Warrior General Games

Ok, heres the deal. I'm not a HB noob, I have built several. My question is I recently have changed my ideas a bit on building. I used to, say on a hb, get speed up to 68, 74, 77, whatever first and foremost but now I'm thinking it may be better to get both agility and speed to 48 and then take speed to 60 or 68 then agility to 60 and so on and so forth. I don't really have a plan in place but I'm working on it. My HB has 24.99 speed and 23.99 agility and I hve 30 sp's. I can't decide if I should take speed to the 48 cap right now, or wait for two more lvl ups and get both speed and agility to 48 at the same time.

I know that if I get speed up now I will take advantage of the next two lvl ups for speed, but if I wait I can get both up to 28 through training. I never went to college(I did have 5 years of high school!!) so I was wondering if any of you math scientist could tell me which is better? Thanks. http://goallineblitz.com/game/player.pl?player_id=1671872

Its possible the math is different for a SSB becasue of all the extra training, but in general you are better off just taking your first stat high and then filling in the second.

However, when in doubt if you can cap something, then cap it. If you have speed at 60 and you can get agility to 48 before you can take speed to 68 then go back and cap agility. In the end you gain the same amount of SP whether you have 1 thing 3rd capped and something else single capped or if you have 2 things double capped. It's the total number of caps that matters, not where they are.

In your case, you absolutely cap one of them now. There is absolutely no advantage*** to waiting to cap speed.


*** OK I lied, there is a reason. If the autogain from leveling (0.33 for a HB) won't take you past the .07 mark then you might as well hold off because the level gain wouldn't really give you any added benefit, thus you would be better off training a few more times instead. In your case this isn't the case, but if you were level 3, or a position like DE that gains .5 per level then you would be able to hold off and train without any loss of build efficiency.

Ok cool. Thanks for the answer.

Normally you could soft cap speed and continue to train speed and agility for a while, but it seems like that's devalued in the SSB scheme. Like nottom says the timing of the crossover is crucial, you'd rather spend 1 SP for a point than 2, any day.

I hope you get this figured out because when the day comes that I SSB a HB I want it to be pure science

I screwed up. I knew it right after I added the points. I was at 24.99 speed so i thought go ahead and cap now so I get the next lvl up at 48. My dumb ass did it before I thought about when I would lvl up again. I am only 340/1000, so I could have trained for another 7 days before I lvl'd. Crap, oh well. whatever.

Strictly mathematically speaking, there is no difference between raising one or two attributes at the same time in overall attribute value (assuming the same distribution method is used in either case)
In one scenario, speed is raised higher and thus gains all relevant automatic level gains earlier and agility gains less so
in the other, speed and agility are raised together and gain automatic level gains at the same time
so you could end up with, for example:
86 speed
82 agility
or
84 speed
84 agility

Originally posted by Djinnt
Strictly mathematically speaking, there is no difference between raising one or two attributes at the same time in overall attribute value (assuming the same distribution method is used in either case)
In one scenario, speed is raised higher and thus gains all relevant automatic level gains earlier and agility gains less so
in the other, speed and agility are raised together and gain automatic level gains at the same time
so you could end up with, for example:
86 speed
82 agility
or
84 speed
84 agility

This isn't really true. The reason it is typically better to pump up one attribute first is because the autogains begin to create a positive feedback loop which tends to allow you to reach the next cap for your highest attribute a level or so sooner than capping something else and thus gaining a little extra from your levelgain. Obviously this isn't always the case, especially when you are still training an attribute you plan on capping next, but it does tend to make it better to just pile on in one stat and then go back.

Like I said above the real key is just to cap any of your major attributes any time it is possible to cap one and you were planning on raising that attribute at some point.

Originally posted by nottom
This isn't really true. The reason it is typically better to pump up one attribute first is because the autogains begin to create a positive feedback loop which tends to allow you to reach the next cap for your highest attribute a level or so sooner than capping something else and thus gaining a little extra from your levelgain. Obviously this isn't always the case, especially when you are still training an attribute you plan on capping next, but it does tend to make it better to just pile on in one stat and then go back.

