Mycelial lighting overcounting hits

[Zasz333]

combatlog.log

The combat log for the Stamets–Tilly 2‑piece “Mycelial Lightning” effect is multi‑packet. A single bolt produces two separate damage entries:

one packet flagged as ShieldBreak (shield damage)

one packet flagged as Electrical (hull damage)

Example raw line:
26:05:20:14:36:46.6::Za'gara,P[9902699@6966569 Za'gara@zarasz],,*,Mo'Kai Bird-of-Prey,C[665 Space_Klingon_Raider_Dsc_Mokai],Mycelial Lightning,Pn.2ys6v21,Electrical,ShieldBreak,62449.4,64450.3

Those two numbers are two packets from one bolt. Your parser counts each packet as a separate “hit,” so:

Targets Hit = 154 (correct, one bolt per target)

Hits = 341 (incorrect as “bolts,” correct as “damage packets”)

This inflates the “Hits” and “Hits/s” columns for abilities implemented as multi‑packet effects. Beams don’t show this because they are single‑packet. The underlying game behavior is correct; the tool is just counting packets instead of ability activations.

[AnotherNathan]

You are describing how the parser works (tooltip on the hits header describes it), so I do not quite understand the issue here.

Note that it is impossible to map a shield hit to its correspondent hull hit, due to 2 reasons:

• there are powers that have hull only hits and hull+shield hit with the exact same name (e.g. the Ravager Shriek which has a DOT with hull only hits and the actual "bolt" with hull and shield hits)
• in very busy combat parse shield and hull hit of a "bolt" can be spread apart, meaning these 2 hits are not on subsequent lines

Also there are tooltips on the numbers that show hit values for shield and hull separately.

[Zasz333]

The main concern is that the parser counts more mycelial lightning hits than actually occur because in the log are two damage events for one hit/line if it hits shield and hull at the same time. The parser counts this as two hits but it should be only one.

Then this is added to the hits and hits/s columns which now have more hits than actually occured. Which makes the hits and hit/s columns inaccurate.

I dont know if its (easily) fixable to make the parser add the damage events to the right columns as it does but then not seperate the hits because one mycelial lightning is one hit, not two. It seems to do that for energy beams already.

Or maybe this is only an issue for this one ability?

[AnotherNathan]

Again CLA always treated every entry in the log (or in other word every damage number that shows up on the screen) as a hit.
Here is a screenshot directly from the app that explains this:

There is no over counting going on here.
Since mycelial lightning is a power that hits hull and shields if a shield is present, you can use the hull hits count available via the tool tip, to see how many shots were there.

And once again, there is no proper way to map a given hull hit to a given shield hit in the log. The information if a hull hit also has a shield component somewhere else in the log, is simply not there.

[Zasz333]

I think we are talking past each other, so let me frame it very precisely.

Mycelial Lightning is a once‑per‑enemy ability.
In my log it hit 154 targets.
That means there were 154 actual hits.
But the Hits column shows 341.

That is overcounting relative to the ability’s actual behavior. The tooltip showing shield hits and hull hits doesnt change that. It still inflates the actual hit count for this specific ability.

I fully understand that CLA counts every damage number as a hit. I’m not disputing how the tool currently works. Im pointing out that for Mycelial Lightning, a single hit that breaks shields and continues into hull is counted as two hits, even though the ability only fired once on that target. The parser wasnt designed to interpret ShieldBreak as “one hit continued” for this ability. It is in this case supposed to be one hit only.

Yes, the information is present in the log. Its even in the example line I posted above:

26:05:20:14:36:46.6::Za'gara,...,Mycelial Lightning,...,Electrical, ShieldBreak, 62449.4, 64450.3

The ShieldBreak flag indicates that this was one hit that reduced shields to zero and then applied hull damage. Its not two separate hits. Yes, the log prints the two damage numbers but the parser counts two hits ignoring the shieldbreak flag.

So my question is simply this:

Would it be possible to add a small check for Mycelial Lightning + ShieldBreak so that the parser subtracts 1 hit in this specific case, so the Hits column reflects the actual number of hits the ability performed?

If for any reason on your side its not possible, thats fine. Then we are done. Please understand this is completely without emotion from my side. Im simply trying to clarify a small discrepancy in how this specific ability is counted because in single scenarios the hit vs kill columns mismatch. I still appreciate all the work you put into the parser.

