Combatives fix

Phrozehn
Posts: 41
Joined: Tue Feb 14, 2017 3:35 pm

Re: Combatives fix

Post by Phrozehn »

Just gonna paste my idea from my post:

It seems the consensus is that a 10% chance to lose your shinobi to an unlucky mutton slice is just too much RNG and for many may invalidate it. Personally I don't necessarily think it kills the perk. I'll still use it. However, I do think there's a better solution.

My idea is to reduce the chances of successfully counterattacking so it is no longer the uber antimuton ability it currently is like 1.5 currently does (maybe even to 80%!) but also to either GUARAUNTEE a graze on that (or all) melee attacks or reduce melee damage by a static amount like with Iron Skin for mechs.

The graze option is my preference as it's more elegant, being more thematic and also scales better through the game, rather than being very strong early but falling off as attacks grow stronger. It also makes the perk more effective on high dodge characters, meaning that a tank shinobi could almost get back to the original perk levels of power, but it takes effort and a specific build to achieve, while a shooty-spec gunner or shinobi won't. This is my favorite part of my idea. It also synergizes with evasive for a powerful combo, assuming you keep evasive up, or choose it at all in the first place.

The obvious point here is to keep combative relevant and strong without it being too exploity as it stands. So the result is we have a fairly reliable counter to melee units, but it isn't absolute. We can be punished, but not in an instagib way that Will totally dissuade some people from taking it. Besides, it makes sense that a melee combatant will be more adept at avoiding and minimizing incoming damage.

Would love to hear your thoughts!
Dwarfling
Posts: 524
Joined: Wed Jan 25, 2017 12:16 pm

Re: Combatives fix

Post by Dwarfling »

The graze could still stun:2 you or put you unconcious. My guess is, if you ever plan to use this skill, you would need the Shinobi to have both high natural HP, the best vest you can muster and at least combat armor. No more 3hp rookies going for blade Shinobi.
deducter
Posts: 43
Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2017 3:47 am

Re: Combatives fix

Post by deducter »

Lightning Reflexes in LW1 was -90% to hit for the first overwatch shot and it's still incredibly good. Vanilla EU/EW Lightning Reflexes was -100%.
Phrozehn
Posts: 41
Joined: Tue Feb 14, 2017 3:35 pm

Re: Combatives fix

Post by Phrozehn »

If you guarantee that a hit when you have Combatives on will graze, you further increase the chance that it'll be a total miss, and can then spec and gear your tank shinobi to eventually get the full 100% chance to miss. Tank shinobis will then have a super powerful mid/late game ability in Combatives if they stack dodge and grab evasive.
Thrombozyt
Posts: 76
Joined: Tue Feb 14, 2017 10:37 am

Re: Combatives fix

Post by Thrombozyt »

deducter wrote:Lightning Reflexes in LW1 was -90% to hit for the first overwatch shot and it's still incredibly good. Vanilla EU/EW Lightning Reflexes was -100%.
This isn't correct. LW1 Lightning Reflexes multiplied the chance to hit with 10% (resulting in a 90% reduction). The LW2 version subtracts 100% from the to-hit- chance resulting in negative chances most of the time. -90% on to-hit-chance wouldn't matter much because only sentinels reach this level of aim. They are the ones that can actually graze even on LW2 lightning reflexes (95ish aim in overwatch minus 100 equals -5%, if they roll a 96 or better on the aim roll, they fall within the graze band.
Swiftless
Posts: 59
Joined: Wed Apr 26, 2017 4:31 pm

Re: Combatives fix

Post by Swiftless »

Just another two cents on the pile but I've been rolling Combatives against Mutons for a while now without a problem. Was on a mission last night and my best bladenobi was oneshot killed when Combatives failed to proc. Not sure what the max damage roll for Muton melee damage is but he hit a 2 ablative 5 HP character and that was game over. Which I think brings me back to my own personal dislike for these small % chance of failures being used for balance because when they do fail they can fail really really badly in the 'punching the monitor' sort of way. If it needs to be nerfed I'd actually prefer the large sort of binary swing to be adjusted such that it's actually more random but you don't lose top soldiers on a whim. It does feel overly OP until that one time it feels completely stupid.
Thrombozyt
Posts: 76
Joined: Tue Feb 14, 2017 10:37 am

Re: Combatives fix

Post by Thrombozyt »

How about a 25% chance for the Muton to hit, reducing the Muton damage to 3-5/5-7/7-9 (Muton/Centurion/Elite) with chance to stun for 2/3/4 turns or knock unconscious (50% each for a total of 100% of the hits). That way, the Shinobi survives but your still in trouble.

