[SR3] Alternate Initiative - need folks to tear it apart! :) Options

[Stumps]

Thank you Cochise,
Some good questions and points brought up.

Base TN for a spell caster using a Manabolt against an "all 3s" dummy is 3 not 4 as the target's Willpower determines the TN

The reason for the TN of 4 instead of 3 is because this was a lab test with controlled settings to run along the averages of the mechanics in Shadowrun as stripped down and raw as Shadowrun mechanics can be set.
The standard for average TN per the Difficulty Number Table on p.92 is 4.
It would be a bad baseline controlled test to run it on TN's different than the standard Shadowrun default TN (4), as this is the baseline from which other TN concepts are based upon.

3 would be too skewed on results due to the probability and is not a default TN (i.e. a commonly encountered TN) for Shadowrun in general.

3 is the Dummy Target's Willpower because the Human Attributes Table on p.41 lists 3 as "Typical", and as such it is a neutral value Shadowrun considers an average Human to have.

The Dummy Target is a Dummy Target and not an Enemy Combatant; this must be clear.
An Enemy Combatant contains a different set of variables to them unique to each one, while the Dummy Target is a set target which just serves to be attacked like paper (or magical paper) hanging in the shooting (and casting) range.

It serves to represent the average numbers in Shadowrun's mechanics in principle, since that is what is being tested - a core mechanic.

That "Focus 9" entry doesn't quite compute. What kind of focus are you talking there exactly: Spell Focus, Category Focus or Power Focus?

This was a typo, and should have red, "Force 9".
I have corrected the typo - sorry for the confusion there.
It now reads:
"Combat Mage has a static Force of 9 and a static Damage Level of Moderate for their spell."

The assumption that the mage should / would cast a 9M Manabolt against the dummy for the comparison is fundamentally ill-conceived because of the outright insane opportunity cost of Drain when compared to a 5M Manabolt performed by a WIL 6 magician ... particularly if you really provide the mage with some form of focus that could add additional dice to either the sorcery test (increasing lethality significantly) or to Drain Test (thus making Drain damage "near impossible").

A TN 2 Drain Test is easier than a TN 4 Drain Test, indeed.
This ran a test of 9M so that all variables were identical in damage caliber setting between the characters, since the question was whether or not setting a Mage to Simple Action instead of Complex Action would cause the Mage to over-power in Damage Output over the other non-Magical archetypes.
This also serves to have the Drain Test set to the standard default TN for Shadowrun of 4, from which the Shadowrun system is built around to slide up and down in difficulty.

For instance, you are already able to apply variables in your head onto what these tests produced as you did just here.
If a Mage was attempting to Soak a 5M Manabolt, it would be easier to accomplish, indeed, to resist Drain damage.

That said, Drain damage did not appear to be a very large concern as a whole - understanding that the Drain placed was 4 and that one could, indeed, walk the Force down if the player wanted to lower the TN for the Spell Resistance Test roll on the enemy as per p.181.

In the case of an actual Enemy Combatant with a Willpower of 3, you could probably get away with 5M instead of 9M for the Manabolt and make things easier on yourself.
This test isn't suppose to represent that, however. It is to represent a baseline of core mechanic standard values by which you can make those kinds of assessments from.

Because of these reasons, to equalize participant's damage caliber and achieve a standard default Shadowrun TN of 4 for the Drain Test, the Force was set to 9M.

The removal of Combat and Sorcery Pool usage skews the results of both attack rolls and the Damage Resistance Test vs. the Spell Resistance Test

The Dice Pools are a very wide variable which are wild cards in the mechanics.
The system is not built around the idea of Dice Pool augmentation for its core assumptions (such as the Difficulty Number Table p.92, Human Attribute Table p.181, or the Skill Ratings Table p.98).
It is assumed, as with all of these core mechanics, that Dice Pools will augment the valued output just as parameters of various conditions will augment the base TN of any given test.

Due to removing dice pool usage you also removed the whole Dodge mechanic on the dummy's end where the dummy gets at least one chance per Combat Turn of rolling against TN 4 instead of TN 7 against the physical attacks while still unharmed.

