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The Wolfhound and his special Item - Allies Cover analysis + suggestion

Vesperion

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So after i was so bored and wanted to waste some Cryos i decided to build the Wolf due i find the idea of "covering" your allies a nice idea in combination to have an RTurr and Prot at your disposal and did make some tests today ingame with it and cus i have not seen any real feedback in forum about the Cover or any "analysis" of it i thought myself to do it then to have some actuall info about it´s mechanics :sweatgrinning: . Thanks here go to @Oldviking, @Josh_Striker (Space-Hunter) and @ZeusCannon who helped me to gather the info i needed.

The Stats of Allies Cover:
  • Max Units covered: 4
  • "Self Cover": No
  • Activation time: Immediately
    • It needs to be noted that the targets that are covered will be added 1 by 1 with a delay of ~1 second
  • Run Time: 24 Seconds
  • Colldown: 37 Seconds (35 Seconds with Lvl 5 Cooldown Drone)
  • Total Cycle: 1 Minute and 1 Second (59 Seconds with Lvl 5 Cooldown drone)
  • Affected by Division Drone?: No
  • Who/What does it cover:
    • Other Pilots (white names)
    • Pilots in your Buddy List (Green names)
    • If you are in PM:
      • Pilots in your Buddy list (with or without active PM)
    • Friendly NPCs
    • Mission NPCs
    • Repair Turret
    • Attack Field Turret
    • Magnet Trap
    • Attack Droid
    • As absurd as it sounds: Deflection Droid (@ZeusCannon can confirm that)
  • What does it not cover:
    • Enemy units
    • Pilots in PM that are no in your Buddy list
    • Pilots with an active Mission
    • For some reason the Aggro beacon hence beeing a placed object
    • Mines
    • Mission Buildings
The Mechanic of Allies Cover:
As the name of Allies Cover implies it should help the other Pilots to survive in the battle a bit longer. This is achived by reducing the damage the Pilot receives with each hit/tick while in return the damage the Pilot how is under the cover will heal the Caster with a certain value.

For Player and Friendly NPC ships this value seems to be 10% of damage received = 1% of HP for the caster and for the Deflection Droid it´s 100% = 2% healed:ROFLMAO:. In case of the NPC ships i have tested it Carl Sagan at Antares and with the Methas at Venar that reflected the same value as players ships.

As an extra note it needs to be mentioned that each Pilot/NPC is individually caluclated so if 1 Pilot/NPC receives 5% damage and the other receives 10% the healing efect is basicly 0,5% + 1%. So to get the most out of Allies Cover it´s basicly "the more you have under your cover the better it is for you and your HP".

Interesting however is that the ratio for Mission NPCs is way different. For Mission NPCs the ratio seems to be 1% dmg = 1% healed (tested with the Mission "Worse is to come" and the defending unit on the mission area) but this may be just due the Mission NPCs have way higher HP values then NPCs on the map and Player Ships.

The range of Allies Cover is pretty long (i would say Rocket if not even Sniper range) so that the fighting pilots can stay in the area of the repair Turrets front to the enemy while the Wolf Pilot can stay way behind the actuall battle but still in range of the RTurret
Max Range of Allies Cover with an placed RTurret:
Allies Cover Range.jpg


The Bugs (?):
  • Allies Cover seem not to work on Shields and Protectors in the dmg reduction part and actually only on the HP of the ship itself so that it basicly is "useless" if Pilots use the Prot or the Shield considering that the running time of Allies Cover is 24 Seconds what is nearly the same time as the Protector and Shield as you can see in the comparision Screens:
Protector with active Allies Cover
Prot with Cover screen.jpg
Protector without Allies Cover
Prot without cover screen.jpg
This means in return that during the active Allies Cover the caster will not gain any HP back no matter how much damage the Protector/Shield takes during this time.

  • For some weird reason the Allies Cover seems not to "change" the cover properly if a Pilot moves out of the range of it so that another Pilot could be covered in its place but then again can cover another Pilot/NPC instead(?). Due it´s hard to just describe it here an short Video what i mean:

  • Allies Cover does not properly count as a support skill. During tests when i have used it but did not attack the enemy units i did not see any Cryo/BP drop but when used it generated aggro and units did target me instandly what normaly only happens when using either Target Rep, Protector or Repair Field.
How much damage does Allies Cover reduce?:
To be honest after the tests it does not much at the current point. The test i have run was done with a DR Thermo vs a Siri Myst (yeah seems to be way off but i had no other pilots around during the time i made the test but Thermo is still the most acurate way for dmg testings) and in both rounds of the Thermo the reduced damage was 10% in total and due thermo runs shorter then Allies Cover there are no chances to have different values.

As a comparision here the results of the tests:
Active Allies Cover
Cover active screen.jpg
As you can see in compare to the tests with the Protector that where done 1st my HP have increased by 3%. If Space would have lost at least 3% more i would have healed up to 43% from the start of 39%.

