» Sat Aug 20, 2011 11:09 am Latest Version: 2.0 BETA1
Author: Alek
Requires: OBSE v0020
You can have a peek at currently available Arcane Shot ability:
http://youtu.be/bAcsGjRfx5o
AAA on Tes-Nexus:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39808
This is new beta version and is fully functional, you're very welcome to try it but bear in mind that it hasn't been polished yet and is lacking new visual and sound effects. Compared to first version it is a major upgrade and adds some new cool and unique archery abilities. I'm releasing the beta hoping for valuable feedback and getting enough informations on possible bugs so I can fix them before final release.
Ayleid Arcane Archer or AAA started as a mod which had a custom race with custom ability. Ability is now available to all characters and you will automatically obtain it when you load your game (check your spellbook for Arcane Archery lesser power). There are 3 types of shots and auto aiming ability. I will release more details on new abilities when I release the final version and if you have any questions feel free to ask.
Rapid Shots
Equip any bow and enjoy the rapid fire mode. You're not expected to keep the arrow nocked, just press the button once and arrow will fly at its full strength, pres once more, two times more, 10 times more, until you run out of arrows. Bow and arrow speed will scale with marksman skill and faster your bow is the slower you gain skill in marksman, it should be proportional.
It uses special technique to achieve faster bow speed without forcing you to use dedicated weapon and no other character but player will benefit from it.
Electrogravitic Shots
This is mother of AoE spells, not in terms of power but in terms of control over your enemies and your own protection when you're being swarmed. Every arrow fired will cost some magicka and its not your target that will suffer but those around it. All enemies around your primary target will be affected by pulling effect and when they get in contact a discharge will spout, deal electric damage proportional to magicka spent to fire the magic arrow and throw them away.
Another cool adition is that you can use it as your own defense. Just hold block with your bow and you will become a center of electrogravitic field. It will cost the same amount of magicka for every tick.
Auto Aiming
Auto aiming is best used when you're trying to hit those distant enemies and you have problem with finding a perfect gravity arc. You can also use it in close quarters and on enemies moving constant velocity. To activate auto aiming go to settings when you cast the lesser power. To use it press the right mouse button when nocking the arrow and it will automatically find the target to lock on, closest to your crosshair. It will stay locked as long as you hold the button. You will be now guided and all you have to do is to shoot and all other calculations like gravity and intercept points will be done on the fly. Just make sure you fire arrows at their full strength because that is what is expected in calculation. You can still miss if target changes direction of their movement while arrow is in flight. Unfortunatelly it doesn't work on knocked down targets or such because there are no way to find the target collision box and thus adjust the angle of fire.
You can't change the auto aiming button in beta but it will work even if you have other things like block or cast assigned to it because those assignments will be disabled while you're locked on the target.
Arcane Shots
This is the same old type of shot from first version so description is just the same. You can imbue your shots with magic by keeping the bowstring pulled back. Your magicka will start to drain and charges will start accumulate. Once you shoot the arrow it will do additional damage based on how much magicka you've spent, voila. It is more complex than it sounds and I'll explain every aspect of it ...
- Bow Charging: Two factors are taken into account here. Your marksman skill will play role of how much charges per second you can get ranging from 1 to 20 charges/s. Note that effective marksman skill is used which means that your luck attribute will be taken into account. One charge is equal to one point of magicka spent. The other factor is your magicka pool. Larger pools allow for more charges without taking a risk of backfire.
- Chance of Backfire: Yes its there to add a bit of a risk if one decide to go for a huge hits. Note that game allows use of potions and welkynd stones so one can use this to advantage of gaining more charges but the risk of having all charges backfire on you will increase. You should be safe with holding charges up to 80% of your max magicka. Going for 100% of max magicka will have a 4-5% chance to backfire, increasing chance further as you go over the limit. Speed at which chance is being processed is once every second.
- Damage: Damage is pure which means no known resistance or weakness will affect it, that is how I wanted it to be. Calculation of damage is made using default game formula and current game settings for calculating spell costs, its just been inverted to allow magicka based damage calculation which is the opposite way of what game does to calculate magicka cost of the spell. Exponential increase is also taken into account so with more charges your damage cost more per point of charge. Calculated damage is proportional to using 'on target' damage spell with base cost of 15 (comparing to Fire Damage having base cost 7.5 and Damage Health having 12 its more expensive but allows greater magnitudes due to the nature of spending magicka first, also note that you can change base cost easily which is explained later). Your effective marksman skill will affect damage the same way your destruction skill affect magicka cost of your damage spells so expect much better damage as you increase your marksman skill.
- Chance of Pushback: Using game ragdoll physics you have a chance of performing a pushback on your target similar to a knockdown. Unlike knockdown you can push your targets more violently and force is proportional to the extra damage so expect to see some very dramatic results in the late game. Chance is calculated from your effective marksman skill and amount of magicka spent using this formula: (marksman_skill * charged_magicka / max_magicka) e.g. at 100 marksman and 100% magicka spent you have guaranteed pushback, at 50 marksman and 50% magicka spent you have 25% chance. If you deal a deathblow with the extra damage chance for pushback is 100%. This is made purely for cosmetic reasons and fun, pushed victims will not take damage from hitting the solid objects but they will be disabled for the duration.
Compatibility
It should work with any mod that doesn't do the some thing with bows and magicka because you don't want such abilities to overlap. Other than that few game settings are exclusively managed in realtime so if you have any other addon that change physics of arrows or rate at which you levelup your marksman skill, AAA will take precedence managing these settings and restoring to vanilla values when they are not used by specific shots.
