Since this loop is my first time training forsaken, I did some math on their values (specifically, their risk vs reward due to disgrace) and figured I'd share a writeup for people who are interested. Some of this info is poorly documented or not easy to get to as a player, and other is documented fine but the actual useful conclusions need more math. I think I did it right but if you spot any mistakes let me know, and if you don't like math just read the last part.
Step 1, figure out how disgrace's cost vs power scales.
This is in the reference text, and at values above 10 disgrace they are steady functions - one's a polynomial, (well line, but it counts) one's an exponential. This is all we need, because if you actually use forsaken at 10 disgrace or lower I am afraid of you and you have transcended math.
Step 2, gain predictive power.
I couldn't be bothered to write out the equations myself (even the simple power reduction) so I fit the curves in wolfram. Here are the two equations, and you can find the cost and power of a forsaken for any given disgrace X. Testing with the values of my existing forsaken proves they work.
You must be registered to see the links
You must be registered to see the links
Step 3, derive useful information.
Obviously nobody uses 1 disgrace forsaken (It's possible to get one with the right ability) because they cost too much EE, and nobody uses 100 disgrace forsaken because they deal 0 damage. Is there anywhere along this relationship we can take advantage of? Well, there has to be. Because one is an exponential and the other is a polynomial, there's going to be some point of tradeoff between the beginning, where each point of disgrace is worth tons of EE and no power, and the end, where each point is worth almost no EE and increasingly large portions of power.
The quantity we want to track here is the relative power point drop per EE saved at any given disgrace, and that's just the ratio of the two functions above. By taking the derivative we can analyze how this relationship changes over the disgrace, and we see something interesting
View attachment 2521238
There's an inflection point right around 70 (specifically at 71.2) where the next point of power you spend is worth less total EE than the point before it. This is pretty useful, though it's not quite ready to be a final result due to some missing factors. There's also another point of interest in
this function's derivative
View attachment 2521268
Here we can see the crossing we already identified, but we can also note an inflection point around 56.7 where the second derivative of EE/power begins to drop. Or in simpler terms, the point where power/EE is still growing, but its growth has begun to slow. You can keep taking derivatives and finding inflections forever, since this is an exponential (next one is at 42.3) but they become increasingly less meaningful.
Step 4, get breakpoints
We have a bunch of interesting numbers but they aren't quite ready to use in the game. For starters, disgrace is an integer and our values are decimals. More importantly, we need to account for the fact that the EE cost rounds up. If we pick a disgrace value that costs 12.1 EE, we'll lose 0.9 EE to rounding and get absolutely nothing from it. This isn't as big a deal if you have a large EE cost, but the smaller your costs get the more these losses are worth. These are easy enough to find with trial and error, you just have to search around and pick one.
- 70.1 -> 68 (8.97 EE)
- 56.7 -> 58 (17.95 EE)
- 42.3 -> 43 (50.77 EE
Step 5, summarize results.
If you want a low power chosen, try a disgrace of 68 for a cost of 9 EE and a strength of 64%. If you go any higher than that you're losing more raw power than you save in costs, so you better have some trick up your sleeve that makes power not matter like stacking BS amounts of buffs.
If you want someone who can hit harder than a low power chosen on a budget, try 58 D, 18 EE, 84% chosen. They cost twice as much for about a 30% power boost from the budget model, which could be the difference between getting a break and not.
If you want something you can throw in towards the high end while you're still trying to get those T3/T4 breaks, try a 43 D, 51 EE, 114% chosen. It's a positive power multiplier at a cost that might make you wonder why you don't just bring a commander that can grab them out of the air, but things like detonations and superior chosen can make forsaken shine where commanders can't. Plus you have to research them and this could get you going quicker.
Or if you want to use any of their T4 break abilities just leave disgrace as low as possible and blow 200 EE like a boss.
Once you get the feeling for the game down it really becomes hard to put down, I remember my first experience with it after getting the hang of things I played through the entire night and had to call in from work because I had such a good time haha
