Random Question Thread (FFXI Related)

You can tell how many attacks it is (with each hand and foot + Daken), but can't distinguish whether it is a DA or Occasionally Attacks Twice.

Animation field here: https://github.com/Windower/Lua/wiki/Action-Event

I suppose that answers my question because it means it would have to send the packet multiple times if an MA so that they could crit or not crit independently. Otherwise all hits of an MA would be crit or not crit which I know isn't the case.

It doesn't. The packet contains an array of targets, each of which contains an array of actions, each of which contains each of those data points on it's own. An 8-attack round with any amount of crits, enspells, etc.. is still just one packet. The client sees it and plays the animations for it consecutively (though with 8 round attacks, it's possible the next attack round comes in before the animations finish and the remainder get skipped).

You can't distingish DA from OAX or FUA because you just see the number of attacks, there's no identifier for which trait caused them.

I recognize this might be confusing because we are using "packet" to mean two different things.

Every 400ms you send/are sent a UDP packet containing chunks of information that FFXI parses to change the world around you. One of those chunks is the "action" chunk that contains information like attack damage, job ability usage, etc. A single action chunk can contain information about up to 8 melee attacks (a whole attack round) or a nuke that hits ... 16? targets or a single WS, etc. it contains all of the information necessary to animate and log the action (to your chat log).

You frequently do receive multiple action chunks per UDP packet (you don't only see your own actions, after all), but each attack round is a single action chunk.

So you can get main hand / off hand / left foot / right foot / Daken multiattack distributions no problem, but you can't know what causes your main hand to attack twice (OAT or DA).

To further clarify, even if you r0ed for a while and multiple attack rounds came in during the same UDP packet, they'd each have their own chunk (what windower API calls a packet) so you could still distinguish them.

No matter how many attacks you make, the server only sends you one actual UDP packet per 400ms (250ms with packetflow and sufficiently low ping).

So how do people actually calculate how TA and DA work together if you can't read the packet? Slow weapon with timestamp?

I feel like you're not understanding. Each packet can contain multiple action chunks. Each action chunk can only contain one attack round, and an attack round will not be split between action chunks. Each attack round can contain any number of targets and swings.

So, to see if an attack was a DA or TA, you would just count the number of swings in the chunk and see if it was 1, 2, or 3. However, let's say you're using a Rostam and multihit gear. If you get 3 attacks in one chunk, you have no way of knowing if it was a DA+FUA or a TA without FUA. All you can see is that it had 3 hits and which hand each hit used.

Great talk from Bjarne Stroustrup that underlines the argument of what we "think" we know / what we have been told is wrong.

Are Lists Evil? 44:40 seconds in


:/ guess i cant use a time stamped link: https://youtu.be/OB-bdWKwXsU?t=2682

So it is in the packet? I am asking why we don't test this using packets rather than counting it manually which is how I believe all tests have been done before.

Set up a THF with equal TA and DA and collect packets, easy.

There's no reason not to. You should test with packets. It's easy to do so.

For someone who has years of experience playing with stuff like like this and knows what they're looking at, sure, its easy to do so.

If I give you a hockey stick and drop a puck at your feet and tell you rip one bar down, "its easy to do so", I'm pretty sure you'd look at me with the same eyeroll I just had reading that.

So why has noone tested it using packets? Put the question to bed about how MA works

There's no question about how it works, unless you mean how the code is written. We know, without a shadow of a doubt, how the math works.

You don't even need to write an addon in this case. Battlemod already reads the packets and converts them to [#] notation, which can be parsed with any text reading tool(pretty sure anyway, haven't used it in years).

So I resubbed last night after an ingame friend messaged me last night. I was overdue to come back anyways. This is basically him tho.


My question for you guys is... I actually won rank 1 on my 3rd character and I have absolutely no idea what to do. That char only has COR geared with Empy gun. My 2nd char is main BRD SCH so no reason to do those. I keep thinking Idris would be a good pick, but gearing/spell collecting GEO again sounds awful since my other 2 chars already have 900+ GEOs. I've started the questing part of Yagrush on this character, but with no real intention of buying the alex for it just yet. I wanted to build Burt on my main or Carn on my 2nd more.

Open to suggestions since I'm so out of touch with the current meta. Am I better picking something that can't be built any other way? I still have not used my free weapon coupons from a bit ago.

