The Shield Problem(s)

[Musashi]

I hate to say it... but I'm convinced. I ran a 20 battle control set. The difference in performance between the two units was negligible. I ran my test set and quit after five battles. It was obvious. Suddenly the unit that I zeroed the shield on was winning by 30-50 kills reliably.

Clearly Shield value hurts a unit's performance in melee. I still can't say whether this is because it applies a negative to armor, or because it introduces an extra animation that slows their attack rate however.

For the sake of completeness, this is my control set data:

#############################################
## Control Set                             ##
#############################################
## Test ##   DCK  ##   TSK  ## Win ## Loss ##
#############################################
##      ##        ##        ##     ##      ##      
##  1   ##   119  ##   107  ##  X  ##      ##
##  2   ##   120  ##   111  ##  X  ##      ##
##  3   ##   116  ##   100  ##  X  ##      ##
##  4   ##   100  ##   116  ##     ##  X   ##
##  5   ##   106  ##   119  ##     ##  X   ##
##  6   ##   112  ##   119  ##     ##  X   ##
##  7   ##   119  ##   105  ##  X  ##      ##
##  8   ##   100  ##    97  ##  X  ##      ##
##  9   ##   120  ##   109  ##  X  ##      ##
##  10  ##    96  ##    97  ##     ##  X   ##
##  11  ##   118  ##   108  ##  X  ##      ##
##  12  ##   113  ##   119  ##     ##  X   ##
##  13  ##   115  ##    96  ##  X  ##      ##
##  14  ##   118  ##    97  ##  X  ##      ##
##  15  ##   119  ##   108  ##  X  ##      ##
##  16  ##   120  ##   111  ##  X  ##      ##
##  17  ##   118  ##   108  ##  X  ##      ##
##  18  ##    95  ##   118  ##     ##  X   ##
##  19  ##   112  ##   119  ##     ##  X   ##
##  20  ##   109  ##   119  ##     ##  X   ##
#############################################
## Tot. ##  2245  ##  2183  ##  12 ##   8  ##
#############################################
## Mean ## 112.25 ## 109.15 #################
#############################################
## W/L Ratio   ###############    3:2      ##
#############################################

As you can see it's within the tolerances of "normal distribution" for a 50/50 system.

The first five battles of the test set looked more like 90/50, 100/60, etc. I just threw in the towel.