Progress system for expedition islands.

[Wardog-]

Something went really wrong with the XP for expedition islands. Really wrong.

BB invited us to do blocks - but blocks was made useless by the XP system. You only get XP for enemies you kill.

Either it is a new german logic - or the nice girls on that backstage video has NO clue how normal adventures works.

Kill the leader and get XP for all the camps that goes down - that is how normal adventues works. But not on expedition islands.

The horrible dev's lost the overview totally - I am NOT in awe.

Now it is like this: Do not worry about XP's - it is only a matter of losing as many troops as possible. What a bore.

Using support is even more "fun" - they are clueless of the matter and thrill you with a.....bleeeh.

Get the thing right - or hand it over to someone that has actually played the game - ty.

[Raubhautz]

...and the beat goes on!

[Troll-Phu]

Wait?!?!?! wardog doesn't like something about "expeditions"? no way

[Raubhautz]

Lol, yeah, Troll-Phu, that was pretty funny. It just shows that no matter what happens in the new expedition option of TSO, not everyone will be happy.

They were so funky from the start, I just don't do them. Perhaps, when I have so many resources, there is nothing else to do, I may poke around a bit in it just to waste some time (and lots of resources); until then, I'll stick to the adv and ft, with an occasional scenario.

[alice007]

There are plenty of advs I haven't even done once till date..
I'll be busy for a long time, before touching PVP..
I do wish they add more variety on normal adventures... The regular advs now look even more awesome in front of PvP

[Perwyn]

Bet nobody expected me to show up!

All kidding aside, I was thinking, like Wardog, that XP was being based on my losses (HuH?), so started tracking my losses, enemy losses (extracted from the efficiency rankings page) and experience gained.

Here's what I've found out.

My losses - enemy losses - experience
1> 931 - 3925 - 3816
2> 934 - 3885 - 3618
3> 1677 - 5336 - 7514
4> 1722 - 4174 - 7074
5> 1905 - 6537 - 8056

Based on these results it seems to me that the experience calculation is based on the number of enemy killed, not on my casualties.

If having higher casualties in my army gave more experience then lines 2 & 4 should have higher experience than 1 & 3, which they don't. In lines 2 & 4 I killed less enemies but had higher casualties so my experience went down, as it should have.

I'm also finding out (see line 5) that if I can manage to get behind leader camps and take them out without touching many camps in that sector, enemy losses are higher and so is my experience, much the same as in adventures. I still haven't figured out how XP relates to specific enemy units, maybe never will, but I think those nice German ladies did OK.

[Ceruhe]

So, what I've found...

I went to Test Sever and killed a few random troops, canceled, checked XP again, rinse and repeat until I had a couple numbers.

Bandit Recruit 1 XP
Bandit Bowman 2 XP
Bandit Cavalry 2 XP
Thug 2 XP

Merc Charger 2 XP
Merc Duel 2 XP
Merc Infantry 2 XP
Bert 50 XP

With those numbers, I then actually did a proper attack.

C1 80 Thugs
C2 80 Bowman
C3 80 Cavalry
C4 60 Merc Cavalry
L1 40 Bowman/40Cavalry/Bert

That would be 570 XP (+ Bert which I didn't have at that time, aka 620 XP total then) I should've gotten assuming our position that if leader dead = all camps razed and XP credited.
However, I did get 380 XP once I took over L1 and canceled the Expedition.

I killed C1 (160 XP) and L1 (80+80+[50]) and the blocks killed 5 units in total, netting me 10 XP. Because I got 380, I deduct my 10 blocking units, the 160 for C1 and 160 for L1, leaving me with 50 XP left, which I therefore concluded to be Bert.

So I got a total of 380 XP, all of which I have killed, and not the 620 XP which we'd have expected for killing the leader and getting credited the other camps for that sector.

Nice find Wardog, overall I didn't pay much attention to it simply because causing myself more losses for that minimal gain in colony yield just didn't cut it from a costbenefit standpoint. Which I automatically "converted" to "not bothering to take out more camps than I need in the first place, as "pvp" progression is utterly pointless and will come anyway.

[Perwyn]

Thanks for the numbers Ceruhe. Knowing what each unit nets is very helpful. So apparently we're not getting xp for extra camps in a sector that go down with the leader. The increase I'm seeing by taking out extra leaders is only for the kills involved. Good to know and thanks again.

Edited after more coffee:

....... but wait!! How are people getting efficiency rates of 6 and higher in the worldwide rankings then? There's only so far you can go by sending the right amount of units against a given camp. If you send 100 cav against 120 bowman, you lose 54. If you send 65, you lose 54. If you send the minimum of 61 you lose 59. Anything lower and you lose the battle. The entire system works more or less the same with slight variations on the numbers. So take 120 / 54 = 2.22. How do efficiency rankings hit higher if we're not getting credit for unattacked camps that go down with a leader? In your research on the test server Ceruhe, you canceled the expedition after one sector. That probably has some bearing on the outcome. We need more data! Imma keep on tracking my results.

[BB_Endesmor]

How do efficiency rankings hit higher if we're not getting credit for unattacked camps that go down with a leader?

Indirectly defeated units count towards the ranking, this is how players reach efficiency rates of 6 or higher.

BB_Endesmor

[Ceruhe]

I haven't really looked at the rankings yet whatsoever, matter of fact, as they are only for Tier 3 in the first place, I've been right off the bat not interested in them.

