The real resistance reduction due to ZOE...(hint: it's bigger than 20%)

Decent effort, but there is quite a lot of misinformation and poor assumptions in this post. The overall premise is worth looking into, but the execution was weak.

I made a spreadsheet a few days ago to calculate how long you would have to be out of combat in order for Nano-Armor Accelerator (regen) to be as effective as Kinetic Armor (the answer is 51.11 seconds of no combat if you're curious). So I'll simply use that spreadsheet to fix your post.



Alright, so the first point is that Kinetic Armor (rank 3) does not reduce the number of bullets to kill by 1, it reduces it by 21.

If you don't have kinetic armor at all, it takes 70 bullets (at 143 damage each) in order to kill a MAX suit. If you have Kinetic Rank 3, it takes 91 bullets.

The way damage reduction works on MAX suits is that the more points you have in Kinetic Armor, the better pocket-engis are.

Furthermore, you can't simply assume that an engineer simply gives 5% resistance to small arms fire. That assumption is preposterous since you're taking two different types of survivability and trying to treat them additively. You simply cannot do that.

This begs the question, how much survivability does a pocket engi give you? Well, this question is quite a bit more complicated because it is a function of the amount of incoming damage you are taking, which in turn is a function of the amount of kinetic armor you have. That said though, we can still do it with a bit of effort.

First thing to do is to calculate the rate at which an engineer gun can repair a max suit. To do this, we'll simply time how long it takes to repair a MAX suit from 1% hp to 100% hp, and then translate that into %HP/sec. After a quick test, a MAX suit can be healed from ~1% hp to 100% hp in roughly 13 seconds, which translates to 7.69% hp/sec.

Now here is the complicated (interesting) part! You know how when you heal a max, you let him live longer... and the longer you let him live, the more time you get to heal him---which in turn lets you heal him even more! If this sounds familiar to you, it should! This is the same way compound interest works, and in fact you can model this with the same equations as you model bonds/loans/stock dividends, etc.

Now, I put all of this into excel and did it the manual way so I could graph it, but if you're curious, you should be able to put this into a finance calculator as:

Interest Rate = %hp/sec
Principal = Starting HP (2000)
Payment = Incoming damage per bullet (143*damage_reduction)
Future Value = 0 HP (dead)
P/Y = Rate of Fire (how fast your enemy's gun shoots)
Solve for N = how long it takes for you to die

So here are the results (I tested this in the VR training area, and the model seems to work perfectly)



The blue line represents your HP while getting repaired against 1 enemy. Red is against 2 enemies, and Green is against 3 enemies.

Now, obviously an Engineer cannot heal for longer than ~14 seconds straight, so the X-intercept value is incorrect on the blue line. The actual graph should be piecewise since an Engi would need to wait for his repair tool to cooldown. However that isn't important since we're only really interested in the actual damage reduction in the short term.

In other words, we're only really interested in the slopes of these lines. The slopes here are basically a measurement of how effective your pocket engineer is.

So back to our original question! How effective is a pocket engi in terms of damage reduction for both a normal max and a ZOE max?

If you have Kinetic Armor (Rank 5), AND you have a Pocket Engineer repairing you constantly, then it is as if you have Kinetic Armor (Rank 11), or roughly 96% damage reduction. In other words, a pocket engi in this case is equivalent to an additional 8.5% armor reduction.

If you have Kinetic Armor (Rank 5), AND you have a pocket engi, AND you have ZOE active, then your ordinary damage reduction is 67.5%, and your engineer equivalent damage reduction becomes ~76.5%. So for ZOE maxes, a pocket engineer is worth ~9% extra armor. Why is this more? Because damage reduction scales exponentially. When you use ZOE, you're getting really really ****** damage reduction, and a 9% increase for ZOE is much much smaller than an 8.5% increase for normal MAXes.

WTF does that mean? It means armor is a really poor way of measuring damage reduction, and it means we're asking the wrong question.

Here is the correct question to ask: How much longer does an Engineer allow you to live against a barrage of bullets?

Under sustained fire from 1 enemy, a pocket engi will allow a ZOE max to live roughly 2 extra seconds in combat.

Under sustained fire from 1 enemy, a pocket engi will allow a non-ZOE max to live roughly 23 extra seconds in combat.

No, this is not a typo, this is how exponentiation works. Pocket engi's are roughly 11.5 times more effective for non-ZOE maxes than they are for ZOE maxes in a perfect vacuum mathematical-land.