Correct. The Dummy Target is a Target and not an enemy combatant.
The test was not set up to simulate like bots in a First Person Shooter, whereby we are gauging how well players play against a given level of enemy difficulty.
For Shadowrun, that is quite a complicated task to achieve due to the variety of manners in which different groups play their games and the varied array of proficiency an enemy combatant is capable of having.

The question was about total Damage Output itself.
The primary reason for the soaking testing was to ensure that the output pre-soak was conducted accurately, for under these settings of base core mechanic default values, the range of difference between the pre-soak and post-soak results should be small.
If I were to see them widely deviate, then I would know that there was an error in the massive array of computations.

This should be made clear; these results do not have the ability to tell anyone what the anecdotal results will be for them personally.
These results only serve to strictly compare relation, or ratio of a sort, between the archetypes under two different core mechanic settings; such that as much as possible that the only variable which alters greatly is the amount of actions taken by the Mage in the two settings.

The main weakness of your simulation lies with "just one target" as the basis for your comparison. Have multiple targets and you'd see why providing mages with the opportunity of casting spells as simple action can and will pose a balance issue

This was, perhaps, a poor choice of phrasing the description.
They had the same target in the sense that they were all using the same type of paper target, or the same type of ballistic gel, etc...

However, they each had their own such Dummy Target.
On each worksheet which contained the character's attack rolls, also existed a Dummy Target to intake those attack rolls.

Each Dummy Target was set up on each Character's rolling sheet to be identical to the other Dummy Targets.


Cheers,
Stumps

[Cochise]

I fucking hate the quote-tag limitation of this board ... forces me to manually format

Stumps wrote:
The reason for the TN of 4 instead of 3 is because this was a lab test with controlled settings to run along the averages of the mechanics in Shadowrun as stripped down and raw as Shadowrun mechanics can be set.
The standard for average TN per the Difficulty Number Table on p.92 is 4.
It would be a bad baseline controlled test to run it on TN's different than the standard Shadowrun default TN (4), as this is the baseline from which other TN concepts are based upon.

The problem is that by using that incorrect TN for the spell casting you are introducing a systematic error to your testing. And ...

Stumps wrote:
3 would be too skewed on results due to the probability and is not a default TN (i.e. a commonly encountered TN) for Shadowrun in general.

... the whole lethality of the system is based around the different probabilities based on different TNs.

Stumps wrote:
It serves to represent the average numbers in Shadowrun's mechanics in principle, since that is what is being tested - a core mechanic.

Which is incorrect, because the core mechanic is actually "roll against base TN" and not "roll against base TN of 4". The fact that the base TN is 4 in most cases is irrelevant there

=> Sorry, but that outright invalidates your whole test.

Stumps wrote:
This was a typo, and should have red, "Force 9".
I have corrected the typo - sorry for the confusion there.
It now reads:
"Combat Mage has a static Force of 9 and a static Damage Level of Moderate for their spell."

And this actually doesn't reflect any "normal" game situation because only a rare number of actual characters would ever be able to cast Force 9 spells because of how hard it is to learn such a spell and the additional requirements of casting it without facing physical Drain damage. So your test involves a non-standard situation for the mage and tries to compare it to a standard situation for the samurai.

Stumps wrote:
A TN 2 Drain Test is easier than a TN 4 Drain Test, indeed.
This ran a test of 9M so that all variables were identical in damage caliber setting between the characters, since the question was whether or not setting a Mage to Simple Action instead of Complex Action would cause the Mage to over-power in Damage Output over the other non-Magical archetypes.
This also serves to have the Drain Test set to the standard default TN for Shadowrun of 4, from which the Shadowrun system is built around to slide up and down in difficulty.

And the whole premise of yours is systematically flawed and subsequently your results are rather meaningless.

Stumps wrote:
For instance, you are already able to apply variables in your head onto what these tests produced as you did just here.
If a Mage was attempting to Soak a 5M Manabolt, it would be easier to accomplish, indeed, to resist Drain damage.

