Warrior General Games

Originally posted by Time Trial
Bort has a habit of using words incorrectly, so it is likely that the point is well made.

What diminishing returns means for anyone who knows economics:

The cost/benefit decreases as you increase the quantity.

So in reality, there are diminishing returns on all of the "passive" SAs. Adding the first point costs one SP and adds the same amount of benefit as adding "one more" at 7, which would cost 4 SPs. (Pass block for instance)

This is not the case for all SAs. Passive SAs such as Aura of Intimidation have an increasing area of effect and an increased likelyhood of working. The cost increases, but the benefit also increases.

What Bort means to say is that the "benefit" of adding one more point to the SA actually begins to diminish after 10. That does not mean that there is no benefit, it just means that the benefit gained is negligible compared to what it was at say 5 points. For those SAs that increase in power and chance of firing, the benefit gained would still be more than the benefit for the passive abilities (like pass block SA).

So while diminishing returns exist throughout the entire SA in many instances, what GLB seems to say is that diminishing returns only exist when the benefit decreases - they fail to include the idea that diminishing returns exist at every interval for some SAs.

What the real story is, is that the "opportunity cost" of adding one more point to the SA becomes so high that it vastly exceeds the benefit of adding more points to the SA at a certain point. Where that point exists will be based on the sim + how you plan to use your dot + the SA you are talking about increasing.

Your interpretation is not my interpretation of what Bort meant.

The way I understood Bort was as follows:

Say an SA adds 1% to the success of a roll per level up to level 10. Going from 10 to 11 would add less than going from 9 to 10, say .5% instead of 1%. Going from 11 to 12 would add less than going from 10 to 11, say .25% instead of .5%. If the increase keeps being halved, then eventually increasing the SA adds such a small amount that it is basically not increasing it at all. To keep my example going, 13 would only add .125%, 14 would add .06%. Is .06% more on a roll going to be noticable? Not likely.

Originally posted by Plankton
Your interpretation is not my interpretation of what Bort meant.

The way I understood Bort was as follows:

Say an SA adds 1% to the success of a roll per level up to level 10. Going from 10 to 11 would add less than going from 9 to 10, say .5% instead of 1%. Going from 11 to 12 would add less than going from 10 to 11, say .25% instead of .5%. If the increase keeps being halved, then eventually increasing the SA adds such a small amount that it is basically not increasing it at all. To keep my example going, 13 would only add .125%, 14 would add .06%. Is .06% more on a roll going to be noticable? Not likely.

Yeah, for "some" SAs that's pretty much how I said it worked. But to an economist, diminishing returns exist from SA 1-10 if the curve is flat.

1% at 1, 1% at 2, 1% at 3, etc. is a flat curve. If the cost of adding "one more point" goes up and the return on the investment does not, that's diminishing returns.

If the flat curve then begins to decrease after 10 points (as you stated at a half per unit), that's still diminishing returns, but the benefit is being reduced rather than simply increasing they cost.

However, for example, First Step does not have diminishing returns from 1 to 10.

A tester and script build here once told me that he didn't notice any SA over 8 that fired more often.

Anything past 8 is really a wast of SP's.

Edit: And any DT that has Heavyweight should immediately swap it for Stone wall. You'll see a much higher production from the season before.