Inactive Allies Cover:

Cover inactive Screen.jpg
Considering the previous test the actuall reduction of the damage seems to be just by something of 0,6% per tick of the Thermo with an runtime of 15 seconds. Testings with blasters and co is a way harder situation cus it would require an constand same dmg output but due of RNGesus it surely would require a couple of 100 tests to get some "confirmable" data out of it.

The Conclusion:
At first Allies Covers sounds like a nice and handy ability to use but at the current point it is way to weak in compare to the AI version (as always) that has a way better ratio in terms of the dmg conversion of an Ancient Defender unit. I can understand that Allies Cover should not turn the Wolf into something immortal during the Cover time but even when a full sq is under cover this means at best you can receive 40% back when all pilots would go down from 100% - 0% (10% per Pilot)
  • Conversion rate is 5% = 1% healed
    • This would translate into max healing of 20% for each Pilot that is under Cover = Max of 80% potential healing
  • Allies Cover does not generate any Aggro
  • Damage reduction is actually 35%
    • Reduction here should count as well for Protectors and Shield along with the healing conversion

The Final Words:
If you made it this far i thank you for reading an hope that this helps a bit to understand the item a bit better. If you have other experience with it or have some other ideas for it feel free to leave your feedback here.

Regards - Vesperion
 

KingSub

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What's that?
So after i was so bored and wanted to waste some Cryos i decided to build the Wolf due i find the idea of "covering" your allies a nice idea in combination to have an RTurr and Prot at your disposal and did make some tests today ingame with it and cus i have not seen any real feedback in forum about the Cover or any "analysis" of it i thought myself to do it then to have some actuall info about it´s mechanics :sweatgrinning: . Thanks here go to @Oldviking, @Josh_Striker (Space-Hunter) and @ZeusCannon who helped me to gather the info i needed.

The Stats of Allies Cover:
  • Max Units covered: 4
  • "Self Cover": No
  • Activation time: Immediately
    • It needs to be noted that the targets that are covered will be added 1 by 1 with a delay of ~1 second
  • Run Time: 24 Seconds
  • Colldown: 37 Seconds (35 Seconds with Lvl 5 Cooldown Drone)
  • Total Cycle: 1 Minute and 1 Second (59 Seconds with Lvl 5 Cooldown drone)
  • Affected by Division Drone?: No
  • Who/What does it cover:
    • Other Pilots (white names)
    • Pilots in your Buddy List (Green names)
    • If you are in PM:
      • Pilots in your Buddy list (with or without active PM)
    • Friendly NPCs
    • Mission NPCs
    • Repair Turret
    • Attack Field Turret
    • Magnet Trap
    • Attack Droid
    • As absurd as it sounds: Deflection Droid (@ZeusCannon can confirm that)
  • What does it not cover:
    • Enemy units
    • Pilots in PM that are no in your Buddy list
    • Pilots with an active Mission
    • For some reason the Aggro beacon hence beeing a placed object
    • Mines
    • Mission Buildings
The Mechanic of Allies Cover:
As the name of Allies Cover implies it should help the other Pilots to survive in the battle a bit longer. This is achived by reducing the damage the Pilot receives with each hit/tick while in return the damage the Pilot how is under the cover will heal the Caster with a certain value.

For Player and Friendly NPC ships this value seems to be 10% of damage received = 1% of HP for the caster and for the Deflection Droid it´s 100% = 2% healed:ROFLMAO:. In case of the NPC ships i have tested it Carl Sagan at Antares and with the Methas at Venar that reflected the same value as players ships.

As an extra note it needs to be mentioned that each Pilot/NPC is individually caluclated so if 1 Pilot/NPC receives 5% damage and the other receives 10% the healing efect is basicly 0,5% + 1%. So to get the most out of Allies Cover it´s basicly "the more you have under your cover the better it is for you and your HP".

Interesting however is that the ratio for Mission NPCs is way different. For Mission NPCs the ratio seems to be 1% dmg = 1% healed (tested with the Mission "Worse is to come" and the defending unit on the mission area) but this may be just due the Mission NPCs have way higher HP values then NPCs on the map and Player Ships.

The range of Allies Cover is pretty long (i would say Rocket if not even Sniper range) so that the fighting pilots can stay in the area of the repair Turrets front to the enemy while the Wolf Pilot can stay way behind the actuall battle but still in range of the RTurret
Max Range of Allies Cover with an placed RTurret:
View attachment 48549


The Bugs (?):
  • Allies Cover seem not to work on Shields and Protectors in the dmg reduction part and actually only on the HP of the ship itself so that it basicly is "useless" if Pilots use the Prot or the Shield considering that the running time of Allies Cover is 24 Seconds what is nearly the same time as the Protector and Shield as you can see in the comparision Screens:
Protector with active Allies Cover
View attachment 48545
Protector without Allies Cover
View attachment 48546
This means in return that during the active Allies Cover the caster will not gain any HP back no matter how much damage the Protector/Shield takes during this time.

