Friday Feature 2/2/2018 – Food and Drinks (released 2/16/2018)

It feels a teensy weensy bit self-serving to be writing about this topic. However the timing is such that it needs to be addressed. Why now? What is special about this time in the life of EiF? I’m soooo glad you asked! Players are starting to think about how to get the most from their characters and templates now that PvP is starting to kick in. The GCW Invasions are being live tested. Bases are being dropped by opposing factions, just taunting the opposition to come blow them up! Just last week the Imperials and New Republic faced off over salvaging the ruins of a blown up NR Base outside Anchorhead.

The player killing instincts are coming to the surface. Crafters want to make the toughest, most resistant armor. Weapons need to deal a lot of damage! How can foods help? There are food and drink to help improve Assembly and Experimentation chances. Food to increase the drop rate on creature resources when something amazing is available.

There are player enhancing foods and drinks. Things to temporarily increase health or mind pools. Need to dodge better? Are you missing your targets and need to be more accurate? Yes, you guessed it there is a food or drink for that! ((Okay, I’m totally geeking out and thinking…”there is an app for that* Then I remember back when I played SWG Live there were no tablets and smart phones in everyone’s hand, and apps weren’t a thing. Sorry, back to the topic at hand. Hee hee hee))

This is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list, nor am I the expert. Not by a long shot. Thanks to Colin and Anishor for their input into this Friday Feature.

Things to be aware of when using Food and Drink

Filling – Each food or drink has a fill number. This means how much your tummy is filled when you eat or drink an item. You can fill your tummy up to 100. There is a lot of strategy that players put into this, so talk to some experienced PvPers to learn more.

Timing vs # – Each food or drink item has a duration that is either a set amount of time or a number of uses.

Bonuses –

-Citros Snowcake:
Accuracy bonus to hit on the currently equipped weapon

-Vayerbok:
Block – Increases the chance to block

-Synthsteak:
Damage reduction for a set number of attacks, but never lasts longer than the designated duration. Gives a nice edge in PVP, especially if facing a hard opponent like a rifleman with an ion rifle or various others that sometimes hit hard for one or another reason. This will reduce the indicated % of the DMG you take after your armour reduction has fully had its course.  

-Exo-Protein Wafer:
Damage Reduction. Works exactly like Synthsteak, but not as strong, nor filling.

-Pikatta Pie:
Dodge – Increases ability to dodge for a set amount of time.

-Aircake:
Dodge – Less powerful than Pikatta Pie

Pool Increases

-Accarragm:
Action/Quickness/Stamina – Increases each of the three pools for a set time duration

-Vasarian Brandy :
Mind/focus/willpower pool increase for a set duration.

-Vagnerian Canape:
Focus and willpower

Other

-Veghash:
Creature Harvesting – While not directly PvP related, the resources are for the crafters who make the weapons, armor, food, and drinks PvPers use. This provides a direct increase to the amount of resources harvested.

-Blue milk:
Instant heal to your mind. Not often used, but useful in a tight situation where you need that little edge over the opponent.

-Bespin Port:
Crafting Experimentation – Increases the chance to get an amazing on the first experimentation

-Pyollian Cake:
Crafting Assembly – Increases the chance to get an amazing on the assembly of your item.

Sandarie, Community Manager

Clearly Not A Combat Princess!

Welcome to Empire In Flames

An Empire in Flames is a post-Endor server offering a new, unique Star Wars Galaxies experience!

What’s the 10,000 foot view?

Empire in Flames began conceptually before the shutdown of the live servers with a design friendly to Roleplayers, PvE players, PvPers, and pilots. It started as, “What’s your ideal server?” It started with a new profession system, expanded to housing and races, and dreamed of a Galactic Civil War in practice instead of imagination. In short, it’s the concept of a Star Wars game as dreamed by a small group of long-time Starsider players – players who were RPers, PvErs, PvPers, crafters, and pilots, none of whom fell into the trap that any of the major combat systems – pre-CU, CU, or NGE – was by any means perfect.

A new profession system

Empire in Flames offers a new approach to the system – one that combines the best of the ideas of the NGE and pre-CU.

Trees are categorized as “professions” and “skills.”

Professions cost no skill points (though they require XP to level). However, a player can only have ONE profession at a time. Professions include:

Bounty Hunter
Commando
Doctor
Entertainer
Merchant
Ranger
Smuggler
Squad Leader

Abilities acquired from professions can be used with any weapon, or even unarmed. Professions offer enhancement, access to specialized skills like slicing, vendors, creature harvesting, and so forth.