What does this all mean? It means you should ignore everything I just wrote because it doesn't change the fact that ZOE maxes are absurdly overpowered in realistic situations.

http://tinyurl.com/mwxr9v7 (twitch tv link)

That is how good ZOE maxes really are with an engi. Skip to 20:45 if you want to see the crazy part.

The original point was that if you're using ZOE to do anything but stand still, your pocket engy can't repair you so you end up being significantly more vulnerable. If you stand still with ZOE then you're a super easy target for anyone with a rocket launcher to instagib you.

For anyone saying that a ZOE can walk into a room and take out 5 people then walk away, so can a MAX with a pocket engy. In fact, that is what the NC have been doing for 6 months now, using a pocket engy on their splattermax's so when they push into a room, they can gib everyone and walk away. The TR MAX can do it too as well as the VS MAX, without ZOE. The point is ZOE allows you to dodge maybe 30% of the bullets while a pocket engy will allow you to tank those same bullets that ZOE allows you to dodge, with the exact same outcome for non-ZOE w/ a pocket engy and ZOE without a pocket engy.

Are you guys whining that the VS can do attacks as 1/2 instead of 2/2 teams now? I swear just four months ago that you whined the same thing should be fair with MBT's when the Magrider would always be seen running Heat/Saron 2/2 while the other tanks ran 1/2 and were getting leveled by the Maggy's. If you want to complain about teamwork vs non-teamwork you should be consistent about it or not complain about it at all. Flip flopping shows you don't want it to be fair, you just always want to be on the side with the best stuff.

I did some simple assumptions and damage differences based on one of the ingame MAX test videos from forever ago. If those numbers should be higher, then the difference is higher.

ZOE maxes are significantly more durable than non-ZOE maxes. The movement is simply that good. The video in my previous post is irrefutable.

Also, I've never posted anything about tanks, ever. I don't use vehicles in this game.

treeHamster, I hope you realize how utterly ridiculous it is to try to convince a good player that ZOE isn't OP. Seriously, go watch any good player's stream using ZOE. You'll notice two things:

1)The streamer admits that it is OP
2)The streamer proceeds to show why it's OP


Take a good player. Give him a Scatmax. Now, take that same player, give him dual blueshifts with ZOE. That same player will ALWAYS be exponentially better with ZOE.

All those videos are from the point of view of a ZOE. I have yet to see a video from the point of someone fighting a ZOE. In other words, you can show a video of some people destroying others but that doesn't mean that's the majority of people. You could be finding videos of the people that were already good players. I watch garbage ZOE players die each day due to lack of situational awareness (they get C4'd or rocketed).

What I want to see is a video from the point of view of a good player fighting an average ZOE. I'd be willing to bet, the difference isn't nearly as bad as people whine it is. We all know BCP isn't that great, he just has his entourage of minions which keep him alive allowing him to get a really high KDR and score rate. It could easily be the same here, simply that you're seeing hordes of people use it which creates a situational bias towards ZOE.

Yesterday I was Arroyo right at the end of the Amerish alert on Mattherson. The NC had zerged in to retake it and there were lots of squishy's around. The first time I dropped with my ZOE, I got a solid 5 kills, getting away with a sliver of life. The second pass I only managed 2 kills before I got killed by the same group (of about 7 guys). The 2 kills were simply because I took out the weak guys who had just be revived. Other than that, I got leveled and fast even with my jumping around and strafing. I got that first lot of kills because I surprised them but they were ready the second time around.

That could easily be what you're seeing now when ZOE takes on groups, the advantage of surprise. We know ZOE is great for shooting people in the back, it was already a place being proposed back before this was released. Between that and headshots, and people can go down fast (I aim for headshots and not bodyshots when I'm MAX'ing and generally charge people to move in closer).

At 20:45 when you were outside, that wasn't ZOE, that was just the fact that the guns were accurate/you got lucky.

When you walked into that building and went around the corner, out of those three guys, ONE of them was shooting at you. The middle one was freaking out trying to run back out the door and the HA on the left was trying to rocket you instead of shooting you with a gun.

So you leveled the three of them because two of the three didn't handle the situation correctly. After that it was just a stream of singles that you were killing which any MAX will be king at.

When the second full group came in, only two of them were shooting you. In that entire stream of people, only a handful were shooting you and half of those guys were using semi-autos. The entire camp out in that cap room, you were spraying the doors getting easy shots on people before they were able to get a shot back then on top of that most of them didn't even shoot at you. This is actually the exact type of behavior that most of the other videos (of ZOE's slaughering squishies) is showing, lots of infantry with very few actually shooting a gun at the ZOE. Most of the time these videos either have a lot of medics running around trying to rez the dead ones, HA's switching to rocket launchers, or people throwing nades, all instead of just spraying your weapon, which is what we have been saying is how you take down a ZOE (get a group of people and just spray your weapon at it).

