User:Grim s/Rants/Revival Imbalance

I am writing this to lay out, as clearly as possible, why the current balance with revives is broken. It is current as of the time of writing, at 22:05, 21 June 2008 (BST)

Introduction

Several of the more vocal zombies have been claiming for a while that reviving is more AP efficient than killing people is. Doing the maths indicates that they are correct, and i intend to, in this document, prove it once and for all, and in as clear a manner as possible.

However, before we can get to the pure maths, I need to explain the situation, the required base assumptions, as well as a few other things. As a word of warning, several factors do not have accurate statistics regarding them and whenever such an example is present, I will be using my best guess estimates based on my personal experience while wandering the city. These will be clearly marked.

There will also be the noting of certain game phenomena, which are regrattably unquantifiable with empirical evidence, but are in general supported by trends and are strongly implied in the raw data. These i will also mark clearly.

Explaining the situation

For this example i will use what is generally the standard zombie strike of 10-14 zombies. I will assume 10 for the sake of this article, in the interests of making the maths later simpler to understand.

An attack is, at least when described, fundamentally simple: A number of zombies log in at a prearranged time, stand up, walk to a target building, break down the barricades, and eat as many people inside as they can.

Reviving the fallen is also fundamentally simple: Search for syringes in a NT building, go to a revive point, scan zombies, click revive this specimen if you like the cut of their jib.

It is immediately apparent what sorts of quantifiable factors we will be getting from this situation, so lets make a list of what we have so far:

Zombies

• Standup Cost
• Walking to target
• Decading
• Entering the building
• Killing people

Humans

• Search AP
• Movement to RP
• Scanning
• Revival
• Retreating to safety

This is by no means a complete list of factors. We also need the AP spent by the killed humans to get to the revive point and to safety afterwards.

So now we have:

Humans

• Search AP
• Movement to RP
• Scanning
• Revival
• Retreating to safety
• Revivee standing up
• Revivee making his way to RP
• Revivee getting to safety

By sheer number of factors, the survivor side of the calculation will be more complicated. Please bear with me as i continute.

The following things i am NOT considering factors for the same of this discussion, and i shall explain why:

• The AP cost to kill the zombies
• The AP cost to build the cades in the first place
• The AP cost to heal the people after revivification

These things are all outside the system i am examining, and restocking on aamunition, healing, and building the original cades can happen at any time during the weeks and months of idle time a suburb experiences between zombie attacks. Including these figures presents an unfair bias as a result, as zombies do not have any of this idle time.

Also, please not that the system i am examining is at an extreme of zombie ability, and will vastly underrerpresent the trie zombie cost overall.

Making Assumptions

Unfortunately before we can go any farther we have to make a few assumptions. So i am spelling out the first ones here, which will operate until i say otherwise:

1: All Zombies have the complete zombie skill tree
2: That all players start with 50 AP
3: The distribution of survivors and Zombie Hunters is uniform
4: That approximately 66% of humans have the skill, Bodybuilding

Before i go any farther i wish to justify assumption 3:
Bodybuilding is an important survival skill in that it increases the amount of damage you take before you die. As a result its logical place in the skill progression is after you max your first primary tree (Reviving or Combat) and obtain the Free Running skill. As such it will probably be taken at around 5th or 6th level.

A little maths on the stats page of the moment shows that there are 6634 humans who are level 4 or lower, of a total of 19514 (Reviving bodies are designated by thier class. The present human total plus the number of reviving bodies gives this figure)

A simple bout of maths 6634/19514 gives us a percentage of approximately 34% (actually 33.996...%, but its close enough to give them those four thousandths of a percent by rounding). So we can reasonably assume that about 66% of the survivor population has bodybuilding, which goes into our first set of real sums.

Part 1: Determining the number of Casualties

Before we can even begin on the human side (I hesitate to call them survivors given that this regards their death and ressurection) of the equation, we must first determine the number of humans killed to get numbers for many of the .

To do this we need a few more assumptions, the first of which i already outlined at the start, but ill restate itb here in the format i am using for such assumptions:
5: That there are ten attacking zombies who have a perfectly average performance (No RNG rape or love)
There is another assumption we need to make. In this case, given that most of the buildings in malton are EHB, we must make the next assumption:
6: The building is EHB +2
Yet another assumption that needs to be made, but isnt much of a stretch. Historically it has been true throughout almost all of Maltons history except in the most dire of zombie holocausts sweeping the city:
7: All Zombies wake up dead
Another couple that I need to give, for the sake of completeness:
8: The Zombies are in a Target Rich environment. They will not run out of people to kill inside
9: That all the humans are at full health

Ok. Now we can start putting some sums together.

The first thing we need to do is determine their starting ap. For this we will be using assumptions 2, 3 and 7.

First i need to determine how many zombies are headshot. A direct copy from the stats page at the time of writing will give us a percentage of headshotters in the population, which i will use to determine a percentage headshot tally. Please realise that this will likely underrepresent the true headshot count as Zombie Hunters are typically high level characters who can kill multiple zombies, while non zombie hunters will have lower kill rates.