Skills, on the other hand, require skillpoints and can be freely mix-and-matched. They, too, require XP to level; however, all skills can be learned from their novice box up. Prerequisites are not required.

Architect
Armorsmith
Artisan
Bio-Engineer
Carbineer
Chef
Creature Handler
Dancer
Droid Engineer
Fencer
Image Designer
Medic
Musician
Pikeman
Pistoleer
Rifleman
Shipwright
Swordsman
Tailor
Teras Kasi Artist
Weaponsmith

Skillpoints have been adjusted to allow a player to pickup approximately 2 1/2 trees, with some exceptions. (Image Designer, Dancer, and Musician together reach 250 points, for example.)

A new approach to housing

Like most branch servers, Empire in Flames offers additional housing options not available on Basilisk – and a few not available on any other branch server. However, player cities take a central role; player houses are required to be built inside city limits.

No more crust of housing on the edge of the no-build zone around NPC starports. No more endless sea of houses on Tatooine. Instead, players have more reason than ever to cooperate – “home” is now a community.

New Races

While “new races” are proliferating across the branch servers, they started with Empire in Flames. After unauthorized use of our code on other servers, we decided to release them for other servers to use…and used they have been. Still, we’re not resting on our laurels – we’re working to add even more options, even when it means we’re pestering Timbab for a new tool to make it happen.

A New Setting

The decision to move post-Endor is partly driven by roleplay, but also by a desire to implement a proper Galactic Civil War. While the immediate ramifications of the time shift are largely cosmetic, it does mean new themeparks will be coming – after all, Jabba the Hutt, Darth Vader, the Emperor, and Xizor are all dead.

How will you position yourself to rise to power?

We respect existing lore that has happened before Endor, but past that we will be creating our own lore, pulling bits and pieces from varying sources. We simply don’t think the way things go in the new canon with Jakku and all makes for very compelling gameplay or storytelling, but we also can’t trod down the path of Legends as its over saturated and restricting.

Crafting Revamp

One of the most controversial changes we have adopted is a crafting revamp for weaponsmith and armorsmith.

Instead of the old crafting system, we moved to a “core”-based system. The base of every weapon is a core, whether it’s a pistol, carbine, rifle, or melee weapon. The core determines critical stats like HAM cost, damage, and speed. Additions like stocks, scopes, and customized barrels are done at the weapon-level to modify those core stats. In essence, any weapon or armor can be made good. Empire in Flames is more than powerhammers and T-21s and composite armor.

A Roadmap Forward

Post-launch, the next three major patches are planned: Galactic Civil War, Schisms of the Force, and Underworld. The first is to bring a proper Galactic Civil War to the galaxy; the second to implement the Jedi profession; the third to reveal black markets, smuggled goods, player bounty hunting, and Crime Lords.

Along the way, other content is planned – new themeparks for the New Republic and the Empire, a three-faction questline over the fate of Jabba’s criminal empire, and a series of post-Endor based heroic encounters.

Also check out our Q&A from the summer!
And the whole Friday Feature Archives

Combat in Empire in Flames, or How I Spent My Summer Vacation

EiF brings you a player’s perspective’s on EiF’s combat system. This post isn’t fully fact checked. Thank you Pizza the Hutt! You are one of my all time favorite Hutts! Enjoy!

-Sandarie, Community Manager

===

The combat in Star Wars Galaxies has gone through multiple iterations and changes in its lifetime. Empire in Flames is another such iteration aiming to improve upon some of the inadequacies of the original game in a fashion that differs from the Combat Upgrade (and the subsequent game-changing overhaul that was the NGE). 

While the fundamental mechanics of “Pre-CU” combat still stand, there have been numerous tweaks and changes to encourage a diversity of builds that was sorely lacking in the original game. These modifications to the base emulator take the form of adjustments to stat allocations for each profession, ability changes ranging from minor adjustments of multipliers to new behaviors, and some tinkering to the engine to make combat much more intuitive and interesting.   

