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Thread: Recommendation: Nano programming.

  1. #1

    Post Recommendation: Nano programming.

    BEFORE I EVEN START: Be warned. You are about to be hit with "Wall of Text" for 9134 damage. Slide your bar to full def, and if you're running "TL;DR", scroll down to the bottom to evade that damage with a handy summarization. If not, make sure you've got a HoT running and the doc is awake, then begin:

    Ok. I've got a recommendation as far as introducing a new mechanism with nano programming. Bear with me here, as I'm working the late shift at work now. I'm not used to it and I'm groggy, so odds are pretty high I'll say stupid things / be incoherent / ect.

    Nano programming. Right now it means being able to craft stuff. Jam stuff into implants. But that isn't what nano programming <i>IS</i>, is it? When I think of nano programming, I think of Izgimmer and his hopeless but energetic counterpart Enfraam. They create nano programs. Whoever heard of Izgimmer's amazing ability to jam little orbs into an implant? Ok, you got the gist of my line of thinking. Now to my recommendations and ideas, in no coherent order:

    - First, all nano programs for all professions will be as is (changed with the rebalance, of course). No changes needed here.

    - New Nano programming skill dependent abilities: Nano program decompile and recompile. Nano program code fracture. Nano program recoding.

    - Nano program decompile. Let's say I'm on that newbie island, and I'm an NT who intends on nano programming. I got the tools from some magic place, it doesn't matter. I have, in my inventory, one nanocrystal for Ice Flechette. I right click it, learn it, and use it a bit. Now, it's nice and quick, but the damage is kind of lackluster. I want to improve on it. I pick up my nano-program decompiler and shift left click the program I've learned. The program leaves my bar (I lose the ability to use Ice Flechette), and my inventory gets a few new components. First, the base program, which we'll call "Nano coding - Ice Flechette". Depending on our nano programming ability, it may drop other items relating to damage strength, recharge, cast speed, or range.

    - Nano program recompile. Let's say I luck out and besides the base code item, we get a "Minor damage optimization code fragment." Whee! We pick it up, shift left click over the "Nano coding - Ice Flechette" and we get a "Modified nano code - Ice Flechette." Then we cross our fingers and pick up our nano program recompiling tool and shift left click the modified code. Now, if we roll just about even, we'll end up with a nano crystal for "Ice Flechette - Modified" that has a miniscule addition to damage. Like from 13-17 to 14-19. But let's say the game decides I suck at the moment. I'll still get a "Ice Flechette - Modified", but on right clicking and learning it, I see the damage is now 9-10! Oh noes! My clumsy attempt at mimicking Izgimmer has weakened my nano! I should have turned error logging on, darn it! At the same time, maybe the game decides I'm lucky for once, and I'll get one that has 15-20 damage, or perhaps a slight improvement in another area.

    Just for laughs, we can also make the shift-click info for the item specify what had been done to the nano. "Programmed by (player)." And we can list what had been done to it. "Minor damage recoding - slightly beneficial / detrimental". And for the serious benefits and detriments, we can put some amusing labels in there. For example, say I have an epiphany and code a marvelous piece of work. "Ice Flechette - Modified. Programmed by Whackjob. Major damage recoding - majorly beneficial - 'Glimpse into the mind of Izgimmer'." and "Ice Flechette - Modified. Programmed by Whackjob. Major damage recoding - majorly detrimental - 'Enfraam's secret shame.'"

    - Nano program code fracture. This will be the meat and potatoes of where code fragments come from. Let's say I've got Ice Flechette again. I decompile it, and only get the base code item. I figure I can get another crystal of this again cheaply enough, so I fracture the code. The base code is lost. With what I've got left, I cannot recreate Ice Flechette. Instead, I get one or more (Or none, if the game decides I'm terribad at that moment!) code fragments relating to one of the properties of that code fragment. I then scoot over to a shop and get a new ice flechette crystal, which I decompile, giving me a new base code set, which I would then combine and try to recompile as usual. Now, using this code fragment doesn't have to be on ice flechette. I could instead try to combine it with the base code for minor toxic barb, for example. it will be more difficult using a lower QL code fragment on a higher QL base, and the effect will be less, but it'll let you do it.

