FYI: Skill value experiment

Hello fellow entropians,

I would like to propose an experiment to try and determine the amount(tt) of skills a certain weapon gives. I have read quite a few interesting threads regarding skill gaining, but so far I haven't seen any real progress made this way. Maybe with enough data and with the combined help of EU community we can add at least some guidelines about this on entropiawiki.com.

On a personal note I would like to share my own opinion regarding skilling system in EU, wich also constitutes the reason I started this experiment. They way I see it, an avatar has to pass trough two types of experiences regarding skills in EU during it's lifetime.

In the begining, when the avatar has under 4.5k - 5k points in one skill, the the gaining is very visible/amount of ped spent. This phase is necesary to make the player an introduction to EU and it's aimed probably to help increase the retention rate of EU users. I remember Marco stating that the average lifetime of an normal EU participant(a few hours spent ingame each week) is around 1 year, which from my experience, is about the amount of time required to unlock coolness or to reach the mark I mentioned above.

Afther passing 5k points in certain skills, the skill gaining(I mean here in points) is reduced alot. This is where I believe the second phase of the skilling system begans. This is where the player will probably decide if he will stick to EU or leave. Things will start to be quite slow from now on. I'm considering here that during that one year spent in EU, the player already knows the basics of skilling(skills points vs tt value of skills).

For me, as a player who recently passed the coolness mark, I tend to be motivated to stick around this universe by the prospects of increasing my avatar tt value. Considering that each 1k points of skill will require about 70% of the previous tt from 0 to that level, I thought about this little experiment, to help me and others have a better view on their progression speed.

I'm curenntly hunting using Breer p5a or Korss H400 both limited and two a105 amps. The pistols and the amps are quite common among entropians so, the results might interest quite a lot of ppl. I always do rounds of 320 ped(Kh400+A105) or 350 ped(P5a+A105) of ammo. I can track everything required for conductiong such an experiment, or at least provide the raw data for someone to extract the information required.

For this I'm looking to work together with one of two ppl who already have a background in this, to help me set the experiment conditions, process the data, draw conclusions and share with the rest of the community. I don't have experience with statistics that's why I'm asking your help on this.

If anyone is interested, please post here, perhaps we can make a meeting on skype or the chat from ef.com during this next week-end and further discuss this.

Regards,
Sitram

The challenge is that there are many factors that affect your rate of skillgain, so it's very hard to correctly compare different weapons. In addition, there is a built in cycle to the rate of skillgains, and then there's the curve that maps gains (which are given in volume increments) to levels, which looks like this:



That's what gives that slow down effect that becomes increasingly obvious from 5k on.

If you do pursue this, you will need to make sure you hunt the same mob and maturity over an extended period of time and compare the volume gained instead of the levels. You'll also want to alternate back and forth at least once to see that the relative values are consistent each time.

I am hunting drones for the last 4 months almost 90% of the time and I don't plan to stop hunting them. That's why I had this idea. The experiment parameters(gear) will remain fairly constant for a long time but this can alos be changed if it's required.

Doear, I never said to compare skill points gained, just that I can offer raw data to whoever wants to use it. It can be stored and used to extract information from it.

By raw data I am thinking now at a cvs files with current skill values after each hunting trip. From those files someone with knowledge of statistics can extracts lots of information and make lots of assumptions.

I mean, I'm hunting daily and already keep some personal records, so why not make an aditional small effort to gather some more information about it in case it's needed.

I see that my idea didn't had much impact and I alone don't have the knowledge nor do I have the time to study about what to do with such data.

I hope this post made it a bit more clear, if not, please feel free to leave your questions here.

Regards,
Sitram