Lightning Claw Mathhammer issues??

[Aureus]

I'd hate to be that guy, but is anyone else noticing that the lightning claw seems to be outperforming the thunderhammer/storm shield? Which is weird since LC is 20/20 bonus while THSS is 20/30 def. I have yet to lose a single frontal assault with the LC while I've been killed in the very mission I unlocked THSS several times, from the front. Could the LC be incrementing the 20/20 bonus twice for each hand? And the additional 5 to hit for each hand with the tear and rend skill while THSS only gets the 5 from hammerfall? Am I imagining this? Or is this a real thing, and was it intentional and not a mistake?

The dude in question below.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=341441896

I don't know if it is pertinent info, but it illustrates extreme efficacy so i'll say it anyway. I've parked him in a hallway and essentially blocked it for the entirety of a mission, watched broodlords run up to him and break against him like waves on a rock then backed him up toward the evac after the objective was done. This has worked so well since he unlocked the lightning claws at level III, that he has been essentially unkillable since (until I switched him to TH/SS anyway), and he was able to reach level X through kills far before anyone else reached level III.

[Frizbee]

I don't get why the Lightning Claw has the defence buff. Shouldn't it be the shield that boosts defence? Thus, you sacrifice an extra attack (from the second lightning claw) for the extra defence that the shield gives you with the thunder hammer?

[Aureus]

@Ginrikuzuma, they are incredibly good. It only goes uphill from there. If we were brainstorming ways to make TH&SS better, maybe we could have the SS provide some sort of protection from acid pools that some stealers leave on death. That seems to be the only thing that can reliably kill my LC assault terminators.

@Mercutian, To further illustrate your point, i grinded a sergeant from lv 7 to 10 in one mission, parking him in front of the last blast door I had to close to end the mission. I think he was in upward of 500 kills. I should have screenshotted that. I'm rather certain you cannot die in a frontal assault with LC equipped.

[Dunan]

I'm not if I missed something while I was going through the manual. What exactly is the point of defence vs attack values?

[jackx]

It's not explained anywhere afaik, nor is any other part of melee combat resolution, and it's not that easy to deduce, which is why we're all speculating and guessing in this thread.

The removal of draws to make melee "deterministic" is definitely the case, though, and is mentioned and explained in one of the developer diaries (the 1st iirc).

[Herr von Unterfranken]

This is DEFINATELY a thing. I played through all the campaigns in the now "old" Space Hulk vidyagame and learned to hate melee marines, since they only have a slightly higher chance of surviving a melee encounter and so they usually die after killing 1 or 2 genestealers. Only ever had any luck with Space Wolves Melee and Seargents, they did show off some badass melee kill streaks from time to time.
But now, with Ascencion, Melee Marine with Claws is like a psiblock: Doesn't let anything through - one round at a time. With the added bonus of killing hordes of genestealers. NOW I appreciate melee again :D
I'd have to add that I'm playing on normal though, which makes survival quite a bit easier.

[Badda Boom]

Yes - we removed draws because they are boring. Hit hit hit - nothing. In our minds a left over from rolling dice against your buddy in the physical world and then grinning at each other to do it again.

Not fun against the computer.

We decided at that point to remove guard, but to give draws to the Terminator. Heavily increasing melee weapons as something cool to use. But always with the risk of certain death.

A few days before launch we decided that LC's should count as 2 weapons and gain 2 attacks in melee. They were a bit underwhelming before. Now they seem a bit overpowered :-D

This discussion leads to us tracing through the melee calculation once more. It sounds as if there is a bug there exposed by the LC having 2 attacks.

The melee system is supposed to work as follows:

A hit is defined as a successful weapon hit roll. Its a % CtH roll based on the weapon attack rating + unit weapon skill attribute * 10 - target toughness * 5 + bonus/malus.

Defend values are a malus and subtracts the CtH in the above formula. So if a unit ends up with 24% hit chance and is up against someone with high toughness and a 20% defense value, then its more or less guaranteed no-hit.

