1. This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn More.

Defensive skills

Discussion in 'Skills' started by Neil, Dec 30, 2012.

  1. Neil

    Neil Adviser Pro Users Arkadia Adviser

    Messages:
    3,094
    Likes Received:
    276
    Trophy Points:
    83
    I think most of you probably don't check EF regularly, so I wanted to bring some info from there over to here. The topic is the defensive skills you get from mobs: basically, skills contributing to the professions of evader, dodger, and captain. There are some knowns and unknowns about this process, so I think it would be good to have a discussion of it here.

    Most of us know that a mob only gives defensive skills for a short time (several minutes) at which point you see no more defensive skillups. The discussion at EF was whether this cutoff of skills was just for your avatar or for any avatar that wandered across a "dry" mob later.

    Finding that people strongly held differing opinions, I performed a test to see what really happens in this VU. I'll start off the discussion by pasting my results from EF, adding in one or two points.

    Can Another Avatar Drain Your Mob of Skills?

    Methods:
    Carabok were agro'd in groups of four at Dependable firebase academy for a duration of 5 minutes per test. One shot of an ASI-8R was used to start agro. Skilling of defense skills on my avatar is not very fast under these conditions (level 21 evader gets only ~2 skillups in 5 minutes), so my wife's avatar was used for this test. She hardly ever logs in and is only at level 1 evader.

    In the academy, there are four carabok and another Carabok respawns a few seconds after a carcass is looted, so there are only four at any given time. Mobs used were either freshly-spawned or "stale", meaning they had already attacked a different avatar for exactly 5 minutes. To obtain "stale" mobs, I used my avatar to agro them for 5 minutes, then logged out so that my wife's avatar could agro them for another 5 minutes (we only have one EU PC). Stale mobs were alone on radar for no more than 1 minute while my avatar logged out and hers logged in. Carabok are not aggressive until fired upon so she had to shoot each one in order to begin each test (it seems they do sometimes spontaneously attack, but you have to be standing very close for a very long time). Skilling generally stopped about halfway through each test.

    Defensive skillups were counted, this means only the skills that contribute to the evader profession (the amount of skill was not counted, just how many times a green line appeared on chat). Skills resulting from weapon or fap use were not counted.

    Results:
    Here are all 8 of the tests done:

    Stale mobs, # of skillups in 5 minutes
    0
    0
    0
    0

    Fresh mobs, # of skillups in 5 minutes
    19
    23
    17
    25

    Paired T-test: 0.0014 (which means there is approximately a one in 714 chance that there is no difference in skilling between the two different conditions (fresh and stale).

    I should also note that my avatar also did these tests and always received 0 skillups from stale mobs, but because of the low rate of skilling, many more attempts would have to be done to show the same level of significance as with the lower skilled avatar.

    Conclusions:
    One avatar can, in fact, "drain" a mob of defensive skillups. If another avatar then agro's those mobs, that avatar will receive no defensive skills. Carabok can be drained in less than 5 minutes.

    Because of the way the experiment was set up, we can also say with confidence that shooting at a drained mob does not reset it to a "fresh" state. Removing all green dots from radar does not appear to reset them either, unless the radar needs to be empty for more than a minute.

    Note that this experiment was performed with a 10hp Puny mob. It is a reasonable supposition--but not proven--that other mobs behave the same way.

    Further questions:
    - How does evader level affect the total amount of defensive skills received from a mob?
    - Is there anything that triggers a refill or resetting of the mob's defensive skills? Time and absence of green dots on radar has played a role in the past... does it now?
    - Carabok (high frequency attack, high regen, 10hp) were tested. Do other mobs behave the same way and if so, how long/how many skillups do they provide before "empty"?
    - Is there a timer or is it the amount of skills given that determines when a mob becomes empty?
     
    • Like Like x 2
    • Informative Informative x 1
  2. KikkiJikki

    KikkiJikki Well-Known Member Pro Users

    Messages:
    3,323
    Likes Received:
    440
    Trophy Points:
    83
    Great to see some evidence based analysis of game mechanics.
     
  3. Snape

    Snape Master of the BanHammer Staff Member PAF Administrator

    Messages:
    4,235
    Likes Received:
    373
    Trophy Points:
    83
    Excellent thread +rep *Stickied*
     
    • Welcome! Welcome! x 1
  4. clonestar

    clonestar Member

    Messages:
    11
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    6
    I never even thought that this was possible except for skills like sweat gathering... Lol... why not other skills I now realise...
    But still, never even noticed that I don't get any defence skills anymore after certain amount of time, always thought that this was "random" or some other word that MA keeps telling us...
     
  5. Neil

    Neil Adviser Pro Users Arkadia Adviser

    Messages:
    3,094
    Likes Received:
    276
    Trophy Points:
    83
    With this VU's changes to level number (from 10 to 4), it's possible that skill gains have changed. I need to repeat those tests above and see what we have. If rate has changed, then it means that the actual level number affects skilling rate.
     
  6. KikkiJikki

    KikkiJikki Well-Known Member Pro Users

    Messages:
    3,323
    Likes Received:
    440
    Trophy Points:
    83
    Very interesting if thats the case. Previously I had thought that skilling was based primarily on peds expended, along with the kill bonus.
     
  7. stefanbond

    stefanbond Member

    Messages:
    143
    Likes Received:
    4
    Trophy Points:
    18
    very cool information, thank you
     
  8. Spike Black

    Spike Black Active Member

    Messages:
    295
    Likes Received:
    55
    Trophy Points:
    28
    The cut off was to stop people leaving an avatar in a position to be attacked while auto fapping / auto clicking a fap. Like many used to.

    One thing I take from this, to maximize defensive skilling on low level mobs do not wear armor so no decay cost, tag a lot of them either through attacks or sweating and then wait until you stop getting skill before killing them.

    Most of us would kill mobs asap after extracting all sweat or to minimize armor decay thereby reducing the amount of possible defensive skill we could have gotten.
     
  9. Fedi

    Fedi Member

    Messages:
    27
    Likes Received:
    2
    Trophy Points:
    8
    I'm new and all I do is sweat a mob until it's dry then kill it..but the time it takes to sweat it until it's dry, is usually enough to stop getting skills from it anyways.
     
    • Old Old x 2