A Few Questions/Observations From an Old Player

[kaypy]

Is the multiplier from a slay explicitly shown anywhere?

I thought these days it was just something along the lines of "It does extra damage from blah", with the actual calculated damage below.

Which means that the display vs maths is kinda irrelevant, since in order to have a confusing UI, you first need to have a UI.

[Timo Pietilä]

Of course, it makes no significant difference for game balance whether the slay/launcher combination does x5 base damage or x6 base damage. Doing it "wrong" bugs me because I'm a mathematician and internal consistency "feels" better, even when it's irrelevant.

You just haven't done enough reasoning to find out how it had been done to make it consistent

As I wrote, it isn't inconsistency, you just make that multiplication twice individually. Net result is same as slay and launcher multiplier added together.

If you have only slay it is x3, and if you have only x3 launcher it is also x3 damage. Add them together when there are both. Net result is x6 damage. That makes perfect sense, no inconsistency there.

[DaviddesJ]

You just haven't done enough reasoning to find out how it had been done to make it consistent

As I wrote, it isn't inconsistency, you just make that multiplication twice individually. Net result is same as slay and launcher multiplier added together.

If you have only slay it is x3, and if you have only x3 launcher it is also x3 damage. Add them together when there are both. Net result is x6 damage. That makes perfect sense, no inconsistency there.

What is your degree in?

[Timo Pietilä]

What is your degree in?

How do you measure degree? It's different school system, but based on wikipedia article about degree I would say somewhere between masters and doctoral. Of course most of the actual education has been done after school in real life.

Personally I don't give much credit to decree, I find most people giving it credit just pompous idiots and/or ignorant and jealous.

[DaviddesJ]

How do you measure degree? It's different school system, but based on wikipedia article about degree I would say somewhere between masters and doctoral. Of course most of the actual education has been done after school in real life.

But in what subject? My theory is that people who have studied the physical sciences (e.g., math, physics, chemistry) will feel that combining two multipliers by adding them is clearly "wrong". While people from other disciplines less tied to hard realities of the physical world (e.g., computer science, psychology, philosophy) will have a more flexible view.

[Derakon]

I find the fact that you draw a line between math and computer science to be interesting, as they're practically the same thing.

[DaviddesJ]

I find the fact that you draw a line between math and computer science to be interesting, as they're practically the same thing.

Well, this is something I know very well because I have several math degrees, also studied computer science extensively, and am now involved with several university math programs, as well as having hired a lot of people out of both math and computer science programs. For a variety of reasons, the math curriculum focuses a lot of attention on those aspects of mathematics that (1) describe the physical world, and (2) have unique, objectively verifiable answers. Calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, complex analysis, etc. Even topology. You can't get a math degree without being steeped in the mathematics of the physical world. While computer science requires very little of that; it deals much more with problems which are abstracted from physical realities, and to which there is no single right answer. Certainly there is a field of theoretical computer science that intersects with abstract mathematics. Some of my best friends are professors in those fields. But it's still the case that the experience and sensibility of a math student and a computer science student tend to be quite different.

[Derakon]

Certainly there is a field of theoretical computer science that intersects with abstract mathematics. Some of my best friends are professors in those fields. But it's still the case that the experience and sensibility of a math student and a computer science student tend to be quite different.

This is what I was getting at -- a computer science degree is going to have a fair amount of abstracted mathematics in it. Granted that computer engineering (i.e. what most CS grads do for a day job) is not so mathy most of the time, but at least for my CS degree I got a lot of math including a decent amount of abstract stuff. Not as much as the math students did, but a fair amount.

[Oramin]

He's right on this. Most of the CS classes I took required very little in the way of actual math even though CS majors took basically the same math courses required for other majors such as engineering and physics.

[DaviddesJ]

This is what I was getting at -- a computer science degree is going to have a fair amount of abstracted mathematics in it.

Yes, there's quite a bit of abstract thinking in a typical computer science curriculum. Not nearly so much of the mathematics of the physical world. That's my point. It's the latter that's relevant (I think) to this "how do you combine multipliers" question.

In theory, you could also study mathematics in the abstract, without much connection to the physical world. But, in practice, people don't. So much of modern mathematics was developed to solve physical problems, that that's still how it's taught. Why do we care about solving linear ODEs with constant coefficients? Because so many things in the real world are described by them.

[scud]

I (used to) know lots of stuff about Gerard Manley Hopkins and Walt Whitman, and I'm happy to accept whatever bonus damage is on offer.

[Derakon]

Sorry, I got my brain flipped when talking about the major. I did a lot of applied math too -- multivariable calculus, differential equations, statistics, etc. I guess maybe those aren't going to show up in every CS curriculum but they did for my college.

[Timo Pietilä]

But in what subject? My theory is that people who have studied the physical sciences (e.g., math, physics, chemistry) will feel that combining two multipliers by adding them is clearly "wrong".

Why do you think it is wrong? As I explained it is perfectly sensible in this case. Or didn't you read what I wrote?

BTW, I wouldn't put math in physical sciences but I would put computer science in it. I had once a schoolmate who had doctorate on math and he was very bad at anything relating real world. Physics and chemistry definitely use math a lot, but math alone is nothing more than a tool. If you are studying a tool and not what that tool is used for you have separated yourself from the real world by one layer.

[DaviddesJ]

Why do you think it is wrong? As I explained it is perfectly sensible in this case. Or didn't you read what I wrote?

I explained several times, most people who care seem to understand my point, I don't feel like repeating it yet again. I think your position is clearly wrong, yet not every dispute on the internet can be resolved by force of logic. Sometimes people just have to disagree.

I take it that you don't want to answer the question about your degrees. It doesn't matter, I was just curious.

[DaviddesJ]

The easiest way to understand why it's wrong is because if you have an x3 launcher and x1 missiles then you don't get x4 damage. We know that because the shops sell x1 missiles (i.e., ordinary, nonmagical arrows) and they only give x3 total damage. So adding the multipliers is illogical and gives the wrong result in that case. That means it's equally illogical to add the multipliers when you have x3 missiles.

But you've already said this argument isn't compelling to you, so there's only so many times I will repeat it. It was only a very minor point (and I never expected it to be controversial). So I would rather move on to something else.