However, if I were to simply imply my warped interpretation of efficiency and account for whatever triangular soccerballs and what have you as well...

Efficiency simply on loss vs limit rather than loss vs defeated. Not accounting for anything else, such as Marshalls and Medipacks.
Lemme try to explain, without having attempted to fact check if it could be the case...and using easy numbers, because I fail hard at taking the root from Pi over the decimal infinite of a prime dividing zero in half and some more to figure out how tired the elephant really is.

So we assume that troop allowance is 1'000.
We assume that 500 deaths to 1'000 limit makes this an Efficiency of 2.
We assume that 250 deaths to 1'000 limit makes this an Efficiency of 4.
We assume that someone steamrolls from landingzone to Map Boss, direct path with whatever resistance and racks up 800 losses. We assume him to have 1.25 Efficiency now.
We assume that someone steamsrolls from landingzone to Map Boss, direct path with least resitance and racks up 650 losses. We assume him to have 1.54 Efficiency now.
We assume that a Pro player actually looked at the map, the optimal paths, blocks, various combinations and takes down the Map Boss having incurred 180 losses. We assume him to have an Efficiency of 5.56

Going with that train of assumptions, the real "tweak" to your efficiency is then with blocks, a few more or less, which (let's say 1000/191= 5.24) can have a rather decent impact. This is of course now assuming we have players on the same kind of skill curve, rather than pro vs noob.

Though, because I already said I didn't look at the rankings at all, but did just for the sakes of it... (Staging/Efficiency)
It kinda already looks like my assumptions steer wrong, but it may already be really just a clear cut loss vs defeated while accounting for the amount of colonies you did take over.
As in...let's go with 5.
1) Take 5 arbitrary numbers ranging 150-220. Add them up, divide by 5, get your average/efficiency.
2) Take 5 arbitrary numbers ranging 150-220. Add them up, divide by 5, get your average/efficiency.
3) Compare 1) and 2), voila?

Although we all incurr "If you send 100 cav against 120 bowman, you lose 54. If you send 65, you lose 54." losses, not everyone may make the same calls.
Same calls being...uh, what do we have....
- Fighting a mixed camp and having forgot/being to slow to select the rock for the scissor.
- Making a (difficult/exotic) block work. See below.
- Skipping a camp through the block. Example I've had an island where I could block 3 camps and kill L1, then block 1 camp and kill Map boss, when in actuality I could've blocked the initial same 3 camps form L1 and go directly for the Map Boss, because they shared 1 camp
- Didn't go for the optimal path (almost happened to by going by sheer looks and "that's obviously the route" when the path pretty much made him "walk on water" and bypass a mountain range instead.
- Intentional suicide by intentional intercept to kill a 80 Bandit (30 dmg) camp instead of a 100 Merc Infantry camp (35 dmg). While killing the Bandit camp loses alot less troops and gets your General killed (mainly because you can't be certain if, once he has won, the Gen won't be insta teleport intercepted and fight the next camp right away...which we know is an issue on overlapping intercepts), it may also be the reason why you then get to block the 100 Merc Camp instead and block that with alot fewer troops. Simple math here, 100 Mercs + Bandit Block = Higher losses than 80 Bandits + Merc Block.


So by your assumtpion that we all need the same amount of troops to kill XYZ being correct, you are mostly forgetting about the individual player making individual and situational decisions. Everyone who has played a handful of Expedtions already knows there are "better" and "worse" maps, and those maps then on top of that then still have "better" and "worse" positions. And I totally don't know how the system/rankings accounts for that. If I were to cherry pick all the easiest maps ever, while being able to toss away bad maps on the side with no effect, efficiency then carries close to 0 value in meaning.

Let's assume again...
1) Perfect Island, attack and taken.
2) Perfect Island MKII, attack and taken.
3) Bad island, no attack and cancelled.
4) Perfect Island, attack and taken.
5) Bad island, no attack and cancelled.

In situation 3) and 5), did the system account for "an invasion but no attack" or not? Because if your Efficiency is simply based on the conditions I elaborated up there, 3) and 5) would _not_ be accounted for in any way whatsoever, as no troops lost and no troops defeated wouldn't change your numbers, _unless_ it does account for cancelled Expeditions too. Then again, I'm too tired to think how, as (5 arbitrary numbers /5 = average) and the same number /6 would yield a better Efficiency, which wouldn't make sense, not that I'd put that past BB.

In your research on the test server Ceruhe, you canceled the expedition after one sector. That probably has some bearing on the outcome

I cancelled to get us the XP numbers so we had a start to verify Wardog's statement, up to a point where I had enough info to simply straight out being able to tell the exact of amount of XP that I certainly would get (killed troops), may get (bonus camps from the sector) and did get, which is just opening your mail and seeing either of those 2 numbers that you did predict to get. So cancelling after L1 wouldn't have done anything outside of what we were talking about in the first place. Just from memory it also doesn't appear that you get bonus XP for winning, or the sector bonus from the Map Boss either, but I haven't verified that, yet highly doubt it being the case and important to the stats.

Whatever it did in terms of Efficiency, beats me. As I'm not Tier 3 and ranked and likely never will be aside from still completing the Achievements (which they changed the conditions on at some point *grrrr*), I'm unlikely to find out by myself. JUst having checked the US rankins, Evil_J is up there, as a bunch are following his guides and many know how excellect and efficient (hint hint) they are, he might be able to chime in some more.

Anyway, off to bed~