auspex bug

Hello all, I recently installed this mod and I was loving it, even finding that several clans I had previous shunned were very enjoyable with the altered abilities.

However, there a bug that was a little disappointing.

You note in the faq that bloodbuff uses its original activation cost when reactivated while already in use. In fact this seems to be true of auspex as well. However, unlike bloodbuff, auspex will also use its original activation cost if the "Keep Disciplines Active" setting is checked in the options menu. This is disappointing because I thought I could run around with auspex always running, but ah well.

Anyway, thanks for the work. I don't think this bug is bad enough to spoil the game for me, but it would be really cool if it worked properly. Otherwise excellent mod that has reinvigorated the game for me.

If I remember rightly that's actually a game mechanic that takes one bloodpoint for everything renewed, last I'd heard they weren't sure what to alter to stop the game doing it - admittedly that was a while ago. Seeing they altered Blood Buff though, perhaps there is a way it is possible but I guess it would have to be something done discipline by discipline going through each power

Maybe it will be fixed in 1.2? I've barely played with this and I'm still looking forward to the next release

I tried 1.1 very briefly and am currently waiting for 1.2 to start over but from what I remember Auspex had no activation cost, but if you tried reactivating it, it used 1-2 blood points(I think it was 2) which I thought was a bug, but I forgot about it until I read this thread.

If it's truly an engine bug, then I suggest just giving auspex a 1 point activation cost and a longer duration (maybe 60/120/180/240/320?) to make up for it. That way people at least know what to expect.

Hey guys, sorry my internet was down over the weekend otherwise I would've jumped in this thread sooner.

Here's what happens and so far we haven't been able to figure out why or how to fix it. We can alter the blood amount for each discipline however it only alters the "activation" cost, not the "maintain" cost. The maintain cost (until we fix it) will remain the same which in the case of Auspex is 1 blood point per activation. Meaning if you have Auspex running and you choose to keep it maintained, it will cost the original amount.

In order to offset this we made all of the disciplines (especially with Auspex) obsurdely long. Like tier 5 Auspex lasts 3 minutes per activation which is the longest lasting discipline in the game. On top of that we also added a +2 dodge bonus while using Auspex at level 5 (+1 at level 4).

Unfortunately as of now there is nothing we can do about this, it appears to be baked into the engine so it may never be possible to change.

I guess considering you have 15 bloodpoints, hitting auspex twice at level 5 will net you 6 minutes of auspex for 1 blood, not a bad return i think.

It's not a bad return. I just feel like there should be consistency. It shouldn't cost 1 point to recharge something when it would cost nothing a split second later. If 1 blood point for six minutes is what you consider fair, then it should be 1 blood point for six minutes, not free for 3 and 1 each additional.

If you can't change the recharge costs then I think it's better to assume the cost is fixed and work with that. Balance out the higher costs with longer duration or more benefits.

At the very least it should be noted in the descriptions.

...or I could set it so you can't renew it period, you can only have 1 instance of it running and you HAVE to manually activate the power after the time. That would keep your character from ever spending blood on Auspex.

That works, it's not like it's an ability you miss when it turns off anyway. I've lost a few blood points where I've right clicked by accident a couple of times when I've had it running, but at least it's not a masquerade breaking power

Zer0Morph wrote:

...or I could set it so you can't renew it period, you can only have 1 instance of it running and you HAVE to manually activate the power after the time. That would keep your character from ever spending blood on Auspex.

That would be good solution.

Zer0Morph wrote:

...or I could set it so you can't renew it period, you can only have 1 instance of it running and you HAVE to manually activate the power after the time. That would keep your character from ever spending blood on Auspex.

That seems like the opposite of a solution, actually.

If the intention is for auspex to be free, then why not just give it a near-infinite duration at every level? 1 hour, maybe. (Or just make it infinite, if such a thing is possible.)

If the intention is for auspex to cost blood, but very little, then why not just make it cost blood but give it a suitable duration?

