User talk:Jibbajabba
Survival Arithmetic
Getting over the "first level hump" means maxmizing the odds you're still alive when you log in. After three days, you're either smart, lucky, or pushing up daisies. Your choice of class has mild repercussions for long-term levelling, but your goal is to build core survival skills as quickly as possible. This document examines how to do that using combat AP (CAP), that is, the average number of action points spent in and towards (cAP) XP generation. I'll use "Level 2" interchangably with "Free Running skill" since that's the first one you should take. Its cost depends on your class (75XP mil/100XP civ/150XP sci).
Conventional wisdom holds that the easiest class to start with is Firefighter:
- 25% to hit for 3 damage
- 0.75 average damage per swing for a 0.75 XP/AP combat ratio ( "XACR" = ADPA, avg dmg per AP),
- reaches level 2 at 100XP, having spent 100/0.75 = 133 CAP.
You might spend 10 AP to find the nearest zed and retreat to safety. That leaves 40 AP for levelling: with roughly 30XP per day (and little chance of kill bonuses), you see Level 2 on the fourth day.
Now is a good time to note the Law of Large Numbers doesn't kick in until long after you've stopped worrying about it. You won't see anything like "average" on a given day.
The Private can, in theory, bring down a healthy zombie with a single pistol (39 avg AP). It takes incredible luck to off one with bodybuilding (BB) (47 avg AP) or a flak jacket (FJ) (48 avg AP) in 50 turns. [Key: bold = with kill bonus / without kill bonus vs. no BB, no FJ / (parentheses = vs. FJ)]
- 30% to-hit for 5 (4) damage
- 9 (7.2) average damage per clip, spending 7 AP with reload,
- 9/7 = 1.286 (7.2/7 = 1.029) XACR,
- 7.2% to find clip in a PD means 7 AP avg. searching per clip
- additionally, (X + 2) movement to/from PD with enter/exit is required at least once
- reaches level 2 at 75 XP, having shot 7.222 / 8.333 / (10.417) clips
- (and started the game with two of these)
- needs 39 + X / 46 + X / (61 + X) cAP to find ammo,
- nets 75 XP having spent 50.556 / 58.333 / (72.9) AP shooting and reloading
- spending total 90 + X / 118 + X / (148 + X) CAP.
Without a kill, there is no significant difference vs. firefighter, since X is small. The kill bonus saves nearly 30AP of ammo-finding (in hindsight); 10XP is a lot of baggage in missed shots and failed searches. Players should therefore always coordinate to salvage each other's kills.
It is recommended to take Free Running at Level 2 instead of Pistol Training even though Pistol Training nearly doubles XACR. To succumb to this temptation is to add two more days sleeping in danger–-in the words of Bruce Lee, "Why add to the problem you are trying to work on?"
- Crude probabilistic analysis of X (there are 243 PD in Malton) is neither surprising nor meaningful. A brute-force calculation of X's expected value using the actual map would be nice to have.
- According to current search data, a PD also yields chances of
- 1.6% to find a pistol containing 2.41 expected bullets
- 1.6% to find a shotgun containing 1.23 expected shells
Should you find a shotgun:
- 30% to-hit for 10 (8) dmg
- 3 (2.4) avg. dmg per shell, spending 2 AP with reload,
- 3/2 = 1.5 (2.4/2 = 1.2) XACR
- 6% to find a shell in a PD means 9 AP searching per shell
- reaches Level 2 having shot 21.667 / 25 / (31.25) shells
- needs 197 + X / 227 + X / (284 + X) cAP to find ammo
- nets 75 XP having spent 43.334 / 50 / (63) AP shooting and reloading
The astronomical cost of finding ammo makes planning to use the shotgun impossible. However, if you happen to have shells, its higher ADPA makes it is slightly more efficient.
