How does Combat Speed Work?

[Mechalibur]

I'm having trouble understanding how combat speed works in this game. At first I thought it meant you have the listed percentage to take an extra turn at some point during each combat round. However, I noticed that one of my characters with about 140% combat speed sometimes takes 3 turns before one of my characters with 100% combat speed can even take her first turn. It doesn't happen very much, but it's unusual when it happens.

 

It seems like stacking combat speed is extremely powerful in this game.

[Slawbug]

Yeah, that tooltip tip is misleading at best.  Likewise the one for Slow, which reduces the Speed Bonus, rather than causing random skipped turns.

 

There's a small random factor, but basically, the number of turns you get in a given period of time scales with your Speed Bonus.  It's not a chance of a bonus turn, it's earlier arrival of your next turn every time.

 

And stacking it is very good.

 

Edited September 16, 2019 by Queen's Vlish
corrected word choice

[mikeprichard]

So the below info in Randomizer's advice topic (http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/topic/24978-queens-wish-the-conqueror-game-advice/) is incorrect? Or am I misreading something?

"Haste increases speed so you go earlier and have a 40% chance of an extra set of 5 action points. Slow can cause you to miss a turn."

Regardless, it would be extremely helpful if Jeff would clarify any tooltips that are vague in the 1.01 patch.

Edited September 16, 2019 by mikeprichard

[Slawbug]

Based on my testing, it seems pretty clear that is inaccurate, yes.  This is a change from previous Spiderweb games so it's possible that earlier in the beta, it did work as explained there.

 

(Actually, maybe there was no misleading tooltip and I am just remembering the tip in that thread?  I think so -- the status tooltip for Haste just says "Act in combat 40% more often."  And the PC stat says "The higher this is, the more turns you take in combat.")

[Randomizer]

I reproduced the tool tip as Jeff wrote it, but never found a good way to test it. I think its a hold over of a version of the Avernum remake where instead of using less action points you get another set of 5.

 

Speed mostly gives the combat order, but I've seen the characters with the highest speed sometimes getting two attacks in a row and more often getting a second attack in before the slowest party member.

 

Now in the Vol, scorpion monsters haste themselves and then will get two attacks in a row or maybe its a pincer and then tail sting attack. In the Utak it's the snakes that do that to your party.

 

Slowing monsters down so they have a negative speed bonus will cause them to lose attacks and against a party with speed bonuses you can get the entire party having two or three rounds of attacks before the monster goes.

[Slawbug]

13 minutes ago, Randomizer said:

Speed mostly gives the combat order

 

Slowing monsters down so they have a negative speed bonus will cause them to lose attacks

 

Per testing, that is still incorrect, Random.

 

Slowed monsters do not "lose" attacks and hasted characters do not "gain" attacks.  If that were the case, what you would see on testing would be a regular pattern of "rounds" where each character gets an attack, and sometimes within that pattern, hasted characters would get a 2nd and slowed characters wouldn't get any.*  Additionally, the "extra" and "missing" attacks would not be evenly spaced out -- sometimes you might get them several rounds in a row, or have a dry spell for several rounds.

 

In QW, that's not what happens.  You only see a regular pattern of "rounds" if everyone has 100% Speed.  If not, characters with higher Speed get their turns faster, so you'll see them gradually advancing relative to the normal speed characters, until they eventually end up having had more turns.  Because of how randomly initiative is set when the battle starts, it's actually possible for this to happen right away.

 

*I also note that in previous Spiderweb games, when slowed monsters missed a turn, the game would still go to them, and you would see a message indicating that they missed their turn.  This was critical because that's also when statuses tick down, poison procced, etc.  Here, the turn is simply delayed, so statuses just don't tick down until the longer wait time is over.

 

EDIT: Also, what tooltip are you talking about?  The Haste spell reads "Provides 12 turns of haste to one ally. You will get turns in combat more often."

[Randomizer]

I can't find the tooltip in the current game version, but I know I was quoting Jeff. I'm going to have to go through several older beta versions to find where I saw it. At the moment the description on the character sheet where it shows current bonus for speed is the most likely place that I saw.

[Randomizer]

You were right this is where I found it in the Scripts folder in textstatus.txt:

 

12 = "Haste";
13 = "Act in combat 40% more often.";

 

It shows up when you have haste status icon and move the cursor over the icon to see what it does and how many turns are in effect. It is misleading.

[Slawbug]

No, that's not misleading.  It's a pretty direct statement of what Haste does.

 

That tooltip is very different from "you go earlier and have a 40% chance of an extra set of 5 action points."  Mainly, you creatively extrapolated the "chance" part of it.  Not a reproduction

 

I just have the same request as I do for every game.  Let's make a clear distinction between when we are stating known facts, and when we are making conjectures about how things might work.  We all remember the urban legend about the invisible -36% penalty that somehow persisted through like 5 games before we realized it didn't exist at all...

[mikeprichard]

Favor to ask of Randomizer - if this is what's going on, could you please edit your advice topic original post as needed (i.e. to remove/edit the "extra set of 5 action points"/"miss a turn" language)? As it's pinned in Strategy Central, a lot of people are probably going to rely on it (like me). Thanks, all!

[Rowen]

The Speed is something that I have been trying to get my head around.  I do not have any facts or lengthy tests that I've done yet either.  The way that I have observed speed behave in the game reminds me of the "time gauge" from Final Fantasy VII.  The time gauge for all monsters and PC's fill a base rate of X and when full they get to act.  Speed just makes the time gauge fill at X + Speed bonus + Haste + Slow (or - Slow depending on the maths for it.)  I have taken to getting as much augment slot armor I can wear that is not - speed and filling it with speed runes. 

 

In my observations of speed I have seen a PC act 3 times consecutively.  I have had 2 PC's take 9 consecutively actions between them as well.  In a boss fight my four PC's had 5 stacks of haste and +10 speed on chest, head, and neck armor.  Together the PC's had 15 attacks before the boss got to have its first attack.  The boss fight was 

Spoiler

the dragon that protects the Borgen(sp) clan.  I had 12 actions in the first part of the fight, 15 in the second part of the fight, and 15 in the third part of the fight.  Maybe the dragon is not a good measure for speed but it is where I started to feel like I was cheesing the game.