    Ok, so what does this mean? I can best explain with scenarios. Let's say I'm late in the game. My buddies ask for me to come along on a raid somewhere. "Great", I think. But the place we're going to has critters who are weakest to fire damage, and my most recent fire damage type nano was 15 levels ago, and the damage on it isn't that great. If I have or can get another crystal or two of that program, I can try to recode it, possibly giving me a better version that I can use on that battle.

    - Random nano program bugs / "Undocumented Features"! Say your new modified crystal was done really poorly / expertly. Proc effects! Example: You took the time and the trouble to modify your rudimentary humidity extractor to give you a little more nano. You do an excellent job! As a result, there's an invisible proc on it that you won't see with a shift-click. When you run the program, every tick has a 10% chance of giving you an extra 5 nano. Whee! But your buddy over there did the same thing, and he forgot to put points into nano programming. He did a really bad job! He can see on his crystal that he's going to get less nano than the standard program because he did a bad job, but since he doesn't have another crystal handy he right clicks it, learns it, and runs it. A reduced flow of nano comes in, all right, but there's some serious segfault-level problems with his coding! There's an invisible, five percent chance he's going to proc a small fire-damage-over-time on himself. His coding is so bad, as it refreshes his nano, it occasionally sets him on fire! Ack! Enfraam smiles at the familiarity of his misfortune.

    Couple of balance concern issues I want to throw out there as well:

    First, using very high QL code fragments on lowbie nanos in the attempt to make a level 7 NT a god. Let it be done. You majorly invest in recoding the damage of Ice Flechette and you get the damage up to the level of, say, "Warmth of the Grave". Great! Your lowbie friend is ecstatic. Unfortunately, it's now such an awesome piece of coding that the nanoskill requirements of that code are also comperable to "Warmth of the Grave". The nano costs have also ballooned greatly. He can't use it, but you can, and you've got better nanos to use anyway. Highly modified Ice Flechette crystal becomes vendor candy / paperweight.

    Second, concerns over making the top tier nanos even more powerful: Yes. Can be done. That top level nuke can be seriously enhanced, but at a cost. One, they may improve it to the point where they cannot run it. Two, the nano costs on it can be extremely prohibitive (Sure, I can do 7,000 damage in one hit, but it takes all of my nano bar, and I can't be sure, but I think it has a temp proc debuff to my nano skills on top of it!) And three, it would require them to get multiple copies of amazingly expensive / hard to get nanos, with no guarantee of success.

    The "It'll cost you" factor. Let's put in a threshold on nanos as well. Let's say, for each attribute of a nano, there's a certain point that increasing / improving the nano any more on that attribute begins to make the nano too powerful. Instead of doing a "Can't do that, maxed out" glass wall, let's do an "Yeah, okay, but it's gonna cost ya. Reaally, really cost ya!" bit, just to make things interesting. Ok, example time, so I can explain to you what I mean here. You modify, with great success, "Izgimmer's Last Word". Instead of doing 4118 to 8907 damage, it now does 7814 to 15012. And instead of an attack/recharge of 20s and 8s, you got it to 2s and 1s. Awesome! Nuke-tacular! Sure, but... it'll cost you. For going so far above the threshold of what the code can do, it now has various detrimental additions. 1079 nano cost? Not any more. You're looking at 3550. Additionally, casting that bit of coding stresses out your hardware so badly that all of your nano skills are reduced for ten seconds at -223. On top of that, the amount of destruction going outbound is so high, that it procs a DOT on you and nearby team members. Ouch, you need to be more careful with that bloody thing!

    Well, that's my ideas. Again, I'm sleepy and not being terribly coherent at the moment, so when I wake up tomorrow, I'll reread what I've put in here, and touch it up / clean it up / recompile it.

