User talk:Zeracles

Balancing the prices of UQM's ships

Based on Shiver's forthcoming PvP guide, I think we could mathematically calculate new and perfectly balanced values for UQM's ships (using the data about how well each ship fares against each other ship).

I have uploaded a C++ version here, but it makes an ugly oversimplification and it's not exactly mathematically proven. The probability of each outcome of each match-up should be taken into account, I guess.

-With hope that you can sort things out, Valaggar 17:33, 15 January 2008 (CET)

Yes, I had this in mind as an application of the idea I put on that page, I guess the only thing at the moment is that my real life has been quite busy in recent times, resubmitting our paper (it's morning where I live and I only just saw this before heading out to face a busy day). I was actually thinking of running the simulations in matlab too, but we can do it every which way :)

There are all kinds of issues to consider here, but I may have some time coming up. I've been watching Shiver's guide with keen interest.

There are also other things we can look at with the approach I suggested. For example, I saw the talk in the dreadnought=banana boat thread on UQMF and actually I think one of the main reasons for the weakness of the dreadnought is that the limited number of directions is a disadvantage for any ship with long range weapons which do not track the enemy. This effect we could test by seeing what happens when we add more directions. There are many other interesting speculations like this too.

For instance, it was also mentioned that the dreadnought was not designed for retreat, it is for frontal assault. Now, I think that because one is never really concerned with holding a position in melee, ships against which this would be difficult are disadvantaged. Like the dreadnought, which is no banana boat, at least as I argue here, because melee doesn't do it justice.

I also think the dreadnought is better in numbers, and that there are some ships which would be terrible in numbers like the eluder.

All kinds of things we could test. But a lot of work. Anyway, thanks Val --Zeracles 21:46, 15 January 2008 (CET)

My apologies, for I was in a great hurry yesterday - I didn't have time to look at your program and misunderstood what you had in mind, Val. I see now that it's mainly an algorithm which deduces values assuming quantities which summarise the match-ups, and what those quantities are is a different but related question. I don't know when I'll have time, but this is really excellent, I will look more closely ASAP.

Oh and it was also mentioned in the dreadnought=banana boat thread that the marauder was better - just as an aside, I suspect this could change completely with numbers. Both of the marauder's weapons are more likely to cause friendly damage than the dreadnought's. --Zeracles 19:22, 16 January 2008 (CET)