Insane Difficulty: BNW 1.5 nATB Beta - Insane Difficulty

https://www.dropbox....3uXAcfyZea?dl=0

EDIT: 1.5.2 update added to folder. Please use that version for 1.5.2.

Patches located there for headered and nonheadered.


I tested this for all of 15 seconds before I uploaded it, but it should still be working fine.

Apply on top of BNW 1.5.0, it should just work without any problems. It has all the fixes + adjustments necessary.

Awake enough for release notes now:

WHAT THIS CHANGES, IN CODE:

1) The ATB gauge pauses during animations. This changes code around the battle effects launching and the Active/Wait command in options, which is now disabled. I can provide disassembly for this if anyone is curious.
2) The global speed bonus is restored to 20, as in vanilla.
3) The Regen/Seizure/Poison table is adjusted to double the rate of Regen/Seizure/Poison.
4) The command timer table had most of its values cut in half.
5) The flee evaluation command was changed to double the amount of ticks that flee is valid on.
6) Enemy timers were drastically cut as according to BTB's wishes.
7) Status timers were all cut in half.
8) Desperation attack timer was cut.
9) The speed timers were reduced so that Haste is only 50% faster than Slow.

WHAT THIS SHOULD CHANGE FOR END USER:

1) Hey, when I put in a command, it doesn't take 30 seconds to execute.
2) Oh hey, menu trick is irrelevant now.

So, my biggest input on this beta patch - and thus my greatest concern - is enemies with timed attacks. Many enemies in Brave New World use them, but here are a few notable examples to keep an eye out for:

	• Gale Cut (Condor/Vargas)
	• Fireball (Albatross)
	• Pointy Stick (Hobo/Hunter/Punisher)

	• Wallchange (Number 24/MagiMaster/Kaiser)
	• Regenerate Arms (Number 128/Infenro)
	• Call For Backup (Dadaluma/Heartfire)

	• Purge & Mind Blast (Atma Weapon/Atma)
	• Holy Wind (White-D)
	• Charm (Isis)

You should be able to get a pretty good idea for how most of the timers will behave pretty early in the game from those first two - Condors/Albatrosses and Vargas use two of the most common timer settings (20 and 30, respectively) in vanilla BNW (*that* sure sounds weird...), and so their new settings can provide a quick and dirty benchmark for what to expect in the N-ATB environment. Do they use their timed attacks more or less frequently than they did before? Is it consistent? Let me know!

Of particular interest/worry is Charm from Isis - she should not be using Charm more frequently than once every four rounds. Ditto for Holy Wind on the White-D, except change the 4 to a 5.

My first sticky! I feel so proud.

Yes, this thread now looks like the underside of my desk. Good work.

It looks like chewed gum?

...sure, we'll go with that.

Man, this is sweet. Were there any major alterations from the 1.4.A nATB patch? I know you'd been looking into adjusting Seizure/Regen since those were barely ticking at all in the test patch.

Nakar, on 30 October 2014 - 05:42 AM, said:

The battle timers were *drastically* lowered to make them behave more like they do in vanilla BNW (still sounds weird).

I believe Think also fixed the periodic effects timing as well as running.

Dude needs to post some release notes

What specific code does this change? If I attempt to add this to DM I want to make sure it doesn't add anything or overwrite areas of code I have changed myself.

BTB, on 30 October 2014 - 05:43 AM, said:

Drastically lowered from vanilla, or drastically lowered from where they were set in 1.4.A nATB (which I think was half or something)? Some enemies were already ridiculous given their Speed (dragons) and numbers (128/Dream Stooges/Inferno), if they're also firing timers a bunch that could be nasty. I guess we'll see. I would laugh pretty hard if the Stooges become the nATB patch's new showstopper, those guys were relentless with their numbers and Haste X.

Drastically lowered from vanilla, slightly from 1.4.A nATB.

Depends on the enemy in question. Think can share the specifics with you since I annotated the script file I gave him.

Oh, then it shouldn't be an issue. I thought the timers were a touch too slow in the first nATB patch so lowering them a little bit is good. The main issue is an overall balance thing; certain fights just are differently-difficult under nATB. Multi-enemy fights become harder due to enemies generally getting strings of sequential turns and the party getting fewer turns around them, and the Stooges happen to also cast Haste on themselves which is incredibly nasty because it compounds all the other issues I mentioned.

It definitely makes Slow all the more important, although the goddesses that have auto-Haste aren't immediately overwhelming either. I just noticed that certain relatively easy fights became noticeably harder, especially Stooges and Inferno and many of the dragons. The dragons will be balanced out a bit by Poison and Seizure working better than they did in the last patch though, hopefully; they weren't using their special attacks quite often enough that the Seizure/Poison setters had to refresh them all that often.

I didn't do any WoB testing on my last run though, so I'll be doing so from scratch now. I'm considering doing a brief writeup and I'll try to record boss videos as well, this time with annotated commentary.

Updated with some release notes. In summary I've addressed everything that was brought up in the last thread. I'm meditating on if we want to add a random effect to enemy speed so that their turns break up a little.

Did you not get enemy timers in? I don't see any edits to bank CF

When I looked at the first post, it said that desperate attack timers were cut, but what does that mean?

Desperation attacks normally will not trigger before the timer has ticked 768 or above. That check was removed.

When I do the testing of my mod I will let you know how things pan out, thanks for the details

dee_ehn, on 30 October 2014 - 09:03 AM, said:

Hrm. Patch must not have saved correctly. Update later tonight.

https://www.dropbox....3uXAcfyZea?dl=0

Or update now, I guess.

I'll need you to make an update to your patch prior to the release of 1.5.2 - remove your patch's edit to enemy index 100 (Marshal). I needed to free up some space in the enemy script bank and did so by shortening that script and removing its timer; applying your current patch over 1.5.2 would overflow the enemy script bank (which is bad).