Understanding the core systems underlying combat in Star Wars Galaxies is important to every player. Hardcore PVP'ers and casual hunters can equally benefit from knowing the basic equations and ideas behind attack speed, accuracy, template stacking, states, postures, and other combat-related topics.
Combat Equations[]
Like any role-playing game, Galaxies uses a set of mathematical equations that govern your interaction with the game world. These equations determine everything from item assembly success to attack hit percentage. Understanding these equations is vital to analyzing and fully understanding combat in SWG.
Combat Speed
Attack Speed is based (and listed) on your weapon of choice. There are 5 types of weapons but only 4 different combat speeds.
| Weapon Type / Attack Speed (seconds) | 1.0 | 0.8 | 0.6 | 0.4 |
| Melee | X | |||
| Heavy Weapon | X | |||
| Rifle | X | |||
| Carbine | X | |||
| Pistol | X |
The Attack speed or Refire Rate determines how fast your weapon can execute the default attack (Ranged Shot / Melee Hit). Also known as White Damage.
Specials can be executed with a 200ms (milisecond) seperation. Due to lag, this time is often stretched by more than 5%. When building macros, particularly macros that find their way into PVP, its adviced to increase the pauses between each special to more than 0.2 seconds to compensate for lag.
Minimum and Maximum Damage intervals.
The difference in Attack Speed fosters differences in the damage range for the weapons to make up for the difference and balance the weapons out against eachother. Faster attack speeds equates lower minimum to maximum damage interval, while having a slow attack speed means the damage interval starts at a higher interval.
- Melee weapons and heavy weapons have the slowest refire rate but also the highest maximum damage is at 1497-1713.
- Rifles have a faster refire rate and their highest maximum damage is at 1141.
- Carbines have a faster refire rate and their highest maximum damage is at 855.
- Pistols have a faster refire rate and their highest maximum damage is at 570.
Multiplied by their attack speed, those maximum values grant a maximum potential DPS at 1424-1425 for the pistols, rifles and carbines and slightly higher for the melee and heavy weapons. The reality is that there are caps in place to balance out the weapons at fixed DPS values so that one type of weapon does not have an apparent advantage over the others. Weapon DPS caps ranges from 1150-1403.
White Damage
Some expertise choices are designed to increase the damage done by your default attacks. The following proc effects will increase your white damage by triggering a second attack, a new combat roll based on the minimum-maximum damage interval of your weapon. The chances are applied per second, and will have to be converted to the attack speed of the weapon.
- Force Clarity [+5%]
- One-Two Pummel [+16%]
- Hammer Fanning [+20%]
- Burst Fire [+20%]
- While using Position Secured (does not apply to Heavy Weapons).
- Assassin's Mark
Combat Tables
For every stat in SWG there is a table with 1000 entries. Based on the additions to the table made by the player, race selection during character creation, profession choice and expertise selections those tables are filled out with a high or low number. Some professions are better at killing than others (DPS), while certain expertise choices makes for excellent defensive builds with little offensive power (Tanking).
When adding entries to the combat tables, your values are added and converted to a percentage value and displayed on your character sheet in the SkillMods pane. 1000 entries equals 100%, while 297 would equal 29.70%.
Recieving a buff means adding entries to a combat table, while recieving a debuff means that a value is subtracted from a combat table - leaving you weaker than before in some way. Depending on your character build, some debuffs can be more harmfull than others; For example a damage reduction debuff will affect a DPS profession more than a medic, while a healing potency debuff will have no effect on the DPS from a Spy, Smuggler or Commando but can get a group killed as the medics ability to heal his group members can be seriously reduced.
Only one profession has the ability to increase the number of entries in the combat tables from the default 1000, thus thinning out the effeciency of certain combat tables. Regular debuffs will simply remove the entries that the player has previously inserted via buffs.
Smugglers with Impossible Odds expertise can apply the debuff to thier opponents, which in turn will experience a decrease in effeciency of their defensive values as their combat table entries have been reduced in potency.
Combat Rolls
While not completely accurate, this chart shows a rough outline of how combat rolls are made as they all follow a predetermined order.
A defender result calculates Loaded Dice, Impossible Odds, Dodge, Parry, Block, and Glancing Blow all into one roll. The AoE defender roll table is: Loaded Dice, Evasion, Block, Glancing, and Impossible Odds (in that order)
Hit Type Breakdown
As seen in the Combat Order above there are different hit types:
- Miss is a failed attempt at applying a damage roll to your opponent. Missing your oppnent means he does not take any damage.
