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Old 11-06-2018, 05:48 AM   #41
RobW
 
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Default Re: One on One simulation

In the spirit of working out inflection points and so on. Here's some results for a series of simulations done with the java simulator Nils mentioned early on. This will take a while to explain.

http://melee.psyops.org/round1.png

This figure plots the results of pair-wise duels for the full range of 32-point figures (ST8 DX16 all the way to ST16 DX8), and for varying levels of armor. This is strict Melee, no talents or IQ shenanigans. This is from years ago, and it is NOT using the new modified plate armor penalties. Shields are in two sizes, small and large.

On the x-axis is ST for the figures. Figures are always using a weapon requiring their full ST. On the y-axis is their adjusted DX. Because the sum of ST+DX=24, you can pretty well infer from the adjDX the amount of armor being worn. Note that figures with 1H weapons are always using a shield of some kind.

The color indicates the win-rate for that figure against all opponents.

So as an example, you can see that ST12 figures wearing light or no armor are doing well overall. In fact wearing lots of armor hurts them.

On the other hand, ST8 figures without armor are terrible, and improve somewhat by wearing lots of armor.

As a guide, the blue line indicates the minimum armor setup (just a small shield if using a 1H weapon, or none at all if using a 2H weapon at ST14+). The maroon line is the maximum armor setup (plate and a large shield if 1H, or just plate if 2H).

There are some idiotic results here. The ST16 fighter in full plate (adjDX=2!) is winning quite a few battles. These are of course against very light fighters. Whereas he just needs one automatic hit to win, they need multiple 2x and 3x hits to penetrate his armor.

If you limit the competition to the best of these fighters, and have them fight just each other, then these kinds of peculiars fall away, and you start to converge on the best overall fighters. The final round results are here:

http://melee.psyops.org/round3.png

Basically, ST11-13 and light armor usually produced the best results. This won't be very surprising for experienced Melee'ers.

I offer this just as one way to think about digesting the large amounts of data a simulation can generate.
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Old 11-06-2018, 07:52 AM   #42
zot
 
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Default Re: One on One simulation

Quote:
Originally Posted by RobW View Post
In the spirit of working out inflection points and so on. Here's some results for a series of simulations done with the java simulator Nils mentioned early on. This will take a while to explain.

http://melee.psyops.org/round1.png

This figure plots the results of pair-wise duels for the full range of 32-point figures (ST8 DX16 all the way to ST16 DX8), and for varying levels of armor. This is strict Melee, no talents or IQ shenanigans. This is from years ago, and it is NOT using the new modified plate armor penalties. Shields are in two sizes, small and large.

On the x-axis is ST for the figures. Figures are always using a weapon requiring their full ST. On the y-axis is their adjusted DX. Because the sum of ST+DX=24, you can pretty well infer from the adjDX the amount of armor being worn. Note that figures with 1H weapons are always using a shield of some kind.

The color indicates the win-rate for that figure against all opponents.

So as an example, you can see that ST12 figures wearing light or no armor are doing well overall. In fact wearing lots of armor hurts them.

On the other hand, ST8 figures without armor are terrible, and improve somewhat by wearing lots of armor.

As a guide, the blue line indicates the minimum armor setup (just a small shield if using a 1H weapon, or none at all if using a 2H weapon at ST14+). The maroon line is the maximum armor setup (plate and a large shield if 1H, or just plate if 2H).

There are some idiotic results here. The ST16 fighter in full plate (adjDX=2!) is winning quite a few battles. These are of course against very light fighters. Whereas he just needs one automatic hit to win, they need multiple 2x and 3x hits to penetrate his armor.

If you limit the competition to the best of these fighters, and have them fight just each other, then these kinds of peculiars fall away, and you start to converge on the best overall fighters. The final round results are here:

http://melee.psyops.org/round3.png

Basically, ST11-13 and light armor usually produced the best results. This won't be very surprising for experienced Melee'ers.

I offer this just as one way to think about digesting the large amounts of data a simulation can generate.
Oooh fancy! Now I'll have to put charts into my spreadsheets...
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Old 11-06-2018, 12:46 PM   #43
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Default Re: One on One simulation

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Originally Posted by RobW View Post
... There are some idiotic results here. The ST16 fighter in full plate (adjDX=2!) is winning quite a few battles. These are of course against very light fighters. Whereas he just needs one automatic hit to win, they need multiple 2x and 3x hits to penetrate his armor.

If you limit the competition to the best of these fighters, and have them fight just each other, then these kinds of peculiars fall away, and you start to converge on the best overall fighters. ...
Yep. Thanks for doing and explaining that.

These charts are very interesting. I thought ST 13 DX 11 morningstar/smallshield was the statistical top, slightly above ST12 DX 12 broadsword/smallshield, but maybe that was an artifact of the peculiar figures. 2d+1 more likely knocks people down that 2d, but when facing someone with adjDX 12 or 13, ST13 DX11 goes second, and usually gets hit, usually getting knocked down -2 DX, and therefore (assuming you apply that penalty to their counterattack) usually missing their first attack. That actually restores my intuition and experience/opinion/expectations over what I thought I'd seen in the previous statistics.

Certainly it matters a lot what the frequency of the different opponent/equipment mixes faced is.

Last edited by Skarg; 11-06-2018 at 12:54 PM.
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Old 11-07-2018, 03:14 AM   #44
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Default Re: One on One simulation

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Certainly it matters a lot what the frequency of the different opponent/equipment mixes faced is.
Yes, with original Melee, there is a definite sweet spot in the 11/13, 12/12, 13/11 range, but there are so many rock/scissors/paper things going on that there is no optimum build, only the best build for the specific conditions and opponents you're facing.

