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You are being quite vague with your questions. You did not specify which of the two mechanics you were inferring too. I presumed that you were asking about the insta hit refresh, since that is what we've been discussing and what the sources refer too that you asked for.
There are two systems that are being discussed in my initial response that end up correlating with each other when insta hit was patched in...
- Equip Delay on Weapons
- Insta Hit Refresh
The equip delay is present on the UO Demo and in the patch notes.
- 12/16/97 Combat -
Equipping a weapon in combat will restart your weapon swing.
This means when you equip a weapon it changes your current delay to the weapon that you just equipped. Here is this process based on the formula presented in the UO Stratics '99 web site.
When you equip a weapon...
Current Combat Swing Delay = 15,000 รท ( [Stamina +100] x Weapon Speed )
That is how the process works on the UO Demo, okay...
Insta hit was implemented in February '99. If an equip delay is applied when you equip a weapon it wouldn't be insta hit... Now we know for sure that the equip delay existed in t2a because of the mention of it being shortened in the UOR publish. We also know the equip delay was present in UOR.
This means that you would have to put a condition that your delay is zero for it to be able to swing immediately aka to be able to insta hit, or if it isn't zero the equip delay would occur since we know it existed during the t2a era and after. Try thinking about what will happen now... If you hit with a hally your delay goes to 4.5s. Now you equip a katana your delay would be converted to 1.3s at 100 stamina because an equip delay was added... If you waited out this delay you would be able to swing with ANY weapon since the equip dealy doesn't apply with an inactive combat delay... This allowed a dexer at 100 stamina to swing a hally just as quickly as a katana to create an exploit by arming/disarming the two weapons...
Now we go into the information that I have already presented in the first post with the first piece of information being a patch note and an article that describes the patch...
Mini-update with small fixes Feb 26 1999 11:25AM
An exploit for getting slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed.
Markee's Dragon - February 26, 1999
10) The disarm/arm exploit to get slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed. It will not be to your advantage to disarm/rearm a weapon. Please note one important omission!! There will be no current changes to Architect NPCs concerning better methods of buying back house deeds. Expect this to be added in the next major update though which is tentatively scheduled for around March 9th.
Reference:
http://www.markeedragon.net/uomall/february.htm
This fix was roughly a few weeks after insta hit was implemented after the exploit was created.
What they did to resolve this solution was to add an average weapon delay of two seconds to your current swing delay when you unequip a weapon... This is where the "insta hit refreshes" feature described in the previous sources that I showed you was created.
UO Stratics February 1999
Disarming Weapons: gives a 2 second delay. Ok, wonderful but this goes hand in hand with the hit being calculated at the beginning of each swing to cause further inbalances.
This is the patch note described above that says "An exploit for getting slow weapons to hit faster has been fixed." in the same time frame. It was simply a way to counter the arm/disarm exploit for slow to faster weapons...
When you unequip a hally your delay resets to 2.0 seconds because of the unequip delay. This allows someone to be able to cast ebolt, hit with a hally, cast ebolt, and hit with a hally. The two second unequip delay "skips" the current hally delay and if you wait it out you can swing again...
Here are the same sources that describe this piece of information that I already showed you that explains this...
- UOPowergamers PVP Guide February 2000 -
Things to Remember:
Use the instant-hit with your weapon whenever possible (instant-hit= where you arm your weapon right after you cast a spell on your opponent---with pre-casting gone remember to target first!!!---then run up to your opponent with weapon in hand. This is a bug that lets you get a free hit off, with no delay. So use it while you still can.). Second, Try to preserve your mana as much as possible (more on this later). Finally, with pre-casting gone, almost all of the tactics revolve around the use of the greater heal spell, so let's hope OSI decides not to f*ck with it
- February 3rd, 2000 - UOHOC Discussion -
Glamdring - *Aegean_LS* Is anything planned for the insta-hally hit? Is it supposed to skipp the delay?
Sage - Yes. We are currently looking at the insta-hally hit, and considering its removal.
If this doesn't help you understand it than I don't know what will... It isn't too hard to figure out if you follow the timeline of the mechanics from pre-t2a that lead into t2a that generated all of this.