[AnotherNathan]

Ok let me try to clarify a few things:

• A hit is a damage number that shows up on the screen. Most attacks (what you probably consider to be a hit) can have 2 hits. One for the shield damage and one for hull damage. If an attack does in fact hit a shield, there will still be a hull hit entry due to shield penetration. If such an attack only hits the hull (no shield present or the attack does not do damage to shields), only 1 hit will be present in the log.
• The ShieldBreak flags only indicates if, with a given attack, the shield was broken (reduced to 0). Meaning if the shield does not break, there are still 2 log entries present.
• The log does not provide any information if a given log entry (a hit), is part of an attack with 2 hits or just 1.
• The log does not contain any information if a given power is "once per enemy". So there is no rule to apply for what you would like to have (note that I will never do any power specific handling in the parser since, that would be very fragile and require constant maintenance).

So I am still convinced, that what you would like to have, is impossible.

Besides that you point out that there were 154 targets hit by Mycelial Lightning instead of 177. Can you tell me how you arrived at that 154 number? When I search for "Mycelial Lightning,Pn.2ys6v21,Electrical" in the log (this should match all hull hits), I see 177 matches, which indicates to me, that there were 177 targets hit.

[Zasz333]

Mycelial lightning does not penetrate shield even though its electrical damage. Like I said: "The ShieldBreak flag indicates that this was one hit that reduced shields to zero and then applied hull damage." One hit is one hit regardless what the log says about how it affects shields & hull and the parser should reflect that in that column.

Im aware no such rule exists. Which is why I asked if its possible to add it when you know an ability has such a rule. You dont want to add it for whatever reason. Ok. I dont like it but I understand that its complex to add and maintain. I accept it. I got my answer. No hurt feelings.

177? Why are you counting damage events in the log file? If you load my combat log into the parser, you see the same numbers Im seeing. I see 154 targets spawned, 154 targets killed which means 154 times the lightning actually fired. No other number matters when it comes to the hits column for this ability. Which is why the 341 hits in the hits column didnt make sense from the start. 177 makes even less sense because its not displayed in the parser.

If it were 177 targets instead of 154, that would mean both the kill counter and hits column have the wrong numbers. Thats the entire topic. Wrong numbers in the main column display. The tooltip of that column is seperate even if that shows a correct number of hits, not damage events. That is not a problem. But people dont really look at the tooltip.

Now I’m wondering how other abilities behave. If I fire a single ability once at a single target, does the parser count that as one hit? Because if not, then the hits column never represents actual hits for any ability, it only represents damage events which are often not one but two events.
If hits is always damage events and never actual attacks, then I need an option to hide that column because it does not represent meaningful information for abilities like mycelial lightning. Which might be easier to add and maintain. I need such anyway because there are many columns I dont need at all like flanking or hits/s.

[AnotherNathan]

I very much think that Mycelial Lightning will hit shield and hull even if the shield does not break. See line 7 in the log, where no ShieldBreak flags is set and there are still and shield hit values.

Attack count of Mycelial Lightning and kills are indeed somehow off. If I search for kills that you got in the log (using the regex "^.+zarasz.+kill.+$"), then I find 154 matches and if I search for hull hits for Mycelial Lightning I get 177 matches. Could it be that some targets were never killed or you were to far away when those died and therefore the log never picked these kills up (note that it is normal to not have log entries for things that happen far enough away from you)?

Giving the ability to configure, which columns are shown does make sense. Maybe I'll add that some day.

And lastly. Yes, any ability, that hits hull and shield with one attack, will count 2 hits for every attack. A CLA user must understand enough of the game to know, which hit number is relevant for a given power (so here I think the hull hit number is what you need). It may also make sense to completely separate hull hits and shield hits in the columns (and diagrams) to make this more intuitive.

[Zasz333]

Just to be extra thorough. I checked the description of this ability and it does not say it penetrates shield:
https://stowiki.net/wiki/Stamets-Tilly_Field_Modifications#Set_Powers

Which is unusual for electrical attacks because they usually come with 50-100% shield penetration. It should not hit hull as long as there are shields on the target.