I would say you need to take a hard look at what job combos you want to work with

I started with a geo only to make it a perma Cor
Which in retrospect the brd alt would have been more ideal to have the geo swap

Or if you really want to transmigrate to a new main

in terms of actual time saved I don't think anything would beat idris/epeolatry.

see below, but if you haven't started coalitions at all then ergon for sure, otherwise a mythic

Really depends how you play the game and how good you are about periodic tasks. Idris requirements are really not that time consuming; you can generally knock out 15 imprimiturs in 20 minutes. Doing that 56 times is only like 20-22 hours playtime when you factor in the nasty coalitions. The quest itself afterwards is only a few hours. Bayld is like 70m on the high end.

Mythic's a minimum of 7 hours assault if you already have captain, 10 hours of nyzul, 10 hours(spread out, w/ overhead) einherjar, hours of ZNM or additional gil, and 125m+. 55m for someone who doesn't cheat is easily dozens of hours of resources.

I wouldn't auto-choose Idris just based on time, especially if you already have a decent GEO on another character. However, if you're the type of person who won't ever commit to doing coalitions.. I get it.

Me all over.

They should halve the rank required to get Ergon. Drop Alex to 20k instead of 30k, 50k ein+nyzul points only. Make Emp 30/30/50 items. Game is old now, idc who has shinies.

If you just do things in the non lazy order (focusing on getting your key items to boost imprimatur rates), it notably lowers the delay to get it

There's definitely a handful of critical things in the game that simply timegate you on needing to login every other day still, I think rather than making them easier, they could just improve the login frequency.

IE double the max imprimaturs you can hold at once, increase max moglophones you can hold to 3 (so you can do 4 runs in a row, same as omen), let you store multiple sortie runs, store multiple dyna D runs, etc.

So I could just do 3 back to back dyna D runs on a single saturday afternoon, instead of feeling compelled to keep a whole *** calendar tracking all my different (not in synch) cooldowns for various content.

Some stuff resets at JP Midnight

Some stuff resets 20 hrs after last enter

Some stuff resets 3 days after.

What boggles my mind is SE nailed it with omen's entry system, it was honestly perfect.

Storing up to 3+1 runs passively was a solid middleground, I liked it.

The weird thing they have with Sortie / Dyna D where it stores a "secondary" KI that charges at 1s per 5s, and gives you the time on it in seconds, but the other item is in "D-H-M-S" time remaining, is high key bonkers.

SMH, so much unnecessary friction that doesnt make the game feel compelling or interesting, its just annoying.

I like the Ergon requirements.

Weeds out the impatient, that would not make good Geos or Runs anyway.

It's kinda like when you wake up one day and you have a pot belly.

Well, you can eat a bit less every day and 6months later, no pot belly.

Or....... do nothing, and constantly whine about your pot belly.

Sound familiar?

Are any of the Ethereal weapons worth upgrading with the Moogle Iris? I've literally seen nobody mention them... probably because of the rarity.

It's not the etheral weapons, it's bonanza weapons

None of them are extraordinary, just a small damage bump

Ergons really arent that bad, idk why people are hung up on it and hell when you finished one the other is basically 70% completed already as you just gotta get the monetary grind(of which is just hp bayld cause you can copper voucher through all of the stones) + delve grind that covers both the mats you need and pays off the cost of hp bayld in the process

Assignments arent any worse than the other bunch of dailies out there if you wanna go that route, or just burn them all at one time then come back in a few days

I didn't know what they were called. I like the idea of having possibly a 1 of item in the game. But like you said, none of them seem exceptionally worth it, especially the upgraded version. They don't even get a white box or anything.

If you got a rank1 on a mule/alt that also has a bonanza weapon kupon please please please get a weapon and upgrade it to lord it over all us plebs tell us if the upgraded weapons are any good.

If it was on my main character, I wouldn't hesitate to blow it on something completely stupid like upgraded scythe.

This is how I am tackling Coalitions:

-Do incursion during campaign.
-Use coffers to get items for Inventor's coalition. (Seriously you get all the stuff you need from there.)
-Obtain legend rank, stock and bank unused imprimaturs by taking coalition assignments.
-Work on next coalition
-Repeat..

You can also convert the incursion coffers into copper vouchers via capes, and get some spare change NPC stuff. Or better yet use the items to work on 2 chars at the same time.

Eventually you will be able to spam assignments non stop. I currently have over 130 imprimaturs banked and ready to binge.

The more coalitions you get legend in, the more imprimaturs you can stash away as long as you login every few days. It's good if you tend to take breaks at times.

It's not "patience", it's a willingness to be controlled by mind numbing hoops you are made to jump through. Only a moron would feel accomplished for doing that.

Sound familiar?

Well I went with Idris. Seems like the item that will have the most impact. I debated on Nirvana as well, but SMN isn't what it was.

You just described every objective in every game in existance.