Post by uncoolio on Mar 2, 2024 15:51:21 GMT -5
It's your friendly old twink here to educate you. This came up today in a GDB thread, so I thought I'd lecture you.
These are skills that only have a chance to go up when you fail, and the kpc determines what that chance actually is. I don't know the math behind the exact chances, but I do know what the kpc values are for each class. Their starting offense/defense is also based on this. I'm only going to list the combat and mixed classes because nobody gives a flying fuck what kind of off/def craftspersons and dune traders have.
The more you have in the associated KPC, the more "wiggle room." An enforcer has a higher off_kpc than a raider does, so their chance to gain against an opponent with lower defense than the enforcer's offense is reduced by a smaller amount, and the point at which there's no chance to gain is also pushed further away. Basically, a higher KPC makes it easier to gain from lesser opponents. However, when it comes of off_kpc, this becomes somewhat irrelevant as you stop actually missing your attacks before you can really benefit from this. There are tricks you could use to eke out a little more, like blindfighting, but that's widely regarded as twinking and staff might smack you down for it. Players have been known to get sanctioned for that stuff.
On the other hand, defense takes longer to raise than offense and weapon skills while you're still able to raise both. You just tend to attack more often than you get attacked, on average. Prior to reaching the offense plateau, it's not at all unusual to get 10-15 misses in a fight. You don't get very many fights where you take 10-15 hits. Maybe if you're sparring with elves, or are so unskilled that fighting things like chaltons is actually gainful for you. On the whole, you will take far fewer hits over the course of your character's life than you will dish out, and for that reason, you want to maximize the chance of gaining defense when you do get hit. You can keep attacking until there's nothing left to swing at, but you can't keep getting hit over and over in one session. That's another reason def_kpc is superior.
Since the class with the highest offense (meaning it has the hardest time raising weapon skills) is also the only one that branches a class-defining skill (backstab/sap) from weapon skills, this is a pretty big problem for enforcers. That's why you're more or less forced to waste your subclass on something that lets you start with backstab/sap. If not, you may never branch it, and then there was no point playing an enforcer.
That's why defense and def_kpc are superior. You generally don't find yourself unable to get hit anymore, but you very much do end up in a position where you can't miss your attacks; and since NPCs tend to have more offense than defense, you also profit more from a high def_kpc than you would from a high off_kpc. Even if a high off_kpc technically gives you a larger window for gaining against targets whose defense is lower than your offense, this doesn't matter when you can't miss your attacks against them.
One of the more obscure and little-known aspects of the combat code is the skillgain coefficients for offense and defense. In the actual code, they're called off_kpc and def_kpc. I don't know what 'kpc' actually stands for, but it's the value that determines how good your class is at gaining offense and defense. Also, weapon skills are tied to off_kpc.
Class Off_KPC Def_KPC Starting Offense Starting Defense
ENFORCER 60 40 20 10
RAIDER 40 60 10 20
FIGHTER 50 50 15 15
INFILTRATOR 55 35 ?? ??
SCOUT 35 55 ?? ??
SOLDIER 45 45 ?? ??
MISCREANT 50 30 ?? ??
STALKER 30 50 ?? ??
LABORER 40 40 ?? ??
(The entries marked as ?? are because I don't remember. I saw the data once but I forgot what the non-heavy ones
had in starting off/def. You can easily see the pattern, though. Basically subtract a few points for each tier you
go down on the combat spectrum. If enforcer starts with 20 offense, infiltrator probably has 18 and miscreant 15
or thereabouts).
Criminal classes: high offense, low defense
Wilderness classes: high defense, low offense
City classes: equal balance between both
Note how even the mixed criminal class (miscreant) has a much higher off_kpc (50) than the
heavy-combat wilderness class (raider, 40). Same goes the other way around for defense.
These gain chances are affected by the defense/offense of the thing you're fighting. The higher their defense is, the better chance you have to gain if you miss an attack against them, and vice versa when they hit you. If you get hit by something whose offense is lower than your defense, the chance to gain is smaller--and if the difference is too big, there may be no chance at all. Conversely, if theirs is higher than yours, the chance goes up.
Why is def_kpc good?
Well, the first answer is the most obvious: defense has a huge impact on your survivability, and surviving is pretty important in a permadeath game. There's more to it than that, though.
You can always get hit, and for that reason, you can always gain defense, provided that there's something with high enough offense that you can survive getting hit by. Unlike offense and weapon skills, you never really end up in a position where it's impossible for you to find something that can hit you. You can always fight unarmed and/or sitting. Moreover, NPCs tend to have more offense than defense.
Many of the dangerous creatures in the game have crap defense but compensate for it with high natural armor and health. Well, that doesn't help you, because you only get anything out of missing your attacks. Meanwhile, they often have high offense. If you just play the game organically, you will probably end up with more defense than offense just because defense isn't bottlenecked as much. That makes it much more valuable to have a high def_kpc.
Why is off_kpc bad?