  • For some weird reason the Allies Cover seems not to "change" the cover properly if a Pilot moves out of the range of it so that another Pilot could be covered in its place but then again can cover another Pilot/NPC instead(?). Due it´s hard to just describe it here an short Video what i mean:

  • Allies Cover does not properly count as a support skill. During tests when i have used it but did not attack the enemy units i did not see any Cryo/BP drop but when used it generated aggro and units did target me instandly what normaly only happens when using either Target Rep, Protector or Repair Field.
How much damage does Allies Cover reduce?:
To be honest after the tests it does not much at the current point. The test i have run was done with a DR Thermo vs a Siri Myst (yeah seems to be way off but i had no other pilots around during the time i made the test but Thermo is still the most acurate way for dmg testings) and in both rounds of the Thermo the reduced damage was 10% in total and due thermo runs shorter then Allies Cover there are no chances to have different values.

As a comparision here the results of the tests:
Active Allies Cover
View attachment 48547
As you can see in compare to the tests with the Protector that where done 1st my HP have increased by 3%. If Space would have lost at least 3% more i would have healed up to 43% from the start of 39%.

Inactive Allies Cover:

View attachment 48548
Considering the previous test the actuall reduction of the damage seems to be just by something of 0,6% per tick of the Thermo with an runtime of 15 seconds. Testings with blasters and co is a way harder situation cus it would require an constand same dmg output but due of RNGesus it surely would require a couple of 100 tests to get some "confirmable" data out of it.

The Conclusion:
At first Allies Covers sounds like a nice and handy ability to use but at the current point it is way to weak in compare to the AI version (as always) that has a way better ratio in terms of the dmg conversion of an Ancient Defender unit. I can understand that Allies Cover should not turn the Wolf into something immortal during the Cover time but even when a full sq is under cover this means at best you can receive 40% back when all pilots would go down from 100% - 0% (10% per Pilot)
  • Conversion rate is 5% = 1% healed
    • This would translate into max healing of 20% for each Pilot that is under Cover = Max of 80% potential healing
  • Allies Cover does not generate any Aggro
  • Damage reduction is actually 35%
    • Reduction here should count as well for Protectors and Shield along with the healing conversion

The Final Words:
If you made it this far i thank you for reading an hope that this helps a bit to understand the item a bit better. If you have other experience with it or have some other ideas for it feel free to leave your feedback here.

Regards - Vesperion
I use this item often in SM and sometimes on Earth in unrest or Calon for Harvester hunt. This item is pretty good with two allies cover. I tested this. Two wolfhounds are pretty strong for a moment. Both get healed and have a little bit 10-15% armor boost which is good. And if you add the two repair turrets you are basically a god for a moment. :d

We did this

Wolfhound and HyAn vs Death SQ on Calon. It is so easy but the 96' Ignomes SQ is pretty stronger than Odion

.. So the wolfhound is im my opinion the best support ship for tau ceti. I think its even better than Cons. Or Marble. Sure he can't repair like the both, but he can power boost allies armos and repairs himself without aggro which makes him attractive. It is also good for the most Calon SM and as well for Earth in Unrest
 

Vesperion

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  • Conversion rate is 5% = 1% healed
    • This would translate into max healing of 20% for each Pilot that is under Cover = Max of 80% potential healing
  • Allies Cover does not generate any Aggro
  • Damage reduction is actually 35%
    • Reduction here should count as well for Protectors and Shield along with the healing conversion
Just noticed that here the wording is missing that i would suggest the above mentioned changes for the Cover otherwise it sounds like the exact opposite to my whole post :sweatgrinning:
 

Sebasti0n

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WoW Vesperion, that's a very in depth an detailed analysis ... I'm very impressed.....

So the trick really is to activate Allied Cover before MT & Rep Turret are deployed, so it attaches to the ppl in sq first.
 

dontbelive

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Well wolfhound is a great ship my brother and me use this ship for difficult missions. And hell the missions get alot easier with the allies cover. No one knows how useful the wolfhound is 😁. Not much players flying this ship. Never seen it in our sever.
 

Iron Black

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Please reply developers, one takes the time to do these types of summaries. :(
 

Highway

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Thanks @Vesperion for the write up on the allies cover item and possible issues with it.

When we are balacing the special ships in TC4 where these items are desined for we surely will look at it again. Keep in mind that the level of the item and the ships level are affected by it and also plays a role of the strength of the effect. @alewx should know more about this as he did the balancing on the item.
 

KingSub

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What's that?
Thanks @Vesperion for the write up on the allies cover item and possible issues with it.

When we are balacing the special ships in TC4 where these items are desined for we surely will look at it again. Keep in mind that the level of the item and the ships level are affected by it and also plays a role of the strength of the effect. @alewx should know more about this as he did the balancing on the item.
Well...i'm excited how the two rare Ne0n-Ships will perform against Classic and Hybrid Prototypes. Some Tau Ceti Techs can be really OP if you combine them... e.g Damage Inverter and Corruption Clouds 😁 can't wait to build my X-12 Parsec with rare TC Techs😌
 
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