questions

I'm trying to figure out what minimum equipment requirements to enforce. I remember ma had reverse engineered the exact formulas in bots2, but I haven't seen him around in awhile so does anyone else remember them?

In case we can't recover them, we can always come up with something new. Here's my current proposal:

• Armor: req_str >= (bot_str * 2/3)
• Weapon: if req_str >= req_dex, then req_str >= (bot_str * 2/3), else req_dex >= (bot_dex * 2/3)
• Shield: req_dex >= (bot_dex * 2/3)

These requirements would be enforced only when equipping new items, meaning equipped gear that doesn't surpass these thresholds is acceptable.

Comments/suggestions welcome.

Armor: reqstr >= (botstr * 2/3)

So I can only equip armour if the REQ Str is greater than/equal to 2/3rds of my Str?

Sadly, I don't recall the formulas used in bots2, though if they come up again, they should be archived somewhere.

So I can only equip armour if the REQ Str is greater than/equal to 2/3rds of my Str?

Correct. The idea is to not hinder legitimate use of equipment (e.g., buying something with lower reqs than you have because it's all you can afford at the moment), while preventing blatant whoring (for energy transfer, xp, etc.).

The multiplier on those formulas can be adjusted as necessary too in response to feedback. If there are legitimate non-whoring cases where something can't be equipped, obviously the requirements would be lowered. Low level bots or bots with stats less than 100 or something could also be exempted to avoid causing problems early on.

I think these formulas look very reasonable, and would be happy to see them employed.

Skeith's seal of approval

i'd suggest mixing str and dex with weapons. Since these rules are to kind of prevent whoring i guess you're stull slightly interested in keeping it at bay. Although your proposed formulas are somewhat similar to the old ones (i cant remember them exactly) but especially balanced bots can still be seriously whored this way. They simply take a pure str (or dex) weapons that is at the bottom of their requirements for str or dex. Adding both str and dex together would prevent this.

for example: min req-weapon-str + req-weapon-req >= (req-str + req-dex)*(2/3)

taking your 2/3s proposal

Also at lower levels this might work better. consider the following example. A balanced bot with 100 str and 99 dex. This bot would be unable to wield a weapon with aroudnd 60 str & 90 dex required. for instance, mithril point(55 str/98 dex), with 30-60 damage. The bot would be allowed to wield a Cleaver (68 str, 0 dex) with 11 - 33 damage. This is prone to a)whoring and b)could possibly hinder people who are not yet experienced. By summing the dex and str and then calculating minimum requirements both problems would be foregone.

I think we may need to see an expansion in arsenal to reflect Mainor's post.

On the other hand, balance bots don't get a great pick of weapons, precisely because of their stats. You don't see many balanced bots wielding high-level weapons, do you?

Mid-level balanced bots*

Sorry, left that part out.

Armor: req_str >= (bot_str * 2/3)

Looks ok though there is one problem with the above formula. Some people like to use speciality armours like "The Face of Horror", "Troll Shoes", "The Snappers", "Steel Grip", etc. to boost stats. This allows us to buy up armours/weapons in advance and also make some interesting builds. With that formula this wont be possible anymore as the str requirement on most of those "special" armours is quite low. None of the bots that I've built will be possible to make.

I don't remember this being a problem in Bots2. Even with 400str I was still able to equip a Face of Horror which has a str requirement of 58. Maybe floR's formula did not apply to unique armours. Not sure...hmmm...

hmmz I remember the formula being pretty simple but I can't recall it :(

anyhoo e-mailed ma to see if he knows :)

ok ma's reply:

It wasn't written anywhere from what I remember I never had the formula for it. There was a thread in old bots2.net forum where I was looking for:

1. exact con rule
2. and where I was looking for the weapon/armour/shields formula

I have never found it, when I was looking for minimum armour req for whoring, I always had to look at armour list - and try items out, same with weapons. Never sort it out.

