Economics of CB Character management (in General)

More to the point, the economics of character management.

And before I start I honestly have no idea why I'm obsessed with random data analysis.

Anyway, I was contemplating the most 'economical' way of spending BA to improve my character.

For the purposes of analysis BA purchase rate is used as a 'constant'. Specifically it appears to be the normalizing factor in forge progress (ie BA cost of 500 has twice the forge productivity of BA cost of 200) and thus is likely to have a similar relationship to fight rewards.

Forging my SoD results in NW increase of approx 105% of BA cost (actually slightly better in a clan; not counting forge costs in either case).

Based on 20 fights (against the same couple of characters with the bonuses factored out)
Fighting at no bonus produces approximately 48% of BA cost in revenue (not factoring in the heal costs)
Adding in the value of EXP gained at 5 CB/XP (the basic minion hiring cost) yields a net revenue of approximately 100% without any fight bonus.

So from the above we can conclude that the 'revenue' from fighting at a bonus is ultimately higher in terms of absolute character development. Unfortunately almost half of that 'revenue' raise PR and thus lowers fight rewards.

Conversely forging the SoD up to my weapon allowance. Does not impact PR and thus 100% of the revenue goes towards making the character 'more powerful' relative to PR.

My current plan is to forge my SoD up as fast as possible to the Weapon Allowance but if anyone has drawn a different conclusion I welcome all insight.

This little study did lead me to question the wisdom of forging for others at 70%. Given that the profit is really 55% of NW increase (maybe as high as 60% of BA cost) the cash from fighting is arguably better. A bonus of 39% yields and average reward of 65% of BA cost with a nice little kicker of XP to sweeten the deal.

Anyway, I'm really sorry, and I admit I need help and or sleep.

Just another reason to at least change, if not remove, Weapon Allowance...

If you want to remove the weapon allowance, then make DD spells count for far more PR than they already do.

Is a 3M Magic Missile the same power as a 3M Haste? Of course not. Or a 3M protection? Of course not.

Tanks have to have a nice weapon to compete with mages at the upper levels. That is a known fact. If you want to remove the WA, then make the mages DD spells count for far more PR/MPR than they already do.

*grins* I checked my comparison, too...I'm getting ~$268 per BA from forging at 70%, which isn't terrible, but not great in exchange for no experience gain...but hey, I like forging, what can I say?

Ranger, is a 3 Mil Haste more powerful that a 3 Mil AS, or a 3 Mil AMF?

Doesn't that depend on build?

If you're talking about damage output of weapons to DD, it all depends on how many attacks per round you're basing your comparison on.

Also, isn't a 3 Mil NW Morg more powerful than a 3 Mil NW Whip? Yet they still add the same amount of PR (or take up the same WA space...)

wouldnt a 20k nw MH on a minion with 3m ST deal more damage than a 20k CoI on a minion with 3m MM?

"wouldnt a 20k nw MH on a minion with 3m ST deal more damage than a 20k CoI on a minion with 3m MM? "

Anyone wants to try? ;)

I don't think so, no.

'Also, isn't a 3 Mil NW Morg more powerful than a 3 Mil NW Whip?'

Why do people still persist on this argument?

If your stupid enough to use a 3M whip, you deserve to lose. The WA is a "pool" of allowance to be used as you wish. If your foolish and make a 3M NW whip, o well. As almost everyone who has enough CB2 to make a 3M NW weapon knows, there are only 5 weapons to spend CB2 on past like 100k MPR.

If you want to micromanage the WA even more and have a sliding scale of PR weighing based on things like base damage, feel free to propose it. That would make your 3M NW whip count less towards the WA than the 3M NW morg. But, seriously, who uses a 3M NW melee weapon that is not a top 5 one??

Tanks need a weapon, therefore the weapon allowance. Mages do not.

And a 3M Magic Missile is certainly more valuable then a 3M Haste. The Haste will only help vs other tanks while the Magic Missile will help do damage to all opponents.

"Why do people still persist on this argument?

If your stupid enough to use a 3M whip, you deserve to lose."

Isn't that just the same as;

"If you're stupid enough to spend 3 Mil XP in CoC instead of MM, you deserve to lose"? Or If you're stupid enough to use a 3 Mil MM on a minion wearing a MgS...

It's exagerated for a purpose. to show the current system doesn't differentiate between the uber wepaons, and the lowly whips.

