Wheel of Time MUD

Terinor and I tested the build up of flee lag. He has 12 wil. Further testing is obviously needed, but even this took a while.

Testing of Time on Wotmud

We first tested how time works on the mud. It seems that every tic is approximately 60-63 seconds depending on lag. Each tic is divided equally into two zones. After 30-31 seconds, a half tic occurs.
Each half tic is divided into 3 sections, each 10-10.3 seconds each. So a full tic is 6 sections. Most mobs only engage (aggro at one of these 6 sections, or roughly once every 10-10.3 seconds). If you want to avoid mobs, you can perform actions shortly after the start of these sections and they should not engage. This was also known as the MST (mob standing tic) back when we were using this to actively avoid being aggroed.
There are exactly 40 pulses, or commands per MST, for a total of 240 pulses or commands per tic. Everything runs on these pulses (bashes, weaves, flee lag, etc) and can be quantified as a function of these pulses.

Method

To test the build up of flee lag for Terinor, I would repeatedly issue a say command. Terinor would hit me in a 6 exit room to eliminate issues of failed flees, then flee. The first set of results were for us doing this for about 2.5 tics. The second of results were doing this for 5-7 flees within a tic, then no more flees that tic. We then did another set of 5-7 flees at a subsequent tic.

All measurements of number of pulses for each flee lag are quantified after the initial fee. For example, below would be counted as a flee with 9 pulses of flee lag.

HP:Hurt SP:Bursting MV:Fresh > +17+ > h
[say test]
You say 'test'
Terinor tries to stab you, but you parry successfully.

HP:Hurt SP:Bursting MV:Fresh - Terinor: Healthy > +17+ > h
[say test]
You say 'test'
Terinor panics, and attempts to flee!

hHP:Hurt SP:Bursting MV:Fresh - Terinor: Healthy > +17+ >
[say test]
You say 'test'

hHP:Hurt SP:Bursting MV:Fresh - Terinor: Healthy > +18+ >
[say test]
You say 'test'

h
HP:Hurt SP:Bursting MV:Fresh - Terinor: Healthy > +18+ > h[say test]
You say 'test'


HP:Hurt SP:Bursting MV:Fresh - Terinor: Healthy > +18+ > h[say test]
You say 'test'


HP:Hurt SP:Bursting MV:Fresh - Terinor: Healthy > +18+ > h
[say test]
You say 'test'

HP:Hurt SP:Bursting MV:Fresh - Terinor: Healthy > +19+ > h
[say test]
You say 'test'

HP:Hurt SP:Bursting MV:Fresh - Terinor: Healthy > +19+ > h
You try to strike Terinor, but he dodges the attack.
[say test]
You say 'test'

HP:Hurt SP:Bursting MV:Fresh - Terinor: Healthy > +19+ > h
[say test]
You say 'test'

HP:Hurt SP:Bursting MV:Fresh - Terinor: Healthy > +19+ > h
[say test]
You say 'test'
Terinor leaves north riding a bloodstock stallion.


Results

First batch:
1 – 1
2 – 2
3 – 4
4 – 6
5 - 7
6 – 9
7 – 10
8 – 11
9 – 12
10 – 13
11 – 14
12 – 15
13 – 17
FIRST TIC HAPPENED DURING 13TH FLEE
14 – 7
15 – 8
16 – 9
17 – 10
18 – 11
19 – 13
20 – 14
21 – 15
22 – 16
23 – 17
24 – 18
SECOND TIC HAPPENED DURING 24TH FLEE
25 – 8
26 – 9
27 – 10
28 – 11
29 – 12
30 – 13
31 – 14

Second batch:
1 – 2
2 – 4
3 – 5
4 – 6
5 – 7
WAIT A TIC
1 – 3
2 – 4
3 – 6
4 – 8
5 – 10
6 – 11
7 – 12
WAIT A TIC
1 – 5
2 – 6
3 – 7
4 – 8
5 – 9
6 – 11

