or 3 psys.  We'd have to go in and manually put it in, though.  That way, they keep their efficiency.

[leaf]

Well, if you're using a multiplier value at all, you may as well just be modifying base with maxPP >_>

Or you could use maxPP twice...

(Base + maxPP/4)*(1 + maxPP/1000)

With 400 maxPP, using a 0 base psy, it would give 140 power. Without the additional multiplier, this would be 100.
With 400 maxPP, using a 150 base psy, it would give 350 power. Without the additional multiplier, this would be 250.

On second thought... hm... For some reason I must have been remembering PP counts and attack scores for a much later level than what is typical for a lv40 party... I just checked one of my files for the lost age and even with bonuses, ivan and mia still only have some 300 or so PP at lv39 in their base classes, whereas isaac and garet both have under 180. But at these levels physical attacks aren't anywhere close to godly, which with this particular formula would make the spellcasters the strongest in your party by far, especially after boosting elemental power with a summon...

Yeah, now I definitely know that I can't start putting in constants yet... until we know exactly what kind of endgame levels and stats we're dealing with, these edits are more likely to break the game more than fix it. I still think a simple (base*(1 + maxPP/c)) would be best, and just leave it at that until we decide what kind of stats we wanna be playing with.

[Rolina]

Not just endgame.  Endgame is our goal, but we need to keep in mind the path we're taking (mid-game) and our next destination (post-game).  So while we've got a target level, not everyone follows it.  We need to make sure to try and keep it from being broken or pathetic the whole way, if possible.  If one type of damage starts to outshine another, it needs to be only by a little.  Nothing as absurd as we had in GS1/2.

[leaf]

Well you can fix that for the early and mid game by adjusting the power of the lower level psys. However, once you get the top level psy for an element, you're stuck with that until the end of the game, which is why it's easier to base it around the final projected psys and the projected end level. Physical and magical attacks will never be perfectly equal, but as long as they're kept close it'll be fine.

[Today]

Today at 18:00:23

Teawater: By the way, I was wondering, did anyone else notice the ".gba" ROM in the Downloads section?

[Today]

Today at 16:54:26

JamietheFlameUser: Well, that particular Briggs fight was from a long time ago. I haven't been working on my current hack the past few days because of other stuff.

[Today]

Today at 16:40:10

Luna_blade: @Saturos: Your english exams?

[Today]

Today at 16:33:40

Teawater: Can't remember exactly what shae of yellow it was, so not sure it would be too close or not.

[Today]

Today at 16:30:58

Teawater: @KoP: Wouldn't Shiny Gold be for the Sol Clan?

[Today]

Today at 15:37:37

Salanewt: Oh wait, tag doesn't work down here. But yeah, how is your hack going Jamie?

[Today]

Today at 15:37:00

Salanewt: [me] considers giving him the Sol Blade...

[Today]

Today at 15:36:00

Salanewt: Oh my. To be honest though, I'd be more likely to give Briggs stuff from later regions; him being a pirate from another continent and all.

[Today]

Today at 09:36:58

JamietheFlameUser: How not to design boss fights: give human-type bosses stats and equipment on par for what the Editor says their level is and what equipment is available where they're from. You get stuff like an actually scaled to level 21 Briggs with a Great Sword, Silver Plate, Silver Helm, Vambrace, and Leather Boots. God, that was BS.

[Today]

Today at 09:09:49

Saturos: Wow first part of exam is ower (in english) tomorow speaking part.

[Today]

Today at 07:11:35

JamietheFlameUser: Eh, I didn't know the exact chance of Curse screwing you over. Still, that 6% chance to fail to act at all could screw you over when it matters most. The obvious solution, of course, is to stick that armour on a character who doesn't do anything but spam attack moves anyway.

[Today]

Today at 07:10:52

leaf: ...assuming I'm remembering the chance of curse taking effect correctly as 25%

[Today]

Today at 07:09:50

leaf: in fact, you get two turns the majority of the time (~56%), and only completely fail to act ~6%, the remainder of the time getting one action

[Today]

Today at 07:07:49

leaf: I like that stealth armor buff. it wouldn't make sense to do that with the clerics ring available, but if you remove that, it's actually an interesting item. On average, you get ~1.5 turns per round. it's potentially very strong, but carries risks

[Today]

Today at 07:04:59

leaf: lol

[Today]

Today at 06:39:21

JamietheFlameUser: Reading the Venus Psynergy topic and 'lol'ing at Role's reaction to a very simple spell idea I'd had (and still think is awesome), where rock explodes out of the ground from a single point in a focused, cone-shaped burst. Role read me the riot act about not combining elements again. lol.

[Today]

Today at 06:17:58

JamietheFlameUser: Well, one thing I came up with that was actually potentially cool is a modification to the Stealth Armour. I gave it +1 turns, under the assumption that the Cleric's Ring would be removed. You might get 2 actions that round, or 1 action, or maybe no actions at all! RNG at its finest.

[Today]

Today at 06:15:32

Knight of Purgatory: Nice orange text kain. Maybe it should be a shiny gold

[Today]

Today at 06:03:40

leaf: I concur. There isn't much I'd consider worth salvaging from dc in terms of work done, but reading the old threads can be quite amusing

[Today]

Today at 06:01:48

JamietheFlameUser: LOL I'm looking at the DCrisis Items/Equipment section. Role and I were both so immature about it (me especially) that it's hilarious in hindsight.

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