Let's play... COVID MATH!!

  

While my initial reaction to some of these COVID "theories" was mild amusement, it has now turned to something more along the lines of stunned disbelief.

To me, this is just math. Can this many people not understand simple mathematics? How are people taking positions wholly against something they can calculate themselves? That turns into an interesting discussion... part of it seems to be that people inherently dislike doing math with large numbers, but a troubling amount also seems to be that people are basing their decisions more on party politics than pure simple logic.

So I decided to address some of the more egregious things I've seen to hopefully help clarify, at least the simple math, for people and give a bit of context for what those numbers signify. The two things I'm going to review are the seemingly top partisan talking points on both sides of the isle. One has to be fair, no? Up first is the one I see floated generally by my conservative friends - Death rate!

Death Rate

The survival rate is 97.97%!!!! 

COVID death rate is inflated, this isn't even as bad as the flu! 

You don't need to wear masks, it's not as deadly as the media are making it out to be!

Only .03% of the population die!

Ok, so let's start with our ingredients (as of 8/11/20):

(CDC COVID Data Tracker)

US Population : 328,000,000

Confirmed COVID Cases : 5,064,171

COVID Deaths : 162,407

Saturation %: 70%*

Most of that is self-explanatory, but I'll touch on the saturation rate. This is, in simplest form, where we would have to be to have 'herd' immunity. That's not 100% accurate, and not the exact terminology I want to use, but it's good enough for this exercise.

The death rate and 'survival' rate are the same thing. You can't survive something if you haven't been infected by it. Also, the death rate from something is not calculated by the whole of the population - that is a different calculation - % chance, you know, like what are the chances I'm going to die by a lightning strike. That's a broad overview of a chance percentage, not a rate of death.

So, the death rate/survival rate of COVID in the US is as follows:

162,407 / 5,064,171 = 0.032 * 100 = 3.2%

That is the death rate of COVID in the US currently. That is the survival rate of COVID in the US currently. This is simple math, but let's look behind the numbers with regard to why this makes this virus so dangerous.

Remember that saturation percentage? This is where you get some perspective and context. Saturation incidence aka saturation rate is what is colloquially referred to as 'herd immunity'. Herd immunity can be reached when a sufficient number of people in the population have recovered (or are vaccinated) from a disease and have developed antibodies against future infection. We are not going to even calculate out to 'if' the entire population got infected. Just 70% of it.

A saturation of 70% means 229,600,000 people. 

328,000,000 * .70 = 229,600,000

(To clarify the math if someone is curious 70% is .70)

This is the amount of people that have to be infected in order to reach 'saturation'. (The reality is that the spread would slow down the higher the rate goes, but again, we want simple for this exercise.) We then have a death rate of 3.2%, so we can now extrapolate how many people would die if we just ignored everything, took no measures and let this rampage right along:

229,600,000 *.032 = 7,347,200 people

You are reading that correctly. That is over 7 million people. Dead.

Oh! You say the death numbers are inflated? It's not that deadly? Ok. Cut them in half.

81,203 / 5,064,171 = 0.016 * 100 = 1.6%

229,600,000 * .016 = 3,673,600 people

Even if there is a conspiracy so huge that the number of dead is half of what is reported, that still extrapolates to over 3.5 million people. Dead. Just to reach a 70% saturation point. Do you now have some context and perspective?

This is of course barring anything that would artificially inflate the infected number, like say... a vaccine. But we can have the discussion about its importance another time.... now we have the one my liberal friends like to tout... Help flatten the curve so this gets over faster!!

Flattening the Curve Hastens 'Return to Normal'

Wear your mask stupid, it'll be over quicker!

Just follow the orders and we'll be back to normal faster!

Following the rules will shorten this!

This one is a tad bit harder to understand, but simpler to explain because one can do it visually. To begin, understand that 'flattening the curve' is meant to only manage the spread of the virus so that the capacity of the health care system is not overwhelmed. This allows better care and presumably a lower mortality rate. It is not meant to eradicate the virus.

What it absolutely does not do is shorten any of this. If anything, it will lengthen it. The math itself for this is, in a word, annoying, but the graphical representation is easy-peasy. Essentially, given a static mass under a curve, if you adjust one axis, the other is affected, thus if time is the X axis and cases is the Y axis, if you flatten Y so it doesn't spike (flattening the curve) the x axis HAS to lengthen!!! If we do succeed in flattening the curve, barring a vaccine, it will take LONGER for it to 'be over'.

