Assembly Mechanics (Game Mechanics)

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Game Mechanics - Assembly Mechanics

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Assembly Mechanics

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Mechanics This document is about game mechanics.

Assembly Overview

There are two factors that go into the process of determining an item's statistics; these are Assembly and Experimentation. Assembly is the starting point of this process. Assembly in its literal sense, is the putting together of the components and resources to create an item. Most crafted items have a set of experimental lines in which have individual properties under them. These properties are a control and bottleneck for the value of the stats that are associated with them. The properties are associated with a particular resource stat and the amount to which that stat weights or factors into the increase/decrease of the stats of this item. The value that gets returned from this process of weighting factors comes in a percentage range from 0 to 100%. The total length of the range between 0 and 100 is determined by the weighting factors of the resources and experimental property. When an item is assembled or experimented on, a portion is added to the range. For every increase in the value in the range beyond 0, the item's stats increases. The process of assembly is to add a starting value to the range. Experimentation will add onto this base starting value on up to a maximum of 100%.

For a closer look at the mathematics behind this process, see the Formulas in Review section below.




Part I. Assembling the item

Assembling an item begins at stage 2 of the crafting process when the player is inputting resources into the draft schematic slots. After the appropriate slots requirements have met, the player may advance the crafting process by clicking the Assemble button on the lower right. Upon clicking this, the game performs a number of calculations on the item which involved a number of factors such as player skill modifiers, a random chance roll, and environmental effects on the roll. These factors are designed to determine the type of success that the assembly attempt will have produced.



Success with the exception of critical failures, have no bearing on the starting values of the items. The various types of success rates available to assembly results are as follows:


Assembly Result
The item assembly was a critical failure.


The item assembly barely succeeded.
The item assembly was 'ok'.
The item assembly was only marginally successful.
The item assembly was a moderate success.
The item assembly was a success.
The item assembly was a good success.
The item assembly was a great success!
The item assembly was an amazing success!!!


As shown above, Each type of success will vary depending on the success roll made. The only success rate of consequence are Critical Failures. When a critical failure occurs, the player loses all resources used (but not components) and the item fails to be produced. Essentially the player must start over with crafting the item if a critical failure event happens.



Part II. The Assembly Success & Roll Detailed

As mentioned previously, after clicking the assemble button on the crafting menu, a process takes place in which determines the success choice that is displayed to the player. The following will help detail that process.


Note: There is no known formula for success rate and roll for Assembly, so I will be borrowing information from the Experimentation Success result formula as Lunariel claims that they are similar.


The result a player receives is based upon two things which will be called the Success Rate, and the Roll.




Here's a model of how it works.

Result = Rating + Roll
Risk = 100 - Rating (Any rating at 100 or higher shows as zero risk)

Note: for assembly, insert Assembly modifiers for Experiment_Skill. As for points used, assembly has no allocation of points so this presents a problem with the formula for use with assembly.


Roll: Random roll. Rolling below a limit will always give a critical failure regardless of your rating and above another limit will always give amazing success. (Think of it as in RPGs where an original 1 or 20 on 20-sided die overrides your base chance.) Research City, Bespin Port and maybe crafting stations and tools modifies your roll before checking the limits and thus lessens your chance of critical failures. As well as improving your chance for amazing success. (The impact of crafting stations and tools seems to be fairly small if any.)


Risk: This is your chance of getting any kind of failure. Note that the lower results like marginally successful are not technically considered failures even though it feels like it. At zero risk you can no longer get any type of failure except critical from the override on the roll.



Rating: Calculated from your experiment skill and modified by average MA on the resources and how many points you spend. 900 MA is a 10 skill bonus, 100 MA is a -10 skill penalty. Each extra point used at the same time is a -5 skill penalty. The formula for the rating is:


50 + (Average_MA - 500)/40 + Experiment_Skill - 5 x Points_Used



Average_MA is the MA of the resources weighted by relative quantity just like the experiment qualities and resources without MA are not counted. It is weighted by resource quantity If none of the resources have MA, the Average_MA is considered zero. Average_MA follows the same rules as if it had a hidden 'MA 100%' experiment line. Points_Used is how many points you spend at once. Points_Used is 1 if you only use one point. (If you try to spend points in multiple lines at once, you get penalized pretty badly and the formula changes a bit) With 75% chance, the red failure bar will show 25%. At 100% or above chance, the red bar is no longer visible.