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Standing Survivors : 15528
Standing Zombie Hunters : 8323

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A simple bit of maths to derive the percentage:

8323/15528 = 53.5999% rounded simply to 54% (Standard rounding rules)

The result is that 5.4 zombies will stand up headshot.

5.4 x 6 = 32.4ap from the headshot (6ap per zombie), 4.6 (1ap per zombie) from the non headshot. This is an immediate penalty of 37ap from the zombie starting total of 500. So lets write that out clearly.

500 - 37 = 463

Remaining Zombie AP: 463

Now we must deal with transit to the next target. I will assume a distance of 3ap. Thats about how far most horde targets i have attacked in my career as a zombie were seperated on average.

3 x 10 = 30

Remaining Zombie AP: 433

Now for the good part. Attacking the barricades. Using Assumption 6, and the cade hit rate of 50% the regular atatck rate, you get 25% against EHB+2

EHB + 2 is 1+3+3+3+3+3+3 cade levels, or 19 levels of barricade.

At 25% to hit it takes four AP to clear away each level of barricade, in accordance with assumption 5.

4 x 19 = 76

Remaining Zombie AP: 389

Next is entering the building, which sost each zombie a single AP:

Remaining Zombie AP: 379

Now we can play with combat, and we only had to lose 22.6% of the zombie ap total to do it.

Now, we are going to use assumptions 3 and 9 to gain an average HP total for humans, which i will use when determining kills scored.

Simply put, 33.4% have 50 health while 66.6% have 60 health. Thats easy enough to calculate:

(0.334 x 50) + (0.666 x 60) = Average Human HP.
16.7 + 39.96 = 56.36 HP

So 56.36 HP per human.

Now lets just grab the stats for full tree claws from the guy who did the calculations:

Damage per AP of claws is 1.71429 damage per AP

The remaining zombie AP is 379 so this is pretty simple:

379 x 1.71429 = 649.71591

Now to get the total humans killed:

649.71591 / 56.36 = 11.5... It goes on.

So they will kill 11 people. Partial kills do not concern us when dealing with the revive rate.

Now to just get the leftover zombie AP out of our sums:

56.36 x 11 = 619.96 (HP of people by number of people killed)

619.96 / 1.714429 = 361.613...

So 362 ap spent (rounding to a whole number) killing.

So we are now down to 17 ap.

Total Zombie AP spent: 483

This ends the participation by our friendly undead. Give them a cheer everyone!

Interlude

Just to give you a break from all the sums, we can go back and evaluate our previous checklists:

Zombies

• Standup Cost (Done)
• Walking to target (Done)
• Decading (Done)
• Entering the building (Done)
• Killing people (Done)

Total AP cost: 483 (43.9090 repeating per kill)

We have determined that ten coordinated zombies working together will get in and kill 11 people with 483ap. It has now become possible to do the human side of the equation. So lets examine the checklist:

Humans

• Search AP
• Movement to RP
• Scanning
• Revival
• Retreating to safety
• Revivee standing up
• Revivee making his way to RP
• Revivee getting to safety

Seems like a tall order beating that 483 AP cost. Let us see how they fare.

Part 2: The Human Cost

I will be making a few assumptions here about how the revive system works.

10: All searches are done in powered NT buildings
11: All Revivers have a DNA extractor
12: That the reviver need only travel 2ap to get to the revive point
13: That a return to the NT building safehouse is 3ap.
14: That four people can be safely revived per trip
15: That there are no rotters in the revive point
16: That the Mrh Cows have Lurching Gait and Ankle Grab
17: That it is an average of 3 blocks to a revive point
18: That an Entry point is within 1ap

Now to deal with the fallout from those last two:

Assumption 15: Since the advent of Scanners revealing rotters profile links, the practice isnt all that common anymore in the average confrontation.

Assumption 16: I am assuming both these zombie skills to make my life easier. I will discard that assumption at the end of the section however, so there is no need to worry. Just bear with me.

Assumption 17: I am assuming between 1 and 5ap from a revive point because there are very few places in malton where an area larger than a suburb does not have at least one revive point, probably two or three. The average is 3ap, so thats what i shall use for simplicities sake.

Assumption 18: This is generally true in most every case for ease of access.

Ok, lets get to crunching those numbers.

First, we need to find enough syringes to revive 11 people. Using the search rate provided on the talk page (Originally i used the rate on the Syringe page of 12.4%, but this was innacurate) of 17.5% (Assuming thats for a powered building) we get:

11 / 0.175 = 62.857 AP (Rounding to 63 AP)

Total Human AP spent: 63

Using Assumptions 12, 13, and 14 we get three there and back again trips for revivers reviving the fallen, so thats another 15 ap spent.

Total Human AP spent: 78

Now we DNA extractor them. Assuming no rotters (Assumption 15) we get another 11 ap used.

Total Human AP spent: 89

Now for reviving them. This is simple enough.

10 x 11 = 110

Total Human AP spent: 199

We have now dealt with the revivers side of the human AP expendature in the revivification endeavour. Now its time to go for the revivees ap budget.