"The WA is a "pool" of allowance to be used as you wish. If your foolish and make a 3M NW whip, o well. As almost everyone who has enough CB2 to make a 3M NW weapon knows, there are only 5 weapons to spend CB2 on past like 100k MPR."

Again, an exagerated example, for emphasis. ;) Out of those 5, wouldn't you say spending 3 Mil on a Morg is more powerful than 3 Mil on a ELS? If the five you're talking about are the MH, VB, BTh, BoNE and ELS.


"If you want to micromanage the WA even more and have a sliding scale of PR weighing based on things like base damage, feel free to propose it. That would make your 3M NW whip count less towards the WA than the 3M NW morg. But, seriously, who uses a 3M NW melee weapon that is not a top 5 one??"

Already proposed it. ;) Ages ago.

"Tanks need a weapon, therefore the weapon allowance. Mages do not."

Ranger, do you think it's OK for a 40 Mil NW weapon to add nothing to a Tank charcaters PR?

If they use a smaller wepaon, there are blatantly less powerful (Will do less damage), yet thier power score isn't influenced by thier weapon choice.

Tanks, and only Tanks, get an invisible boost to thier PR and therefore thier rewards. As Tanks are the only type of minion that can get any benefit from the WA.

Lower the WA. Add a PR weight for Wepaons. Or give all minions some way of utilising the free PR WA gives...

How about this then.

Some percentage of trianed XP into DD and Enchantments increases WA instead of MPR. Say 50% for example.

Then everyone is on an equal footing...

Not increases Weapon Allowance, but uses up Weapon Allowance like Weapon NW does... >_<

I've been trying to figure out a way to get my thoughts on this down, so I shall start my ramblings.

Basically tank damage is somehow related to ST+WEPX=DAM
and when you have 3ST+3WEPX, your damage triples, straight from Jon's changelog. Odds are your weapon allowance fits under your weapon allowance as it's based on your entire MPR. Subsequently, the only portion of physical damage that is related to PR is ST (or GS I suppose).

For a mage, I'm not sure how the damage model works (anyone know?). However, I seriously doubt damage doubles everytime you double the level (NOT the effect) into your stat. This is somewhat fair being that you dont really have to spend money to increase your damage, however, damage increases become rather EXP expensive at the higher levels when you're paying a 15-16 exp point per increase, whilest all a tank has to do is pour more cash into their weapon.

This being the case, I think a better way to do the weapon allowance (being that Jon would likely never remove it) would be to tie it to the amount of ST trained on the respective tank, plus whatever GS it receives. Not on the MPR of the entire team. Sorry for the aside from the subject at hand :O)

...and that was pretty poorly explained. I'm sick, gimmie a break. :O)

Yes, doubling DD doubles the damage (and doubles the number in parens). Aren't they linear, and always have been?

Now, that does not mean doubling EXP, since experience costs go up: 12, 13, 14, 15, 16...etc. at various points on the exp/level curve.

What we ALL want is a fair comparison. I don't think totally removing the weapon allowance nor making DD experience count for more PR is the answer. They are all the same things in the end, balancing it out. I would just like to know what total PR for a tank would LOOK like without the WA, and what sort of targets each would be able to kill. We can't test it now, because we can't be sure what PR the WA is letting off the hook. All we can say is, "hm, that tank with less total PR can beat folks at the same score as I can with my DD" (for example). If that is, in fact, the case, then WA should be brought down a bit so more total PR pokes out the top. Otherwise rewards are skewed, and that can be a tremendous injustice over the long term.

So, if someone can unequivocally show that a tank with lesser total PR (due to fitting in the WA) can still beat similar targets as a higher-total-PR mage, then post it, empirically. Then, we can estimate what the WA is allowing, and try to see what we can see in regards to its "fairness".

Another way about this would be to compare score/PR ratios of pure mage and pure tank teams up through the ranks. If tanks have a higher score/PR ratio, then one of the following must be true:

-- people running tanks are just better at finding targets, just better players of the game, than mage-runners
-- tanks are able to have a better score/PR ratio because the WA is too large, and allows them to "hide" too much power.
-- something else entirely, sound off on why else tanks would have better score/PR ratios (if that is indeed the case).

My post the other day was about this Sut. I shifted from ELB bearing ToA tank to FB ToE mage and lost about 5k in score. My overall max damage per strike dropped by half.

I didn't lose that much MPR in the retrain; maybe 30 or 40k. That's not a lot of xp in any stat really.