Hopefully even more true now with the new talents. Although TBH I still worry about UCV! (Not to mention wizards)
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Old 11-07-2018, 04:48 AM   #45
zot
 
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Default Re: One on One simulation

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Yes, with original Melee, there is a definite sweet spot in the 11/13, 12/12, 13/11 range, but there are so many rock/scissors/paper things going on that there is no optimum build, only the best build for the specific conditions and opponents you're facing.

Hopefully even more true now with the new talents. Although TBH I still worry about UCV! (Not to mention wizards)
There are only two UCV entries in the top 20 of the 40-point simulator output and those are both Reptile Men. The real dangerous ones are the weapon masters.

At 44 points, UC Reptile Men start to become more dangerous, occupying 9 of the top 20 slots. The majority are still weapon masters and experts, though. But 44 points doesn't seem very possible with the new experience rules.
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Old 11-07-2018, 07:43 AM   #46
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Default Re: One on One simulation

I see now! This is great.
A few questions about the spreadsheet.
What does 'orginal settings' refer to?
Are fighters defending against initial pole charges, and/or using any other tactics we can't see in the descriptions?
Any thoughts about why there are pole weapons around the top of the lowest (32) and highest (44) tables, but not in between?

Re UCV, One of the things I find potentially scary is the Throw attack. Adding HTH to a simulator sounds painful though....?
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Old 11-07-2018, 08:23 AM   #47
larsdangly
 
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Default Re: One on One simulation

A cool exercise that nicely shows the large range in fighter types that are loosely equivalent in this sort of toe-to-toe conflict. I feel like when you throw in group conflicts, ranged attacks and terrain, the design space opens up even further, to the point where it is not really possible to identify ideal 'builds' across any range of stat totals. (Or, I suppose, we should now say XP totals). A character design that is a bad choice for toe to toe melee fighting might be a great choice for an arquebusser who spends the first few rounds of a melee setting up his portable cannon and then uses it to deliver a nearly-sure-thing kill shot on an enemy of his choice.
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Old 11-08-2018, 08:16 AM   #48
zot
 
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Default Re: One on One simulation

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Originally Posted by RobW View Post
I see now! This is great.
A few questions about the spreadsheet.
What does 'orginal settings' refer to?
Are fighters defending against initial pole charges, and/or using any other tactics we can't see in the descriptions?
Any thoughts about why there are pole weapons around the top of the lowest (32) and highest (44) tables, but not in between?

Re UCV, One of the things I find potentially scary is the Throw attack. Adding HTH to a simulator sounds painful though....?
"Original settings" runs the simulator with the same behavior as Nils' C/AL simulator, so I can compare my results with his to make sure my results are close to the original's (so I can find bugs in my code). The published rules changed some things since Nils last updated the code (unconsciousness at ST 0, IQ levels for UC talents, etc.) and my code uses the published rules unless you tell it not to.

There is a setting for defending against charges but I haven't run the simulations with that setting turned on, yet. Maybe there are bugs in that part of my code :).

I haven't thought a lot about the results, I was too busy getting the code to work :). Nils has a LOT more experience interpreting the results than I do. Maybe he'll chime in on it.

HTH won't be SO hard to do but it's not trivial. Assuming Skarg's interpretation of the rules for Reptile Men's double damage in HTH, that'll be about 1/2 extra point of damage on average for Reptile Men. The inherent advantage of UC warriors in HTH will make a difference though, since people drop their normal melee weapons going into it. The random failure chance may balance it out though.

UC doesn't change the chance of failing to initiate HTH though, so I'm not sure what's that scary about throws. Throws start at UC II and at UC III and up, the defender has to save with 4/DX. The only thing that changes is the damage which is 2 hits at UC IV and V. I don't think UC V is much scarier than UC III in this respect. Am I missing something?
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Old 11-08-2018, 10:48 AM   #49
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Default Re: One on One simulation

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...at UC III and up, the defender has to save with 4/DX. The only thing that changes is the damage which is 2 hits at UC IV and V. I don't think UC V is much scarier than UC III in this respect. Am I missing something?
I'd missed that, and you're right, thanks. Yes, UC III, IV, V all have the 4D Throw. Although at UCV, the attacker in HTH can get two attacks (both at +4 for prone opponent) with 1D extra damage each, at ST12 that would be two 2D-1 attacks. Or if a reptile man, I believe that would be (1D-1)*2 (reptile man does double damage for ST in HTH) + 2 (reptile man has claws) +1D (for UCV) = 3D, twice.

I suppose the issue is that the current top 40pt characters are mainly very high DX shrewd fencers and aren't threatened by 4D saving rolls.

Maybe my fears about UCV are unfounded.

Last edited by RobW; 11-08-2018 at 11:11 AM. Reason: trying to take into account reptile man damage discussion
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Old 11-08-2018, 11:06 AM   #50
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Default Re: One on One simulation

Agh, sorry for all the questions, I just find this sim very interesting.

If we take the top 40pt fighter with a Win rate of 91%:
ST9,DX20,IQ13,Rapier,No Armor,M.Fencer,Florentine,Shrewd.

Does this mean he is using two rapiers, shrewd attacks with both? So that his first attack is at adjDX=20-4 = 16 for 2D+2 damage, and his second is at adjDX = 20-4-4 = 12 also for 2D+2 damage.

I guess I'm surprised this figure would have a win rate of 90%, as I would have thought if pole weapons go first -- and he isn't defending -- he would lose regularly even if not usually to the pole weapons. If he is defending the first charge, that would be very effective, although still suffering 5% auto-hits with little ST or armor. (I see the nemesis is a poleaxe)

Also his first rapier will be hitting for 2D+2, and that's good damage but it will frequently fail to knock the opponent down. And then Mr Rapiers is at high risk of being knocked down himself by his opponents first attack, before his second rapier at adjDX 12 happens.
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