But my application of variables in my head provided no new numbers for comparison. Yet yours are still meaningless for the actual game standard.

[/list]Stumps wrote:
Because of these reasons, to equalize participant's damage caliber and achieve a standard default Shadowrun TN of 4 for the Drain Test, the Force was set to 9M.[/list]

You have repeated this now at least thrice, but it doesn't make your test less flawed or better suited for determining if or how a switch to simple actions for caster would change the game overall situation.

Stumps wrote:
The Dice Pools are a very wide variable which are wild cards in the mechanics.
The system is not built around the idea of Dice Pool augmentation for its core assumptions (such as the Difficulty Number Table p.92, Human Attribute Table p.181, or the Skill Ratings Table p.98).
It is assumed, as with all of these core mechanics, that Dice Pools will augment the valued output just as parameters of various conditions will augment the base TN of any given test.

Bold claim and I would counter that the system certainly is built around the tactical element of Dice Pool augmentation. Dice Pools are in fact described as a core game element (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Stumps wrote:
Correct. The Dummy Target is a Target and not an enemy combatant.
The test was not set up to simulate like bots in a First Person Shooter, whereby we are gauging how well players play against a given level of enemy difficulty.
For Shadowrun, that is quite a complicated task to achieve due to the variety of manners in which different groups play their games and the varied array of proficiency an enemy combatant is capable of having.

The question was about total Damage Output itself.

But (actual) Damage Output is depending on all available combat mechanics. Even if for a "all 3s" dummy the Dodge attempts will rarely alter the outcome your attempt of answering the question must entail all mechanics that have influence on Damage Output. If not you're facing yet another systematic error that cannot be properly accounted for when looking at your numbers.

Stumps wrote:
This should be made clear; these results do not have the ability to tell anyone what the anecdotal results will be for them personally.

The problem with your results is not so much about differences with regards to "anecdotal results" on individual level but the fact that they don't even reflect the expected average results for the involved dice probabilities for the respective archetypes.

Stumps wrote:
These results only serve to strictly compare relation, or ratio of a sort, between the archetypes under two different core mechanic settings; such that as much as possible that the only variable which alters greatly is the amount of actions taken by the Mage in the two settings.

And that comparison is meaningless due to the involved systematic errors.

Stumps wrote:
This was, perhaps, a poor choice of phrasing the description.
They had the same target in the sense that they were all using the same type of paper target, or the same type of ballistic gel, etc...

However, they each had their own such Dummy Target.
On each worksheet which contained the character's attack rolls, also existed a Dummy Target to intake those attack rolls.

Each Dummy Target was set up on each Character's rolling sheet to be identical to the other Dummy Targets.

You missed the point: My comment was with regards to all characters engaging (and harming) multiple targets at the same time.

Sorry to say this. But right now it looks to me as if you wasted a whole lot of time into spread sheeting something under extremely false premises and getting results that are not in slightest relevant for what would happen if you really were to introduce simple actions for everything.

[Stumps]

Hey there Cochise,

I can see that we're going to probably continue to see these things differently in thought.
Perhaps an interesting idea would be for you to provide to me what numbers you would like to see me populate into the simulator and then I run another 100 Combat Turns with those values.

Then we could examine your specific setting's concern.

Cheers,
Stumps

[Cochise]

I'll come back to this once I have a clearer mind again ... Can't completely ignore psychological effects of having to stay in hospital while waiting for an eye operation that might or might not save sight for an eye that suffers from retinal detachment.

[Sendaz]

Ouch... hope it works out. At least the tech is a lot better nowadays for it.

I was lucky as worse we have had was cataracts causing triple vision which only needed a quick op to replace the actual lens in the eyes and was good as new.

In and out the same day with only a wee headache.

Doc would not go for any add ons like magnification/IR/Low Light though damnit.

Got some pretty funny looks from him and the nurses when I asked. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Stumps]

Ouch, good luck Cochise!

I hope it goes as best as it can.

Cheers,
Stumps