All in all I'm still happy, because a 10% chance to have the Shinobi killed puts it into the 'last resort' corner where going toe to toe with a Muton just armed with a sword should belong to.
merkmerk
Posts: 36
Joined: Wed Jul 05, 2017 3:29 pm

Re: Combatives fix

Post by merkmerk »

Just make it an activated if that's possible

It's still gamey but it's either that, or B.) make it garbage, or 3.) make it just another boring passive booster
Phrozehn
Posts: 41
Joined: Tue Feb 14, 2017 3:35 pm

Re: Combatives fix

Post by Phrozehn »

Making melee hits guarantee a graze will elliminate those shitty instagib scenarios. TO compensate, reduce the chance to 80% or so. It's a good change, because you can then potentially get tank shinobis back to near full original effectiveness by specing them tank and stacking dodge to convert those autograzes to misses. THis is balanced because you nee dot put effort to achieve it, and it still keep sit as a dangerous last resort on Gunners and non-tank shinobis.
nmkaplan
Posts: 207
Joined: Thu Jan 26, 2017 5:14 pm

Re: Combatives fix

Post by nmkaplan »

I just noticed that the line in the 1.5 changelog about combatives was changed from:

"Changed combatives roll from 100 to 90"

to

"Changed combatives roll from 100 to 90, so it will fail a little more often on low dodge soldiers"

Is combatives a roll against the dodge stat? If so, does that mean you only need a 10-dodge soldier to guarantee combatives will proc? Missing from this thread is a discussion of exactly what the mechanic is and how combatives procs. It seems like everyone is assuming that it's a simple % roll (so 100% vs 90%). But the change to the patch notes seems to indicate that it interacts with the dodge stat somehow.

If this is true, it seems like a player can easily mitigate the RNG by taking dodge perks and PCS on shinobis to gaurantee a combatives proc, yes?
Skyfire
Posts: 15
Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2017 11:52 pm

Re: Combatives fix

Post by Skyfire »

nmkaplan wrote:Is combatives a roll against the dodge stat? If so, does that mean you only need a 10-dodge soldier to guarantee combatives will proc? Missing from this thread is a discussion of exactly what the mechanic is and how combatives procs. It seems like everyone is assuming that it's a simple % roll (so 100% vs 90%). But the change to the patch notes seems to indicate that it interacts with the dodge stat somehow.
I went code-diving, and I'm pretty sure I've identified how all this works.

The details bounce back and forth over several files, but the first thing to note is that Combatives hooks into the game's prebuilt melee-counterattack mechanism - any unimpaired unit with a readied counterattack will auto-counter a melee attack that rolls a miss or a dodge.

From there it's relatively simple: the Combatives perk gives the soldier a CombativesPreparation ability which adds COUNTERATTACK_DODGE_AMOUNT worth of dodge to the soldier against melee attacks during the enemy turn. An important thing to note is that this stacks with other dodge effects including the +10 'normal' dodge that the soldier also gets from Combatives.

Upshot of all this: under the old mechanics a minimum-possible-dodge gunner would have -10+10+100 = 100% dodge even with no other bonus. If I'm reading the to-hit formula correctly, a 100% dodge stat straight-up ignores crit-chance, which would mean it's mathematically impossible for any soldier to ever fail a counter without some outside dodge penalty (Red Fog?). If I've misunderstood exactly where the LW2 to-hit over-ride kicks in there will be a small chance for failure when a crit gets demoted to a 'normal' hit instead of a dodge (but A) I don't think I am, and B) the chance still exists regardless of whether we use old- or new-style Combatives...).

Under the new mechanics, Combatives ends up giving 90+10 = 100% rather than 100+10 = 110% bonus dodge, so the cut-off points for a fully-reliable Combatives soldier are a (pre-Combatives) 0-dodge gunner, -2-dodge squaddie shinobi, or a -10 (I.E. even a min-roll) MSGT shinobi.

TL;DR: Any soldier without an outright penalty to dodge is still reliably protected from melee attacks.
nmkaplan
Posts: 207
Joined: Thu Jan 26, 2017 5:14 pm

Re: Combatives fix

Post by nmkaplan »

Skyfire wrote:TL;DR: Any soldier without an outright penalty to dodge is still reliably protected from melee attacks.
If this is true, then pretty much this entire thread is obsolete. The 1.5 change to combatives only really applies to soldiers with very low dodge. And a player can mitigate the RNG by not taking the perk on such a soldier or using a dodge PCS. Much ado about nothing.

Thanks for that analysis, I love it when people take the time to do the code diving. I hope you had fun doing it, because it's very helpful information!

Seems like we should learn ask questions first before collectively freaking out about a change like this :roll:
orion_winterfire
Posts: 68
Joined: Mon Sep 12, 2016 10:12 pm

Re: Combatives fix

Post by orion_winterfire »

nmkaplan wrote:Seems like we should learn ask questions first before collectively freaking out about a change like this :roll:
That's good advice in general.
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