Currently on this char, 640k MPR or thereabouts, I can fit 42 million NW in under my WA. The 5th biggest ELB is 42 million. As a tank I had a 14 million Morg and a 10 million ELB; both mostly NW in damage because lets not forget the ToA bonus to PTH. How much would that be worth in NW?

Not quite the conversation I had anticipated.

Anyway, my PR would essentially remain the same if I forged my SoD up to 20mil in NW (it is currently 4mil) and I can't honestly say that there isn't something disconcerting about that. I think that WA is necessary; lets face it, big weapons have way more NW than a full set of mage gear. That said, lowering the WA to say 40% of EXP trained (or 50%) would perhaps give a better balance.

Incidentally, I like forging too and forging for yourself is pretty rewarding.

You're right, I will start a new thread with some score/PR ratios I gathered...

"Not quite the conversation I had anticipated."

I agree.


On the subject of character management: I do take an interest in this myself.
I find it hard to rely on your statistics though.

1: "Based on 20 fights" you need a few more zeros on the end there if you want this to be a reliable statistic. I'm not sure how much randomness is in the fight rewards, but the more there is the more tests you have to do because a difference of even a few percent can be the deciding factor in many situations.

2: "Adding in the value of EXP gained at 5 CB/XP" assumes everyone puts the same value on EXP.
This varies greatly from person to person.

Finally, it doesn't make any difference which is more valuable in many situations.
The rule I've always followed is to fight when your fight rewards are good, when they're dropping then you have no choice but to forge. It doesn't matter if fighting is more cost effective because sometimes the simple act of not getting EXP whilst increasing NW is far more valuable.

With that said, it's threads like this that should make people think twice about forging.
More importantly though it may lead to Jon thinking twice about forging.

Forging should be a better way of earning money than fighting is.
With such a fine line between their cost effectiveness, that should be raising a few red flags.

Mr Chuckles,

1). The sample of 20 fights against an individual opponent is sufficient to largely eliminate the randomness. Strictly speaking I believe the bonuses are most likely to be applied after the randomness and there fora sample could be drawn from a wide array of bonus levels with equal validity.
With regards to my sample; beyond about 15 fights no single reward will alter the average by more than 2% which is a reasonable margin for error. Additionally the average of 20 fights is within 1% of the average for 15 which seems like a fairly positive sign.

2). The value of EXP was taken from the basic minion hiring cost which yields 1 EXP per 5 CB. This is in objective in game basis for weighting something which is inherently subjective ie: the value of EXP.

With regards to your final point:
a) 'Finally, it doesn't make any difference which is more valuable in many situations.'
b) 'It doesn't matter if fighting is more cost effective because sometimes the simple act of not getting EXP whilst increasing NW is far more valuable.'

These to comments are rather contradictory and furthermore 'b' seems rather similar to the following point I originally made>

'Conversely forging the SoD up to my weapon allowance does not impact PR and thus 100% of the revenue goes towards making the character 'more powerful' relative to PR.'

I made the post looking for insights and opinion based on NW based advancement vs MPR based advancement; not unresearched critiques of my methodology.

On the off-topic thread of this conversation, there is another
form of "invisible PR". Armour.
I found that I can put $1M worth of armour onto a 200 MPR
character and not noticeably increase its PR.
That character is immensely more powerful than a naked character.
Assuming +50 of the AC is "magic" then this tiny little character
suddenly has 10% magic resistance and about 70AC which is a pretty
big advantage. Of course this advantage grows less obvious as the
character grows, but then the armour can grow too.
On the other hand, putting a base tattoo on the character adds
hundreds (or is it a couple of thousand ?) PR to the same character
but does very little for it.
On my main character I've been running a RoS team. I recently
acquired a RoE, so I gave it a shot. I lost 3 of my 10 favorites for
a little while. I have them back now, and re-adding the RoS now
actually only allows me to draw/stale another 1 or 2 characters.
So a tattoo that adds 25% to my PR gives me basically nothing
now over a tattoo that does nothing in a fight. I'd actually be
a stronger team if a added a base ($10k) IF than my $20M tattoo.

Yukk, the armour adds a percentage to your pr, this percentage is the amount on the + multiplied by the weighting.
This means that although it may not add a lot at lower levels it'll definitely become noticeable higher up.

If the damage output of a mage and tank at equal PR is the same, then won't there be a lot of people changing to mage because its a lot "cheaper" to run one?

Not if the mage is doing it using large AGs and a CoI while the tank is doing it with large weapons.