As for the flare gun (1.7% to find in a PD):
- 15% to-hit for 15 (12) dmg
- 2.25 (1.8) avg. dmg
| Sound combat strategy is to discharge all loaded weapons in order of average damage per shot: shotguns, then flares, then pistols. Then use up all your shells (higher XACR), then switch to pistol. |
An alternate strategy is to seek the elusive "flair kill" by hammering a zombie down to low HP, then hitting it with a flare (+15XP + 10XP). Flares are as useful now (before pistol/shotgun training) as they'll ever be. With a zombie at 10HP, in order of preference, you should:
- shotgun him for 10XP (expect 3.333 turns with infinite loaded shotguns)
- flare him for 15XP (expect 6.667 turns with infinite flares);
- pistol him once then flare him for 20XP (expect 10 turns with infinite loaded pistols and flares);
- pistol him twice for 10XP (expect 6.667 turns with infinite loaded pistols)
math note: these numbers are limits of series describing trees of possible outcomes, and give the results expected from vanilla to-hit analysis.
Finally, read "Beyond Average Damage" on the UD wiki: http://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/Guides:Beyond_average_damage
New Player FAQ
0) you get 50 turns that regenerate 1 per half hour. you can play multiple characters, but your IP is only allowed 160 server hits per day. if you have alt characters, they can't interact (dice rolls are penalized, plus you might get banned). Keep them in separate suburbs or the game's anti-cheating measures will kick in.
1) you want to stay alive. dying turns you into a zombie, and getting revived is a fair pain in the ass.
2) there is no auto-combat. when you aren't online, you're a sitting duck. so you want to end your play session inside a well-barricaded building.
2a) said building should be "low-profile," namely, not a police station, hospital, or necrotech office (aka 'tactical resource points').
3) said resource points are the best place to search for guns & ammo, medkits, and revive syringes, respectively. even so, expect 80% failure. see wiki->Items for more data.
2b) should a curious corpse smash your barricade and investigate, he will alert every zombie in Christendom if there are many survivors inside. n00b slumber parties are a bad idea. shacking up with a small group of experienced strangers (who haven't run out of AP with you) is preferable.
2c) at first, you can't enter "heavily" barricaded buildings. to get in you need the Free Running skill (entry from inside an adjacent building). getting this is your first priority.
4) to buy skills, you spend XP. So gaining XP is the most important part of the game (especially the early game, cf. #1). The best starting classes to gain XP are Private/Cop and Lab Assistant. This choice has important ramifications: out-of-class skills (military vs. science) cost twice as much. Over the whole skill tree, military spend 100 more XP maxing out compared to civies, and scientists spend 225XP more than that, but it's a wash after the 2100XP to get there.
4a) Fighters see a logistic (S-curve) XP gain curve. You level to increase shooting accuracy which in turn accelerates levelling. Recommended skill progression is Free Running, T, T, Shopping, Bargain Hunting, S, S, where T are first-tier shooting skills (+25%) and S are second-tier (+10%), taken in order of available ammo. You'll need construction eventually, but enough EHB buildings exist that aren't molested by zombies that other players will pick up the slack.
4b) Healers see a logarithmic (flattening) XP gain curve. You level to gain options that don't help (lab experience) or even decrease (first aid, surgery) levelling. The DNA extractor has phenomenal XP/AP potential, but the opportunity to exploit it on any given day is a crapshoot. Recommended skill progression is Free Running, Shopping, Diagnosis, Lab Experience, Bargain Hunting. I find more FAKs than wounded survivors, so taking first aid or surgery early on seems like sabotage.
5) if you shoot a zombie with the Scent Trail skill, he sees your location next time he logs in. Unfortunately, zombies are all anonymous unless they're in your contact list, and the only way to add contacts is through their profile, and the only way to see their profile is if they attack you. So you have no way of knowing what you're shooting at.
5a) zombies see the same thing you do: survivor names and "recognized" zombie contacts. they can and do target an individual survivor based on his level.
6) players can't trade with each other
Manual for Scientists and the Recently Deceased
I happen to be a fan of 'Whim Revives' (not to be confused with the well-defined Combat or Random varieties)
- It's more kill-efficient than optimal shooting (currently 12% to find syringes), but not at all XP-efficient
- If you have a damned flak jacket and bodybuilding, you spent some time as a human anyway
- Disgruntled revived zombies who opt for revenge sacrifice their greatest asset: anonymity
- If you don't like it, keep your brain-rotted buddies the fuck out of revive points, you griefing bastards!
Gripes with the RRF
- maintains a subforum for the explicit purpose of wiki-voting for every pro-zombie suggestion that comes up, regardless of its actual merit
- tolerates the use of survivor zergs "for tagging and clean-up" during major raids.