Whether you’re an old-hand at Pre-CU combat, an NGE player visiting the past, or completely new to SWG, there are some things that you should know! But where should we begin?   First things first! Before you can fight you need a weapon! If you’re a bareknuckle brawler or an inveterate sniper, your attacks follow the same formula! So, here’s the rundown on your hardware:

1.       Weapon type – This one is the most obvious. A pistol, a carbine, a sword, et cetera. These weapons have their corresponding abilities in their respective professions but here at Empire in Flames we have some special-case scenarios! If you’re a Bounty Hunter, or a Smuggler, your weapon skills are “weapon agnostic” which means you can use these abilities with any weapon equipped! 

2.       Damage type – All incoming and outgoing damage in SWG is “typed” and is compared against a variety of resistances. Not all guns do energy damage, and not all melee weapons will do kinetic. To ensure maximum effectiveness, examine your target (in the case of PvE) to see your opponents’ resistances and equip yourself accordingly!   

3.       Armor Piercing – This is a stat you’ll see on all weapons but you can completely ignore this as Empire in Flames removed Armor Levels from all damage equations!   

4.       Attack speed – This is the base delay for your attacks (in seconds). The CDEF Pistol that you start with, for example, has a speed of 3. Without any skills, you will auto-attack every 3 seconds. But all weapon-specific professions come with a speed stat boost that modifies this value as a percentage. More on this later!   

5.       Damage range – Minimum and maximum damage is self-explanatory.   

6.       Wound chance – Whenever an attack lands, it has a chance to impart a wound to a specific HAM pool. While higher percentages are better, the actual effect is rather small.   

7.       Range modifiers – Ok, so this one might not be super clear as to how exactly it works but it is simply a +/- modification to your attack’s accuracy. Ideally you want to be at the ideal (hehe) range but in most cases you can get away with any spot that’s not a massive penalty (like the -120 @ 64 meters on the starter CDEF pistol).   

8.       Special Attack Cost – These are the base values for the consumption of your HAM pools when you use special attacks. Each special attack has a multiplier that can leave you with an empty action pool in the case of high special costs on your weapons.   

Okay! So that’s a quick review of the weapons and how their stats function. Let’s get started with the combat mechanics and how your skills tie into them. I’m going to start with the novice box of the Swordsman profession because it’s what I have in front of me and it gives me a wide variety of skills to use as examples. In the novice box we have the following skills:

Counterattack, Defense vs. Blind, Defense vs Dizzy, Defense vs Intimidate, Defense vs Stun, Melee Defense, Ranged Defense, Two-handed Melee Accuracy, Two-handed melee Center of Being [duration], Two-handed Melee Center of Being Efficacy, Two-handed Melee Speed, and Two-handed Melee Toughness… whew! That’s a lot of stats! It might be a bit overwhelming, but they’re very straightforward once you get the hang of it!   

Counterattack is one of the three “secondary” defense skills, alongside Dodge, and Block. The way these work is that upon receiving a “successful” attack, you have a chance to react to the incoming damage with these skills.

  • Counterattack allows you to make a free basic attack against your opponent.
  • Dodge always you to sidestep the incoming damage entirely.
  • Block reduces the incoming damage by 75% and has the added bonus on Empire in Flames of making a second block attempt if the first one fails.

These three defense skills are limited to their respective weapons – Counterattack for Carbineer and Swordsman, Dodge for Pistoleer and Fencer, Block for Rifleman and Pikeman.

Note: Heavy Weapons are considered as Rifles by the game and allow you to make use of Block when wielding the Commando’s arsenal. Teras Kasi Artists have a special defense stat called Defensive Acuity which allows you to react to incoming damage with either Counterattack, Dodge, or Block.   

Defense vs [XXXXXX] – These are stats that are generally referred to as “State Defense”. Certain abilities have the benefit of attempting to apply a variety of these states and that is compared against your state defense to determine whether or not it is successfully applied.             

You’re probably curious as to how these states affect you or your target – here’s the hot-skinny.           

    • Intimidate – This state reduces the maximum damage of outgoing attacks\
    • Dizzy – When dizzied, posture changes can cause you to be knocked down.
    • Knockdown– Flat on your back! You are incapable of acting while knocked down and you take extra damage. –          It’s important to note that the way Dizzy/KD works on Empire in Flames is different from SWGEmu in that it is impossible to lock anyone into a Dizzy/KD loop (because this is just no fun!)
    • Stun – Reduces outgoing damage by 10% and lowers Primary Defense (more on what that is in a bit).
    • Blind – Reduces accuracy. Posture change (up/down) – This causes the receiving party to change their posture (standing, kneeling, or prone). Coupled with dizzy, this has the chance to knockdown.   

