The economics of the pill - Lessons of The Festival of Damage (2/2)

Hello dear readers,

This guide is aimed at everyone, new and old players alike, since a large percentage of the player base is not aware of this cost benefit analysis from my observations of battlefronts.

Only top damage dealers seem to understand this math. So if you see someone who's high level, attacks with good gear and is not on the pill, send them this guide.

Chapter 2: The Pill

Today I'll talk to you about the economics of taking a pill. The damage effects are obvious and easy to calculate. You take a pill when your bars are full. Then it lasts 8 hours, so 8 hours worth of bars are added during it's duration.

In total you attack with x1.8 attack boost for 18 hours worth of bars every 24 hours. So The real effect to your daily damage is 1.8x18/24 = 1.35! Taking a pill will increase your daily damage in 35% and you only spend 75% of the resources you would otherwise, what do I mean by this?

Let's take a look at a basic farm build, this time I'll use myself as an example (level 23 at the time of writing) using my own situation and explain my choices.

2.1 The gear costs

This guide I'll start with the gear, since this is a farm build I will use all greens.

Let's breakdown the cost of this build in scrap.

Green items cost 18 scrap and 2 steel if random, 4 if chosen. We'll assume the later since generating randomly can give you something you do not want.

But once fully used the equipment gives you 1/3 of that scrap. So realistically it costs you 12 scrap and 4 steel.

So 12 Scrap @0.3 and 4 steel @1.211 gives us a total of 8.444 BTC per item. If we look at the market we can see items below average (i.e. boots with 5% or 6%) below this value and above average items above or equivalent to this value.

Since all my gear is above average I'll use the scrap calculation as a base line to simplify calculation. You personally should check the market for deals on above average items. There's a few players who make huge margins on equipment trading buying cheap above average items and reselling them for more.

Anyway, each item costs 8.444. Bullets cost around 0.12. For food I'll use steaks as I can afford them on my hunger @1.922 each steak.

So for a full 100% green gear I spend on average 8.444x6 = 50.664 in gear. To shoot the gun 100 times I will spend 100 bullets, that's an extra 12 BTC. But will I shoot 100 times in a day? And how much steaks will I eat a day?

2.2 Number of attacks

Looking at my skills for number of attacks I need to look at 2 possible scenarios, number of attacks on a pill (since we only fight for 75% of the time) and without pill (100% of the time usage of the bars).

My skills and gear provide me 25% damage reduction and 29% dodge. With 70 health and using 6 steaks I have a total of 190 health.

This means I lose 7.5 health for each attack I do not dodge, so 25 attacks in total for a full bar. But I dodge 29% so my expected number of hits is just over 35.

2.3 Cost per day

So what's my real cost?

For all equipment except weapons I expect to lose 25% every time I use all my bars when they are full, since 25 attacks not dodged will take 1% durability each.

For 10 hours of bars spent each equipment will cost me 8.444x25% = 2.111. We have 5 equipment slots that will follow this loss so it's 2.111x5 = 10.555.

For bullets and weapons I have to keep track of the real number of attacks, since this can vary due to dodge mechanics I'll use the average.

On average I expect to hit 35 times, so it's 35% loss for the gun and 35 bullets. 8.444x35% = 2.9554 and 0.12x35 = 4.2

So if I spend all my bars from full to empty in this build I will spend 17.71

Now we will caluclate the daily expense on equipment, bullets, food on the pill and off.

On Pill:

If I'm on the pill I spend its cost (20) and I multiply the equipment costs by 1.8 since I get 8 more hours of bars during the pill.

So 17.71 x 1.8 = 31.878. And I'll eat 10 steaks (6x1.8 = 10.8, you can only eat if hunger is full number so 10) for an additional 19.2 and pill is 20.

Total money spent per day: 31.878 + 19.2+ 20 = 71.078

Off Pill:
If I'm not, then I spend the same values times 2.4. So that's 17.71 x 2.4 = 42.504 and I'll eat more since before I did not eat while in debuff (6 hours) and now I do, so 6*2.4*1.92 = 27.648.