The way it is set up, level 1 auspex costs 1 blood for 60 seconds. So why not just increase the duration to 60 seconds and charge 1 blood for it?

Bottom line, what are you trying to accomplish? Personally I think making auspex cost 1 blood and doubling its duration from current makes the most sense. Making it so that it can't be recharged at all makes the least.

My opinion is that Auspex is one of the weaker disciplines, and when I play the game I usually end up saving my XP and blood points for other things rather than Auspex. While it has better bonuses in CE, the new blood loss mechanism makes even 1 point of blood valuable (as it should be, I guess) and the reason I used Auspex and noticed the bug was because it was free in CE, otherwise I probably would have ignored it like before. Plus, having the Auspex visual effect for a long time could get annoying.

I think I'm finally on the same page as you Lofgren... I understand what you're saying now.

Forgive me if I'm wrong but you don't like the inconsistancy of Auspex, either make it cost blood or don't, non of this sometimes it doesn't cost blood (activation), sometimes it does (maintain).... Is this correct?

Is Auspex the only power you have a beef with? BloodBuff is also the same way, it's 1 Blood to Activate, 3 Blood to maintain.... I believe Auspex and BloodBuff are the only 2 powers that do this... again because of the engine.

I'm on board with fixing this, we just need to brainstorm how.

I like the idea of Auspex being free, however I don't like the idea of having it infinite... I guess we'll have to compromise....

Yes I can make it a free toggle like Bloodform, thats easy enough to do, or I can set it to 1 blood and make the durations absurdely long...

Which would you prefer, let's take a vote....


Also, what about BloodBuff?

Zer0Morph wrote:

I think I'm finally on the same page as you Lofgren... I understand what you're saying now.

Forgive me if I'm wrong but you don't like the inconsistancy of Auspex, either make it cost blood or don't, non of this sometimes it doesn't cost blood (activation), sometimes it does (maintain).... Is this correct?

Exactly.

Quote :

Is Auspex the only power you have a beef with? BloodBuff is also the same way, it's 1 Blood to Activate, 3 Blood to maintain.... I believe Auspex and BloodBuff are the only 2 powers that do this... again because of the engine.

Yes and no.

I think that you should keep the 3 blood activation cost for bloodbuff as well. If something has a maintenance cost and it cannot be changed, then I think you should assume that the activation cost is fixed. It sucks that you wouldn't have this variable to work with, but the inconsistency is absolutely glaring to me.

HOWEVER, I would be mostly OK with bloodbuff being changed so that it cannot be maintained, as you proposed above for auspex. This is mostly because of how I personally use bloodbuff. Because of its very high cost, I never got into the habit of using offensively. Mostly I just use it to pick locks. I basically never feel the need to recharge it. Auspex on the other hand I find incredibly useful, especially if you are not a very durable or stealthy character. Traveling through the warrens with a gun wielding malkavian is a hell of a lot easier when you know what's behind every corner, and you are drawn to rats like torpedos on radar. This is entirely because of how I personally use these disciplines, however. Basically, I just wouldn't notice it if bloodbuff was made non-rechargeable, whereas I would with auspex. Blood buff also would not stand out as much to me because it's unlike all of the other disciplines in several other ways… although that will change in 1.2, I understand.

Quote :

I'm on board with fixing this, we just need to brainstorm how.

I like the idea of Auspex being free, however I don't like the idea of having it infinite… I guess we'll have to compromise…

Yes I can make it a free toggle like Bloodform, thats easy enough to do, or I can set it to 1 blood and make the durations absurdely long…

Which would you prefer, let's take a vote…

Also, what about BloodBuff?

I vote toggle for auspex. I definitely agree that there should be a way to turn it off, because the visuals can get annoying and the world looks cooler steeped in shadows.

For bloodbuff, I vote return it to its 3 point activation cost and triple the duration.

On second thought, I see that you plan to make blood buff allow the character to boost his attributes by even more than 2. I wonder how you came to this decision. At the current duration of blood buff, spending 15 xp to get +3 to attributes is a cinch decision. In fact, it makes spending the 12 xp to get +2 to ONE of those attributes seem like a complete waste.

