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Counting Turns in Quest Mode

PostPosted: 30 Nov 2010, 19:03
by Jaedayr
When deciding the bonus credit reward during quests what is considered a turn? After the computer has played one time and I have played one time, is that one turn or two?

*edit*
I think I know the answer now :)

When I won after taking five turns, Eclipse was reporting that I won by turn nine. However a recent svn update seems to make the turn bonus count only my turns for reward purposes. Thank you!

Re: Counting Turns in Quest Mode

PostPosted: 03 Dec 2010, 01:11
by Jaedayr
Hmmm, playing r4056 the quest reward bonus for turns has changed again. I won in 6 of my turns but it is reporting that I won in turn 11. Can anybody respond and say which way it should be please?

Re: Counting Turns in Quest Mode

PostPosted: 03 Dec 2010, 01:43
by timmermac
It depends on who plays first. The player who opens is turn 1. Next player is turn 2. Sequence goes from there.

Re: Counting Turns in Quest Mode

PostPosted: 03 Dec 2010, 01:52
by friarsol
I can look into this at some point but probably not today. I have no idea how it takes it into account. I have a feeling it just takes amount of humanTurns*2-1 to get the amount of turns (which is the same as your two experiences).

If you were referring to my update, that had nothing to do with turn bonuses. It was mostly for handling Serra Avenger more smoothly.

Re: Counting Turns in Quest Mode

PostPosted: 03 Dec 2010, 05:30
by friarsol
So the first turn of the game is turn 1. At the end of each phase, if that phase will start a new turn (i.e. the untap phase), the turn increments by 1.

When you win, it takes the amount of total turns and uses that. If the AI went first, subtract 1 from that value (which explains why if you win during your turn no matter who goes first, the turn amount is always odd). I'm not sure what the reasoning is behind negating 1 here is, there isn't any comments explaining the logic in the code.

If you manage to win during your opponent's first turn, the turn is set back to 1.

So the basic answer is what timmer said. It counts total turns, not "Human turns." If you are able to cast a bunch of Time Walks, you can actually gain bonuses easier, because there will be less turn accumulation. Although if you already have a bunch of Time Walks, the quest mode is probably boringly easy, so you should start a new quest.

I'm not sure who originally wrote this portion of the code, although it feels relatively balanced, so unless one of the devs is really into trying to balance the quest rewards, any additional work here is very low on priority.

Re: Counting Turns in Quest Mode

PostPosted: 03 Dec 2010, 18:13
by Jaedayr
Thank you for the info! I am definitely not in the completely-uber-walk-in-the-park mode on quests so I need every bit of help I can get. Now that I understand how it works I can reset my expectations of bazillions of credits flowing in every few games. :)

Re: Counting Turns in Quest Mode

PostPosted: 03 Dec 2010, 18:18
by friarsol
The best way to do that is with Alternate wins. I found that if I was lucky enough to get a Jace 2.0 that once I got into a Winning Board Position I could just stall until I drew Jace and use it to deck the AI.

In my last quest I slowly built an Infect deck, that would kill by poison every other game or so. Even just one of the 1/1 Infect Flyers and some Equipment can make that happen.