All i can tell is the min. req for weapons, weapons vanish if there is 20 or more lacking points in req. (it was the trick for being invisible in Hof).

sadly I can't help with it, you need to wank floR for the answer xD

oh I'll leave the wanking of floR to you wiggin ^_~

thats not the case here since i'm missing 72 points for my weapons, and 78 for my body armour ^^

oh, and on-topic: I indeed also remember playing around with what weapons i could use. it was more like 1/4th of maximum...

Good idea about combining the requirements like that for weapons, Mainor. And another good point about low req uniques Saiyan. Thanks for getting in touch with ma, Ms. Rose.

The uniques seem like a tricky situation. On one hand, I want people to be able to use items like Steel Grip for special purposes like str boosting, but on the other I don't want to exempt all uniques and just have people flock to those for whoring purposes. Any ideas?

maybe not restricting armours on required str, but on minimum defense, or even total defense. In this sense a highly str bot could use some lower armours as long as his defense doesnt get to low. How the formula should look like i dont know since i'm not too good with roots etc ;)

alright, lets give it a try anyway by analyzing the formula.

Absorb = 2 * Square Root of [Defense]

Basically there are 3 options, minimum defense per item, minimum total defense, and minimum total absorb. The latter two are the same, but i would favour setting a minimum requirement on those. There is one flaw i can think of: if your body armour breaks your absorb/defense will be a lot lower and you might not be able to get the kudos to buy an armour that is sufficiently high. This could be evaded by allowing any improvement in defense, even if this means that the required def/absorb is still too low. People would still be able to whore their bots by completely destroying their armour, but i guess that is even harder to evade. Only by making bots unattackble which happened in bots2 but is really unhandy with energy. Damn. Lots to think about :p

Minstrength = (sqrt(basestr) * 2) Armor Base_str 20str = 100 29str = 200 35str = 300 40str = 400

So even at soul harvesters, you can use snappers etc. The same thing could be done with shields i suppose.

Ender, I think with the current energy system you could exclude uniques from the formula since everyone can attack anyone else's bot for points. It will take a some time to find weak uniques and even more time to find good armours and weapons again after attacking it. That's a lot of effort to whore a bot.

I really hate this formatting thing. really. really.

Hmm yeah, at least weapons would still be hard to whore. I know there's been at least one case of whoring for the purposes of energy dumping and I know there's been tons of exp whoring going on. I guess just having something will be better than nothing.

what about if a bots armor gets destroyed to counter the ability to whore after a certain amount of losses and the FIRST armor is broken the game will auto-buy you that armor? or would that just make it worse?

In bots2 there were no restrictions on helm/gloves/boots, but there were slight body armour restrictions and of course weapon restrictions. The body armour restrictions were pretty lax, eg. with >300 str you could equip armour with ~150 defense and still be attackable.

I think it's fine to follow something like what Saiyan suggested, since most people won't bother camping unique gear to whore their bots out. As for weapons, what will happen if you trash your weapons and someone takes all your kudos? If there are no equippable weapons that cost less than half of the price of your current weapons you'll be kinda screwed...

It will take a some time to find weak uniques and even more time to find good armours and weapons again after attacking it. That's a lot of effort to whore a bot.

I do not agree. First, people who whore their bots for xp might have stars, and thus easily swap back armours. Worse though, in a small experiment i just conducted, 3 out of 6 showrooms contained unique body armours with less than 75 defense. Considering no min def on gloves, helmet and boots this would result in very easy and ultimate whoring. So i suggest that we do incorporate more strict rules than in bots2.

Now I remember. What Bluei said is correct. Only the body armour was limited to a minimum of 2/3 base str in bots2. Maybe do it like this:

1. Same way as in bots2. Limit all body armour (uniques and normals) to a minimum of 2/3 base str.
2. Limit all normal helmet/gloves/boots to a minimum of 2/3 base str as well but all unique helmets/gloves/boots are allowed.

So it will be a little bit more difficult to whore bots compared to bots2 but this still allows for build tweaking.

I like the idea of exempting just non-body uniques.

