Points Cost Prototype

[Darzoni]

General methodoly I employ for applying this system.

1. Damage Cost.
2. Crippled Threshold Cost
3. Crew Cost
4. Skeleton Crew Cost
5. Speed Cost
6. Turn Cost
7. Troop Cost
8. Craft Cost
9. Trait Cost
9a. Any traits which rely on the entire cost of the ship are applied later.
9b. Apply any halving one by one.
10. Weapon Costs
10a. Add all multipliers that rely on the Attack Dice together to get the Cost per AD.
10b. Multiply the Attack Dice by the Cost per AD.
10c. Determine Arc Surcharge/Cost if not Boresight or Turret.
10d. Apply any halving from Weapon Traits one by one.
10e. Apply any overall modifiers one by one. Any increases are applied before decreases.
11. Add up the results of the prior steps to get the Base Cost of the ship.
12. Apply any modifiers to overall ship cost here. Remember all increases are applied before decreases.

I'm debating whether or not to change how the Crippled and SK thresholds modify the cost, hence why you don't see them here. I believe it more accurate to determine what percentage of the thresholds are for their respective tracks, then apply those as a general point discount.

 

[Chernobyl]

OK, I refined it a bit, I took into account the odds of tieing (and thus re-rolling)

even: 50%
+1 62.4%
+2 73.5%
+3 82.7%
+4 89.6%
+5 94.4%
+6 97.2%
+7 98.8%
+8 99.6%

So, if you can manage to leverage a +3 initiative advatage, you will win intiative 82.7%, or roughly 4 of 5 times. a +4 advantage gives you a 89.6%, or basically 9 in 10, virtually guarenteeing a lock on the initiative on any normal game. Most games I've seen it matters most who wins the initiative on turn 2 or 3, when most of the shooting starts.
In fact, most games I've seen are usually decided by turn 5 - by that time one player has a clear advantage over the other.
even as little as a +2 advantage in initiative gets you the initiative at least 4 of the first 5 turns 60.2% of the time.

Chern

 

[Darzoni]

Setting aside initiative at the moment (still haven't figured out what to do with the data), we have revisions to the carrier costs.

The cost to carry craft is now a percentage of the total cost of the craft carried, based primarily on the hull of the ship carrying them. Hull 4 ships reduce total craft cost to 40%, Hull 5 to 50%, and Hull 6 to 60%.

Carriers add to that percentage above, being (X/100)*X, where X is the number after the Carrier trait.

Fleet Carrier costs the same as the Carrier trait, in effect doubling the cost of the Carrier trait.

 

[Darzoni]

So, if you can manage to leverage a +3 initiative advatage, you will win intiative 82.7%, or roughly 4 of 5 times. a +4 advantage gives you a 89.6%, or basically 9 in 10, virtually guarenteeing a lock on the initiative on any normal game. Most games I've seen it matters most who wins the initiative on turn 2 or 3, when most of the shooting starts.
In fact, most games I've seen are usually decided by turn 5 - by that time one player has a clear advantage over the other.
even as little as a +2 advantage in initiative gets you the initiative at least 4 of the first 5 turns 60.2% of the time.

Chern

So in all, initiative is a bomb rather than a straight value. It only matters truly in mid-game, not in the early game or late game. Given games of ACTA are supposed to last 10 turns, you roughly have about 2-4 rounds where initiative matters most.

So if we figure that you add a surcharge to ship cost based on your likelihood of winning initiative combined with how many turns the initiative bonus is roughly useful for, that would probably give me a rough estimate of how valuable initiative is. This doesn't exactly work for determining bonuses granted by Command, but will give me a basis for that as well.