Warrior General Games

http://goallineblitz.com/game/forum_thread.pl?thread_id=3853045&page=3#34270564

In this quote above Bort says that above 10 in a SA, and the benefits start to tail off so that beyond 12 or so it is not really worth it.

My question is: If I have a favoured SA above 10, is the extra bonus (for it being favoured) applied before or after the reduction in the SA value? Has this been clarified yet?

An example with numbers - I have a favoured SA at 10, which situation applies:
(i) The extra bonus is applied making it 12 (say), but then this is reduced to 11.5 (say) afterwards.
(ii) The SA at 10 has no reduction applied to it as it is not above 10, and then becomes 12 (say) when one takes into account that it is favoured.

Good question. Maybe PM Catch since only Bort can answer that and the next Q&A won't be for a while.

Would this be the answer you are looking for?
Wiki-
Catch22
February 9, 2011
Question:
If you have 10 in a bonus SA for your archetype, does the bonus take the SA above 10 for calculation purposes where you have diminishing returns or are you getting the full bonus here? For clarification,suppose the bonus is adding 20%, would this make your 10 a 12, or would it add 20% to the value of the 10 SA?
Answer:
You would face diminishing returns if the bonus took you above 10. So if you had 9 and the bonus is (as stated before, it's not) 20%, then the SA would act as if you had 10.8 in it. That .8 above 10 would face diminishing returns.

Yup. So diminishing returns are applied after the bonuses and penalties, interesting. That sucks for favored SAs, but helps if you put a lot in penalized ones.

Thanks for the replies. Guess the moral of the story is not to take favoured SAs above 10 then!

As for the penalised ones, getting them to 6 with SPs and putting +6 from equipment in there seems like not a bad idea now.

Edit: This sort-of removes a lot of the benefit of the SAs being favoured! Oh well ...

Yep, makes the whole thing silly really. Add to that the fact that they don't tell you what the bonus actually is and you don't really know at what point you should stop spending on the SA, heh.

Originally posted by jdbolick
Yup. So diminishing returns are applied after the bonuses and penalties, interesting. That sucks for favored SAs, but helps if you put a lot in penalized ones.

Yeah, basically means:
1. Having an SA favored instead of penalized means it's cheaper to get it to effective 10. That's nice if you're crunched for SPs/EQ.
2. Having 15 in a favored SA is not much better than having 15 in a penalized SA.

I wouldn't call it silly, because of #1, but #2 definitely is something to consider.

It's silly because if it's favored OR penalized you have no idea how to optimize the points you spend. If I want the SA to be 10 to avoid any diminished returns and it's a favored or penalized SA, where do you take it? Is it safe to stop at 9? Or 8 for favored? Is 12 where you should target for penalized? Is it even possible to get an effective 10 on one of these SAs?

Originally posted by TheGreatPuma
Yep, makes the whole thing silly really. Add to that the fact that they don't tell you what the bonus actually is and you don't really know at what point you should stop spending on the SA, heh.

I disagree. It means that you can save SP by not taking favored as high freeing up SP for the penalized SAs or other needs.

LOL Ok

Originally posted by DisEnFranchised
I disagree. It means that you can save SP by not taking favored as high freeing up SP for the penalized SAs or other needs.



I think his point was, that you can't reliably save SP by not taking it as high.

Since the favored SA's have varying bonuses even from archetype to archetype (and it is not published what that amount is), you could say stop at 9 in favored juke, and end up with only 9.9 because it may only give a %10 bonus. So you still have to take it to 10 if you want to get it up to the point where diminishing returns would not affect it. But of course if you take it to 10, you could end up getting it favored by a 50% bonus(not likely) and hit 15, and then the diminishing returns kick in (which are also not published) so you could end up with basically the same amount as if you had taken it to 8 or 9. In the end to have a reliable value at a necessary SA, you still need to take that skill to at least 10 anyways.

While the penalized SA's might allow you the knowledge that you can pump them up higher and at least somewhat avoid diminishing returns, I don't see any point at all in treating the favored in any way but what you normally would do. It's worthless knowledge unless we get some kind of data on what gets what bonus and on who. And you can bet that will not happen.