    === TL;DR SUMMARY ===:
    Nano programming doesn't actually program nano programs. Let's let nano programmers do that. They can take apart a crystal, combine different stuff, and recompile it and try to make it better. Sometimes they can, sometimes they make it worse. Really good coding procs nice effects, bad coding and bad stuff randomly happens. Old nanos for your profession, whatever it is, can be taken (in crystal form, get another one!) to a friendly nano-person, and they can work on it and see if they can improve it enough to make it more viable for you.

    Every NT out there aspires to be the next Izgimmer. We all want to recode something and fire Enfraam an email mocking him (He tends to fly into an amusing rage... accompanied by minor brain damage). Let's put in a mechanic like I mention where we can do just that.


    That's it. That's what I've got. Good idea, stupid idea, would look better on toast? Let me know what you think. All recommendations / criticisms / generalized mockery welcome.
    Last edited by Whackjob; Jan 5th, 2011 at 05:37:17. Reason: Edit 1: Bad spellinck

  2. #2
    Sure, why not. My NT has maxed NP anyways.
    Brofist 220/30/70 Engineer
    Techbro 220/30/70 Nano-Technician

  3. #3
    i think nano programming, really means small programming, like programming things that are small.

    your taking it as the term, nano crystal programming.

    besides you do make crystals with tradeskills, but sadly its an irreversible process
    Quote Originally Posted by McKnuckleSamwich View Post
    considering how many ranged advies omni has, clan did quite a job.
    Quote Originally Posted by Ciex View Post
    Ive rolled NT and rarely make it longer than 3-4s vs fixers.
    Talking whats OP and whats not by people who have never really played so told OP profession is just lame.

  4. #4
    So... TL;DR version is... I actually like the concept. There are some seriously daunting implementation issues and some difficult balance issues. I wonder whether you'd ever get enough benefit out of the system for people to really be bothered with the risks involved. In the end... a cut down version where you take the existing crystal creation process and jink it a bit would probably be more realistic.

    And I do feel that I should point out, that Nano Programming does in fact already program nano crystals... and has done since game begin. NP does the compiling and the programming of the PPE and performs the final step of putting the program into the nano crystal. This has become nearly a lost art perhaps... but the process is and was there. There are still a few very nice nanos that are primarily or only available as Instruction Discs that need to be built into crystal. Not many... but a few.

    But this is good news, since there's already a nano-programming tradeskill process that works with pieces to create the crystals - so the implementation of your idea becomes, perhaps, a little less daunting for the poor old devs. And daunting it will be... because as things stand in AO tradeskills, there has to be an item for every stage of every tradeskill process and for every change.... which will end up being lots of items for your system.

    Let's say we take our Ice Flechette Instruction Disc and recompile it with a bit better damage, or a bit better attack speed, or a bit less nanocost... then we already need another 3 Instruction discs to be created right there. Not only that but we get another 3 PPEs and another 3 Nano-Crystals - so per nano that might be 9 new items that need to be created. Then add in all those new items for the random undocumented feature procs etc etc... and just adding all the necessary items would be an enormous piece of work.

    Then there's the balancing difficulty. You've had good ideas for helping to balance the system with negatives attached to the positive changes that would help prevent some difficulties. But just generally, it becomes very difficult to balance professions when the same basic nano can vary across a greater range. I have a feeling that you'd find that changes that were worth the effort and risk would probably end up too expensive in down-sides.

    Who's going to run the Scheol quest to get a nano and then risk an upgrade that might go wrong and work out worse for them than the original? While I like the idea of processes going randomly wrong... in reality players tend to hate them. And unfortunately, I think they have a point.

    And then... the programming dudes have a deep fear of removing stuff from characters. Firstly, it has a tendency to 'break' characters. This was part of the reason why MapNav wasn't in the original reset... because they had serious problems when trying to remove maps from characters. In the end, they allowed resetting MapNav without removing the maps (thus getting around skill requirements) because removing maps was too awful to contemplate hehe.