Discussion

It seems that each flee, there is a dice roll to determine whether 1 or 2 pulses will be added to flee lag. Flee lag always goes up by at least 1 pulse from the lag incurred for the last flee. A hypothesis (that would require a lot more testing) is that the dice roll for 1 or 2 pulses is based on wil.
In between tics, we saw the following flee lag reduction:
Starting: 17, after tic: 7 (41% reduction)
Starting: 18, after tic: 8 (44% reduction)
Starting: 7, after tic: 3 (57% reduction)
Starting: 12, after tic: 5 (58% reduction)
A hypothesis for the removal of flee lag is potentially removal of 10 pulses for a certain amount and higher, and a certain % for any flee lag less than this. This however would need a lot more testing to confirm.

Conclusions

More testing will be needed to confirm. However, it seems that each flee adds 1-2 pulses of flee lag based on a dice roll. Each tic significantly cuts flee lag; however it likely takes several tics to return back to base line flee lag. Each tic is made up of 240 commands, split equally into 6 parts. The beginning of the 4th section is when the half tic of hit point regain occurs. The beginning of each of these 6 sections is when most mobs aggro.

Markus did some work on this, and the impact of will, back in the day. Think it was up on the now-defunct wotmad, but I'll see if I ever grabbed a copy. If I recall correctly, he reached the same conclusions on the 1-2 pulses, and had a pretty good bit of data on the degree that will indeed impacted whether you picked up one or two pulses on a flee. There was some information on how much lag one lost each tic too, but I don't remember any details at all.

Yeah Markus did a full study of this.

Can't tell you the stats but do remember:

Will comes in bands. So it's not necessarily 8 will is better than 7 will for flee lag. It's something like 0-8, 9-12, 13-16, 17+

The higher band you are, the quicker you 'calm down' from flee lag. I think it also builds up more slowly? Also there are different messages depending on how big your flee lag is, 'heart pumping', 'slowly calm down', and stuff. Again I can't remember the details on how that messaging works.

Here you go, Thuvia recreated/restudied the original study to some degree: http://forums.wotmud.info/viewtopic.php?f=7 ... it=fleelag

Couple questions as this caught my eye.
How were you timing when a tic occurred? Using the hungry/thirsty messages would be a good way to do so if you didn't already.
Going off that, are you sure that you were getting the full 240 commands per tic with your "say test"? Just to be sure that there's no pulses missing due to lag between you and server (though I believe your link is good enough to minimize that if I'm not mistaken )

Adael wrote:Couple questions as this caught my eye.
How were you timing when a tic occurred? Using the hungry/thirsty messages would be a good way to do so if you didn't already.
Going off that, are you sure that you were getting the full 240 commands per tic with your "say test"? Just to be sure that there's no pulses missing due to lag between you and server (though I believe your link is good enough to minimize that if I'm not mistaken )

During the flee lag tests, tics were obvious by things such as night messages or just by seeing the flee lag go down.

For the 240 commands per tic, the testing was done separately from the flee lag tests using MST with Terinor's mob. This confirmed 40 commands/pulses per MST and 6 MST per tic.

I might've been not as clear as I hoped. Are you sure that you were achieving the maximum rate for "say test" of 240 times per tic when testing Terinor's fleelag?
There's potential that lag between you and the server means you might only get in (for example) 220 says per tic. This could end up giving shorter fleelag results when you count in the log than actuality, as pulses pass by in the mud that don't have a command from you attached to them for visibility.
Small concern probably, just curiosity on my end

'test1;'test2; … 'test240 would solve this if you were in one of the zones that gave global zone messages every tic, right?

Sanguine wrote:'test1;'test2; … 'test240 would solve this if you were in one of the zones that gave global zone messages every tic, right?

The zone messages in coach and ship zones aren't every tick, but slightly after. Technically speaking they will be 1 tick apart, just slightly lagged, but that would affect testing in this case.

And I suppose if you triggered off one it'd lag enough to miss some pulses. Would have to over account for that and use a third person having a mob sit/stand each MST?

Easy way to time tics is to be hungry with low survival. You get a message every tic that way.