TLDR at bottom.
Finally finished my first game, as a reward I have a whole new system to master, why is this game more complicated than my aunts knitting projects?
Anyway, my attempts to understand Forsaken stats from the text guides have left me completely confused on why I want each stat to be high or low, so I'm making notes.
Hopefully in my attempts to make sense of the basics of this Forsaken system I'll discover some strategy somewhere. And if not, in the case it might help someone else (or prompt someone else to help me), I'll put my ramblings here.
First up on the stats for me to make sense of: Hostility:
| Hostility | Deployment Cost | Deployments until Tantrum (from 100% Motivation) |
|---|
0% | 50% | 2,00 |
10% | 38% | 2,37 |
20% | 29% | 2,76 |
30% | 23% | 3,04 |
40% | 20% | 3,00 |
50% | 18% | 2,78 |
60% | 16% | 2,50 |
70% | 14% | 2,14 |
80% | 12% | 1,67 |
90% | 11% | 0,91 |
100% | 10% | 0,00 |
Looks like the main benefit from Hostility is that it cuts down on Motivation Costs.
Two takeaways from this chart are: It is completely pointless to have Hostility below 30%, and that going too high on Hostility has diminishing returns, with >80% being completely non-viable due to not being able to deploy them at all anymore, despite the reduction in Deployment Cost.
As far as I'm aware there is no easy way to increase motivation gains, so as high Hostility as is practical to get, until 70-80% seems the way to go. In my eyes cutting down 25% on Deployment Cost is more valuable than being able to deploy them a third time before they tantrum.
So how bad are these tantrums anyway?
The reference warns us of a Motivation Damage Divisor, that reduces from 22 at 0% motivation all the way down to 2! at 100% hostility. Scary! So I drew up a really haphazard graph to see how much % Motivation damage that actually amounts to when you drop below your 'Hostility threshold'. There probably is a way better way to represent this data, but I'm really amateur so bear with me here:
Looks like my worries were entirely unfounded. Yes, at higher Hostility levels you get the option to keep spamming a forsaken until they do crazy Motivation Damage in a super-tantrum, but realistically speaking that only happens if you do it on purpose - and even then - at 80% hostility you get a tantrum that does a measly 16.7% motivation damage. Even Amazon workers have more effective strikes! Besides, you only get the option to push them that far if they are high Hostility in the first place, at low Hostility you are forced to stop deploying them due to increased Deployment Costs anyway, so the option to deploy until they drop is less viable. The median of all tantrums between 30 and 80 Hostility is 7% damage.
So, if we're going to do reasonably-sized tantrums on purpose, just check in with your other minions to see if they can handle a 7% Motivation hit without causing a chain reaction. Then deploy the Forsaken a time or two too many, and be at ease knowing they'll blow their lid with zero real consequences.
While the median of 7% damage per tantrum with reasonable misuse is a great guideline... Let's go hog wild and explore this tangent: Could a strategy of maximum exploitation be viable? Since a Forsaken throwing a tantrum resets their motivation to 100%... Here's a table of the theoretical maximum amount of damage a Forsaken can do with a tantrum that is the result of deploying them 24/7 until the game literally stops you from doing so:
| Hostility | Max Tantrum Damage |
|---|
30% | 6,3% |
40% | 7,1% |
50% | 8,3% |
60% | 10,0% |
70% | 12,5% |
80% | 16,7% |
So, is an OSHA-decried, perma-deployed max tantrum strategy viable? With a limited roster: probably yes! If your roster grows large enough then this will become impossible to execute. Assuming the rest of your roster is around 30% Hostility so they don't get in the way, how many high Hostility Forsaken can be a part of this terrible loop? The answer is: as many Forsaken as the amount of Tantrums you can get away with:
| Hostility | Tantrums you can get away with before chain reaction |
|---|
30% | 11,2 |
40% | 8,4 |
50% | 6,0 |
60% | 4,0 |
70% | 2,4 |
80% | 1,2 |
The funny thing is that this actually translates to less Deployments overall the higher Hostility your tantrumees are, but you do get more deployments out of a single Forsaken with a higher Hostility before their inevitable tantrum, so it's a wash as to which is more useful. Ultimately, going for 60-70 Hostility early on will allow for pivoting away from this short-term and counterintuitive strategy, to a more sustainable cost-reduction and small tantrum plan, that allows for a bigger roster.
Last thing to keep in mind, and another point for high-Hostility builds: you need at least 35% Hostility for Penetrate (MOR) Defilers. and 50% Hostility for Impregnation Punisher.
TLDR:
- Never go below 30% Hostility. Ideally, aim for 40%+
- Build Forsaken with around 70% Hostility to cut down on Deployment Costs without completely gimping them.
- You can ignore most of the Tantrum mechanic as long as you keep a 7% safety margin of Motivation for the other Forsaken. Feel free to send out a Forsaken one or two too many times, the rest won't mind too much.
- 35%+ Hostility is required for Penetration, 50%+ for Impregnation.
- Very early game you can build into deploying forsaken repeatedly beyond their limits, for instance: two 70% Hostility forsaken: while one is throwing a tantrum the other can keep deploying for 6 days straight, never having to stop since motivation resets to 100% on every tantrum. This strategy is most likely very not viable long term.
PS: What the hell, this is only one of four base stats. I'm too tired to explore the other three in detail right now so I'll come back to this later. I wonder what was going through CSDev's head when they designed this.
