Pretender Cost Calculator

[quantum_mechani]

I don't know if you are interested, but as far as statistics go there is another project I think a lot of people would get use out of. If someone came up with hard statistics on the ratios of what path's sites occur on each terrain type, that could revolutionize site searching. In theory, Edi's database should have all the information necessary, the only catch I can see is maybe knowing exactly how much more common 'common' sites are vs 'rare'.

[Psientist]

I just uploaded an updated version (v1.03) of the Pretender calculator. I decided there were some elements of the linear regression method which were just too quirky, so I used some different statistics-based tricks to come up with a weighting method that incorporates some of the comments posted here and my other thread.

Notably, it now:
- still does a measurably good job of predicting the scores for the default pretenders (whose average cost is about 78 plus or minus 44, by the way)
- provides a way for the modder to score "synergy" ... how well pretender attributes work together or against each other.
- compensates for non-linear scoring of magic levels
- tries to "build in" control over why a pretender's cost should be more or less than the predicted average

[Psientist]

Regarding cost calculators for units and magic sites and the like... if anybody wants me to run regressions or other statistics on any data, just (a) ask, and (b) give me the data typed up in spreadsheet format, with all categories converted to numbers (e.g., "absent"=0, "rare"=1, "common"=2, "very common"=3, etc.)

I also thought it would be interesting to do a listing of pretenders, spells or magic items by the combinations of magic schools, to see if there are any gaps ripe for modding (e.g., "There doesn't seem to be many astral+earth spells?" etc.).