Catapults Skillgain Bugged

[Fawkes 1,567]

I haven't been able to get a single catapulting tick after nearly an hour of trying, even though I can usually get around 20-30 ticks in this time.

[Holar 1,484]

What skill are you at?

[Fawkes 1,567]

63.81 right now

[ErikN 452]

Skill gain for catapults was changed due to an exploit, It can now only give skill when hitting something.
However I noted that it also required the target to be damaged, but I changed that just now so that it won't care if you damage you target as long as you hit it, that way the ammo used wont matter as much.

[rosedragon 2,282]

So two days ago I do cata and I got like 70-80% chance of hitting target with below 10 cata skill and 40ql 80weight tin ore, and skillgain normally.

 

Today me and a friend with 0 cata skill launched 40+ ores, and even when we hit and do damage, there is ZERO cata skillgain, only one war machine skillgain got. To make it worse, we have like 5-10% chance of hitting target.. please fix, bashing walls is just too slow for perimeter bashing.

[Aristia 37]

Did some quick testing on what Rose said, there is zero skill gain ticks being given and the chance to hit has been severely tampered with that makes skilling catapults near impossible, if what ErikN has written is suppose to happen.

 

Please revert it back to what it was - this just does not work, catapulting with 80kg weight should be easy to achieve the max hit, not a lottery as to whether you ever hit at all, nevermind ever get a skill tick again.

[ErikN 452]

A revert is not possible due to the reason it was changed, an all out rewrite/redesign of that part of the code is however is.

[rosedragon 2,282]

I need to cata.. let us know if it was fixed plox.. thanks!

Supposedly.. cata is better than bashing with large maul. If large maul (that have no fail chance) is better, then I have no use of cata.

Edited November 8, 2013 by rosedragon

[hoof2000 278]

as of today no skill gain at all. i destroyed a couple of stone walls ... ergo i did hit them and did damage to them but no skill gain. not even an characteristic skill was gained.

[Pescadera 34]

Hopefully this gets fixed soon, as I have 30+ walls to remove and rebuild. With 1 skill in catapulting and seemingly no chance of skillgain, this might be quite difficult.

[ErikN 452]

With exactly 1 in catapulting skill you should have ~53% chance to hit and ~38.9% chance that the hit will give skill.

 

This is an average calculated based on 500 catapulting actions with exactly 1 in skill and with only 10 winches (catapult ql 44).

 

For catapulting distance = difficulty, meaning at lower skill levels a shorter distance will lead to more hits, and more skill gains.

 

I made a lot of tests yesterday with catapulting and have concluded that skill gain is not bugged, as in it's possible to gain skill, the difficulty will however need to be tweaked as it is not having enough of an effect at higher skill levels.

How much skill gained per gain needs to be increased as well I think. I made two different tests with this yesterday, one started with 1 in skill and fired 100 rock shards at walls with 10 winches and at the end had 7,6 in skill.

The other test started at 20 and ended with 21.13, same distance as the first test.

 

 

Skill level: 1

Distance 11 (10 winches):  ~53% chance to hit and ~38.9% chance a hit will give skill.

Distance 21 (20 winches):  ~39% chance to hit and ~32.8% chance a hit will give skill.

Distance 41 (40 winches):  ~14.4% chance to hit and ~8.3% chance a hit will give skill.

 

Skill level: 20

Distance 11 (10 winches):  ~92.8% chance to hit and ~40.3% chance a hit will give skill.

Distance 21 (20 winches):  ~89.2% chance to hit and ~46.6% chance a hit will give skill.

Distance 41 (40 winches):  ~69.4% chance to hit and ~44.9% chance a hit will give skill.

 

Skill level: 50

Distance 11 (10 winches):  ~99.9% chance to hit and ~7% chance a hit will give skill.

Distance 21 (20 winches):  ~99.8% chance to hit and ~8.6% chance a hit will give skill.

Distance 41 (40 winches):  ~95.6% chance to hit and ~35.5% chance a hit will give skill.

This is the numbers that I got after doing catapulting 500 times for each distance and skill level, when reviewing the data I can see that 500 actions is too low to give very accurate data since in some cases the quirks of random number generators are quite visible, at one time I hit all 500 actions in a row at a greater distance then in the test before it give a lot higher hit % then it should have been.

 

The numbers do however give some inclination on the odds on hitting and getting skill.

All these tests was made on an epic test server off deed with a 44QL catapult, so no permissions or rules could block it from happening.

[rosedragon 2,282]

Isn't test server use epic curve? I and my friend use 21 winch to cata on the previous cata gain I mentioned... it is problematic when that many throw result nothing. I guess this somehow put cata to absolute pvp-use and not for replacement of bashing on pve >_> ...

[ErikN 452]

The public test servers have different settings, don't remember which server is which right now. Most of the time I start a local server to do tests since it allows me to step through the code and actually whats going on.