Why not make blood buff a steady bonus at +2, regardless of ranks, return it to the original duration and 3 blood cost at level 1, and make additional ranks increase the duration instead of the bonus?

So for Auspex, you vote making Auspex cost 0 blood, and make it a toggle for all levels (1-5)?

So really your upgrading the distance the discipline works, and the benefits you gain from it correct?

----------------

Ok let me clear up how Blood Buff works in CE 1.2 as of now...

Activation Cost: 1 always
Maintain Cost: 3 always
Is Renewable: Yes

Level 1: +1 Physical Attributes for 10 seconds
Level 2: +2 Physical Attributes for 20 seconds
Level 3: +3 Physical Attributes for 40 seconds
Level 4: +4 Physical Attributes for 60 seconds
Level 5: +5 Physical Attributes for 120 seconds

Just as a note Blood Buff in CE 1.1 was +2 Physical for 40 seconds however you couldn't upgrade it.

I really like how Blood Buff is setup in CE 1.2 and I plan on keeping it this way. I have tested the game balance quite a bit with it and it's an incredibly viable discipline to dump XP into because it benefits you both offensive and defensively. The only thing I can think of as a discrepency is the Activation/Maintain costs are different, yes that bothers me as well.

What I'm thinking, as you noted earlier, is to simply kill the ability to maintain it. It's either on or off, you cannot renew it, that will take care of the player accidently using 3 blood points. If Blood Buff is activate and the person tries to activate it again, a warning will flash "This Discipline is already active".

What do you think of this plan?

Correct.

If it is free, then the duration is meaningless anyway.

I got a problem, it seems that I can't make Auspex run for unlimited time after all, at least not in the state it's in now. I can only do this if Auspex is no longer a passive discipline and I'm not sure how to turn it into a targeted one.

Another problem is that I can't make Blood Buff unrenewable, again not in the state it's in. Both of these are passive disciplines so we're screwed unless we can figure out how to make them targeted (without targets).

You see Thaumaturgy is a targeted discipline, all the data for that power is stored on another .txt file, not directly in stats.txt. That is how Bloodform can be turned on and off at will, and last as long as the player wants. Until I can figure this out, I may have to make Auspex cost/maintain 1 and Blood Buff cost/maintain 3 to bring consistancy to the game....

This sucks...

I freely admit that inconsistency is a bugaboo for me. It just stands out very much to me. When I first noticed that auspex thing, it was the only thing I could think about for a while and I actually had to stop playing that character because it was annoying me so much.

Very probably other people don't care as much.

But I still say you should mention somewhere in the patch notes that automatic discipline renewal is basically unusable. I can't be the only person who plays with that setting.

Inconsistancy bugs me as much as it does you, I want SOLID always and after you brought up this little stink I can't help but to agree with you more and more, in fact it's all I think about now too, HAHA.

We need to come up with a solution, and the only one I can think of is to leave the default bloodcosts for Auspex and Blood Buff, sadly enough. Auspex = 1 and Blood Buff = 3.

However we need to compensate these steep blood costs somehow, any ideas?

Edit: Ok literally after 4 hours of research and banging my head on the table, here's what I found out.

1. You cannot change the maintain cost of any passive discipline.
2. You cannot have infinite/toggle setups for passive disciplines.
3. You cannot keep someone from renewing a discipline after it's been started.
4. The Auto-Renew option is broken, this must have been broken since Bloodlines release. Here's what happens...

I know your a fan of Auto-Renew Lofgren so I'm sure this will make you sad, it did me. I never noticed this before because I never use Auto-Renew, but I played with it last night and I noticed the first time you activate a power, it maintains the power for the proper time, however as soon as Auto-Renew kicks in, for some reason it renews the power 2x the duration.

Example: I hit my 30 second Tier 1 Auspex, I get 30 seconds of Tier Auspex, Auto-Renew kicks in spending 1 bloodpoint, now I get 60 seconds of Tier 1 Auspex....