Next on the list is Ranged/Melee Defense – These are your so-called primary defenses which is what your accuracy is compared against when attempting to hit something. These primary defenses reduce the likelihood of being hit by most, if not all, attacks.

  • Accuracy – This makes your attacks more likely to be successful.
  • Center of Being –  Duration and Efficacy are modifiers to the Center of Being skill (which has just received some interesting changes from Anishor). Duration is in seconds, and the efficacy now functions by way of reducing the players outgoing damage by 25% and increasing their toughness by [Efficacy / 3]. Weapon Speed – This is a percentage modifier to your weapon’s attack speed before ability multipliers. It caps out at +75 which translates to 75% * attack speed (or 1/4 of your weapons attack speed as your effective attack speed).
  • And finally we have Toughness – This is a flat percentage reduction on incoming damage. It makes you “tankier”.   

In addition to all of the above, an important consideration (especially for PvP) is the Ranged and Melee Mitigation skills that come with the combat professions. The way this works is it reduces the damage range of the attacker’s weapon making it less likely for you to receive random “big hits”. Ranged Mitigation applies to incoming ranged attacks, and Melee Mitigation applies to incoming melee attacks.

For the curious, or the mathematically inclined, the formula is [Max Damage = MinDmg + ((MaxDmg-MinDmg)*(<20% for Mitigation 1, 40% for Mitigation 2, and 60% for Mitigation 3>)]   

Now that we have all that out of the way you might be wondering “What the hell do all these abilities do?!” because the tooltips may not accurately reflect what is actually happening. Each special attack ability has a damage multiplier, and an attack delay modifier. Some attacks have a specific pool they target, while others will hit a random pool. Some attacks might even apply a state. Unfortunately due to the changes made by the Empire in Flames team, I don’t have access to the definitive numbers, or what abilities apply what states, but I can give a “broad-strokes” answer regarding the ability choices available.

Higher tiered attacks will generally do more damage, with a higher special ability cost, and a larger attack delay. This means you have the luxury of tailoring your attacks based on your playstyle! Like hitting hard, but maybe not so often? Use the higher tiered attacks! Want to spam specials, as much as possible, or slip in a few extras while your action or mind pool is low? The lower tier specials will fit that niche. Every special has a trade-off which makes using something like SpinAttack1 useful even when you have AreaAttack3.   

That’s all for now! I hope it answers more questions than it creates. Happy hunting and May the Force Be With You!

With Love,              Pizza The Hutt.  

Friday Feature 10/27/2017: EiF’s Combat!

EiF knew combat would not be fully balanced when we went live. Over the past months we’ve had a much larger player base using our system than the 5-10 players pre-launch on the test center. Our community’s feedback has been invaluable. I reviewed the Q & A with the Devs, to be sure this was the most accurate and up-to-date information. There are a few changes, such as with the armor. 

Below is the current state of EiF’s combat systems, as it relates to Professions and Skills.