    Secondly, though, whenever you have the ability to remove stuff from a character like the uploaded nano, then you will get support problems too. You'll get people who claim that nanos just removed themselves and want them replaced. You'll get real bugs where stuff gets removed improperly.... and so on. And when the nano was the reward at the end of a long and involved quest (for example) that will be a major big deal. It's a general rule, that deleting anything from a character as part of the game, should be avoided at all costs.

    Finally... there's those quests. Many of the more recent nanos are delivered at the end of quests. Those quests would need to be rejigged to be fully repeatable - without being able to duplicate other items during the quest that shouldn't be duplicated. This should all be doable... but does add to the implementation difficulty.

    All in all... I think you might be better off with a more simple idea, like being able to decompile a nano crystal back to a PPE and a Prepared Program Crystal and a random Improvement Code Item of lower QL than the decompiled crystal. The Improvement Item would be used on a PPE of QL equal or lower than itself, to alter a given stat by a certain percentage and failure would not break the PPE. Nano Cost, Cool-Down and Attack Speed might be good target values.

    Like I say... I like the basic concept, but there are so many difficulties associated with balance, player expectations, implementation and support, that I don't think I'd want to see it implemented as you've put it forward.

    X
    Last edited by XtremTech; Jan 5th, 2011 at 08:08:27.
    Xtremtech: MetaPhysicist currently resident on Test. (209 + 21 AI Levels).

    Various other test MPs of differing levels and builds available.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by XtremTech View Post
    So... TL;DR version is... I actually like the concept. There are some seriously daunting implementation issues and some difficult balance issues. I wonder whether you'd ever get enough benefit out of the system for people to really be bothered with the risks involved. In the end... a cut down version where you take the existing crystal creation process and jink it a bit would probably be more realistic.
    Sure. If a player is smart about it, they'll slightly to moderately improve the nanos to prevent the severe drawbacks. It'll also allow players to still utilize nanos that would otherwise be relegated to the dustbin via outlevelling. Plus, I think it would be a fun time-waster. I'm not really going for core-game-mechanic, here. More like "Something else fun to do".

    Quote Originally Posted by XtremTech View Post
    And I do feel that I should point out, that Nano Programming does in fact already program nano crystals... and has done since game begin. NP does the compiling and the programming of the PPE and performs the final step of putting the program into the nano crystal. This has become nearly a lost art perhaps... but the process is and was there. There are still a few very nice nanos that are primarily or only available as Instruction Discs that need to be built into crystal. Not many... but a few.
    Yep, I remember. But to me, it's just not the same. Lots of nano programs have descriptions talking about how they were made by Izgimmer or Enfraam and others. It'd be nice to be able to program up stuff, too, I think.

    Quote Originally Posted by XtremTech View Post
    But this is good news, since there's already a nano-programming tradeskill process that works with pieces to create the crystals - so the implementation of your idea becomes, perhaps, a little less daunting for the poor old devs. And daunting it will be... because as things stand in AO tradeskills, there has to be an item for every stage of every tradeskill process and for every change.... which will end up being lots of items for your system.
    Yes, I agree with you here. Most of the infrastructure required for this system is already in place. The item entry would probably be the biggest part.

    Quote Originally Posted by XtremTech View Post
    Let's say we take our Ice Flechette Instruction Disc and recompile it with a bit better damage, or a bit better attack speed, or a bit less nanocost... then we already need another 3 Instruction discs to be created right there. Not only that but we get another 3 PPEs and another 3 Nano-Crystals - so per nano that might be 9 new items that need to be created. Then add in all those new items for the random undocumented feature procs etc etc... and just adding all the necessary items would be an enormous piece of work.
    There might be a way of restructuring the nano crystal construction process for modified programs just to streamline things. Alternatively, we could leave it in place as is, as you've mentioned. Is it a pain? Sure. Is it worth it? With the right implementation...