Again I didn't know this was broken and I'm 99% sure it's broken dating back to vanilla 1.0. I went ahead and grayed out the Auto-Renew feature so nobody can use it in CE 1.2. I figure if we are going to be CONSISTANT then we need to be CONSISTANT across the board, no bugs period! Sorry Lofgren...


Ok on to Auspex. Here's what I did..

I agree with Lofgren that the disciplines must be consistant so I went ahead and made Auspex cost 1 blood point across the board no matter what. Next I went ahead and changed the effects you get when using it and the durations it works for.

I always saw Auspex as more of a utilitarian discipline, not so much combat so check this out...
Tier 1: Duration 30 seconds, +1 Wits
Tier 2: Duration 60 seconds, +1 Wits and Perception
Tier 3: Duration 120 seconds, +2 Wits and Perception, +1 Intelligence
Tier 4: Duration 180 seconds, +3 Wits and Perception, +2 Intelligence
Tier 5: Duration 240 seconds, +4 Wits and Perception, +3 Intelligence

You ask Intelligence? Huh? Really?

Yea, read the description of Auspex: Enhances your MENTAL faculties and allows you to see the auras of those around you.
In plain english.... well Perception, Intelligence, and Wits are mental faculties... It's kind've like Blood Buff but for the mind with some extra goodies...

What does this change for me?
Well Wits grants you a Defense bonus
Perception grants you Inspection and Firearms bonus
Intelligence grants you Hacking and Research bonus

I tested to make sure you can actually hack computers while using Auspex without it turning off, and you can. Also I tried reading a book but I had -1 research, I used level 4 Auspex and poof I could read it!!

I really think this new Auspex is going to add some flavor to Malks, Tories, and Tremere allowing you to further customize your character...

I will be addressing Blood Buff here soon and I hope you like the changes made to Auspex.

I like the idea of increasing Int with auspex. Especially since you moved hacking from Wits to Int and I used Auspex only to temporarily raise my hacking feat.
For the renewability: Doesn't setting "Is_Renewable" to "0" in stats.txt do the trick?

Concerning BloodBuff: Tier 5 would set all physical Attributes at least to 6. Does the game recognize that whe it calculates the feats or cuts it off anything beyond 5? (Same question goes for Auspex and any other discipline that boosts Attributes or Abilities)

BTW Since this topic got so much attetion, it should be moved from Bug reports to Ideas.

Bah, computer ate my post.

The short version:

Auspex looks awesome.

Bloodbuff looks crazy powerful.

With the quoted bloodbuff values it seems like you would be a fool to ever put any XP into physical attributes. Just keep dumping them into bloodbuff and you will end up with an extremely powerful utility, attack, and defense power that costs next to nothing to cast and doesn't really do anything interesting.

It's better than potence in every way except duration. (Although admittedly potence sucks.)

It's better than protean at every level except 5, since you can just use a nice sword or axe and you won't miss the aggravated damage at all.

It looks to me like it is really worth those 3 blood points at every level except level 1.

Childe of Malkav wrote:

I like the idea of increasing Int with auspex. Especially since you moved hacking from Wits to Int and I used Auspex only to temporarily raise my hacking feat.
For the renewability: Doesn't setting "Is_Renewable" to "0" in stats.txt do the trick?

Concerning BloodBuff: Tier 5 would set all physical Attributes at least to 6. Does the game recognize that whe it calculates the feats or cuts it off anything beyond 5? (Same question goes for Auspex and any other discipline that boosts Attributes or Abilities)

BTW Since this topic got so much attetion, it should be moved from Bug reports to Ideas.

Cool, I'm glad you like the Int for Auspex, it was really fun hacking and researching high text books.

Unfortunately "Is_Renewable" does absolutely nothing, I was banking on that working in my earlier posts when I said I could do it, turns out Troika bent us over again.

