Acid Burn / Irradiate damage calc

[RingsOfReznor]

Update: I got the formula super wrong because I assumed upgrades were effective - they actually don't influence DoT at ALL!

After testing I've drawn some conclusions about how the damage over time effects are calculated.

Applying acid burn / irradiate deals an invisible 0 damage. This is exposed by having Rally/300 percenter active in FFvTTR as a 2 damage minimum is imposed.

The damage over time (DoT) is calculated as the power Magnitude/2. This is unaffected by upgrades, damage multipliers, strength (for melee) or even by overpowering. The only factors that influence DoT are the power's base magnitude, and fluctuation (from 0.5x your upgraded magnitude up to 1.5x minus 1). Repeatedly applying these effects will add to the current DoT, up to the ingame maximum controlled by RPG_IRRADIATED_MAX=5 (this specific variable is shared with acid burn). Applying more than 10 magnitude (after fluctuation) of these effects is therefore always wasted.

DoT can be fractional, and is re-calculated every 1sec until it hits zero by subtracting RPG_ACID_DECAY_RATE=0.20000000298

So how does this translate to the damage bubbles we see? The damage bubbles are equal to FLOOR(DoT) but are only dealt every RPG_ACID_DAMAGE_PERIOD=1.5 seconds.

Here's an example of the damage progress for a max starting DoT of 5:


Strategy implications include avoiding upgrades on these skills, and underpowering where the success rate is adequate. Mentor can hit 5 DoT with 1/5 in Modulating Beam = 72 total damage on flesh/gene modified targets + the area damage. When hero-building, consider increasing strength to improve success chance for melee effects.

[BentonGrey]

RoR, that's very interesting!  Fascinating work!

[RingsOfReznor]

Update: For some reason a zero-magnitude Commuted Sentence in will always result in the effect transferring in either direction with just 1 second remaining. If using this power type strictly as a cure, always keep it at 0 magnitude.

I totally forgot that in  Commuted Sentence works differently to in  - it does indeed multiply the current damage value (DoT) of Acid Burn and Irradiate.

Specifically, in  Commuted Sentence generates a multiplier with the exact same magnitude scaling as Rally the Troops RPG_ATTACK_BONUS_MULT   0.0399999991059 (however this variable doesn't impact Commuted Sentence). The Commuted Sentence multiplier is affected by existing attack multipliers.

When transmitting effects, the duration is remainder * CS multiplier. This has a minimum duration of 1.
When receiving effects, the duration is remainder / CS multiplier. The remaining duration can be fractional (i.e. below 1)

Here's a test scenario anyone can use to measure how effective the Commuted Sentence status extension is:

1. Set the following in console:
RPG_IRRADIATED_MAX=100
RPG_ACID_DAMAGE_PERIOD=1
RPG_ACID_DECAY_RATE=0
RPG_EP_RECHARGE=9999
god()

2. Apply acid burn to a hero.
3. Have the burned hero use a zero-magnitude Commuted Sentence on the initiator. This guarantees a DoT of 1.
4. Have the newly burned hero pass the 1-damage Acid Burn with any magnitude Commuted Sentence on another hero. The damage tick is the net multiplicative effect. Steps 3 and 4 can be repeated for multiple measurements.

Campaign relevance: Law's CS is Medium magnitude (base 10), which upgrades to 20 magnitude at 5/5 and up to 30 when upgraded and overpowered. This really sucks as it's multiplier is weak/unreliable without help from Minuteman.
Useful effects like Empathy and Energize can be transferred and extended using under-powered CS followed by 300-percent+Rally+Overpower CS to another hero. The same applies for negative effects to enemies. Alternatively, a single point in CS lets Law underpower CS to a friendly hero to remove any DoT on herself without endangering the team, and the remaining upgrade points/EP can go into her sword powers.