    Quote Originally Posted by XtremTech View Post
    Then there's the balancing difficulty. You've had good ideas for helping to balance the system with negatives attached to the positive changes that would help prevent some difficulties. But just generally, it becomes very difficult to balance professions when the same basic nano can vary across a greater range. I have a feeling that you'd find that changes that were worth the effort and risk would probably end up too expensive in down-sides.
    The benefit and detriment table would be graduated. You wouldn't, say, get a nano's damage to 9% and be safe, then go to 10% and have all the worst penalities applied. In the too-strong-but-it'll-cost-ya area, I see it ramping up slowly from "The costs and reqs of the nano are higher" to "the costs are prohibitive, you won't be able to use this much" to "This hurts me to use it" to "This bloody thing almost killed me!". Ideally, the "butter zone" where the benefits are maximized (to include invisible prob benefits) would be around the 10% improved range.

    Quote Originally Posted by XtremTech View Post
    Who's going to run the Scheol quest to get a nano and then risk an upgrade that might go wrong and work out worse for them than the original? While I like the idea of processes going randomly wrong... in reality players tend to hate them. And unfortunately, I think they have a point.
    I'm not saying this system would be easy, or even for use by a casual player. This is something a dedicated programmer would do. Additionally, when you begin to cap out, and have all the best nanos there are, this would give you a way of still improving yourself. I understand and agree with one of your concerns: If a badly programmed nano is uploaded, overwriting the old one, then they have to go through the time and effort of replacing it, or have another replacement ready to go. The fix for that would be to not have the restructured nano overwrite the old. After all, it IS a different nano now, but they should remain in the same nano lines, to prevent dual buffing.

    Quote Originally Posted by XtremTech View Post
    And then... the programming dudes have a deep fear of removing stuff from characters. Firstly, it has a tendency to 'break' characters. This was part of the reason why MapNav wasn't in the original reset... because they had serious problems when trying to remove maps from characters. In the end, they allowed resetting MapNav without removing the maps (thus getting around skill requirements) because removing maps was too awful to contemplate hehe.
    I'll have to take your word on this one. That must've happened during my hiatus. I figure, though, that if there's going to be this huge rebalancing, then that's the ideal time to implement something like this. Strike while the iron is hot, as they say.

    Quote Originally Posted by XtremTech View Post
    Secondly, though, whenever you have the ability to remove stuff from a character like the uploaded nano, then you will get support problems too. You'll get people who claim that nanos just removed themselves and want them replaced. You'll get real bugs where stuff gets removed improperly.... and so on. And when the nano was the reward at the end of a long and involved quest (for example) that will be a major big deal. It's a general rule, that deleting anything from a character as part of the game, should be avoided at all costs.
    Ah, now I got ya. Agreed! Let's leave the old nanos on, and any programming to be done has to be with crystals/discs.

    Quote Originally Posted by XtremTech View Post
    Finally... there's those quests. Many of the more recent nanos are delivered at the end of quests. Those quests would need to be rejigged to be fully repeatable - without being able to duplicate other items during the quest that shouldn't be duplicated. This should all be doable... but does add to the implementation difficulty.
    Hrm. Agreed. There's an alternative, though. A nano crystal duplication quest, perhaps with a nano-programming storyline. Easier to add content than modify existing content, no?

    Quote Originally Posted by XtremTech View Post
    All in all... I think you might be better off with a more simple idea, like being able to decompile a nano crystal back to a PPE and a Prepared Program Crystal and a random Improvement Code Item of lower QL than the decompiled crystal. The Improvement Item would be used on a PPE of QL equal or lower than itself, to alter a given stat by a certain percentage and failure would not break the PPE. Nano Cost, Cool-Down and Attack Speed might be good target values.
    Aye. Though I'm not just thinking of NT attack nanos, here. I'd like to be able to modify any of them, for any profession.

