Lobotomy Corporation Stats and XP script
Lobotomy Corporation's weirdly complex Stats and XP Mechanics (No Spoilers*)
| Script | Notable On-screen blurbs | Additional notes and credits |
|---|---|---|
| In a previous video, I showed this formula on screen...
...then went on to say that you shouldn't pay too much attention to it and instead just work on the riskiest Abnormalities that you can handle. Turns out I was right, had I explained all of this properly, I would've derailed that video and easily doubled it in length. But at the same time, turns out I was also wrong: after spending some time going through the rabbit hole of Lobotomy Corporation's code, I learned about a mistake that almost every player makes when grinding for XP, and it goes against the advice I gave. So if you've already finished the game and you're just here for the clickbait, skip to the timestamp on screen. For the rest, I'll be giving you a tour of the game's weirdly complicated Stats and Leveling mechanics. |
Lobotomy Corporation - Essential Beginner Tips | |
| First, I'll run through some basics about Agent Stats, including the game's Color system.
Next we'll go over the main topic, the Leveling process. Then we'll expand upon what we just covered and see how deep the Stats rabbit hole goes. Like with most of my guide videos, I will be avoiding spoilers. However, I have to spoil some early game Abnormalites to show some concrete examples on how the mechanics work. If this is still too much of a spoiler for you, come back later once you've fully researched most of them. Another problem with avoiding spoilers is I also have to avoid talking about some gameplay mechanics that change in the late game. Rather than wait for another video, I'll just shove them to a short Appendix at the end of this one. I strongly suggest skipping this part until you've reached the final stretch of the game. |
What We'll Cover
(Spoiler-free)
+APPENDIX (full spoilers) |
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| A bit of a disclaimer before we continue…
Most of the info I'll be discussing comes from decompiling the latest version. While I've verified them through testing, and I will show examples throughout this video, there's a possibility that the decompiled code is inaccurate or more likely, I read the code wrong and the examples may just be a coincidence. Long story short, don't treat this video as 100% correct and check the comments for any major corrections. |
Decompiled version: Steam v1.0213f1 | |
| Agent Stats Mechanics | ||
| Alright, let's start with the basics.
Your agents have 4 Primary Stats, or Virtues in game terms: Fortitude, Prudence, Temperance, and Justice. Each corresponds to 1 or more Secondary Stats: Fortitude determines the Agent's base max HP in game, with each point equal to 1 HP. Prudence does the same for SP. The next two aren't as simple. |
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| Temperance affects the Work Success Rate and Work Speed.
This is what you see when you order your Agents to work on Abnormalities. ...after you unlock all the Work Preferences. This info window doesn't tell you the actual Success Rate; instead, the text gives you the ranges where your Agent's Success Rate falls into, with “Very Low” meaning there's less than 20% chance of success per attempt at extracting a Positive Enkephalin box, “Low” less than 40%, “Common” at the middle at less than 60%, then “High”, and finally “Very High” at greater than or equal to 80%. Success Rate is capped at 95%, and some penalties are applied after that ceiling. Now that we've explained the mechanics, let's go back to Temperance and the Success Rate stat. |
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| Each point of the Virtue leads to 0.2% better chance of work success.
That may not seem much, and in many cases it really isn't, but since the game adds it to the base Success Rate rather than multiplying it, the effects of a high Success Rate stat can be huge. |
125 extra Temperance = +25%
Added to base 50%, the bonus is effectively +50% (50% vs 75%) On a 25%, it's +100% (25% vs 50%) |
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| Each Temperance point also contributes to 1% faster work speed.
I won't go into detail with the numbers because it's a bit more complicated than Success Rate, but basically a 130 Work Speed Agent will work twice as fast as one as a 15 Work Speed Agent. |
Work Time is rounded up, the real values are 28.99s and 14.49s | |
| And finally Justice, contributing to Attack and Movement Speed.
These are even more complicated than the Temperance stats, being tied to Unity's physics engine. But to keep things simple, you can also treat them as “1 point equals to 1%”, with the same 15 vs 130 comparison. The numbers don't quite match if you look real closely, but it's close enough for practical purposes. |
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| A stat's value also determines its Level, as shown by the following table:
Starting with Level 1 for stats less than 30, up to 5 for stats 85 and up. The game uses these levels to look up success rates for working with Abnormalities, and also uses it in other places, like requirements for equipping E.G.O. |
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| Adding up stat levels gives you the Agent Level.
Similar to the stats, this goes from Level 1 for Agents with total stats less than 6 to Level 5 for those with a total of 16 or higher. Like Primary Stat levels, Agent levels are used all over the game, like how more senior Agents take less SP damage when working on or suppressing Abnormalities. |
Higher leveled Agents take less Fear damage on Work or Suppression
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| Work and Damage Types (Color System) | ||
| Before we talk about Work, we might as well talk about the 4 colors and the damage types.
As you may have noticed, Lobotomy Corporation doesn't use the usual classical elements for its types, but instead goes for the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Fortitude is Red. And to no one's surprise, Red damage affects HP. Prudence is White, and White affects SP, both damaging it or healing it. Temperance is Black, but since Black can be a challenge to show in games, it's represented by dark purple. Black damage is a combination of the previous two, damaging both. Or healing SP in the case of panicking agents. And finally, Justice is Pale. The in-game color might not match some translations of arguably the most popular horse, but light cyan has its own ties to Death. Anyway, Pale deals percent damage of the target's max health. So if after all the attack and defense calculations we end up with 1 Pale damage, it will deal 1% of the target's max HP. |
Revelations 6:1-8 | Classical Elements:
Four Horsemen Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne Maniax sprites from https://megatenwiki.com/ |
| Leveling Mechanics | ||
| Ok, let's discuss what most of you are here for, the leveling and experience mechanics.
Whenever an Agent works on an Abnormality, they earn experience for the Primary Stat they used. So if they did Instinct work which corresponds to Fortitude or Red, they'll improve that Primary Stat. Same thing for Insight with Prudence/White, Attachment with Temperance/Black, and Repression with Justice/Pale. This experience is added to the stat at the end of the day. |
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| Unfortunately, this value is hidden.
You can see it with a mod - and for this video I'll be using the More Detailed Info Mod by Yentis from Nexus Mods. |
The UI doesn't show Experience values until the end of the day | More Detailed Info Mod by Yentis (Nexus Mods) |
| And by the way, there's a maximum value for the stats.
If a Virtue goes over 100 at the end of the day, the base stat will stay at the 100 ceiling. Simple enough so far? Let's go a bit deeper... |
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| The game stores Primary Stats as integers, or whole numbers for normal people.
The experience, on the other hand, is stored as floating point numbers AKA not whole numbers. To see this, let's quickly modify the mod to show the raw value up to 3 decimal places. And there it is. |
Temperance XP is NOT +2, it's actually +2.14
not gonna detail what I modified, just watch the video |
Source: https://github.com/Yentis/LobotomyCorporation-MoreDetailedInfo |
| "What about rounding?" you might ask.
Well, it just uses the default rounding operation in Unity, round half to even. Not what some are used to, but that's just how it is. |
aka Banker's Rounding | Rounding references: |
| Experience Calculation Formula | ||
Misc.
WebVTT captions: download WebVTT captions
Translation are welcome, contact me at bry@bryanbibat.net if you're interested in submitting one.