Right at the end they FINALLY responded correctly and all just grabbed their carbine/AR/LMG and started to spray you. When people just shoot automatic in groups, ZOE's go down very fast.

So it's not necessarily that ZOE is OP (maybe it is, maybe it isn't) but rather that people simply aren't responding them correctly. They freak out, try to pull rockets, try to C4, try to use frags/vehicle nades, or run around rezing (in the case of medics) instead of just whipping out your primary and spraying a mag at the ZOE.

Another great weapon for killing ZOE's is auto-shotties. I had a pair of NC HA's yesterday drop in on me in a Biolab, with pistons (I assume extended mags), and they leveled me very quickly.

P.S. It also helped that you had an engy constantly repairing you.

You, sir, just won the internet.


The more I think about it, the more laughable the original post becomes. Unless something has changed drastically, ZOE can be turned on and off at will. If you're really worried about getting those extra heals, you can turn off your ZOE for the heals. Then immediately turn it back on with no cooldown.

I wish lockdown worked like that. Lockdown takes AGES to disengage when under fire.

Not quite compound interest. If that was the case, then the amount of healing you do would increase when the person has more health. Furthermore, since damage received is a linear relation then if it was compound interest then we would see signs of an exponential curve in the model. But the model looks eerily linear over such a large area that I doubt it really is compound interest we're dealing with here.

Instead, with the model I posted:

Damage = D*(1-A) - (1+c)*R

where D is base damage, A is damage resistance (or armor), R is the base repair amount and c is the percent increase that the repair tool certs provide. And as shown before, this leads to the new damage resistance:

New damage resistance = A + (1+c)*(R/D)

And if we extend our domains for R and D into continuous domains, then the time derivative:

Damage per second = DPS*(1-A) - (1+c)*RPS

where DPS is base damage per second and RPS is base repair amount per second. Since the shape of the formula hasn't changed then:

New damage resistance = A + (1+c)*(RPS/DPS) = A + ERPS/DPS

where ERPS is the effecitve RPS i.e. ERPS = (1+c)*RPS.

From your own testing you repaired from 1% HP to 100% HP hitpoints in 13 seconds. Since you didn't mention certs I'll assume this is the ERPS.

ERPS = (2000 HP - 20 HP)/13s ~ 152.3 HP/s

For a example weapon, let's use the TMG-50 at point blank range.
D = 167 HP/round
ROF = 577 RPM ~ 9.62 rounds per second
Ideal DPS = D*ROF = 167*9.62 HP/s ~ 1606 HP/s

ERPS/DPS = (152.3 HP/s)/(1606 HP/s) ~ 0.0948

Which means that the repair against the TMG-50 provides roughly 9.5 percent points of extra armor under continuous fire upon base resistance, kinetic armor and ZOE.

For rank 5 kinetic armor and ZOE:
New damage resistance = 0.8*0.875 + 0.0948 = 0.7948
And without ZOE: 0.875 + 0.0948 = 0.9698

Compare that to without repairing.
ZOE: 0.7
Without ZOE: 0.875

The difference?
ZOE: 0.7948/0.7 - 1 ~ 0.135 or 13.5% increase
Without ZOE: 0.9698/0.875 - 1 ~ 0.108 or 10.8% increase.

What about TTK?
For the sake of simplicity, we'll use TTK = Base HP/EDPS
where EDPS is the effective DPS.

In our case, EDPS = DPS*(1-A), where A here is the new damage resistance.

ZOE: EDPS = (1606 HP/s)*(1 - 0.7948) ~ 329.6 HP/s
Without ZOE = (1606 HP/s)*(1 - 0.9698) ~ 48.5 HP/s

TTK
With repair
ZOE: (2000 HP)/(329.6 HP/s) ~ 6.07 s
Without ZOE: (2000 HP)/(48.5 HP/s) ~ 41.2 s

Without repair
ZOE: (2000 HP)/(1606 HP/s * 0.3) = 4.15 s
Without ZOE: (2000 HP)/(1606 HP/s * 0.125) = 9.96 s.