This is why there is such a push for the vaccine. It will artificially manipulate the infected total, both dramatically lowering the death rate and increasing our saturation percentage bringing the pandemic to heel. And that's it! I'm all mathed out! I hope this helps either clarify the underlying math for some people or gives some context and perspective to others.

* Herd Immunity: Understanding COVID-19

------------------

Side note: If anyone wants to read up on a study that specifically tested masks (and also notes cloth masks aren't too good for the wearer) I'll leave this here. Maybe we'll do another one of these on masks soon.
Influenza Virus Aerosols in Human Exhaled Breath: Particle Size, Culturability, and Effect of Surgical Masks

Dragon City Eggtropolis 2020 Map

New direction for the Cove

 Since I've stopped with Battle Pirates, but still enjoy writing, I'm going to open up the Cove to various options, from articles to reference for other games, to politics to... whatever. If you want to submit something, make sure it is written well and I can sit through it in a single reading. ;)

Battle Pirates... Maybe?

Cha, Cha, Cha, Cahnges.... Turn and face the strange...

by: Brian Randich

a/k/a Brian_R

RATE THIS!

Kixeye recently came out with a defense rating system. Most people don’t understand it. Kixeye might not understand it. I’m going to help you understand it, and how to audit Kixeye’s work. Let’s go!

WHAT ARE THESE OTHER PERCENTAGES?

Things that used to give resistances now give a stat called survival. Survival has a number associated with it, and a percentage after. For example, new folded ferrite armors give 720 survival. This will convert to a percentage based on the tier of your ship. T6 ships seem to need about 28 points for 1% of survival, T7 needs 32 points for 1%, and T8 needs 64 points. If multiple survivals apply, you add them all together. For example, if you have pen survival of 50% and turret survival of 25%, you have 50%+25% = 75% survival if you are hit by a pen turrets.

Now we need to talk about how this affects flagships. Most of our flagships before had higher resistances. They were typically about 5% higher (80% versus 75% or 85 versus 80 for the normal ships), which translated into about 20-25% less damage taken. This was mostly normalized to armor. For example, an Eradicator has 7361 (+115.02%) ballistic survival and 7092 (+110.81%) radio survival. The flagship built the same way has 7541 (+117.83%) ballistic survival and 7272 (+113.63%) radio survival. We’ll assume each build has the newest battery for 28.13% turret survival, which puts the numbers as close as possible to minimize the difference. We’ll also figure assume radioactive damage, as that’s most of the damage you find in the newest siege target. There is a 1.18% difference in effective health now versus a 25% reduction in damage taken before. Your flag was a lot more tankier before than now. The benefit it has over regular ships is about 1/20 as much as before.

HOW DID YOU FIGURE THAT OUT?

The percentages after the number show how much longer a ship will survive if being hit by a damage type (or turret). If you had +200% penetrative survival, you would last (100% + 200% = 300%) three times as long versus penetrative damage as opposed to not having that survival. We can use that to make an effective armor versus a certain damage type. Since survival is how long you last, we can find out effective armor with:

(1+survival %) * Armor = Effective Armor

From the above equation:

Brutal Eradicator: 30,235,165 * (1+113.63% + 28.13%) = 73,096,534

Eradicator: 30,235,165 * (1+110.81% + 28.13%) = 72,243,903

73,096,534/72,243,903 = 1.0118, or a 1.18% increase in effective health

MY HYPER-30’S SUCK NOW!

Splash damage reduction got a similar change to a survival statistic. The difference is that splash has now changed, where you take more damage if you take a direct hit from the projectile, but less damage if you are near the edge of the splash. This makes sense in real life but is different to how the game has been played for the remainder of its nine-year history, and how players built ships to counteract. It’s not really possible to figure out how this works for our ships at this time. The formerly 30% splash damage reduction on the hyper-30 dropped to 8.44%, but the overall damage taken still depends on how far a ship is away from the projectile. With so many moving things and particles and being unsure of the opponent’s splash and spread, that’s really hard to figure out. Can you tell where the actual particle of the damage comes from one of those throwers in siege targets? I can’t.

BATTERIES!

