Three questions about Malus

[unkala]

1. What does it really do?
2. What does it really NOT do?
3. What can be done about people who answer #1 and #2 incorrectly on these forums and the /universe channel?


The in-game mouseover text over "Total Penalty" on the identity screen says this:

"Indicates the overall action penalty you sustain when you cast a spell or carry out foraging or crafting actions.
A high malus implies a high cost in energy, a long casting time and a smaller action range.
This total depends on the properties of the malus on the actions concerning the clothes and armour you are wearing and the objects you have in hand."

That's not very detailed, so I did some forum searching, and some web browsing, and some Q&A in /universe for more precise answers. I didn't find any information that was both consistent and more detailed than the summary above, so I experimented.

ACCORDING TO THE ACTION WINDOWS IN-GAME (and that's a BIG disclaimer), this is what Malus seems to do for various general categories of action. In these, M = (100 + Malus)% . In other words, M=1 for Light Armor or armorless, M=1.5 for a Malus of 50, M=2 for Malus 100, M=2.5 for Malus 150, and so on.

Attacks:
Stamina cost is multiplied by M.
HP cost is multiplied by M.
* no effect on attack time
* no effect on range (at least for ranged weapons and Taunt)
no effect on success rate

Spells:
Sap cost is multiplied by M.
HP cost is multiplied by M.
* Any extra cast time added by stanzas is multiplied by M. The spell's base cast time is unaffected.
* Range is divided by M. (So a Malus of 100 cuts range to 1/2, a Malus of 200 cuts range to 1/3, and so on.) If the spell has a decreased range credit, subtract that from the spell's base range first and only apply Malus to the result.
* Link spell maintenance costs are unaffected.
no effect on success rate

Foraging:
Focus cost is multiplied by M.
no effect on action time
no effect on success rate

Crafting:
Focus cost is multiplied by M.
no effect on crafting time
** no effect on success rate


Notes:
* I double-checked this result by actually testing it. It appears accurate.
** I didn't test this, and I'm not sure how to do it thoroughly. I also know a lot of people won't believe it. Please remember I'm only pointing out what the game says here.


For those items above that don't have a single * by them, I'd like to know if anyone else has found difinitively whether the in-game text is correct.

[sidusar]

All seems correct. Yes, including this one:

** no effect on success rate

The list under Crafting however is incomplete, you'd have to add this one:
* quality of the result is multiplied by ( 1 - Malus/1000 ), rounded up

So for a q230 craft with 24 malus (full MA suit), the craft would come out: ( 1 - 24/1000 ) * 230 = ( 1 - 0.024 ) * 230 = 0.976 * 230 = 224.48 = rounded up to q225.

3. What can be done about people who answer #1 and #2 incorrectly on these forums and the /universe channel?

Educate them. However if you're hoping to purge every piece of incorrect information from the help channels, I can tell you right now it's a hopeless affair.

[unkala]

The list under Crafting however is incomplete, you'd have to add this one:
* quality of the result is multiplied by ( 1 - Malus/1000 ), rounded up

Fantastic. Thank you. That confirms one thing I heard. It also looks right, as far as I'm able to test.

3. What can be done about people who answer #1 and #2 incorrectly on these forums and the /universe channel?

Educate them.

That will not be an option as long as I'm new. They have no reason to believe me.

[ajsuk]

How will the new people know you're new?

[dakhound]

also note alot of people who *answer* questions in uni are also new people parroting people they heard previously. I dont have a problem with this but they are quite often totally wrong.

[sidusar]

I see I was so focused on the crafting I missed this one:

Attacks:
Stamina cost is multiplied by M.
HP cost is multiplied by M.

The correct effects are:

Attacks:
* Stamina cost is multiplied by (100 + 0.5*Malus)%
* HP cost is multiplied by (100 + 0.5*Malus)%

(The action window is a lie!)

And for spells, it is hypothesized that malus increases the chance of your spells being interrupted. But as with anything involving the random number generator, this is very hard to verify experimentally.

also note alot of people who *answer* questions in uni are also new people parroting people they heard previously.

Yep! This is generally good, saves us old people a lot of repeating ourselves. The problem is just the traditional rumor effect, that any piece of info passing from ear to ear often enough gets mutated into something completely different.

That will not be an option as long as I'm new. They have no reason to believe me.

I assure you that matters not. To a new player anyone is just a name on a screen anyways, they'd be no more inclined to believe me than you. Your best bet to defend yourself against unbelievers is the "Don't take my word for it, see for yourself."

[unkala]

I see I was so focused on the crafting I missed this one:

The correct effects are:

Attacks:
* Stamina cost is multiplied by (100 + 0.5*Malus)%
* HP cost is multiplied by (100 + 0.5*Malus)%

(The action window is a lie!)

You do, in fact, seem to be correct on this point, but there is yet another complication! I tested nearly every melee and ranged weapon, including amps and open hands. All ranged and one-handed melee weapons followed your formulas above. All two-handed melee weapons only cost half the Stamina, but the full HP, that your formulas predicted. I don't know if it's a bug in the Malus calculations or if those weapons are intended to work that way, but it was consistent. It even applied to punching with amps, though not to empty-handed punching.

I don't have the skills to test dual-wielding.

I double-checked foraging and casting penalties. The info windows are correct for those.

[sidusar]

Oh, that, that's a leftover bug with weapon weight. Because 2-handed weapons occupy both hands, the action window preview includes the weight twice in calculating the stamina cost. Multiply the weapon weight with the stamina credit for yourself and you'll see the action window shows you double that. The actual stamina cost is the correct one though, so it's only half of what the action window shows.

The action window lies in more than one way.

The same mechanics are used for dualwielding, so what happens there is the preview adds the weight of both weapons, while the actual stamina cost takes the average of the weight of both weapon and is thus only half what the preview shows. One odd result of this is that using a dagger along with a sword costs less stamina than using only the sword.

But all of that is unrelated to malus.