Mostly because of the plateau. Sooner or later - and in most cases, much sooner than one would have hoped - you reach a point where there's just nothing that can dodge your attacks anymore. You've hit a wall and can no longer improve your offense or weapon skills, so now your off_kpc is irrelevant. Having a high off_kpc lets you reach this point faster, but it's not much of a benefit because any combat class reaches this point fast enough to not worry about how long it takes.
On top of this, the classes with high off_kpc also have high starting offense. Since they don't get an equivalent boost to starting weapon skills, this means that when they do plateau, their weapon skills will be stuck at a lower level than they would if playing a class with lower starting offense. Since weapon skills are more useful than raw offense, it's disadvantageous when offense makes up too big a percentage of the sum of factors that bring you to the plateau.
Let's take Rick the Raider and Evan the Enforcer. R starts with 10 offense and E starts with 20. They both start with something like 15 in slashing weapons. By the time they hit the pleateau, R might have 35 offense and 35 slashing while E has 45 offense and 25 slashing. These numbers are just for illustrative purposes, but they get the point across. R and E are both at the point where they can't really get any better because none of the things that they can regularly fight have high enough defense to dodge their attacks, but R's slashing skill is higher than E's, and that's more valuable. Also, R can get his defense higher in the meantime because the raider class is better at that, and defense isn't bottlenecked the same way.
Can off_kpc be good?
In theory, sure. If you're uniquely fortunate and have access to some ancient badass with extremely high defense who is willing to spar with you regularly over the course of a long period of time, you will be able to max out your weapon skills, and then your off_kpc just makes this easier. However, almost nobody has this luxury, and if you do, it's not as if the higher off_kpc really makes a meaningful difference. It just cuts down the time it takes. In fact, if you and Mr. Badass are sufficiently twinky and spar over and over to the point where you're guaranteed to gain in every session, the off_kpc doesn't even help. A raider with a low off_kpc would also have gained. And since you can only get hit so many times in a sparring match before you have to stop, a high def_kpc is much more valuable.
Still, off_kpc does also have a tiny bit of merit even for those who don't have access to Sensei Badass three times a day for a quarter of a year. When you've plateaued, you generally stop missing against the things you can fight on a regular basis--but there might be the occasional opportunity to fight something different. Maybe you're going on an ankheg hunt and you get four or five misses. Then your high off_kpc gave you a better chance to eke out an extra point. It doesn't amount to very much, since these opportunities will probably be rare, but it might give you a tiny morsel of benefit every once in a while.
Also, if your only priority is to become deadly very fast, off_kpc obviously helps with that. Picking enforcer lets you reach the plateau so quickly that it's kind of silly. If you put your mind to it, it takes just a few days of play to become as effective in combat (offensively, at least) as 90% of characters ever get to be. Go spar with the gith every time you can for like three days and you're there. If you have some specific reason to fast-track yourself that way (maybe you want to reenact the era of Dwarven Tavern Gankers or something), off_kpc lets you do this quickly enough that the investment is minimal. Your defense will be trash and you won't have a well-rounded character, but you will be a menace to vulnerable characters.
Can def_kpc be bad?
No.
Why is high offense bad?
I already explained that! Why the hell are you asking me again? Are you stupid? Fine, I can elaborate a little. Basically, offense is your enemy. Your accuracy with attacks is derived from a sum of various factors, most notably offense and weapon skill; but other than accuracy, offense doesn't do very much. Meanwhile, weapon skill also improves your parry chance against attacks with that weapon type, so it's much more valuable. High starting offense makes it harder to raise weapon skills, and makes you hit the plateau at a lower weapon skill level than you would if you had played a class with a lower starting offense.
Think of it like calories and weight gain. If you want to gain x amount of weight, what's healthiest: 2000 calories comprised of chocolate, or 2000 calories comprised of vegetables? In the end, 2000 calories (which here represents the plateau) yields the same amount of weight gain no matter the source (I think? Right? I'm no nutritionist), but getting these calories from chocolate (representing offense) is nowhere near as healthy as veggies (representing weapon skills). You want as many of your calories to come from weapon skills as possible, and as few as possible from offense, because that just gets in the way, you fatty.
Furthermore, Evan the Enforcer already starts out with such a high offense score that most of the things he can safely fight in the beginning cannot dodge his attacks with any real regularity--and the things that can dodge enough to give meaningful gains, like tarantulas, gith and mantis, cannot be safely fought in the beginning. As such, you have to raise your defense/parry for a while before you even begin to progress offensively. Meanwhile, Rick the Raider with his low starting offense can get plenty of misses off of scrabs and whatnot, and he's also gaining defense faster when he fights them. By the time your enforcer's skills are good enough to safely start fighting gith and mantis, the raider has raised his offense to the same level as you, brought his weapon skills higher than you, and also has a head start on defense on top because his def_kpc is better.
Anyway, yeah, get a high agi raider friend and you'll have a great sparring partner. Use your stats and skills responsibly, my friends.