Posted on UOHerald.com

FoF: Fiddly Bits
Jeremy Dalberg
29 Feb 2008 13:39:03

Join us this week as we dig into accuracy calculations, enhancing, perfection, and more! And don't forget - the Jacksonville Town Hall is tomorrow!

"Why do I seem to miss so often when using Archery?"

I've seen several variations on this question, so Leurocian scoured the accuracy code for me, and we did not find anything that would specifically affect Archery accuracy (with one exception, covered below.) Accuracy in general is a fairly complex topic with many variables, so it's a tricky thing to test at the best of times. Here's an explanation of the different factors - if anyone sees any results that aren't consistent with this, please let us know!

Attacker's stats: Weapon skill and Hit Chance Increase are the stats the formula uses on the attacker's side. HCI is increased by HCI items and decreased by the defender's Hit Lower Attack, if any.

Defender's stats: Weapon skill and Defense Chance Increase are the stats the formula uses on the defender's side. DCI is increased by DCI items and decreased by the attacker's Hit Lower Defense, if any. (Exception below.)

Barehanded defense: If the defender is not using a weapon, "weapon skill" will be EITHER Wrestling skill OR (Anatomy + Evaluating Intelligence + 20) / 2; whichever is greater (which means that if you have none of these skills and are barehanded, you'll have a functional weapon skill of 10.)

Mage Weapons and Use Best Weapon Skill: UBWS uses whichever weapon skill is highest, and Mage Weapons use Magery (with whatever penalties listed on the weapon) assuming it's higher than the appropriate weapon skill for that weapon.

The minimum chance to hit is always at least 2%. If both attacker and defender have the same weapon skill and HCI/DCI, the chance to hit is 50%.

But wait, there's more!

Attacks can be parried or evaded - those are completely different calculations that happen after the hit chance is calculated. If you're trying to track your accuracy, make sure you're taking parried or evaded attacks into account.

Archery has one more caveat - if you move, it resets the swing cycle. There's only one place where this might break the swing - between the "swing" and the "hit" calculations - and we couldn't make it break in a few minutes of testing, but it's possible that a move could break the swing and it would look exactly like a miss, when in fact the attack was simply aborted. Archers, hold still!

The actual formula is conveniently listed in the question below!

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"The formula for Hit Chance on Stratics is: Hit Chance% = ( ( [Attacker's Combat Ability + 20] * [100% + Attacker's Hit Chance Increase] ) divided by ( [Defender's Combat Ability + 20] * [100% + Defender's Defense Chance Increase] * 2 ) ) * 100

Does HLD lower the defender's combat ability by 25%? Does HLA lower the attacker's combat ability by 25%? Or are both applied to the DCI and HCI portion of the calculation?"

HLA/HLD are directly applied to the HCI/DCI portion of the equation - when the HLA/HLD effect goes off, it reduces HCI or DCI by 25 (and yes, it can make that value negative.)

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"Is the change of colored ore spawning a straight 100% calculation or is it 50/50 to be colored and then a second roll for the type of ore?"

Each ore type has a different percentage chance to be chosen, but it is a single random roll.

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"Is there any difference in the success chance between enhancing wooden items or leather and metal?"

Not necessarily - success chance is actually a function of the intensity of the properties you're changing and the number of properties on the item, not which skill you're using. Of course enhancing armor with gold, which affects six properties (bonuses to four resists, luck, and lower requirements) is, in general, more likely to fail than enhancing a weapon with bloodwood, which only affects two (hit point regeneration and hit life leech,) but if that weapon already has near-max intensity on either of those properties, or has several other properties, it may have a smaller chance of success.

In short, while determining the actual success chance of enhancing is complicated and depends on several variables, all the crafting skills use the same formula.

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"Why does perfection, step 9, always return the same or less damage than step 8? I have verified this over a run of 200 honors, and step 9 is ALWAYS less than or equal to step 8."

There are a couple of things happening here - first of all, the size of the damage bonus increase is dependant on your Bushido skill. Second, it's capped at 100%. Third, it's a percentage boost to your damage, so the total damage is dependant on the base damage of your weapon, which is variable.

With Legendary Bushido, you'll be at a 96% damage bonus at step 8, and you'll hit the cap of 100% bonus at step 9 - with only a 4% increase, the extra damage will likely get lost in rounding even if your base swing is the same (decimals get truncated, so the base damage would have to be at least 25 to see even a 1-point increase.) And weapons have a variable damage per swing - it's a random roll within a range - so it's absolutely possible for your actual damage to drop.

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Playguide Update Roundup:

No Playguide updates this week, but more are on the way once I'm back in the office next week.

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What's To Come:

A few more confirmed bug fixes for the next publish:

• Greater dragons are visibly named "Greater dragons"
• Fixed a couple of worldbuilding trouble spots (places where folks would get stuck - one in Wrong, one in Magincia.)
• Made several fixes that we ain't telling you about until they're live on all shards ;)

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Jacksonville Town Hall

The Jacksonville Town Hall is tomorrow! Looking forward to seeing all of you there!

For our mid-Atlantic players, the May Town Hall meeting is also posted - you can get details on the Town Hall page and RSVP for that one as well. If you're in the neighborhood, don't miss out!

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Heading out to Jacksonville now - if I don't see you, have a great weekend!


- Jeremy

What about the QA tested bug fixes from last week?
Promised another publish that never happened.

But perhaps I am just being negative.

I have submit nearly 2 dozen PVP related exploits. I wonder how many will be fixed.

o_0

Two dozen? No wonder I die so fast when I fail a stealth check!

I dont see UO focusing at all on pvp at moment.

They are adding Greater Dragons.. which is good but really its just a filler... takes 10mins to set a spawn with right stats and right name.
Lets say.. they need to do it once in whole destard.. say 1 hour in time for all spawnpoints max! .. so yea they deliver something that was easier then easy to make to quiet people.

That's pretty much with everything that they've added recently.
Most of the "great additions", like the valentine stuff and even the 10th anniversary drops are things that an experienced scripter can round up in an hour or less.

Really makes you wonder what those guys are doing with the rest of their time.
As for them spending it all on bug fixes, I don't buy that.
Being busy with SA? Doubtful, but perhaps...
Watching porn? Who knows, but if they are they better pass me the links of any good stuff they find!

I agree Blurghh

If they didn't take so long to implement even simple things, people wouldn't be so eager to go to other games.

I mean, why DOES it take a year or more, to bring out a simple rideable polar bear as a vet reward?

If stuff takes a long time to create and test due to old, buggy code, then they need to spend proper time scrapping that code and starting from scratch imo.