Like I said above the real key is just to cap any of your major attributes any time it is possible to cap one and you were planning on raising that attribute at some point.

Right... and by raising that attribute and initiating your "positive feedback loop" you neglect the attribute you could be raising with it, thus you sacrifice progress with one to gain more with another. There is no logical means to debate that.

I also would never condone simply raising an attribute as soon as you can (especially in the case of SSB). Training value>automatic level gains for every class except C, P, and K. If you're raising a HB, the last thing you want to do is invest into an attribute before it's at least 25. If you do so, you forfeit your ability to get the best training value you possibly can out of that attribute.
If you had 25 free points and the attribute you desired to raise was 24, investing would gain you the first cap. If you trained to 30 first however, it would only take you 19 points, and the 6 you had remaining could be used to take the same attribute to 52; considering of course that it would take time to train the additional amount you would lose a level, possibly more (in the case of SSB this is not so, because there are several additional trains per level) and in doing so lose the automatic level gains that attribute would gain (.33 for HB majors) so you have to weigh the loss of level gains against how much you gain from training. Since 3 (at the value of 2:1) is strictly greater than .33, .66, .99 and so on (at the same value) it is therefor better to train longer instead of cap earlier. The longer you withhold the more you reap the benefit of training, and assuming you'll pursue more than one cap, the more efficient your build is.
The only disadvantage is that you aren't training something else in the meantime. That's negligible however because after level 35 you'll be hard pressed to train an attribute for as great a value as the journey from 20-35, it's the most beneficial training your player ever does, and to squander it by capping as soon as possible is lowering the potential attribute total of your player.

In summation (ie: TL;DR):
Training longer = saved SP
Capping earlier = more auto level gains
And the SP saved is almost always greater than the additional auto level gains.

I did say that the math might change for a SSB, and I did a run through the Player builder and for a SSB getting no game XP using your wait and train approach vs my cap ASAP approach.

Assumptions:
Player starts at level 4.913 (one day away from level 5) with 23.99 speed (this can obviously be any major attribute) and 30 SP
Begin on day 0 (this eliminates the off-season, which will admittedly make the waiting method better since it gives more training sessions)
Players gain 0 game XP aka SSB
Experiment ends when player reaches lvl 8. This is because for a HB, if you don''t cap at level 4 @ XX.99 there is no reason to cap until level 7 @ XX.98 and level 8 will then get your level gains
Players intense train Speed/Agility
Cap ASAP player continues to train speed after capping it - this is important since training has to be accounted for with this build. I think most would agree that this is probably not the most efficient use of training and is therefore a somewhat conservative choice.

Results:

Player reaches lvl 8 on day 40

Wait and train method: Speed: 61.31, with training @ 93% and 7SPs banked (I didn't first cap until day 39 at which point I could double cap)
Cap ASAP method: Speed: 61.31 w/ 68% training bar and 7 SP banked (he also reached 2nd cap on day 39)

So, Djinnt is correct for a SSB. The wait and train does come out ahead with 25% more in his training bar. This would only increase more if there was an off-season involved although I doubt you would want to train past that 93% mark anyway unless the off-season was long enough to get a full point of training in (which it probably is).

However for a normal build with game XP, waiting will put you behind by about a train. will take about 13 days to get from 4.913 to 8 and you just don't have the time to get enough benefit from training to offset the lost autolevel gains. (my cap build was 61.31/97 w/ 8TP vs 61.31/98 w/ 3TP for the training build, both had 3SPs). Certainly you have to consider the effect of the offseason here as well, since a long off-season would benefit training longer although any boosts would obviously benefit the capping method.

Also I'd note that because of our training assumption, we only gain around 0.09SP/ intense_train when we wait. ( 0.39SP/train @ 24 vs .3SP/train @ 49) So just using basic math, if we can get in more than ~3.5 trains/level we should wait and train and if not we should just take the .33SP from the auto-level gains.