    Quote Originally Posted by XtremTech View Post
    Like I say... I like the basic concept, but there are so many difficulties associated with balance, player expectations, implementation and support, that I don't think I'd want to see it implemented as you've put it forward.

    X
    But do you think, given that the bugs / problems / issues we've discussed, were they removed and everything streamlined and problem-free, would it be a system you would enjoy using?

    Thanks for the constructive thoughts, by the way!

  6. #6
    Aye, like I said - I like the concept and it would be nice to see Nano-Prog doing something more useful. It's been a long time since anybody really built nano-crystals much at all - except for those special case nanos like GA.

    X
    Xtremtech: MetaPhysicist currently resident on Test. (209 + 21 AI Levels).

    Various other test MPs of differing levels and builds available.

  7. #7
    I don't like the random parts where you gotta "cross your fingers" and hope a good item comes out.

    But to me this is Nano Crystal Programming. I'd like to see new abilities come out from maxing nano programming, not new trade skills that are random... randomness in trade skills really sucks and is a bad way to force people to keep redoing them (imo).

  8. #8
    OMG! I survived all walls of texts.

    So... I like the idea and I agree with X (now go read everything, gimps)
    Lainbr - 220/30/70 Meta-Physicist Nanomage - E / Spirals - 220/30/70 Enforcer Solitus - E / Kokusho - 201/22/55 Fixer Nanomage - Equip Soon ;o
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    Proud veteran of Spartans

    To devs: You failed redesigning MPs as NTs with pets. I want my debuffer back.
    Dreamer: Basically - I wish THIS much effort was put in to ALL profs rebalance docs.

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  9. #9
    *b ravely puts on wide brim hat covered in fishing lures*
    *u nhurriedly puts together collapsible fishing rod*
    *m errily Ties a DevBait lure on the line*
    *p roficient cast! The DevBait lure lands this post back up to the top*

  10. #10
    Bump again. Devs, what do you think?

  11. #11
    I think where talking about alteast afew thousand new items to be added to the DB here... Like 6 slot implants it would be nice but it wont happen unless FC implements some kind of socket system...
    Rktim - 220/70/30 Omni Soldier.
    Imdrunknow - 157+/XX/15+ Omni MA
    Quote Originally Posted by IHaveHugeNick View Post
    Messiah has spoken.

  12. #12
    Not necessarily. It could be as little as, say, twenty or so. You wouldn't need a new item for every possible permutation of a program. You would only need entires in the database for the actual modifiers. Pardon the pseudocode here... Like, intead of "function nanocast(program);", it would be "function nanocast(program,mod1,mod2);"

    See what I mean, here? The mods themselves would just be percentile increases or decreases of different attributes of the program.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Whackjob View Post
    Not necessarily. It could be as little as, say, twenty or so. You wouldn't need a new item for every possible permutation of a program. You would only need entires in the database for the actual modifiers. Pardon the pseudocode here... Like, intead of "function nanocast(program);", it would be "function nanocast(program,mod1,mod2);"

    See what I mean, here? The mods themselves would just be percentile increases or decreases of different attributes of the program.
    Yes, like a socket system... Aka the base item gets linked to a second item in the DB and both get equipped at the same time.. Then you would just need say 3 item thats ql 1-300 and +DD, 1 with only DD, 1 with positive proc/extra DD and 1 with negative proc or something... (basically you would get the same effect that you are looking for if you could open a socket window for each nano and using NP you would equip the mod there)

    Reason im pushing sockets is that i think its next to impossible to link items with mods in AO without one..

    A socket system would also fix the issue with implants and DB size making it possible to have implants with more then 3 clusters...

    But im not sure if the DB could even handle a socket system even if they tried -.^

    (But tbh they really should try to make a socket system after rebalncing and the engine, i can even draw up the basic concept of implementation for them )
    Rktim - 220/70/30 Omni Soldier.
    Imdrunknow - 157+/XX/15+ Omni MA
    Quote Originally Posted by IHaveHugeNick View Post
    Messiah has spoken.

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