So, let’s break this down. Batteries (siege battery 1-4, assault battery, garrison battery, conquest battery, etc.) were changed massively. The siege batteries 1-4 had their turret survivals changed to very different numbers, and that makes sense. Even before the update, you got more turret defense (now survival) as you went up. Some made it up to 50% (or 49.5%) with retrofits, but at a certain point, they all came with 50% turret defense and no retrofits. Most batteries that were at the “top level,” having 50% turret defense before, now had 900 turret survival (900/64 = 14.06% on a T8 hull). However, the ballistic/radioactive/penetrative/corrosive battery I’s from the last raid cycle, as well as Pillage and this new raid, were given 1,800 turret survival. Before the defense update, people had to choose from all these batteries with 50% turret defense. The more recently released stuff was better because of the increase in damage, but everything had the same defensive statistics.

People made decisions based on these numbers, and the defense update came near the end of the first month of building the new fleets. A lot of players put batteries onto assault fleets, even though assault targets have the least amount of turrets and turret damage (other than Skirmish with no turrets). This was done after the redemption for Pillage was over. People put soon-to-be inferior items on, and didn’t have the option to claim new batteries based on an increased defense number. I didn’t mind the loss in damage that the assault battery had, as long as I wasn’t taking more damage from an inferior turret defense. (Yes, more damage = killing things faster = less damage because you take fewer shots. I don’t mind that, either.)

In checking the batteries, one may wonder why these changes were made. In general, it was stated that PVE hulls had their power shifted to armor points, so players could try different builds without batteries. Is anyone doing that, even in assault, where it’s safest to do so? People have probably put them on beforehand, and would be less likely to omit batteries in later cycles with more turrets. Maybe we’ll know in a year if no one tests it now. Looking among the batteries, I tried to consider different power based on its intended hull (a siege-class specific battery would have more turret survival than an assault-class specific battery), or if there were clear differences between tier classes. There aren’t. There is no single reason that can be applied to all the changes.

The conquest battery deserves its own paragraph. After being brought into the FM as an interesting choice on speed versus damage, it suddenly became mandatory to put on. Since PVP hulls didn’t have their armor changed like PVE hulls did, and the PVE batteries all had their turret survival changed drastically, a battery had to exist to give PVP hulls their old power. There are two problems with this. The first is that while 6,400 turret survival is 100% for T8 conquerors, it’s 3,200 to get to 100% for T7 conquerors. The 6,400 turret survival on a T7 hull converts to 200% survival, or lasting three times as long as before, or 66.67% turret defense. After the change, everyone has to swap out their battery on every conqueror hull. I wonder why there wasn’t some sort of stat added in below every battery that give 50% turret defense (even if rounded up at r15) that read “Conqueror Turret Survival: 6400.” Kix has done stats and abilities that depend on faction, so they can create different stats or dependencies. I wonder why they didn’t do it there (Although we probably really know why. But they took off the refit tax, so that makes it okay, right?).

WHAT’S THIS BATTLE REPORT?

After a battle, a screen pops up with every damage type and how much of each damage type you evaded (evade working against a missile, for example), resisted (your survival lowered the damage), and taken (what damage actually hit you). You can use this along with your survival ratings to help figure out builds in terms of armors/specials. For a quick example, 100% survival means you last twice as long as without it. If you last twice as long, you should resist half the damage. In that case, the blue bar would equal the red bar.

However, no player really knows how new splash works. Since every damage type could have splash (even missiles, think of the cryo fields from a year ago or the Proto-Nem’s special ability), you can’t get accurate, reproducible results with any consistency. Every single roll of spread and splash would have to be exactly the same as a previous attempt, and that’s impossible to tell based on what you see.

If you want to check Kix’s work, and want to assume that you get exactly an even percentage of damage two separate times (Kix hates significant figures, so it’s hard to know when you get exactly 7%), you can figure your effective health against each damage type with what’s shown above, then see how much damage you take two separate times. If those times have different percentages, you can try to solve them in a matrix. If you want to go to the lengths of doing all that, you probably know how to solve matrices, or can find an online calculator to do so.

SO WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE YOU?

The point of this defense update was to help change things away from needing endlessly-increasing resistances. Creating massive leaps in effective armor is one way to do this. Another way is to cycle mechanics and have hulls with weaknesses to them (such as taking Proto-Apollos into the glowing nav relays where they’d get stunned to death). Increasing our damage facilitates increasing enemy armor at the top levels of play, and that’s something else they’re doing. This solution doesn’t seem necessary, but it won’t be going away anytime soon, and it seems to work with Kix’s goals at the cost of widespread confusion among the playerbase.

