(OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?

[Timstone]

SJ said:

The question of Why would make a huge difference:
Consider if you had personally ordered a training facility built in a chokepoint system to help boost the troops as they arrived.

"Governor Joe wants permission to scrap your training facility at Algaran I"
Heck, no! I built that for a reason, dummy!
...(Two Months Later)...
"Governor Joe REALLY wants permission to scrap your training facility at Algaran I"
What? You again!? Grr, now I've gotta go and look at everything to see what's got you so upset. 50 lashes for wasting my time!

-or-

"Governor Joe wants to scrap your training facility at Algaran I because a higher-level training facility is under construction (2 months) near the resupply depot on Algaran II (Y/N)".
Ah, excellent work. Have a cookie!


Hahahaha!!!! Great stuff SJ! Almost fell from my chair. Hahahaha!!!! LOL!!!!

[Slick]

Although I voted for knowing exact values, I voted for this game only. I believe that this is consistent with the flavor of how I would want to play this game.

I could envision another game where I would want vagueness if it is consistent with the flavor of that game. A good example are First Person Shooters (which I play occasionally). I really don't want to know exactly how many hitpoints the various baddies have nor how much damage the Rocket Launcher delivers with a direct hit and/or splash damage. I'd much rather figure out by playing that some guys will be blown to smithereens with one hit and other bad guys are best dealt with by increasing the distance between them and my high-tailing rear end.

Bottom line for me is that it matters on the kind of game.

[brianeyci]

Well no, you don't. But there are numbers in FPS. For example, you don't know exactly how much damage a rocket launcher will do, but you know a rocket launcher in the face will kill them. So, in a FPS, there is an incredibly simplified style of playing. This is different for different games of course, especially with more modern games that have hitboxes where shooting them in the head does more damage than in the foot. But generally, you know that a sniper rifle hit to the head will kill, you know that six pistol shots will kill somebody, etc. Its just not quantified, but qualified when you see the person hit the deck =D.

Brian

[Caduceus]

I'll agree with Slick about the character of the game determining whether I give a fig about formulas. To be honest, I have calculated stuff a handful of times in SE IV, gotten the wrong answer and then determined that I was doing the math wrong, not the machine adding mysterious modifiers. Talk about embarassing.

[Power Man]

I do not need the exact formula or some complex damage table.

However I would like more complete discriptions of how some things work together.

For example, we are told that the Phase Polaron Beam goes through regular shields. The phase shield will stop the Phase polaron beam.
But we are not told how the phased shield works verses regular beams.
It seems logical that it would work better than a regular shield but how to tell?

[Bill Door]

Power Man said:For example, we are told that the Phase Polaron Beam goes through regular shields. The phase shield will stop the Phase polaron beam.
But we are not told how the phased shield works verses regular beams.
It seems logical that it would work better than a regular shield but how to tell?

Not necessarily, the Phased Polaron Beam could exploit a weakness in the normal sheilds that the 'phased sheilds' do not exhibit. This doesn't have to lead to increased conventional strength.

Example: The phased sheilds expand the 'spectrum' covered by the sheild. Any attack made on the conventional 'bands' are absorbed with the same degradation in sheild performance as the 'phased polaron' 'bands'.

Example: The phased sheild generator components are actually multiple different types of generator, each with its own specific defensive responsibility, sharing common support components. Thus the strain on the support facilities depletes the usefulness equally (I realise this is not the most brilliant of arrangements for a sheilding system, but it makes the point.)


Besides, after reading this, I feel that phased sheilds act a bit strangely when their name is taken into consideration. They could be more accuratly considered multi phase sheilds

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Interesting read, so far.

[Kamog]

Bill Door said:
Besides, after reading this, I feel that phased sheilds act a bit strangely when their name is taken into consideration. They could be more accuratly considered multi phase sheilds

Thanks for posting the link. That was an excellent article.

[Suicide Junkie]

Don't read it as "shield which is phased", but rather as "shield for phased stuff"

[Traskelion]

I prefer to not know formulas. If I know too many, I feel like it's the numbers playing instead of me. Then again, maybe that's just being ot lazy to figure out what they are. If I DO end up knowing some formulas, I play via calculator. Either way tho, I feel there must be enough beyond my grasp.