Difference
ZOE: 6.07s/4.15s - 1 ~ 0.463 or 46.3% increase
Without ZOE: 41.2s/9.96s - 1 ~ 3.137 or 313.7% increase

And the difference between ZOE and without ZOE;
Without repair:
4.15s/9.96 s - 1 ~ -0.583 or 58.3% reduction

With repair:
6.07s/41.2s - 1 ~ -0.853 or 85.3% reduction

Difference of the gain between maxes:
(41.2s - 9.96s)/(6.07s - 4.15s) - 1 ~ 15.27 or 1527% increase.

In other words, against a single TMG-50, turning on ZOE means you lose 58.3% of your TTK without repair and 85.3% with repair compared to a regular max. Furthermore, by turning on ZOE you gain 46.3% on your TTK with repair compared to without. However, the gain of the regular max is 1527% larger!

Lots of maths ignoring one vital fact - pocket engis are used far, far less with VS maxes than the other 2 factions.

Simply ridiculous. Just look at the Jaeger's Crossing part afterwards. Try to run around in the open like that as NC or TR. You'll just catch a stream of bullets and die almost instantly. The fact that a lot of enemies turn around and try to run away from a ZOE simply comes from their awareness how OP they are atm. When I see a NC Max with Double Scatterguns or even Double Hacksaws, I will still try to engage them at distances around 20m. When I see a ZOE, I just run zig zag towards him and try to damage him at least a little before he instagibs me. Running isn't an option. ZOEs will chase you down and gib you, even in a 3 vs 1 situation.

Maxes are supposed for a small area superiority when equipped with anti infantry weapons. You can lock down rooms or the sky when you're supported by engineers. The ZOE is nothing else than a faster, much better armored heavy assault class with a higher damage output. A class meant for charging, instagibbing enemies and retreating (like you can see a couple of times in the video as well). It has nothing to do with the roles of NC and TR maxes which are strong in their own right as well, but not as infantry farming units able to charge at them and instagibbing them.

And no, the charge ability is not the same. Whoever says that is completely ignorant and simply wants to defend the current ZOE ability. With the charge ability, you can't charge into a room, fire constantly while strafing at lightning speed and charge out of a room again or charge after the remaining bits of the enemy force who are desperately trying to outrun their certain death.

There are so many VS maxes around now, it's ridiculous. And everyone who plays all factions and is not biased will have to agree that it's over the top atm.
NC and TR maxes dominate the area, and especially the room they're in. I'm ok with that when playing against them since I can avoid them. A ZOE doesn't exclusively dominate a room like in the video, he dominates YOU and will try to run after you because he knows he can always retreat at the very same speed again if he bumps into 5 more enemies.

This is because most VS are selfish jerks who refuse to play support roles.

What I find funny is that when the entire MBT debate was going on with the Maggy was that the other two factions were whining because their 1/2 tanks weren't as good as the 2/2 Maggy's and they wanted their tanks buffed because they couldn't get people to gun for them. Their tanks got buffed and the Maggy got nerfed. Now the situation has reversed and they're now complaining that it's not fair that our solo MAX's are as strong as a MAX/pocket engy pair. So it has little to do with "fairness" and more to do with the fact that they're whiny little children that always want to get their way.

Everyone knows the real reason NC/TR hate on ZOE is because our MAXs look absolutely fabulous with a nice purple glow and can perform wondrous laser light shows previously reserved for the Lasher.

Have the TR lockdown make them glow in the dark too so they will stop complaining already! Maybe make the NC Aegis shoot out rainbows as well.

ZOE is the new BFR of Planetside.

Poorly thought out, rushed without adequate validation and testing.

Coming soon, caves

I hate to break this to you but everything that you saw in the video, I have been doing for months with much less effort using the charge ability, much less risk of death too. This has nothing to do with ZOE and is done equally effectively by mercy maxes as well.

You are either a factory worker or a high school kid so let me explain this to you.
100 x 0.2 = 20
100 x 0.4 = 40

Do you get what im hinting at or is it too complicated for you to understand?

Are you ******* blind? Can't see the glow?

Oh and nice claim about the engy, nice way to completely rebuke your team mates point in the OP, and point out exactly WHY this ability is overpowered.




Man either VS players are ******* dumb or just cocky that they got two OP abilities in a single patch and suddenly they're winning. I mean i get liking to win, but have some common decency to actually admit something is wrong and that it should be fixed. This isn't a war, its a game. when 2/3's of the players actively avoid the remaining 1/3 simply due to max issue there is a problem.

Ive said it before but what part of it is OP? I am doing the exact same thing using blueshifts without ZOE with much less risk of death? And you can do the exact same thing using mercies.

Funny thing is, this is all based on a single assumption that the MAX is always advancing forward. Life and theory in action.

See my picture for proof: