On a more serious note, I'd like to do some public philosophizing and Serious Analysis of the contest structure. I already pretty much did all of this before I decided my statistics, so feel free to extrapolate what I did based upon all this. I believe I have a good chance of winning, naturally.
Strategizing below in secret tags, for both length and if the reader would rather not read all this.
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×We all started with 500 HP, 10 ATK and 10 DEF. This means that at the start, nobody can harm each other. This means that a purely DEF-based strategy, which I'll call A: (500 HP, 10 ATK and 110 DEF) wouldn't work terribly well, since a Stalwart with that build can't hurt anyone. This means that nobody will probably have that build. Therefore, a maximum ATK-based strategy (B): (500 HP, 110 ATK and 10 DEF) would be able to hurt anyone besides A, in which case there would be a tie both in combat and in health.
So it's very likely everyone has at least upgraded both their ATK and their DEF, possibly with some sort of balance, possibly with a bias towards one side.
Incidentally, I'll be pointing out the obvious here, which is that this is all highly reminiscent of the Altars in Tendry's Tale.
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So, for the first trade-off, we can get either 10 points of health, 1 point of ATK or 1 point of DEF. I'll compare health and DEF first. For 1 point of DEF to balance 10 points of health, the player in question has to survive ten (or more) strikes.
So, the obvious thing to do is calculate damage goals to figure out how many strikes it takes to kill someone with 500 HP. (Damage being ATK minus DEF)
500 / 12 = 41.67 ~= 42 dmg
500 / 11 = 45.45 ~= 46 dmg
500 / 10 = 50 dmg
50 damage means that it's smarter to have 1 point of DEF if the attacker does 50 damage or less, since you'll avoid taking 10 or more damage. Since the requirement for doing that kind of damage is 60 ATK (50 dmg + 10 DEF), and goes up as time goes on and DEF scores increase, this means that the only time getting 1 point of DEF isn't profitable in the first round is if the opponent spent more than 50 training points on ATK, and will be killing a person in 9 or fewer strikes. In that case, increasing the number of strikes will require 1 or more training points to put it back to 10, and possibly 6 or higher to put it back to 11. That cost is ridiculous, even with the opponent only having 60 ATK. Given that the other skills cost only 30 points, leaving 20 points remaining, my guess is that there will be a fair number of people with at least 60 ATK, and very probably two or three with at least 70 ATK.
Obviously, DEF stacks, so the more DEF you have the less likely it is that someone will be able to kill someone in only 10 strikes, even with a higher ATK score, making each DEF point pay for itself by increasing the number of strikes required to 10 or beyond.
So, overall, in my opinion, it's better to buy DEF than it is to buy health, since health just increases the number of strikes it takes to kill someone (and is worse at it), and pays off less in the long run when the player can't absorb as much damage and ATK scores are higher. (We all figured this out when we were playing Tendry's Tale, I'm sure.)
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Getting more ATK will decrease the number of rounds combat takes, as is obvious. Since the addition of even 1 ATK point can allow the player to cross an ATK goal and kill a person in 1 fewer strike, this allows the player to get hit once less often. My guess is that many hits are going to be for at least 10 HP, making this kind of thing a profitable strategy.
Everyone starts with 500 HP, or possibly more in later rounds. This means that in order to finish a battle in a reasonable number of rounds and not take too much damage in return, it's necessary to have a good amount of ATK, so around 25 to 65 damage can be done per hit, causing the battle to end somewhere between 10 and 20 rounds. This means that it's likely that any given hit will cost more than 10 HP, so crossing an ATK goal will save 10, possibly far more HP. This means that getting 3 or 4 more ATK just to cross a checkpoint will pay for itself even in the short run, and almost certainly in the long run.
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Therefore, since ATK and DEF are both better than health, it's kind of pointless to buy health except for metagaming purposes. Once again, as a reminder, I'm sure we all learned this when we were playing Tendry's Tale.
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As for whether each of the skills are worth 10 training points, and the accompanying 100 HP, 10 ATK or 10 DEF they involve - keep in mind that as I've said, battles in the first round will probably range from 8 to 20 strikes or so, and probably won't go too far beyond that range in either direction any later on.
This means that, for example, in a battle where a Stalwart takes 12 hits, Skill is expected to take place twice - maybe more, maybe less, but in the long run it'll only take place once, twice, or three times per battle. Depending on how much damage each hit does (which I've established to most likely be in the 25 to 45 damage zone to start out, and increase in later rounds) those two or three hits may or may not add up to 100 HP, depending upon how lucky the defender is and how much damage the attacker is doing. On the other hand, 10 more DEF guarantees that that same 100 HP will be saved in exactly 10 hits (and more hits save even more health, and more DEF saves even more health), and also forces other people to need more ATK to hurt you. It's kind of a toss-up between 10 DEF or 10 ATK and Skill, but in my opinion Skill is probably better in the long run, since damages will likely climb above 30 or 40 damage in the endgame.
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Bravery is most likely a good idea to spend 10 credits on, since it forces everyone else to buy Bravery also, or have a distinct disadvantage in battle. (Mutually assured destruction, anyone?) Once again, we've seen in Tendry's Tale how much it can hurt to get hit first.
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Courage is once again dependent on how much damage a player does per hit. It has a good 1/2 probability of taking place, but it's unlikely to heal more than 10 HP per strike (and that assumes that the player is doing 100 damage each hit, which as I've shown is unlikely). Therefore, with a damage range of 30 to 50 damage per attack, it's expected to take at least 20 hits, possibly more, to pay for itself. However, as I've already shown, I expect that in the course of three rounds, players will likely make more than 20 hits, so I think this probably will pay off in the long run.
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So what does this all mean? It means that there's really no reason anybody should be missing any of the three skills, and that I'd be highly impressed if someone boasted to that extent.
It also means that I think we're going to see similar builds to those we've seen in Tendry's Tale, and therefore I don't think too many people upgraded their health past the initial 500 HP.
Furthermore, I'd be willing to bet that most of us here have more ATK than we have DEF.
I'll remind everyone that the addition of random chance into the mix with the two skills, Skill and Courage, means that the "
best"
build might not necessarily win. But I think that there's room for intelligent decisions, just like in Backgammon, if anyone's ever played that.
Feel free to critique any of my above analysis. Some of it is very objective and some of it is subjective.
EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot, I'm supposed to state something about my character build.
Having a sword through one's abdomen can really ruin your whole day. I've taken the smarter option and defended myself well, and made sure I can penetrate everyone else's defenses. I have an immovable object and an unstoppable force, the best strategy!
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[Last edited by Chaco at 07-26-2009 08:58 PM]
/dy