If you have 55 in skill, you get 100% with MA 500. At 100 skill you have 145% with MA 500. This means you can only test out the formula at a fairly low skill while the red bar is still there.

Once you get 100% you can no longer get any failures, except criticals. But the system considers even marginally successful as a success. As you get higher above 100% the worst type of successes are gradually no longer possible. I believe that if your success rate is high enough, you can't get below great success either.

But there are two parts affecting the experiment result and the other one is the experiment roll. The roll is basically a random number which is added to your success rate to give the final result. But the roll has special cases. Like RPGs where a roll of 1 or 20 on d20 will always hit or miss regardless of your base chance. So if the roll is below a certain number, it will force a critical failure, if it's above another number, it will force an amazing success. This ensures you can get amazing with almost no skill and that you can always get a critical. Fortunately things which gives bonus to your rolls are applied before checking for the special cases. Which is why you then get less critical and more amazing results. High enough bonus might theoretically prevent any criticals at all.

This means that once you are above 100% (no red bar) you will only get failures from the roll and not from your skill. So things which affects the roll are more important to avoid failures. Like being in a research city or drinking Bespin Port. Both the success rate and the roll matters for getting more amazing successes, but for being able to use more points at once, probably only the skill matters. And there is a possibilty that there is a cap on your skill in this formula. But then you can't use the failure bar to test it out since your skill is too high to even get a red line. A force sensitive master crafter with +25 clothing would have a mean success rate without a cap.

The MA is the surprise factor. Having 100 in MA will be just like losing 10 skill points, while 900 in MA is a 10 point bonus. Unfortunately this MA is considered zero if none of the resources have MA effectively giving a -12.5 skill penalty.

I strongly suspected Complexity to affect the chance, since it rises as you experiment. But it doesn't affect the chance at all. Also testing with various levels of crafting stations from public to 40+, there is no difference either. But both of them may affect the roll instead. The only way to find out would be to do tons of experiments with the same materials and use statistics. I remember an old post from someone who did this testing, but can't seem to find it again. Anyone with a link ?

And being in a research city doesn't affect the success formula either. But that is documented as affecting only the roll, so no surprise there. I have seen noticably better results from rolls in a research city than outside, but haven't done any tests on stations or complexity.


With Novice Medic only, the red failure bar will normally show 57%. (100 - (50 + -12.5 + 10 - 5) = 57.5 which is then truncated to 57)



Things that Affect Success Rate and Rolls are:


Success rate

  • 1) Experimentation / Assembly Skill including skill clothes. Any possible cap is unknown.
  • 2) Mallability of the resources used. (Higher MA is better)
  • 3) Number of experiment points spent in each attempt. (Fewer is better)
  • 4) Force Experimentation modifiers. Adds to the experimentation skill modifiers to factor in for success rate during experimentation.
  • 5. Force Assembly modifiers. Adds to the Assembly skill modifiers to factor in for success rate during assembly.


Roll


  • 1) Being in a Research City.
  • 2) Drinking Bespin Port.
  • 3) Crafting Tool Quality.
  • 4) Crafting Station Quality.
  • 5) Crafting Technique force sensitive skill modifiers act as a bonus to the roll.



Part III. Calculating the Initial Percentage

After a roll check has been made and a non critical failure success type has been established, the next phase of the assembly process is in calculating the Initial Percentage for the experimentation line.


The initial percentage is the starting value for experimentation lines. After this value is calculated, the next phase of crafting would be to begin experimentation and add on to this value through that process. Several important values in relation to the experimentation derive from this stage of crafting. The first is the initial percentage, and the second is the Maximum Experimental Percentage. The maximum experimental percentage is the total amount to which an item can be experimented to. This is based off of the Weighted Resource Value (also known as weighted average).