- Ranged attacks start out with a 5% innate miss chance and despite the players increase by the Strenght attribute to increase the hit-chance, there is always a 1% chance of missing your opponent while attacks applied by melee weapons does not share the same penalty.
- Dodge is a successfull defending combat roll and will counter single target damage applied with a ranged weapon. No damage is applied as the attack is completely avoided.
- Parry is a successfull defending combat roll and will counter single target damage applied with a melee weapon. No damage is applied as the attack is completely avoided.
- Note: Lightsabers can also Parry ranged attacks.
- Strikethrough is a successfull offender single target hit type. Parts of the damage applied will bypass the armor (up to 98% depending on how many entries have been added to the Strikethrough Value Combat Table and how high the roll towards the strikethrough value ends out being).
- Strikethroughs can be blocked.
- Critical is a successfull offender target hit type. Criticals can apply to area attacks as well as single target attacks and will add a damage multiplier bonus of 1-50% (depending on the outcome of the critical combat table roll).
- Criticals can be blocked and evaded.
- Punishing Blow is a successfull NPC hit type. Like a Critical hit it will boost the base damage of the attacking NPC by 1-50% (depending on the outcome of the critical combat table roll) on that particular hit.
- Punishing blows can be blocked, evaded and glanced.
- Hit is a successfull offender area or single target hit type. Its the result of a successfull hittype that haven't been boosted by being converted to a strikethrough or critical hit.
- Hits can be blocked, evaded and glanced.
Special Notes:
- Blocking an attack will reduce the damage taken (post-armor) by the block value amount.
- Successfully evaded attacks can avoid 100% of the damage from area attacks (depending on the Evasion Value) of the defending player. Evasion rolls apply only to area attacks and does not come into play versus single target attacks.
- Glancing an attack will reduce the damage of that attack by 60%.
- The sum of the offender attributes cannot exceed 99%. There is always a 1% chance of failing an attack.
- Having 104% critical chance does not grant you with a 100% chance to crit all attacks.
- The sum of Strikethrough Chance and Critical Chance caps at 99%.
Inherent Combat Abilities[]
Even with no Novice Professions, a player has several innate abilities:
- Melee Hit The most basic melee attack.
- Ranged Shot The most basic ranged attack.
- Duel / End Duel Allows a player to duel another player, if both use the command.
- Deathblow Allows a player to kill another player, he or she is fighting, while that player is incapacitated.
Combat-Related Systems[]
- HAM Display Knowing how to read the HAM is vital for anyone in combat.
- Toolbar Utilizing and understanding the toolbar and how its timers interact in combat is essential post-Combat Upgrade.
- Armor Once players reach Combat Level 22 of their profession.
- Accuracy The ability to hit your opponent.
States[]
When in combat, you are likely to be afflicted with a variety of "state attacks." These attacks change the abilities and modifiers of your character to either increase or decrease your effectiveness in combat. States that increase your potency are called "buff" states; "debuff" states generally hurt your character.
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Damage Types[]
Two primary damage types exist in SWG. Each player weapon will deal damage in either of these types:
Kinetic damage is arguably more effective, as PSGs will only protect against ranged Energy attacks.
Additionally, many weapons have a bonus Elemental Damage associated with their attacks. Elemental types include:
Combat Postures[]
The four basic postures in SWG affect player regeneration, aiming, defense, concealment, and movement speed. The only posture you cannot be in during combat is sitting.
Combat Posture Modifiers[]
While in combat there are two modifiers granted to the player:
- Accuracy
- Damage taken modifier based on posture
These modifiers take into consideration if the player is standing, kneeling, or prone and still or moving.
Line of Sight[]
Line of sight is the system used to determine if characters can "see" their targets. If a target can be seen, then they can be attacked. If something is blocking the target, then they will not be attacked, and the player will receive a Flytext message saying "Can't see target."
Line of sight is calculated by making a line from the position of your torso to the position of the target's torso. If there is a tree, structure, wall, or any collidable object (something you cannot walk through) that crosses that line, then the line of sight is broken. Additionally, any terrain will break line of sight; you can no longer fire through hills.
Doors and furniture that can be walked through do not break line of sight, and thus provide no cover. Sometimes you are able to fire through walls if targets move quickly; this is often just an effect of lag: at the time of the calculation, the target was within the line of sight, but by the time you see the action the target is behind a wall. Note that most fences are collidable, and thus prevent attacking targets that are on the other side.