Hydras, how are they supposed to work?

[Chthon]

Ok, the way hydras are worded:
They spawn a head when they take damage equal to 1/(1+mark) of their max health.
They also regen over time suggesting that the % damage can come out of what they healed.

However I constantly see them producing 15-20 heads suddenly (single hydra here, MkI or MkII) when they reach the % of their health that they would be expected to spawn one, when hit with many small attacks.  That's at 50% for MkI, or 66%/33% for MkII.  These heads are spawned suddenly.

Is this the proper behavior?  It seems to me that they are hit by a small attack, spawn a head, heal a little, get hit again, spawn a head, etc.  This caused me to nearly lose my regen golem on an attack to just 4 MkII Hydras when they spawned about 350 heads over a very short time.  I was not amused.

Currently it seems that they are overwhelming against any ship that cannot do much damage to it in a single hit, but weak to any ship that has a multiplier vs. it's hull.

Finally, are all marks of hydras supposed to spawn MkI hydra heads?

[alocritani]

I just tested it and re-read carefully description: Hydra will spawn an head when they received damage equal to 50% of their health.
In general, this is different from spawning an head when they have 50% of their health.
In other words, an MK I Hydra with 310K of health will spawn an head every time it receive total damage that is a multiple of 155K (310/2)
Regeneration doesn't affect thisbehavior.

the current counter of received damage is shown as XXXX BP (build points) - when it reaches the threshold it will spawn an head.

[Chthon]

Well that doesn't explain how 4 Hydra MkIIs spawned >300 heads in under 5 seconds upon reaching 66% health.  I was the host in a multiplayer game with a friend of mine and this occurred.  I had to manually pause and focus fire the remaining hydras to finish the job before I lost my regen golem.

[alocritani]

I tested it again putting an MKI, MKII and a MKIII Hydras versus a Neizul viral cluster (8K damage x shot)

an MKI Hydra (310K health) spawns an head when BP reaches 80K --> ~25% of max Hydra's health
an MKII Hydra (620K health) spawns an head when BP reaches 112K --> ~17,5% of max Hydra's health
an MKIII Hydra (930K health) spawns an head when BP reaches 120K --> ~13% of max Hydra's health

So definitely the (max health)/(1+mark) formula is not respected.

I'll try to repeat text vs a lower damage enemy (so calcualtion it's more precise)

[Chthon]

Could it be multiple shots hitting at the same time taking it down below the threshold and causing each to trigger the spawn head behavior before it resets the build points perhaps?  Try sending one against 50 viral clusters and see how that affects it.

[alocritani]

Ok,
I've repeated the test with wormhole guard post (dmg: 20/shot) so results are very precise.

mkI (health 310000) spawns at 77500 - 1/4
mkII (health 620000) spawns at 103340 - 1/6
mkIII (health 930000) spawns at 116260 - 1/8

so correct formula seems to be

Code: [Select]

max/((1+Mark)*2)
Issue reported to mantis.

Regarding multiple heads spawning, I faced 120 wormhole guard post and always spawned 1 head.
Do you have a save of your game?

Edit: in my game now I noticed that AI Hydras sometimes spawn 3 heads! I'll investigate further!
at the moment I opened bug report #13250. feel free to put any useful information about this problem on that bug report

[Chthon]

Woo!  We're not crazy!

[alocritani]

Woo!  We're not crazy!

Definitely not! I found (and updated bug report) that firing with 12 sniper turrets against a single MKIII Hydra will cause it to spawn 2 heads instead of 1.
So, bug reproduced!