I have raised ALL abilities to max out at 20, so even though you can't see dots past 5, they will be calculated in the feats section. Let's say you have 2 dots in Strength and you have level 5 Bloodbuff, you would see 2 regular dots and 3 blue dots in Strength and in the feats section your Melee would be 7 (2 + 5 = 7). So though you can't see past 5 dots raising the cap you can effectively have a 20 Strength before you max out. This is true for all feats/attributes/abilities for CE 1.2.

lofgren wrote:

Bah, computer ate my post.

The short version:

Auspex looks awesome.

Bloodbuff looks crazy powerful.

With the quoted bloodbuff values it seems like you would be a fool to ever put any XP into physical attributes. Just keep dumping them into bloodbuff and you will end up with an extremely powerful utility, attack, and defense power that costs next to nothing to cast and doesn't really do anything interesting.

It's better than potence in every way except duration. (Although admittedly potence sucks.)

It's better than protean at every level except 5, since you can just use a nice sword or axe and you won't miss the aggravated damage at all.

It looks to me like it is really worth those 3 blood points at every level except level 1.

I hate it when a long message gets wiped and you have to start over... Bah!

Glad you like Auspex...

I went ahead and overhauled BloodBuff last night on my own, here is what I setup, let me know what you guys think.

BloodBuff for CE 1.2
Tier 1: +1 to all Physical, 20 second duration, 3 blood to activate/maintain
Tier 2: +2 to all Physical, 40 second duration, 3 blood to activate/maintain (Same as Original BloodBuff in everyway)
Tier 3: +3 to all Physical, 60 second duration, 2 blood to activate, 3 blood to maintain
Tier 4: +4 to all Physical, 90 second duration, 2 blood to activate, 3 blood to maintain
Tier 5: +5 to all Physical, 120 second duration, 1 blood to activate, 3 blood to maintain

What do you think of this? As far as anyone being a fool to invest XP into physical attributes, why do you think that, those are permanent? Blood is precious in CE, spending 1-3 blood on Blood Buff WILL take it's toll, the expense is almost not worth using it at low levels so if you plan on using Blood Buff it's best to take it all the way to 5, and THAT will use up ALOT of XP.

Potence is worthless? Enemies can't use their Defense against it, It's guaranteed damage everytime you hit, I think it's a wonderful power.

You are right about Lethal vs. Aggravated, since NPC Vampires don't heal it makes doing Aggravated damage no better than Lethal. The only reason I can think that Aggravated Dmg would be good is if the NPC had a high Lethal soak and not a high Aggravated soak. I can look into this and see if I can setup Vamps to use Lethal soak but not use Aggravated soak, if so then having Aggravated Protean claws would be very beneficial.

Anyways, let me know what you guys think for Blood Buff, I really like the setup. It's expensive but gets easier as you get better at using it.

Perhaps I don't understand properly how potence works. My understanding was that it was bugged and just added a flat bonus to strength, nothing more. Even if it does bypass defenses, does only the points of damage from potence bypass, or does all damage bypass as long as you have potence activated? If it's the former, then it could be useful. If it's the latter, then it's useless, because after level 3 you will generally be able to get more bang for your buck by putting your xp into melee and strength than potence.

Either way, it is boring to me personally because it is just a straight-up buff, nothing more. Protean is also a straight-up buff when you get right down to it, but at least it does what it does in an interesting way.

As for bloodbuff, if you charge 3 bloodpoints then I agree that it makes more sense to put your points into abilities. If you only charge 1, then I can't see ever putting a third point into a physical ability. Combats are short enough that you won't go too hungry – I've been playing a gangrel and I didn't put a third point into protean until Chinatown. 40 seconds was long enough that it was useful, and 1 blood was not that costly. I frenzied only once, in the brotherhood of the ninth circle when I had to keep hitting blood heal and I've increased the rate of passive bloodloss to 1/4 because 1/5 minutes was having basically no impact on my game. Blood is exceedingly easy to come by.