General

  • EiF is about player choice and counter play in our balance.
  • Professions vs Skills
    • The New Profession System and Skill Trees: One of the core ideas of EiF was to separate “What you do” from “How you do it”. “What you do” are your Professions – Bounty Hunter, Commando, Doctor, Entertainer, Merchant, Ranger, Smuggler, and Squad Leader. Any person can pick any profession; they cost 0 skill points, but a person can only have one of those professions at a time. Professions grant non-combat abilities and some combat specials, but no combat modifiers – for example, picking Smuggler doesn’t give you extra pistol speed/accuracy/etc.
    • Skills are the “How you do it”, and it’s almost everything else from the original skill trees. Pistoleer, Carbineer, Rifleman, TKA, Fencer, etc, plus your crafting skills and dancer/musician/image designer. Those do require skill points, so you mix-and-match to your heart’s content, up to 250 points worth. The trees are recalculated so that you can basically take two and a half skill trees; I suspect most players will have a line or two of Medic in their builds, but some of our testers already surprised me on that point by forgoing it for more defensive modifiers.
  • No Legendaries
    • Weapons or Armor
  • Core Based Crafting System
    • Separates the appearance from the performance
    • Crafting revamped -Damage is substantially higher and resists cap much lower than 90%
    • Weapons
      • All stats have been revamped to actually matter on a weapon. Assuming similar crafting, pistols will be faster than carbines which are faster than rifles. Rifles have higher damage than carbines which have more damage than pistols.
      • Accuracy calculations come into play; a melee character on top of a rifleman will absolutely destroy him, but at 64 meters the rifleman will shred a melee character.
      • Additional weapons, including some from the NGE will be added as EiF progresses
      • A recent tease from Halyn was an A280-CFE which is a convertible weapon. With the proper certifications (details coming soon(™)) it can be switched between a pistol, carbine, or rifle.
      • Armor piercing/armor level have been removed from calculations, as it pushed players to AP3-only weapons (or stun!)
    • Armor
      • Not all about Composite anymore, appearance is separated from performance
      • Armor is capped at 60% resists
      • Suits of factional armor will come in with the GCW patch. The Imperial and Rebel variants of Mandalorian armor will be part of the Mandalore patch
    • All armor and weapons decay
      • An armorsmith can best repair armor
      • A weaponsmith can best repair weapons
      • Any player can use a repair kit, but the master AS and WS have better chance of not breaking the piece and getting a better repair
      • Crafting stations improve chances of a good repair
  • HAM
    • The HAM/buff system has been inverted. Pre-CU features low base HAM and extremely strong buffs; EiF flipped that, so players start with high HAM and buffs add around 10% total.
    • Starting HAM is closer to 5000
    • No longer incapped by depletion of:
      • Mind
      • Action
      • PvP
        • Action and mind bars can still be targeted by other players, even if they can’t force an incap. During, say, a 4v4, a valid tactic may be for one or two players on each side to focus on keeping the enemy healer’s mind bar locked down to prevent them from throwing heals.
      • Players only incap on the health bar.
    • Action and Mind regenerates faster
      • 3-4 sec from empty to full
      • Action and mind regen very fast, but specials actually /use/ action and mind – firing a pistol special, for example, might take 30% of your action bar, but a few seconds later you’ll be back at full action.
      • Health is regenned faster by sitting
    • No species starting differentiation for HAM
  • Speed
    • Not capped at 1 atk/sec, but 75% reduction of weapon speed
    • With a focus on speed all the way down (speed crafted, speed sliced, speed PuPed) pistols can fire well faster than once per second…but given HAM costs for specials, it’s not real practical.
    • Speed is calculated differently. HAM costs and encumbrance matter. AP is no longer factored into damage calcs. High HAM and low buffs. Lower armor protections.
  • Dizzy
    • Dizzy/KD doesn’t work the same way here.
    • Dizzy is only a 15% chance to K/D you on posture change, not 85% that is is traditionally
    • Dizzy however affects you offensively, reduces your accuracy
    • Stacks with Blind
    • Reduces your primary defenses by 20%
  • Primary Defense – caps at 125
    • Melee/Range
    • SL bonus pushes the cap above 125
    • Pikatta Pie – pushes the cap about 125 too
  • Secondary Defenses – caps at 125
    • Dodge – Pistols/ 1H mele
    • Counter attack – Carbines/2H Melee
    • Block – Rifles/Pikeman
    • Defensive Acuity – Unarmed
    • In the future we’ve talked about adding in schematics that drop with different combinations, such as a dodging polearm.
    • SEAs help to reach Cap, but not push above the cap. Still keeps the cap of +25 to one stat from all your attachments.
  • Buffs
    • Doc buffs
    • Moved status from doc buffs into base stats, so now unbuffed you are close to what a doc buffed character was. Doc buffs only increase stats by about an additional 5% ( as was intended in Raph Koster’s initial design )
    • No longer required for play, intended to be at same power as other buffs such as food and drinks
    • No Doc Bots
    • Buffs are weak on EiF
    • Ent Buffs are reduced from Live
    • The classic SWG model is “low HAM, high buffs” – we’ve swapped that around, so you natively have high HAM with buffs providing far less of an increase. Playing without buffs is perfectly feasible; in PvP, buffs give an edge.
    • Further tweaking to ensure Doc buffs are viable is planned, but not outside the scope of current design. Atm they’re a bit underpowered.
  • Professions – Profession skills require the ‘mind’ pool to activate.
  • Racial Bonuses – Some bonuses do affect combat.

Thank you, Anishor, for helping me to put this together!

-Sandarie, Community Manager

Clearly Not Combat Princess!