The way squad size is calculated results in exponential growth as players progress through the chapters and add land expansions and AW levels.
I found this picture of exponential growth with various tangent lines. There is no question that for the period that the new tournament was examined, there would have been little movement or change to the tangent line. With exponential growth, there is a period where the slope approximates the tangent line.
What I've seen in my FS on live is that everyone's tournament score has declined and as a FS, we are not getting strong and more capable towards getting extra chests, but we've tended to decline and I would say we are definitely averaging less chests now. Players are talking about seeing their tournament score declining. This is the regression that over 100 pages of protest was about.
It is like we've moved from the 2/7th difficulty increase slope to the 2/3 difficulty increase slope and with the current formulation, it will simply get worse with the next chapter.
So early minmax came up with a calculation that did a great job predicting squad size:
Developers may think they did something different, but the end result is that this calculation predicted squad size across the chapters and there in is the problem because it creates an exponential growth with increased expansions, AW levels and technology.
I have two suggestion to make this formula work for higher chapters as the penalty for the AW levels and expansions is too high a punitive.
So the AW penalty could be fixed by taking the square root of the number, so (0.003A +1)^0.5.
This would change this multiplier as follows:
------------current Sq Rt
AW levels ---- Multiplier
0 ----------- 1 ------- 1
100 ------- 1.3 ------ 1.14
200 ------- 1.6 ------ 1.26
300 ------- 1.9 ------ 1.38
400 ------- 2.2 ------ 1.48
500 ------- 2.5 ------ 1.58
600 ------- 2.8 ------ 1.67
700 ------- 3.1 ------ 1.76
800 ------- 3.4 ------ 1.84
900 ------- 3.7 ------ 1.92
1000 ----- 4.0 ------ 2.00
1100 ----- 4.3 ------ 2.07
1200 ----- 4.6 ------ 2.14
With the current formula, adding an expansion for someone with say 1000 AW levels automatically increases squad size 4 times as much as a person with no AW levels. By square rooting this part of formula adding an extra expansion for 1000 AW levels would cause an increase double the size of of a person with no AW levels.
The other penalty that is too high is on premium expansions. The benefit of premium expansions is declining, so the penalty of adding them should also be declining.
So to fix this part of the equation (2.75P + 3.67V -18) should have a declining multiplier on the 2.75P.
My suggestion is to take 99% of the value, so it would look like (2.75P*0.99^(P-1))
This would change this part of the equation as follows:
# premium
expansions --2.75P -- 2.75P*0.99^(P-1)
0 -------------- 0 -------- 0
5 ------------ 13.75 ----- 13.21
10 ---------- 27.50 ----- 25.12
15 ---------- 41.25 ----- 35.83
20 ---------- 55.00 ----- 45.44
25 ---------- 68.75 ----- 54.01
30 ---------- 82.50 ----- 61.84
35 ---------- 96.25 ----- 68.39
40 -------- 110.00 ----- 74.33
45 -------- 123.75 ----- 79.52
50 -------- 137.50 ----- 83.19
With this adjustment the penalty for premium expansions is declining, and it matches the fact that extra expansions are a declining benefit, and as the number of premium expansions increases, the cost increases so they should be less costly to your game progress.
The 1.00415M is the same for everyone and as I wish to look at ratios, it will cancel out so can be ignored.
(0.003A +1)*(2.75P + 3.67V -18) will vary with the number of free expansions and for this example, assume 100. So the next part is a comparison of a player with 100 expansion, no premium expansions and no AW to a player with 1000 AW levels and 40 premium expansions, and then with my suggested modifications.
Existing multiplier no premium expansions, no AW, 100 regular expansions.
(0.003A +1)*(2.75P + 3.67V -18) = (0.003*0+1)*(2.75*0 +3.67*100 - 18) = 349
Existing multiplier with 40 premium expansions and 1000 AW levels
(0.003A +1)*(2.75P + 3.67V -18) = (0.003*1000+1)*(2.75*40 +3.67*100 - 18) = 1,836
So, in this extreme example the squad size is 5.26 times bigger for having AW and for spending a fortune on AW levels. To put this into perspective, with the old tournament the difference between have done the optional squad sizes and not made the squad size about 1.4 times bigger, or in this example about 489 compared to 349.
With my two suggestions the base does not change, but with 1000 AW and 40 premium expansions the calculation is:
(0.003A +1)^0.5*((2.75P*0.99^(P-1))3.67*100 - 18) = 2*(74.33 + 367 -18) = 846.7
The starting squad size would be 2.43 times bigger for having added AW levels and the premium expansions. This is still significantly larger but it makes it so leveling AWs makes sense again, and placing expansions doesn't cripple you game. My chapter 15 beta game is way stronger than my chapter 18 game on live and I'm sitting on 12 unplaced expansions on beta because it is a total lie that Inno has told by saying these things do not hurt your game and it improves. It does not. There's no way in the world to get around the exponential nature of the equation and in two chapters players are seeing serious declines in their ability to maintain the initial tournament scores when this new tournament was introduced. My ability on live is down 25-30% and all of my reserves are stripped now.