I like the setup of bloodbuff that you mentioned above. The only thing is that reducing it from 2 to 1 at level 1 means that locks will be harder to pick in the early game, and cost more XP to pick over time than they currently do. Not that that is a problem.

lofgren wrote:

Perhaps I don't understand properly how potence works. My understanding was that it was bugged and just added a flat bonus to strength, nothing more. Even if it does bypass defenses, does only the points of damage from potence bypass, or does all damage bypass as long as you have potence activated? If it's the former, then it could be useful. If it's the latter, then it's useless, because after level 3 you will generally be able to get more bang for your buck by putting your xp into melee and strength than potence.

Either way, it is boring to me personally because it is just a straight-up buff, nothing more. Protean is also a straight-up buff when you get right down to it, but at least it does what it does in an interesting way.

As for bloodbuff, if you charge 3 bloodpoints then I agree that it makes more sense to put your points into abilities. If you only charge 1, then I can't see ever putting a third point into a physical ability. Combats are short enough that you won't go too hungry – I've been playing a gangrel and I didn't put a third point into protean until Chinatown. 40 seconds was long enough that it was useful, and 1 blood was not that costly. I frenzied only once, in the brotherhood of the ninth circle when I had to keep hitting blood heal and I've increased the rate of passive bloodloss to 1/4 because 1/5 minutes was having basically no impact on my game. Blood is exceedingly easy to come by.

I like the setup of bloodbuff that you mentioned above. The only thing is that reducing it from 2 to 1 at level 1 means that locks will be harder to pick in the early game, and cost more XP to pick over time than they currently do. Not that that is a problem.

Here's how Potence works. You receive a normal STR increase when using it however it is overwhelming STR, it cannot be defended against. When you attack someone your damage is determined by your lethality - their defense. If they make their defense roll then that subtracts your lethality.

Example: Gang member has a defense of 2, there is a chance that 2 lethality dice will be removed from the player's attack roll. So lets say you hit them with a weapon with a lethality of 5 and the base damage is 3, 5 x 3 = 15, however the gang member made both defense rolls, now you take away 2 lethality so your weapon did 3(lethality) x 3(base dmg) = 9(dmg potential).

In the case of Potence, your opponent cannot use their defense to defend against damage dealt by the Potence increase. So using that same weapon as earlier you do 5 x 3 = 15 normally right? Well you hit Tier 5 Potence so your lethalty goes from 5 to 10, now you do 10 x 3 = 30. 5 of those lethality points CANNOT be defended against, those are automatic hits for damage.

See how Potence is way better than just regular ol' strength bonuses?

Fortitude works the same way but on the opposite end, it gaurantees you will make your soak rolls.


BloodBuff, so you like this proposal? Awesome! I already went through the tutorial and made the door level 2 hacking instead of level 3 for those who only have level 1 Bloodbuff at the beginning of the game, so that won't be an issue. And yes it does make lockpicking a little tougher which in my opinion is just fine, makes the game harder and more diverse.

It appears my previous source was misinformed on potence.

That's all well and good. Can't say it makes it interesting to me, but at least it's not both boring AND useless.

As for bloodbuff, yes I like it. I don't see any poblem with charging people 5 xp to pick locks that their character could previously have picked for free either. Picking locks is pretty easy in the early game and later on you have to become dedicated to it if you want to keep picking anyway.

I don't think I've ever been this excited for a game mod. When I first played bloodlines I remember thinking, "There is so much here that is so good, why is there also so much that is so bad?" It was like somebody with a split personality had designed the game (or, more likely, like it was a licensed video game adaptation of a pen and paper game built on a shoestring with a beta engine by a company who ran out of time and money). I reinstalled the game just to play this mod and I have not been disappointed. Of course there is still so much potential in the game that a user mod can never hope to realize. Something about this game just seems so different from every other game I've played – in style, in design, in organization. Like, is there any other game where you can so unapologetically play a villain?

I have a few other suggestions but I hope I am not annoying you too much with these off the wall ideas. It seems like most of my thoughts you have already considered and rejected with good reason.

For example, now that walk is a toggle button (excellent), I would use it a lot more if there was an auto-walk button like in Oblivion. I get sick of holding the walk key down.