Is there max skill gains/mob?

[Serica]

Neil doesn't need to prove anything here, it has been the accepted theory for many years that mobs only carry a limited amount of skillgains, entirely independent from player(s).

You were the one coming up with something that's just in your head, and maybe that of a few of your mates, presenting it as if it were facts.



You've lost me there - read that part again, and tell me if it actually makes any sense, especially the "after it has stopped" part.

And, how "can get a mob to keep giving defensive skills"? Who claimed that??

I guess you didn't read the thread on the links I supplied last time.

I'll quote the relevant posts in full this time so you don't have to bother cliking on a link:

This is quite old implementation to cut off too easy skilling of evade and other defence skills. Imagine MOD Fap autoclick and 30 troxies around But after you stop getting any skills theres a method to start it over, you just have try to sweat mob or just shoot it with M2100 and skill gains start again.

Yup, its like the 'creature is in a condition where it cannot be damaged or sweated" implementation, its possible to reset it.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

...

I'll do some formal testing and report back with my results.

Thanks Neil, I'll look forward to seeing the results to see if they differ from the above observations from others.

If you like, I can split this part of thread out to a separate one, as we've strayed a good bit off-topic from the OP

Oh, and skills don't have a TT value. The ESI has a TTvalue - adding skills to one actually produces a skill-chip with a LOWER TT value. And seeing as it seems I need to provide a quote for everything I post:

...MA don't save any money by giving out less skill value since skills themselves don't have TT value, the ESI does.
...

[Neil Stockton]

Oh, and skills don't have a TT value. The ESI has a TTvalue - adding skills to one actually produces a skill-chip with a LOWER TT value. And seeing as it seems I need to provide a quote for everything I post:

That's true! I didn't realize skills have no TT value in themselves... only markup.

Thanks Neil, I'll look forward to seeing the results to see if they differ from the above observations from others.

I'm in the process of testing, and preliminary results on punies indicate that I was correct... after mobs are sucked dry of defensive skills, they will not give skills to another avatar. Will post full results of experiment later.

[Serica]

Okie doke, I've also sent a pm to Doer on PCF (OP of 'Defense Skills; OR, everything you ever wanted to know about Evade but were too lazy to search for') to see if he's done any specific testing on this issue in the past as well.

If I come across any baby mobs today, I'll test to confirm that sweating and/or any other mob interaction still 're-sets' the skills as has been previously stated on PCF too.

[Neil Stockton]

If I come across any baby mobs today, I'll test to confirm that sweating and/or any other mob interaction still 're-sets' the skills as has been previously stated on PCF too.

Interaction doesn't "reset" them, at least not according to my still-preliminary results (I'm using Carabok and they don't really agro without provocation, so you have to shoot at them to start the experiment).

[Serica]

15min in front of a Snable F young and lots of hits, but not a single defensive skill message yet... and this is the 2nd one I've tried (with the first one I gave up after 5min and shot it )

This could take a while

I'll give ripper a try when I'm on again in a few hours, and if that doesnt work

Found another recent thread on PCF (Oct12), with some relevance: http://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/fo...-training-area

(See Danimal's posts)

Perhaps until sometime fairly recently, there was a difference between how defence skills were limited with space mobs and planet-based mobs, which has since been applied universe-wide ? (That's only a guess ofc)

[Neil Stockton]

OK, here's my report:

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.

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?
- 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?

[saradu]

Serica.. wind ya neck in..you speak of what you think sounds like old school players and such without knowing this as fact, as a moderator your opinion on such matters needs to be one of neutrality in my humble opinion. Rights and wrongs on both sides of the actual in-game experience that started this thread.

I have to agree with you on this one Max

[Serica]

Serica.. wind ya neck in..you speak of what you think sounds like old school players and such without knowing this as fact, as a moderator your opinion on such matters needs to be one of neutrality in my humble opinion. Rights and wrongs on both sides of the actual in-game experience that started this thread.

I have to agree with you on this one Max

I must have missed the forum rule that says I'm not permitted to post of my personal observations of player interaction, let alone an opinion...

And I guess that would be that there isn't one (I can't quite imagine anyone managing to gag JC )

I do however abide by the forum rules that ARE there (except sometimes 3.2 where posts can stray a bit off-topic ... )

And so, to drag this thread back on topic a bit, let me just underline that I agree there were wrongs on both sides in the OP (as I thought I'd made clear earlier).

I don't condone a player following someone and killing their mobs any more than I condone a player killing a mob that someone else is sweating. In each case, it's interfering with another person's gameplay. I only said that I'd seen that happen as an outcome of other encounters of the same type in the past 6yrs.

[Serica]

Neil, I wish I could say I could confirm your findings, but so far it's just been difficult to collect any evidence at all.

Over a period of two hours ingame, standing with mobs hitting me for 10min or so at a time, I received only 3 defensive skill gain messages:
1 from Ripper Young (but none from the subsequent 3 attempts I tried as well)
1 from an Exa Old (but none from the subsequent couple)
and 1 from a Bery Mature.

The mobs I tried were:
. Groups of Punies
. Ripper Young (in 1's and 2's)
. Exa Young thru to Old
. Daikiba Mature thru to Provider
. Bery Mature to Old

I'm only level 22 Evader, so I would have thought I'd get a bit more than that even from those (admittedly low-level) mobs.
As my husband doesn't have an EU account that I can use to test stuff at low levels, I guess I'll just have to keep trying different mobs and maturities til I find one that will consistently give me some defensive skill gains so that I can do a baseline comparative.

On the plus side, I've got a bit more Paramedic and Biotropian than when I started, and it was an extremely cheap way to spend the evening

One thing I did notice was the number of mobs that just 'vanish' and then another re-spawns a few minutes later (not always the same mob or maturity ofc, but consistent with the spawn parameters of the location. This has happened for a while ofc, and iirc was introduced to cut down on the mob-on-a-stick type of thing that was so darn annoying for hunters. But this behaviour would presumably help 're-cycle' any mobs that get 'sucked dry' of skills as you suggest.

And Fish, careful with the 'old' cracks... just 'cos your wife sometimes calls me 'mum' doesn't make me your mother-in-law's age

[Neil Stockton]

Neil, I wish I could say I could confirm your findings, but so far it's just been difficult to collect any evidence at all.

Over a period of two hours ingame, standing with mobs hitting me for 10min or so at a time, I received only 3 defensive skill gain messages:
1 from Ripper Young (but none from the subsequent 3 attempts I tried as well)
1 from an Exa Old (but none from the subsequent couple)
and 1 from a Bery Mature.

The mobs I tried were:
. Groups of Punies
. Ripper Young (in 1's and 2's)
. Exa Young thru to Old
. Daikiba Mature thru to Provider
. Bery Mature to Old

I'm only level 22 Evader, so I would have thought I'd get a bit more than that even from those (admittedly low-level) mobs.
As my husband doesn't have an EU account that I can use to test stuff at low levels, I guess I'll just have to keep trying different mobs and maturities til I find one that will consistently give me some defensive skill gains so that I can do a baseline comparative.

I suppose you need to find something that hits very fast. Carabok are level 10 and hit every 3 seconds or so. It could be that there is a time limit for receiving skill messages (say, the first 5 minutes), and if you don't get hit enough in that time to gain skill, you won't receive any skill ups at all. With Carabok, my avatar (lvl 21 evader) gets 1-4 skillups in 5 minutes (with 4 mobs attacking).