Catapults are mostly intended for pvp use, but that don't mean all is fine and well with how things are. 
 

I do think that the chance to gain skill at lower levels might need a boost, just to kick things off and make it less frustrating to get the skill up to a more usable level.

At 10 skill and 20 winches the hit chance is ~69.8% and the chance to gain skill ~50.1%. 

And as the way random works 50% can result in a lot of actions in a row that give nothing.

[fjalke 29]

I have taken down 12 low walls with catapults now, my skill is 25.20 and haven't had a single skill tick.

 

12 walls is at least 5 hits pr. wall = 60 hits

 

According to this: Distance 11 (10 winches):  ~92.8% chance to hit and ~40.3% chance a hit will give skill

 

It seems very unlike that it works as intended. Maybe it is because it is on deed?

[Sklo:D 2,210]

Found out the same, but I wonder if it should not work as Archery or Fighting, where skill gain is based on damage.

[ErikN 452]

I have taken down 12 low walls with catapults now, my skill is 25.20 and haven't had a single skill tick.

 

12 walls is at least 5 hits pr. wall = 60 hits

 

According to this: Distance 11 (10 winches):  ~92.8% chance to hit and ~40.3% chance a hit will give skill

 

It seems very unlike that it works as intended. Maybe it is because it is on deed?

It could be something to do with deed, but it could also be bad luck. As far as it goes with random even if it's 40% chance that could result in 60 misses in a row out of 100.

I took a look at 30 in my spreadsheet and the drop in % compared to 20 is significant.

I simulated catapulting with 10 winches at skill 20, 25 and 30 and got some more data (3000 actions each).

 

Skill 20: 38%

Skill 25: 29%

Skill 30: 20%

 

While these number is not 100% correct they do seem to be rather accurate when I do manual tests.

 

It might be worthwhile to say that after 20 in skill the difficulty(distance) have less effect on hit % then it has on skill gain %, meaning at greater distances you can still have a good hit % and a better % for skill gain.

 

 

But in order to investigate this properly I will need more information.

Such as Which server you are on (tells me how to configure mine to find permission bugs)

If you are standing on deed or off deed.

Firing on something on a deed or off deed.

Is it on your deed.

Do you have permission to destroy.

Is it an enemy kingdoms deed.

Is it a deed of a member of the same kingdom that you are at war with.

[ErikN 452]

I have decided to redesign things again so that the old skill gain can come back excluding the exploiting possibilities.

I have simulated the gains for some skill levels and concluded that it had a far to big impact at lower levels.

 

At skill one before the changes there was ~ 80% chance that a hit would give skill after it was more like 40%.

[GroeneAppel 373]

Last raid (about a week ago) I've catad down serveral walls. I've not gotten a single tick.

[DOE 140]

I just knocked down 5 walls, at 10 winches. I did not get any skill gain. I was using 40 QL catapult and around 70 QL rock shards. I am also on the epic cluster. Should I just find a huge village and fire down 1k rock shards and make my own skill gain chart

[DOE 140]

I found the trick to it Winch it 11 times not 10

[Nadroj 3,554]

I havn't gained a single bit of catapult skill in about 2 months despite being the highest skilled catapulter in our kingdom and pretty much always operating one on our raids.... whats going on with this? O.o

[ErikN 452]

I havn't gained a single bit of catapult skill in about 2 months despite being the highest skilled catapulter in our kingdom and pretty much always operating one on our raids.... whats going on with this? O.o

That would predate the changes to catapulting so it's not related to that. But the skill check for catapulting follows the normal rules, your effective skill (if it's on the curve or not) + bonuses vs difficulty.

For catapulting the distance from where you fired to where it landed is used to calculate the difficulty. The higher difficulty it is the higher chance there is that a successful skill check will result in skill gain.

For 1 in skill vs 2 difficulty it's something around 50% chance to get a successful roll and 80% that a success result in skill gain. 

 

As you skill increases your chance to get a successful roll closes in on 100% while your chances of gaining skill is reduces, the only way to keep your chances for skill gain up is to increase the difficulty, for catapulting that would mean firing at a target from a greater distance.

 

With that said, there is always the possibility that the difficulty don't scale well enough so that it will always be too easy for your skill.

[Redd 4,281]

Can you look into the catapulting system? The whole thing is a little flawed right now. For example. It is impossible to hit certain tiles which are too high from the catapult. 

 

Maybe have a system where you, for example, winch 10 and it'll tell you "You will hit a small stone wall", before you actually fire. Right now you can hit a building and it'll say "you hit a stone wall" or sometimes it'll say "you hit (buildingname)" which can mean that you're not hitting a wall, or you are.

 

The whole system is completely random, there needs to be a propper way to actually calculate the catapulting range without having to randomly fire for the first 10 shots or so. I love the collision stuff, where you will hit a building higher then the one u wanna hit instead, but its firing up to something or down to something whcih is just incalculable.