To begin calculating the initial percentage, several steps must be carried out beginning with finding out the Weighted Resource Average first.

Initial Assembly Percentage






Part VII: The mathmatics behind armorcrafting

This section is provided as a starting point for armorcrafters to understand a bit more about how they get the results they do. Since the actual equations behind crafting have not been released by the game developers, this section may not be fully accurate. However, it does describe the best understanding we have of how the system actually works.

In order to understand how the final result is produced, you first need to understand the basic formula. Essentially, the game calculates a minimum experimental statistic. This minimum experimental statistic is a function of the weighted average experimental quality. By spending experimentation points, you can increase this experimental statistic above the minimum at a fixed rate. The degree to which you can raise the experimental statistic is capped, a limit that is also a function of the weighted average experimental quality. The final experimental stastic is then mapped to an actual statistic in the final item.

A. How the weighted average experimental quality is calculated

This section describes how the weighted average experimental quality is calculated based on resource attributes. Essentially, for each experimental statistic there is weighted average quality that depends on a)the attributes of each resource used, b)the amount of each resource required by the schematic and c) the weighting of each attribute. Depending on the number of resources and attributes, this can be very simple (for example, in the case of batteries, only one resource and one attribute) or very complex (multiple resources and multiple attributes, each with different weights). In order to simplify the explanation, base resists will be used.

When you experiment on a piece of armor, you get three options, one of which is Experimental Quality. Experimenting on experimental quality raises the base resists of the item. However, in order to know how experimentation will effect the base item, you first need to calculate the weighted average quality of the item for that particular experimental statistic.

The weighted average quality for Experimental Quality on all armor is based on the Overall Quality and Shock Resistance at a 50-50 ratio. The shock resistance of each material multiplied by the quantity used divided by the sum of the total quantites of the materials used. This will give you the average shock resistance for the item. The same process is performed for Overall Quality and a weighted average of the two (50/50 in this case) is determined. For materials that do not have one of the values (for example solid petrochem fuel), the equation simply removes that factor from the calculation.

For example, say you're making a composite helm using the following materials (we're only going to list the OQ/Shock of these theoretical materials, since that's all applies to resistances):

Intrusive Ore 800 OQ 900 Shock Solid Petrochem Fuel 950 OQ Nabooian Fiberplast 700 OQ 900 Shock Aluminum 600 OQ 800 Shock Beyrllius Copper 700 OQ 400 Shock Wooly Hide 900 OQ 600 Shock

You're looking effectively using the following total quality of material...

((((70*800) + (70*950) + (35*700) + (40*600) + (30*700) + (30*900)) / (70 + 70 + 35 + 40 + 30 + 30 )) + (((70*900) + (35*900) + (40*800) + (30*400) + (30*600)) / (70 + 36 + 40 + 30 + 30)))) / 2

<P>In the above equations, the average OQ would be 796 while the average SR would be 729. Consequently, the weighted average material rating for this experimental attribute would be 762.5.

The full equation for finding the weighted average attribute quality is described below:

General equation:

OQ1: Material 1 Overall Quality
SR1: Material 1 Shock Resistance
n1: Number of Material 1 required in schematic <P>OQ2: Material 2 Overall Quality
Material 2 does not have a Shock Resistance
n2: Number of Material 2 required in schematic <P>OQ3: Material 3 Overall Quality
SR3: Material 3 Shock Resistance
n3: Number of Material 3 required in schematic <P align=center>( ( ((OQ1*n1) + (OQ2*n2) + (OQ3*n3)) ) + ( ((SR1*n1) + (SR3*n3)) ) )
(n1+n2+n3) (n1+n3)
_______________________________________________

( 2 )

B. Experimental minimums and maximums

Experimental minimums and maximums are directly related to the average weighted quality of the resources used. Currently, the benefit gained from using each experimentation point is fixed at 7%, regardless of resource, although this will almost certainly change at some point in the future.