First, we have standing up. This will cost them, using assumption 16, a total of 22 AP. (They need to stand twice, once after being killed,m once after revival)

Total Human AP spent: 221

Now we have to deal with them walking to the revive point. This, using assumption 17, 3 ap each.

3 x 11 = 33

Total Human AP spent: 254

Now, for them to get inside. Its 1ap to move to the Entry point (assumption 18). We will say that they want to hide in teh NT building as well, for fairness sake.

11 x 3 = 33

Total Human AP spent: 287

Let us examine the checklist:

Humans

• Search AP (Done)
• Movement to RP (Done)
• Scanning (Done)
• Revival (Done)
• Retreating to safety (Done)
• Revivee standing up (Done)
• Revivee making his way to RP (Done)
• Revivee getting to safety (Done)

Pretty neat.

Valid concern raised by Midianian concerning rebuilding the cades. I plainly admit this was a factor i forgot. The following is his maths on the subject i have ripped bodily out of his page, and is not my own work, though i could have easily enough done it myself:

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Constructing EHB+2 barricades cost, with numbers taken from here, with the change of assuming a chance of 100% for the first two levels because of the scant data. Those levels wouldn't make a noticeable difference anyway. The data on constructing EHB level 'cades is also scant.

• None: 1 / 1 = 1
• Loose: 1 / 1 = 1
• Light: 3 / 0.996 = 3.01
• Quite Strong: 3 / 0.974 = 3.08
• Very Strong: 3 / 0.850 = 3.53
• Heavy: 3 / 0.624 = 4.81
• Very Heavy: 3 / 0.373 = 8.04
• Extremely Heavy: 2 / 0.196 = 10.02
• Total AP used on constructing barricades: 34.49, rounded to 35

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Adding this all in:

Total Human AP spent: 322

Here ends the participation by the humans. Give them cheer!

Cutting down on assumptions

Some of you are by now probably a little annoyed at some of the assumptions i have made regarding humans abilities, specifically thier zombie skills. So i intent to show you what happens when around half of them dont have those skills.

For the following, Assumption 16 has been ignored. 6 of the 11 people killed do not have either lurching gait or ankle grab.

First of all, to skip all thr troublesome repeating of maths, i have removed 18 from the AP total so far (12 for standing up and 6 for walking) as i have removed those parts of the zombies additions to the total in order to calculate their new additions.

Total Human AP spent: 301

Now, because these zombies dont have ankle grab, they will be standing up for 10ap a pop. This gives us:

10 x 6 x 2 = 120

Total Human AP spent: 424

Now since its 3 moves to the revive point, at 2ap a move:

2 x 6 = 12

Total Human AP spent: 436

This is providing an absurd amount of people without Ankle Grab and Lurching Gait. You will likely have half that.

Now, lets get rid of assumption 15 and toss in a few rotters. Assuming 4ap to scan each (Generous guesstimate), and that you have to get through a rotter for every three revivees (This would be an exceptionally polluted revive point), then with this you end up with:

11 / 3 = 4 (Rounded to the nearest whole number)

4 x 4 = 16

Total Human AP spent: 452

Which is considerably less than the coordinated zombie cost, and requires some rather silly assumptions to reach (For example, rarely do you get an RP that polluted).

Note: I orginally had a rotter for every person in the pile. The addition of my oversight of barricades in section 2 made such number unfeasable to demonstrate my point and i was forced to change it. The new numbers still make my point though.

Further comments

In this document i have purposely ignored the fact that not every zombie has the maxed combat skill tree. I also assumed they all have Ankle grab, and while most do, there are a considerable number who do not have the skill. As such, this document has the tendancy to minimise zombie AP expendature while at the same time maximising the human AP costs to absurd levels, especially in the section prior to this one.

Furthermore, this is done using a coordinated zombie strike team for comparion, which is the exception in malton, rather than the rule, and serves to further icnrease the zombie AP efficiency in the document. Using the average zombie (Usually feral) the cost to kill soars. There is no requirement of coordination on the part of the revivers and revivees however.

Survivors using tactics such as DIRT:NAP would increase their efficiency even more.

Game Phenomenon: On top of this, i have left out the fact that when a level 1 human character is killed, the player is just as likely to dump the character and create a new one to play with. Especially if they are a newbie. This is why the level 1 section on the stats page is so bloated. Killing these still costs maxed zombies about 30ap each and since they arent being played anymore they do not enter into the revive system and cost the humans nothing.

In essence, in addition to being overpowered in most other respects, the Human capability to revive the fallen is broken and not within a bulls roar of being balanced fairly.

In addition to being unfun, Zombies are unfairly hobbled by the advantage humans have in reducing attrition upon which the hordes rely to take out human population centers, and it is not by a trifling amount, but a spectacular AP difference of ~33% (Before you take into account anything else mentioned in this section), and only through a considerable amount of gifts to the human population does it even come near to parity with the most organised of zombies, and even then, only at the most absurd levels which are clearly not representative of the game.

Conclusion

This space intentionally left blank. I have presented the case, draw your own conclusion.