By Lakshmi.Byrth 2013-05-15 08:30:05
I used 5 minutes just to be sure. My mule is using Fire Maneuvers every 12 seconds (8 times) and then waiting 480 seconds and doing it again. He's level 1 with a level 1 animator, and the puppet's STR is greater than his own.
I'll repeat this test with Thunder Maneuvers, because the puppet's DEX is lower than the master's.
Preliminarily:
* Someone said that puppets start with no burden. That's not correct I think.
* Currently I have gotten these numbers multiple times:
** 2 - 6 seconds (1x so far)
** 3 - 22 seconds (or 33 seconds? Probably a result of not-full-decay)
** 4 - 38 seconds (many times)
** 5 - 54 seconds (the most times)
** 6 - 70 seconds (several times)
* The fact that I'm using exactly 12 seconds between my maneuvers instead of ~10 and still getting the same values for 5/6 maneuvers indicates the decay may be pretty different from what we think. Perhaps it decays every minute (5 maneuvers = 60 seconds) instead of every 3 seconds?
I measure the overload time based on timestamps from the overload to wears off message using battlemod, but I'm probably underestimating overload times by a fraction of a second.
Edit: It looks like 5 minutes wasn't enough. Extended it to 480 seconds (8 minutes) and trying again.
Edit2: Resetting my count of number of overloads due to the change. Re-verified 4/5/6 maneuver overload durations. Overload 4 is always 38 seconds, not a multiple of 3.
Edit3:
There is exactly 16 seconds between my overload durations. Combined with my similarity to Sylow's data, which used a different time between maneuvers, this shows no decay at all. This does not mean no delay occurs, and I'll note that my numbers are 100% consistent while his are not. It probably means that the delay does work on a "tick" system and because I chose a multiple of 3 for my delay between maneuvers, I end up with a completely consistent value.
To take it a little further, 16 seconds is when I use one maneuver every 12 seconds. If 1 second = 1 degree when overloaded and heat decays at 1 degree per tick when not overloaded, then each maneuver would be giving 20 degrees of heat. Each maneuver lasts 60 seconds, so the heat from one maneuver would completely decay by the time it wore off. SE loves doing this ***, so I bet this is the system. Initial overload threshold would be 30 degrees.