The attacker rolls all his hits, the defender rolls all his hits - as melee is simultanious.

Then we compare the number of hits. If attacker hits 4 times and defender hits 2 times, the attacker won and does 2 wounds on the defender. Those 2 are then subtracted from the hitpoints (primarily broodlord and armored biomorph relevant)

Draw situations where both attacker and defender have same number of hits count in favour of the Terminator.


What we think is the error with the LC is, that it seems to count double in the defense calculations - times two. So that it gets twice as many defense hits as intended.

We will try to dig through things next week, and possibly remove that double roll as well as look at the SS defense value itself and possibly buff it a bit.

[Spardin]

would be cool if somehow they could work in the thunder hammers 40k rule that it makes it harder for people to fight back who survied a hit from one (the person/thing is blown off there feet).
Also the stormshield should give a much higher def tbh

[Cheapside]

I think its fine the LC are better at offence really. But they might peform a little too well on defence there is very little down size to it when you know you get 2 hits in. where as the Thunder hammer and shield only get one hit and only have the 10% more def and 1 hit less. dont know if this made sence xD

[Badda Boom]

Makes total sense and is how we wanted it to be as well. LC is an offensive weapon combo. THSS defensive

[Mario, Lawyer in Black]

Maybe claws should be the top tier instead of THSS? The defense bonus with claws represents a parry they had in the BG.

[Badda Boom]

In the upcoming 1.0.3 we removed the LC double parry part, and fixed a bug in the SS defense calculation. So THSS is now on par in performance with the (sorry guys) nerfed LC.

Lets see how it plays out, and if its suddenly totally whacky, then we take another look. Your feedback is essential there

[Cheapside]

Nice to see you guys are listening to feedback gj man :D

[jackx]

Thank you very much for the detailed explanation. :)

[Aureus]

@drizle Just fyi the lightning claw didn't have a parry in the 3rd edition BG, that was the power sword. the LC only had an additional attack.

@ silverleech, I definitely agree with you removing draws. Conclusive encounters keep the gameplay exciting and fresh. From what you indicated, the manner in which it was removed in addition to the way combat resolves seems to have pushed melee heavily toward the LC marines favor more so than was apparent to me at the time of the original posting. I'm glad you and the team were willing to have this discussion with us and explain the mechanics of battle.

The removal of guard however, is something I'm torn on. Since guard in my experience was what made thunder hammer storm shield viable in melee in the first place. Since the mechanic of guard allowed for you reroll your dice, and the storm shield removed an enemy roll from a standard genestealer reducing them to two and you to one, guard is what allowed the marine to stand a competitive chance, effectively giving them 2D6+2 rolls vs the genestealer's 2D6.

If the thunderhammer still needs a competitive boost, my recommendation would be to re-implement guard as a storm shield exclusive action (or global one). It would force a tactical choice, move less far, but stand here and guard in the event nids spawn, and double as the overwatch-esque action for melee only since it is also 2 AP. Thats one of the things I noticed as a whole with melee right now, they don't have to make tactical AP choices like ranged units do. They can book as fast as possible to a corridor and block it, without having to consider stopping early to perform an action like overwatch or guard.

*EDIT* Sorry in advance for all the references to the BG, I recognize that ascension was your team's attempt to do something new and unlike the boardgame. Something I think was a great success, I've already played this game more than triple the previous space hulk release, but speaking in terms of the boardgame keeps the discussion at a mutually understandable level, I hope you guys don't mind that too much. */EDIT*

Again, thanks for considering feedback and responding. I'll definitely be testing out the new mechanics.

[Pelinal]

Playing with space wolves and their wolf claws i am not seeing this kind of performance at all, assault termies still seem really weak compared to stormbolter + power weapon termies.

Does this (i'm very sad its being nerfed because i want to add more melee badassery to my space puppies) bug not apply to space wolf claws then?