I'm glad you liked it!
(. . . could you spoiler your strategy and win chance? I know this challenge is three years old, and what you mention here isn't game-breaking info, but I want to keep it possible for people looking/playing through the archives to seek clarifications in the comments without unwittingly/unwillingly learning anything else about the scenario.)
That makes sense, ty.
The leaderboard will track how well you've done relative to random/best play at the # of soldiers you chose to bring.
Could you elaborate on this? I think I'd do better relative to best play with
high numbers of soldiers,
and do better relative to random play with
low numbers of soldiers,
so it's not clear which way I should lean; also, I don't know how you plan to quantify "relative to".
What we're facing:
Relevant Weapons:
Current strategies per number of soldiers:
8 Soldiers: 3 Artillery, 2 Lances, 1 Minigun, 2 Torpedos.
(My model says this gives me >99% chance of survival, but also says that about just bringing one of every weapon. We can be more daring!)
7 Soldiers: 3 Artillery, 2 Lances, 1 Minigun, 1 Torpedo.
(My model says this gives me ~95% chance of survival.)
6 Soldiers: 2 Artillery, 2 Lances, 1 Minigun, 1 Torpedo.
(My model says this gives me about a 2/3 chance of waking up the next morning.)
5 Soldiers: 2 Artillery, 1 Lance, 1 Minigun, 1 Torpedo.
(My model says this has slightly worse odds than a game of Russian Roulette with five bullets loaded.)
4 Soldiers: 1 Artillery, 1 Lance, 1 Minigun, 1 Torpedo.
(My model says this almost gives me an entire 1% survival chance.)
If I have to pick one strategy:
7 Soldiers: 3 Artillery, 2 Lances, 1 Minigun, 1 Torpedo.
Description of an investigative cul-de-sac:
I notice that
I reason that
This is what we'd see in a turn-based fight where humans aggressively heroically always take the first move, and the xenos move randomly. The Artilleryman caps a Tyrant every time; the remaining Tyrant then picks a random human to squish; they pick the dud half the time; we get the coinflip we see.
But then
I find out that there are 2v1 fights between two Tyrants and a lone Artilleryman, and these have the exact same 50% win chance; the dud isn't even useful as a decoy; my hypothesis is falsified.
From all this I conclude
Absolutely nothing.
Like, conceptually it's absolutely unpredictable
That's exactly what I was going for; I wanted phenomena which couldn't have been predicted without using the dataset.
Misc. prelim notes:
Thanks for running this when my one was going to be late, and thanks for checking with me beforehand.
(Also, thanks for the scenario, like, in general: it looks like a fun one!)
I (to my own surprise) got an "above average" score when I took this test a few years back, which I attribute mostly to the lack of emotional and circumstantial 'noise' in the images. I don't think being able to tell what is being emoted by a professional actor told to display exactly one (1) emotion, with no mediating factors, has much connection with being able to read actual people.
(. . . though a level-2 version with tags like "excited but hesitant" or "proud and angry" or "cheerful; unrelatedly, lowkey seasick" could actually be extremely useful, now I think on it.)
If I'm following your notation right, it looks like you mixed up Flamethrowers and Miniguns.