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GSF Custom Map Science!


Drakkolich

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Hey guys so now that we’ve had a little more time after the holidays, my team (Verain, Audson, Skell and Mical) and I have been using our fancy new custom maps to do some science and figure out a few things that have eluded us for a long time.

 

First off we quickly figured out that 2 of the new custom maps are very incorrect.

 

Lost Shipyard Deathmatch is using the Domination Scoreboard and the game actually thinks it’s a Domination map. What you end up with is a Scoreboard that goes to 1000 on each side, with no satellites to cap. It also means no power ups spawn on the map at all, what you’re left with is an empty Lost Shipyards Deathmatch map that has no power ups and goes to time every game.

 

The really funny one is Kuat Mesas Domination which is using the Team Deathmatch scoreboard. This means the score only goes to 50, however all 3 satellites are still on the map so the game quickly ends once one team captures a satellite. I guess we could play some sort of Blitz mode on this map but I doubt it’s going to see much use until that’s fixed. As a quick aside for this map, we seem to hear brand new voice lines when the satellites are captured by either team, we suspect it’s from an earlier build maybe in the beta or something.

 

 

 

Next up we wanted to know the percentage of health your ship is at when it changes colors on your UI. This one was pretty easy to test.

 

Here are the results:

 

Yellow = 80% Hull remaining

Orange = 60% Hull remaining

Red = 40% Hull remaining

 

These results were pretty interesting, I didn’t realize you stayed “green” for the top 20% of your Hull, it means you could be missing 350 health on a Bomber and it would still look green. I also didn’t realize how much bigger the “red” section was, it makes it pretty hard to know just how low you actually are.

 

 

 

Afterwards we decided to test which Dot’s (Damage over time effects) stopped your shields from regenerating.

 

We made a list of each dot in the game and then tested each one on shields to see how they worked.

 

Cluster Missiles - Stop shields

Rocket Pods - Stop shields

Thermite Torpedo - Stop shields

Proton Torpedo - Doesn’t stop shields

Plasma Railgun - Stop shields

Lingering Effect - Doesn’t stop shields

Seismic Mine - Stop shields

Ion mine - Stop shields

Remote Slicing - Stop shields

 

We also learned some extra stuff about these dots while testing them.

 

Clusters, Rocket Pods, Thermite, Plasma all have a weird line of sight thing. If both ships are facing each other and you get hit in the front the dot will continue to tick on that shield arc. If you still have the dot on and turn around and have your rear shield arc facing the ship that hit you with the arc however the dot will swap to tick on the other arc. This also effects which arc is being stopped from regenerating.

 

Ion Mine didn’t seem to have this restriction whatever side you hit the mine with the drain from the mine would continue to drain that arc no matter how much you turned the ship around.

 

Remote slicing was really cool, it drains shields from both arcs at the same time, which means it also stops both arcs from regenerating for it’s duration.

 

 

 

Lastly we tested something we’ve never understood perfectly because it was just so hard to test before now, Sensors! We managed with hours of trying different builds and slowly moving in and out of ranges to finally figure out just how the sensors in GSF work.

 

Sensor Radius: Sensor Radius is the range at which you can detect a ship in any direction, they can be directly behind you and your Sensor Radius will pick them up.

 

The default starting values for each ship class are as follows:

 

Scout: 17500

Strike/Gunship/Bomber : 15000

 

 

Sensor Focus: Sensor Focus is a cone that goes out from your ship to see things directly in front of you, it has a “firing arc” of 29 degrees. If your Sensor Focus has a higher range then your Sensor Radius then you’ll be able to see ships a little further out then your Sensor Radius can while you’re looking in that direction.

 

The default starting values for each ship class are as follows:

 

Scout: 20000

Gunship: 16500

Strike/Bomber: 15000

 

 

Communication Sensors: Communication Sensors reach out and try to find anyone elses Communication Sensor range from a teammate. Once it finds it, it sends all the targets you can see to the other player and vice versa. The ranges are additive, so if I have 10000 Communication range and you have 15000 Communication range as long as we are within 25000 of each other we’re giving each other our target data.

 

The default starting values for each ship class are as follows:

 

Scout/Gunship: 10000

Strike/Bomber: 7500

 

 

Dampening Sensors: Dampening Sensors make it harder for your opponents sensors to detect you, you simply subtract your Dampening Sensors from both their Sensor Radius and Sensor Focus stats when they are trying to detect you. One thing is though you can never lower their Sensors to lower then 15000, that is the minimum range at which a ship can always see you.

 

The default starting values for each ship class are as follows:

 

Scout/Strike/Gunship/Bomber: 0

 

 

Now that we know all the ships starting values we were able to figure out how the sensors minor component and tactical crew passives actually worked.

 

What we found out next was pretty surprising, the Sensor Focus passive that says it gives you +3500 Sensor Focus doesn’t actually give 3500. What it does give is +5000 Sensor Focus.

 

With all these values in mind here are a few fun values you can get too.

 

A T1 Scout (Novadive/Blackbolt) that takes Range Sensors and both the Sensor Radius and Sensor Focus tactical passives will have 25500 Sensor Radius and 30000 Sensor Focus. This means even vs a full Dampening ship you could see it at 24000 if it was in your Sensor Focus arc.

 

Lets say you have 2 T1 Gunships, both are using the Sensor Focus and Dampening passives. One has Range Sensors and the other has Dampening. Their Sensor stats would look like this

 

Range Gunship

Sensor Radius: 20000

Sensor Focus: 26500

Dampening: 2000

 

Dampening Gunship

Sensor Radius: 15000

Sensor Focus: 21500

Dampening: 6000

 

If both these ships were slowly moving towards each other the Range Gunship would see the Dampening one at 20500 Focus or at 15000 Radius. The Dampening Gunship would see the Range one at 19500 Focus or at 15000 Radius.

 

I find this really interesting as I always took Dampening Sensors on my Gunships but in reality it’s probably slightly better to take Ranged Sensors to see further. This is especially true because the T1 and 2 Strike fighters (Rycer/Starguard and Quell/Pike) can only get a maximum of 20000 Sensor Focus and 17000 Sensor Radius, which means with my 2000 Dampening I’m already getting them close to the 15000 mark anyways, where as I get to see them at a whopping 26500.

 

 

Learning all this new sensor information probably won’t affect much of the gameplay since Communication Sensors are so powerful at relaying information from teammate to teammate, but it is really nice to know just how they work and who knows maybe we’ll see some build changes come out of it.

 

 

 

These new Custom maps have been absolutely fantastic to test things out on, thank you so much to Bioware for adding them in. Hopefully this has been helpful to some of you out there and if you’ve tested out some things on the new custom maps I encourage you to post them in here.

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