On Wed, 22 Sep 1999, Rokenn Swiftsong wrote:
>
> Here's an example: Using round numbers here, and mythical weapons, both with
> a .25 efficiency rating, a 5 dam/20 delay and a 10dam/40 delay weapon. All
> results assume a 50th level player, with 200 in all his combat skills, and
> 100 STR. The 5 dam/20 delay weapon will outperform a 10dam/40 delay weapon
> by about 27 percent in a two minute time period, in the primary. If you
> have double attack, it goes up to 44 percent, thanks to double the amount of
> DA activation checks. It will outperform by 39 percent if used in the
> secondary, mainly thanks to twice as many DW activation checks. If your
> class is capable of 'quad' attacks (see above), it goes up to a staggering
> 73 percent overall spread between the faster and the slower weapons.
There seems to be some misunderstanding about why JM and I
disagreed on this. He assumed the same efficiency rating
(divide damage by delay), I assumed the same damage over time
(hit for X minutes, add up damage, divide damage by time).
What he says above is true if the damage/delay ratings for the
weapons are the same, but the damage-over-time of the weapons
are different (to favor the faster weapon, whish seems to be
the case in this game).
If the damage-over-time of the weapons are the same, then it
is impossible for dual wield or double attack to make a
difference unless the damage equations are time-dependent
(i.e. your chance of doing X damage on a hit is different 30
seconds into the fight than 2 minutes into the fight).
> polarized. But you can still expect a marked advantage over the faster
> weapon. Enough of an advantage to even sacrifice some small amount of
> efficiency in favor of speed. A well balanced scimitar, (5 dam/21 delay,
> ..238 eff rating), outdoes a barbed leather whip,( 7 dam/28 delay, .25 eff
> rating), by 14 percent in a two minute period used as the primary, and 19
> percent as the secondary. At 50th level, in pure melee combat, two minutes
> is pretty close to how long a typical fight lasts. Drop the time period
> down to one minute, the gap narrows, but is still evident. Drop it down to
> 30 seconds, it's a dead heat, still. Anything less than 30 seconds tends to
> favor the whip.
This happens due to "strobing," a bias that occurs in discrete
sampling. An extreme example would be a 100 damage 200 delay
weapon vs. a 10 damage 10 delay weapon. Even though the 2nd
weapon is twice as efficient, if the fight lasts 1 second,
both weapons will get in one swing, and the first weapon will
do 10x better. It is not the type of time-dependeny I mention
above.
> If you factor in the highly variable factors of target defense and AC,
> first you go nuts, then you come up with results even more in favor of the
> faster weapon, as you get more chances to hit as well.
I still maintain JM was in error here. More chances to hit
only lowers deviation from the average - that is, you're more
likely to get average results. Sometimes that is a good
thing, but it is not advantageous as a general rule. A higher
deviation just means you're further away from the average -
you're more likely to do worse than average, but you're just
as more likely to do *better* than average.
--
John H. Kim
kim@...