It’s actually pretty hard to get these new changes sorted out. You can use math for some of them, but there’s plenty that’s obscured from the player base. We get reminded every raid that Kix can change the damage whenever they want. Usually they tune it down, but that just means it was too high to start with. You have to choose to believe Kix that things are working as intended and there’s consistency among targets or individual runs. Personally, I don’t have any faith in a company that halves the damage of a 2,000,000 damage weapon and it goes down to 800,000.

Divide By 2??

And the answer is...


It seems this has reared it's head again and some players are a tad confused. Why do we tell them to divide by two after all those crazy calculation to find a 'final' number.

Well... it goes something like this - the display values in game are double the actual values... but not everything. Clear? Ya...

So to narrow it down a bit, let's focus on damage, deflection and armor(health). In the game displays, Armor is an actual value, damage and deflection however are doubled.

SO- you have a weapon that does 100 damage. A special that adds 50%, so you do 150 damage. The enemy has 100 deflection. 150-100 = 50 damage. Then you divide by 2. You are doing only 25 actual damage to that hull.

This is an important stat because it comes into use when trying to calculate TTK (Time To  Kill) or HTK (Hits To Kill).

Before the refactor, since the numbers were sort of set for exceeding the deflection values, we knew the damage number. Many players were mis-calculating the amount of turrets they needed firing to eliminate an enemey. This was the reson.

REFACTOR IS COMING!

PvP Refactor is HERE!

This Tuesday the PvP Refactor that players have been looking forward to/dreading is finally being released.

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

The change to PvP is broad and all-encompassing. If you start with the premise of 'everything is changing' you won't be far wrong. This is going to be overwhelming for most players. Keep calm and take it in small chunks, otherwise, you will end up very frustrated. Everything is changing, not just some blueprints.

First Things First :

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! These are observations from the last test server and my own interpretation of things I've seen. Did I say NOTHING IS FINALIZED yet? Guess what? NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!!!!

Random Observations :

First things first - Don't start a shipyard upgrade and don't tie up your shipyard. The PvP Refactor comes with a compensation package including a 70% reduction in associated build time and costs that is only active for the 1st 48 hours.

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

Aura stacking is also changing fundamentally. We repeatedly saw that Fire Support was going to 1 stack with a much larger coverage area. The Overlays looked to have gone to a single stack as well.

Pass-through and Over-damage are now a thing of the past. Death by a thousand cuts is now a thing of the past... I hope.

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

Slow down effects have been adjusted as well to reflect the intended increase in damage from turrets and defender hulls.

It looks like defender ranges have been reinstated with a few tweaks to bring final ranges in line.

What Won't Work :

• Base crawl designs that relied on slowing the fleet down to kill it with the death by a thousand cuts theory.
• Death by a thousand cuts.

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

• Multiple Fire Supports.
• Group bonus stacking beyond 4 turrets within the group.
• For the most part, any reliance on Tier content lower than 7 to outright damage T7 hulls.

Changes To Note :

• Group bonus stacking goes to 25% total with 4 turrets within the group.
• 1 Fire Support seems to cover all of your island and only stacks once so no need for massive use of island space for buildings.

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

• Splash damage reduction aura stacking seems to have stayed at 3.
• Overlays seem to have been adjusted to 1 stack.
• Walls seem to be important again. Don't overlook these. (Changes to how we upgrade them may be coming out as well this week.)

What Do I Do? :

Don't Panic!

It looks like you'll want to diversify your defense. You'll likely want to plan out a few base redesigns as well.

Likely remove any lower tier weaponry if you relied on that for base defense. With the removal of pass-through and over-damage, any damage dealt must come from overcoming deflections.

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

Diversify your base defense. You will want to have a good mix of damage types in your base in order to be able to damage the various options base hitters will have with regard to building a baser fleet.

Don't spam out T7 hulls, Chris has hinted that the tokens will not be based on hulls, but rather, T7 content built. Also don't strip down your hulls of T7 content... yet.

I will try and get some preview videos from the last day out on my channel later tonight, but for now, here are a couple hits by Egowok... er... I mean Ewok during the first and second day of the test server. Things changed significantly from day to day so DO NOT base anything on these.

Hey, did I mention that NOTHING IS FINALIZED YET?!?!?!?! Just Checkin'...

