CSM Value Index Analysis Equipment plays a relatively minor role in most CSM managers' strategies. A sound training regimen and smart tactics enjoy primary consideration in getting the most out of a team's players. However, equipment offers an opportunity to boost a player's total skillpoints, break limits and give your players an edge in close match-ups. Much of the equipment on the CSM market is rather expensive and the preponderance of poor quality items makes many managers shy away from equipment. This article aims to identify those items which offer the highest utility for the lowest price - "best buys" if you will. The method employs a straightforward mathematical formula to compute value. The item's cost is divided by its durability which is subsequently divided by the total number of skillpoints that item confers to the player. The inverse of this figure is presented for a more intuitive presentation. An item with a high Value Index (VI) means that you're paying less for skillpoints than an item with a lower VI. The formula and charts for the current CSM environment (15/03/07) follow: 1 / ((cost/durability)/skillpoints) = Value Index |
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The best, second best, and worst items in each category have been marked accordingly. There clearly exists a wide variety of utility in the equipment market on CSM. Hopefully the VI metric allows managers to make more informed purchasing. Limitations As with any aspect of CSM, there are some serious limitations to Value Index Analysis. Wealthy teams with highly skilled players may wish to buy equipment based on total skillpoints, rather than value. Some items with an especially high number of points in one particular skill may be needed to break a player's limits to reach 100 (or close to it). Care must also be taken not to exceed 100 points in any given skill, as those skillpoints will have been wasted. Rebuilding teams will gain more utility from sending their players to lan camp and gaining skillpoints which last a player's lifetime. Managers on a very tight budget may opt to buy the cheapest items in absolute terms. VIA also counts each skill equally (i.e. a mousepad giving point of handling is the same as one giving a point of aim). Skills are valued differently by each manager and without a clear understanging of the game engine, weighing skillpoints would be a subjective matter. Conclusions A team purchasing the best values here would have purchased 17 skillpoints for 876csm. Using the second best items would yield 18 skillpoints for 992csm. For a player with 550 skillpoints, the extra 17 from equipment constitutes a 3% increase. Similar to a small heart, 3% may make the difference between a round won and a round lost. Maybe someone would spend 6696csm to give an extra 4 skillpoints to a player using the worst equipment? Thanks to all who read and discuss in the CSM forums. |
*UPDATE*A point I tried to touch on in the 'Limitations' section was the uniform value assigned to all skillpoints. This egalitatrian model does not accurately reflect the desirability of one skill over another. Weighing the skills created some interesting results (credit to osi on the CSM forums for these weights). Aim, Awareness, Handling, Quickness - Weighted as 1 |
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Note that mice and mousepads all give skills which are assigned a weight of 1 so a weighted chart would be identical to an unweighted one. However, as seen above, weighting the skills produces very similar charts to the original ones. Creating a more dramatic .5, .75, 1 weighting schema also fails to produce different results. It should be mentioned again that as it is impossible to accurately quantify the advantage of one skill over another (as the game engine is closed-source), weighting currently offers little for value analysis. Of course value analysis is not an applicable strategy for each manager, either, but it has much to offer the majority of CSM users. |