What we see in the log are highly buffed hits instantly killing shields of weak enemies the longer the fight progressed. "The ruin of our enemies" mastery trait at 100 stacks is a huge buff for this ability. I have this on pretty much every ship.
Enemy gets hit by decent beam hit usually with fire at will, lightning triggers, kills shield, partially hits hull. If any log entry shows hull damage while shields were still up, I have no explanation for that. ML shouldnt do that. Could be a bug.

Im sure nothing survived and everything was within 10km range. This is standard for my solo patrol runs :)

And yes, I fully agree that one attack that breaks shields and hits hull produces two damage events. I’m not disputing that. But it should still count as only one hit.

If I could move the columns next to each other to show shield hits, hull hits and then total hits, that would probably be optimal. And then hide the columns I dont need optionally.

But right now I'm more interested in the next release that hides the decimals :)

[raman78]

This topic shouldn't been closed?

[AnotherNathan]

No, the conclusion of this issue is, thats its probably best to separate shield and hull hit count (which I have not done yet).

[raman78]

Investigation: "hits" counts damage packets, not ability activations — and this matches OSCR

I dug into this while working on a fork. This isn't a shield-vs-hull separation bug, and — importantly — it matches how OSCR (the official parser) counts, so it's the accepted convention rather than a defect here.

What STO logs. An attack that hits shields and bleeds through to hull is written as two separate log lines: one Shield line and one hull-damage line. The parser reads each line independently — a record is either a shield hit or a hull hit, never both (src/analyzer/parser.rs, RecordValue). Each is then counted exactly once (hits.shield += 1 / hits.hull += 1, with hits.all = hits.shield + hits.hull in src/analyzer/damage.rs::calc_and_apply_delta). So there is no within-line double count and the shield/hull counts are disjoint.

Mycelial Lightning (Stamets–Tilly 2pc) emit a ShieldBreak shield packet plus an Electrical hull packet per bolt, so N activations legitimately produce ~2N "hits" in log.

Same in OSCR. OSCR counts identically: every damage line increments total_attacks, split into shield_attacks/hull_attacks, with total_attacks = shield_attacks + hull_attacks (OSCR/parser.py, ll. 97–109). So "hits" = damage packets in both tools; this is the officially-accepted path, not a CLA-specific behaviour.

Conclusion. There's no double-counting or hull/shield-separation defect — "hits/all" counts damage packets by design. Reporting activation-based counts instead would be a deliberate semantics change (e.g. count hull hits only, or coalesce same-instant shield+hull packets into one logical hit), and it would diverge from OSCR unless OSCR changes too.

[Zasz333]

"There's no double-counting or hull/shield-separation defect"

False. I explained it three times with evidence. The fact alone that the parser counts more hits than actual targets are present disproves this.

[raman78]

Zasz it is you that not understand, please read carefuly.
In short 1 shot of Mycelial gives 2 shots in parser. It is how game is working.
And yes we could wrap this thing, but this is what for now is not intended. We just translate what is in parser and group.

So yes 100 shots of Myc are giving 200 in parser, if you complain, I suggest to rise a ticket to game support.

[Zasz333]

“In short 1 shot of Mycelial gives 2 shots in parser.”

That’s literally double‑counting IN THE HITS COLUMN, which you previously concluded “isn’t happening.” You are describing 1+1=2 but then say 1+1=1. Make up your mind.

I started this topic because this behaviour doesn’t occur with other abilities, which is why I asked whether the parser could be adjusted to compensate. You would know that if you actually read what I wrote at the top of the thread instead of describing double-counting in the log and parser but then saying it doesn't occur.

[raman78]

All discussion is about it, how we understand HIT.
For CLA, OSCR every line on log is a hit, so shield hit, hull hit, everything separately.
For you @Zasz333 if I understand hit is when I shot a weapon is one hit, doesn't matter if is going to hull, to shield.
And this is why 1 weapon hit = 1 hull hit + 1 shield hit.

CLA, OSCR are sum all hits, so all line is one hit, for you it is not ok, I understand, but game is producing logs differently.
Program were disigned to calculate hits directly, it could be wraped and I see possibility to try to recognize that 2 hits in log (hull+shield) are 1 one of weapon, but it is not easy.

And MORE important it is not, what was agreed and what is in official OSCR parser.

My one of the comments before was not correct, all weapons are calculated like that, but it is more visible, because it is easier to count Mycelial hits (should be one per target), so here I was not precise in 100%.