2/3 str requirement for armours (except non-body uniques) seems a lot imo. For example if I have low base int and I want to equip a Crystallised Armour for the +20 int, I won't be able to equip it past 383 str. Similarly if I have a 160 base str bot and I want to buy a Heavenly Garb to level faster I won't be able to do that either. I think 1/2 str requirement would be more appropriate and wouldn't stop these kinds of builds.

Also, there would have to be a min str amount before these restrictions apply. At low levels you can't afford any body armours that have >2/3 of your str req, especially if you're a str bot. Perhaps >150 str? (so 149 or less str will have no restrictions)

One more thing, what will happen if we have gear equipped that is below the minimum reqs (say if you add str when you level up)? Will you still be able to use that gear? I would guess that you would still be able to use it but as soon as you take it off you wouldn't be able to put it back on/buy a new one.

There are plenty of other good body armours for adding int. If you've got over 383 str there's Blood Eater, Rinohide, Atmas Wail. All with much more defense than Crystallised Armour so you can get more exp by training on higher bots. There's no way I will use Crystallised Armour if my str is in the 400 range. Also there is Goldskin which is way way better than Heavenly Garb in the lower str range. So there are other body armour options.

If you can use Crystallised armour and beat X-terminator regularly, then I would say that would be the best armour possible for training if you have low int. As for the Heavenly garb scenario, what if you have only ~50k kudos and you want to swap to training asap? They're more common too, so to use one while waiting for a Goldskin would be nice if you're swapping to training gear.

Anyway, my point was that they are valid uses of armours that would be considered too weak with the 2/3 str restrictions, regardless of whether they're optimal or not.

One more thing, what will happen if we have gear equipped that is below the minimum reqs (say if you add str when you level up)? Will you still be able to use that gear? I would guess that you would still be able to use it but as soon as you take it off you wouldn't be able to put it back on/buy a new one.

Right, the requirements will only be enforced when equipping. The idea is just to prevent easy switching between whored and non-whored, so corner cases like this are okay.

Maybe just completely exempting all uniques is the way to go.

Here's what I ended up doing for now:

• No minimum requirements at all until level 50
• Uniques always allowed
• Body, helmet, gloves, boots: req str must be at least 50% of your base str
• Weapons: req str + req dex must be at least 50% of your base str + base dex
• Shields: req dex must be at least 75% of your base dex

These rules can be tweaked as necessary in response to feedback. Let me know how it goes.

3 things;

1. I take it that at lvl 50 exp whoring might already be an issue. Perhaps the same less strict rules could be applied (or less strict from lvl 30/40 for instance)
2. I do think you do need to restrict unique armours too, especially body armours. There is no need for them at higher levels at all so they are only interesting for whoring purposes. Setting a minimum requirment of 1/3 of the str for instance would slightly settle this, with at least highly increased camping times for whoring while even the def is still higher. There is no way any normal player would be using armours that would be restricted in this case.
3. The 50% min str rule would thus only apply to non-unique armours. I see no reason why anyone, except for the purpose of whoring, would have a lower non-unique armour that possible except for not being able to buy a higher one (see solution below). In this case the 50% rule might even be too easy. Although i think people will use the easiest uniques, which makes this less important.

All these rules have one potential problem: suppose someone has a normal build, or even a slightly wierd build and breaks his body armour. His build would deteriorate fast, while he might (might) be unable to buy a decent body armour. Suppose he completely breaks his body armour and thus have a really low absorb, unable to win any fight and gain kudos. For such cases (might be rare, might be not so rare) i would suggest that any amour switch that increases the total defense should be allowed. In the example above, a player could then to buy a non-unique armour that might be below his required strenth but does increase his defense. This way he or she'd be able to get a decent armour again in a few steps. Someone who wants to whore his bot can only do so under these restrictions by first completely destroying his armours. which is quite some work.

I'm not sure I like the idea of restricting uniques because even low req items like Twitchthroe (52 req str) might have specialty uses in extreme builds because of its +6/6 str/dex bonuses.