1. Each point of experimentation placed into the object resulted in a 7% gain, regardless of material, as was expected.

2. There is a fairly clear linear relationship between average material quality and starting/final percentages. The fit is not perfect, suggesting that there is a more complicated relationship at work, but this fit is very close (R2 = 99, n=6), which is good enough for pratical purposes. Any deviations are in the fractions of single percents and won't affect our work.

Basic Equations:
starting experimental percentage y = 0.0003x - 0.0369
max experimental percentage y = 0.001x - 0.0012
incremental gain: .07 (7%) <P>Ultimate equation:
x = average material quality for the relevant attribute
EM>n = number of experimentation points spent</EM> <P>final attribute percentage = (0.0003x - 0.0369) + (n*(.07)), but capped at 0.001x - 0.0012

Note that depending on how many experimentation points you have and the resource qualities, you may have points left over that can be spent in other areas.

C. Mapping experimental percentages to actual statistics






http://forums.swganh.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=233


To reveal the mystery abour crafitng, and why you get different stats at the same experimental percentages on two different crafting sessions. You first have to calculate the weighted average for each single stat line. Since Estei and me found that the displayed percentage for assembly and experimentation is an average of each line, meaning that the displayed percentages for Experimental Damage is the average for Speed, Min, Max and Wound Chance. Same thing goes for Experimental Efficiency which is the average of Health, Action, Mind and Force Cost. To calculate the displayed assembly percentage you need to know the weighted average of all the available lines and then divide that number by four. And knowing the percentages for each line is very important since using resouces that gives you a better displayed percentages might not be the best for the single line.






http://forums.swganh.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=199&sid=b46cad20d33b55015ee6ed5597c57430

Almost every item that can be experimented on has stats . These stats are tied to particular experimentation categories. Wind generators have two categories: Efficiency (tied to extraction rate) and Storage (tied to hopper size).

The experimental categories are displayed as percentages between 0% and 100%. The success type of the experiment ("good success", "great success", "moderate failure") determines how much improvement (or deterioration) is applied to that percentage. For example, a "great success" increases the category +7 for every point you spent; spend 5 points and get a great success, and the percentage increases by 35.

Stats on in-game items have a minimum value (at 0% experimentation) and a maximum value (at 100%). The actual value of the stat is calculated using a linear scale between these two points and the experimental percentage you reached. You take the minimum stat value and add the stat range (Max - Min) times the experimental percentage.

For example, crafting tools have a minimum effectiveness value of -15 and a maximum effectiveness of 15. If you experiment Effectiveness to 65%, the actual stat will be:

-15 + (15 - (-15) ) * 0.65 = -15 + 30 * 0.65 = 4.5

The higher you experiment a category, the closer you get to the max possible on the stats associated with that category. In elite crafting professions (mainly weaponsmith and armorsmith), items have subcomponents which also influence final stats.

The limits on the "best" item you can make is determined by the hard-coded maximum at 100% experimentation,and resource quality. Resource stats determine both the maximum experimentation percentage and (along with the assembly success) the starting experimentation percentage







http://forums.swganh.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=214


Every time you experiment, the item complexity raises by 1, which raises the risk of failure. (I also heard that higher complexity item requires higher rate of insurance, though I cannot verify this). It�s recommended to spend multiple points every experiment to reduce the chance of failure. Also you should only spend points in one attribute only in every experiment attempt since addition attributes beyond the first attribute adds +5% to the total risk. It�s better to spread the experiments on several attempts and one attribute per attempt.

stats

Your assumption is correct, all experimentation in SWG uses this formula :

Stat = [Base value at 0% experimentation] + ([Increase/%] x [Experimental Percentage])

For example : X-Wing : Mass = 97500 + (5000 x E) with E = Experimental Percentage

The initial and maximum Experimental Percentage depend on the resource stats, resource amounts and the applicable stat percentages for the item youre making. These values make up the Weighted Resource Value and determine the initial and maximum experimental percentage this way :

Initial EP = 0.00000015 x WRV^2 + 0.00015 x WRV Maximum EP = 0.001 x WRV

Source References

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