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

Additional hits:

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

Ok, due to some seriously vehement messaging and requests, I will add pics from the blueprints from the test server. THE STATS ARE NOT GOING TO ALL BE THE SAME. THESE WILL LIKELY CHANGE. Thanks go out to that Egohacksellingwok guy for the pics!! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!!!!!!!!!

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

 NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

 NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

 NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

 NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

OK, ENOUGH OF THIS COLOR SHIT!!

 NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

WATCH OUT FOR THIS DUDE!!!

I WOULDN'T TRUST HIM NEAR A BASE!!! 

 NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

 NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

 NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

 NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!! 

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!

NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!NOTHING IS FINALIZED!!!



UPDATE INFO HAS DROPPED.

Greetings, Captains. The 8.47 update is deploying Tuesday, November 20th at ~4:00 PM PDT. This update contains The PvP Refactor, Tier 7 Refit Discounts, Outpost 11 PvP Defense Upgrades, and a new fleet hitting restriction to prevent PvE fleet sniping. Read the full details below!

OUTPOST 11 DEFENSE ROLLOUT

Alongside the PvP Refactor release, new Outpost 11 upgrades are becoming available to fully complete the Tier 7 picture. These upgrades include new levels for Walls, Defense Platforms, and Portals. It also includes one new Portal! Stat blocks will be posted in a separate briefing, but all new levels include increased power capacity, health, and defense stats (where applicable).

In addition to these new levels, power generation on the Outpost has been increased, along with the power maximum of Warehouses.

WALL UPGRADES

You can now upgrade Walls by row, using resources. Hallelujah!

PVP FLEET HITTING RESTRICTION

We have put restrictions in place to prevent PvE fleet sniping. Fleets containing purely Garrison, Skirmish, Siege, Assault, or Generalist hulls cannot be attacked on the world map.

If a fleet contains even a single Conqueror or Defender class hull, it can be attacked.

CM Notes:

• Guard fleets are always attackable
• Base hitting rules are unchanged
• An attackable PvP fleet will display a Conqueror Crown icon over the top of it.

PVP REFACTOR

Following a final player preview, the PvP Refactor is ready for its initial launch! As GoldenDoodle announced, we will be continuing to take feedback on board regarding this change, and have done whatever we can to make this transition as smooth as possible for everyone.

The complete itemized list of stat changes will be posted as a separate briefing. One item outside of ship stats that is worthy of note is that damage in the shipyard has changed from displaying as additive to multiplicative. There is no functional change, as battles have always used the multiplicative damage calculation, but this will result in a notably visual difference.

PVP REFIT DISCOUNT

To smooth the transition of the PvP Refactor and allow everyone some level of experimentation for their builds, the following items are going into effect with the update:

• A 70% refit discount will be active for 48 hours following this update, and applies to Tier 7 Conqueror/Defender hulls, Tier 7 PvP Ship Weapons, and Tier 7 PvP Base Turrets. This reduces time and resources, not just gold cost.
• Refit tokens that apply to Tier 7 PvP content will be credited to users across separate segments, which vary based on the amount of Tier 7 PvP content a user group has already built.

BRINGING HOME THE BACON

Begins: Wednesday, November 21st @ 9:00AM PST

Ends: Monday, November 26th @ 9:00AM PST

A bacon-themed special activity, filled with bacon skin prizes, a special chest for our hull collectors, and the first official Tier 8 PvP hull, the Breacher Dreadnaught! Full briefing and prize list will be posted separately.

A reminder that alliance rosters and relocation will be locked for the duration of this activity and the duration of the prize redemption period!

• [UI] Certain player levels were visually locked at 129, despite players being a higher level. This has been fixed, so players stuck in this state may notice their player level jump a few levels very suddenly.
• [Buildings] Some players were experiencing duplication of buildings in their base.
• [R&D] Locator wasn’t showing R&D bases
• [Other] General bug fixes and performance improvements

Want to discuss this release with other players? CLICK HERE.

------

WC:RA/BP Community Manager

Community Rules: CLICK HERE

Submit a Support Ticket: CLICK HERE

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• 

  CM Chris
  

  KIXEYE Community Manager

  Joined Mar 2014Posts: 3,029

  Today, 12:43AM

  Regarding details of changes - the volume of changes has proved difficult to transcribe. We are continuing to work through the night to get you what you need and will post as soon as we are able