Since there is no loss in hunger we'll calculate decimal cost as everyday you'll have 0.4 hunger extra that eventually compound into an extra steak.

Total money spent off the pill: 42.504+27.648 = 70.152

The price is nearly identical market fluctuations can make one more expensive than the other, so what do I get for the pill?

I lose 0.926 more BTC on an all greens build and I deal 35% more damage in that day! This loss value when accounted for the extra scrap gained from leaderboard bonus can become better for the pill!

No equipment or bullet upgrade will give me that damage increase for 0.926 BTC per day.

Since I am pilling every day and extracting as much damage as I can, I do not need to craft greens since all the cases I open will provide me all the green equipment to farm I need and more. I scrap anything gray or below average stats and only use above average items.

If there are bounties I will collect 35% more money as well from bounties provided I can always collect bounty.

2.4 Better gear (Blue)

These calculations were made for all greens build. If you look at an all blue build sudenly you start really saving money. Blue gear costs 3 time the scrap and 2 times more steel. Let's plug that into our calculations. Each piece of gear now costs 20.48 in scrap and steel (cost of making minus scrap returned once fully used).

Since we're using all blues we need to recalculate the number of attacks and dodge to calibrate our real cost.

37% Armor means 6.3 health loss on attack. That's 30 attacks on 10 hours. 35% dodge means 16 extra attacks on average.

So now I lose 30% on non-weapon equipment and spend 46% on the weapon and 46 bullets every 10 hours.

Cost by 10 hours
Weapon: 20.48 x 46% = 9.42

Bullets: 46 x 0.46 = 21.16

Gear: 20.48 x 35% x 5 = 30.72

Total every 10 hours: 61.3

On Pill we eat 10 steaks and multiply cost by 1.8 and add the cost of the pill (20):

61.3*1.8 + 20 + 19.2 = 149.54

Off the pill we multiply that by 2.4 and eat more steaks:

61.3*2.4 + 27.648 = 174.768

Taking the pill just saved us almost 25 BTC even though we spent 20 on it!

The better the gear, food and bullets the more it saves. And you get a boost for 35% damage for the exact same build!

The downside is that we are locked to 8 hours of action, however in a world where life gets in the way having to worry about where to hit for only 8 hours is actually better imo, instead of constantly worrying about it. I know that if I pill at 2 PM I will only have to worry about combat until 10 PM and the next day I'll be ready to fight again at 2 PM.

The downside is you might miss an important battle or big bounty. But I categorically reject this notions, 2 players on pill on different shifts (e.g. One 8 AM to 4 PM and another 4 PM to Midnight will deal more damage than 2 players fighting 24 hours and will cover 2 rounds of damage, their impact on these 2 rounds will be greater than if none of them is on the pill as well!

As for bounties lost, if you wait for a better bounty it may not come. Don't count your eggs until they hatch.

Conclusions

All these calculation were made for my build! I have an hybrid build with 32 points spent on Econ and 60 on Combat. My economic build allows me to use greens forever and occasionally hit with blues if paid well for it. This has allowed me to rise through the ranks of damage while not falling behind in Wealth ranking.

XP ranking gives you good measure for where you should be in the rankings. Since it dictates time playing the game (150 every day, plus some weekends on double XP).

I am 181 In Total Damages and in Wealth I'm on par with my XP ranking. I'm punching way above my weight while growing just enough to keep my Wealth ranking with my XP ranking.

This week I've mostly used greens and I'm Diamond ranking in weekly damage.

If you see someone shooting a weapon that is blue or above without a pill, please send them this guide and hopefully I will stop raging when I watch a front.

We have a very good cost analysis calculator in our Discord, it calculates not only combat cost but also factory output profit per pp and salary income. I will build a website that will make this calculator available to everyone so everyone knows how much they make a day, how much damage they expect to deal on their build and what is the daily profit on different contracts collected based on this damage, since not everyone is willing to do these calculations by themselves and I'm a cool guy :)

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https://app.warera.io/user/688d5195c9890d9e5a1a4228