As for bots getting stuck because of repair costs, that's a possibility. I'll deal with it on a case-by-case basis though until I see that it starts to be a common problem.

And another possibility for dealing with this whole issue is to just give bots innate absorb/damage as your level goes up. That way you're guaranteed to hit for a certain amount and absorb a certain amount of incoming hits regardless of what you're wearing. I'm not sure if I like this solution or if it's even necessary though.

You're right about that armour, but in my opinion the advantage of being to able to use that is far less great than the easy and advantage of whoring it gives. unique body armours are so easy to get that whoring under these conditions is a still a piece of cake.

I think Mainor may have a point about easily camping low unique armours. The 1/3 str suggestion for unique body armours sounds good to me too. So with the Twitchthroe, you can equip it until 156 str, at which time you can swap to other +str/dex armours like Rockfleece or Rattlecage.

Otherwise, all the restrictions look pretty good to me :)

I haven't really tested this system yet, since i have perfect answerers and no stars. So, I'll say what i think should happen.

• Can't buy anything less than 1/4 of your str, no matter what. When you have 400 strength, You shouldn't be relying on the +6,+6 armors at 56str. That's just common sense.
• If you have bought the armour/weapon, you should be able to wear it as long as your base str/dex is less than or equal to it. Maybe even with in 10 stats.
• Like mainor said, If you have something that is trashed completely and you need to buy something quickly, if it is "better", then you should be able to buy it. I use some armours for many many levels just because it is easy to do so.

A minimum of 1/4 str requirement is a bit too low I'm afraid. Whoring will still be rife. I see you've gone with a 50% minimum but I would stick to a 2/3 minimum for body armour but allow people to equip any unique piece of body armour if their current body armour is totally trashed. You would also need to make equiping a trashed piece of armour impossible or people will keep a trashed piece in their stash to quickly whore their bots.

Just a small question, would it be possible to hide unequippable items from the shop/order lists? I guess the showroom lists are the same for everyone, but if the items that you can't equip are hidden it might clean them up a bit.

Already been suggested. It just makes it to easy to camp. The extra scrolling won't kill ya.

MakJizz sent Behemoth back as metal strips to the workshop with its plasma sword. (208 damage) Behemoth is in reasonable shape.

Behemoth wounded MakJizz with its crab whistler. (3 damage) damage report: 937/940 100 % left

MakJizz missed Behemoth.

Behemoth missed MakJizz.

MakJizz destructed Behemoth professionally with its plasma sword. (260 damage) Behemoth is not looking too good.

Behemoth wounded MakJizz with its crab whistler. (3 damage) damage report: 934/940 99 % left

MakJizz melted Behemoth into a puddle of liquid metal with its plasma sword. (373 damage) Behemoth is a goner.

i dont think it works

He probably had crab whistlers equipped before the change.

i thought it was meant to make them un attackable?

There's no concept of "unattackable" in bots2. The equipment requirements only apply when equipping items, meaning you're grandfathered in by the old rules if you had an item equipped before the rules were put in place.

I don't know if I like the idea of hiding unequipable items. The only reason someone would really be shopping at that level of item is for whoring purposes, so I don't want to make that task any easier than it already is.

There's no concept of "unattackable" in bots2.

Meant to say bots4 ofc.

Just a note that I've temporarily disabled these requirements for the end of beta stuff.

under the current rules, i can get this bot down to 30% absorb, and recieve hits of 2000-7000 damage. Surely that is easy whoring. It took me 2 showrooms to have fully crap armour (lowest uniques), so at worst it would have taken me 20 minutes under normal condition. That i consider to be easy whoring.

I agree with the people above suggesting the need for 1/4,1/3rd of even stricter rules. Though i again propose to set rules at the total defense, absorb level. The big advantage of this is that you can wield 1 or 2 armours that are kinda crap at your level as long as your other armours do have high defense. This way you can also set a higher minimum requirement much easier without problems for individual people