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Swap sucks, then why (when) do (should) you use it?

I'm following my own "train of thought" and gratually approaching yours. @Haydis the Fair If I abruptly jump into your "train of thought" and wear your shoes, I would not be able to think clearly because the thoughts would be foreign and repellent to mine.

As our trains of thoughts gets nearer and nearer to one another, however, I think we can merge, and simplify the subject as follows:

Is it true, that, after the golden spots, i.e. the 1st/2nd/3rd spots are done in x1.9 thread, the good old superb fantastic x1.9 degrades to the point of as bad as solo-leveling?

Or in the way how @klods hans put it, in short: 1.9 -- good; swap -- medium; solo-leveling entirely -- bad. (hereinafter the preferentiality order).

The preferentiality order applies to all 5 reward spots on a GB in the same way, and there is no differentiation between 1st/2nd/3rd spots on the one hand and 4th/5th spots on the other hand.

Thank you, Bewildered Zeratul. I'm loving all of the debates here and that's for which I was hoping. Please keep them coming, as I'm trying to finish my general guide as well. New ideas or thoughts would only enrich it.

In my first write-up about To Swap, or to 1.9, that is the question ... , I described the finding of the "degrading" rates of FP Return for each position used in 1.9 calculation. And it is actually modeled after "the law of the Diminishing (marginal) Return" in the real world. Too often, the love for 1.9 is based on a "take it or leave it" point of view (meaning to level GBs exclusively via 1.9). You are right, for P4 and 5, 1.9 would not give you the fantastic rate of return as great as P1-3.

What I am proposing here is, if you are lucky enough to be in a Unicorn guild that has an honest and active swapping system. P4 and 5 (actually GBs before level 15 for some of their higher positions) could benefit from said "unicorn" swapping system more than via 1.9.
 

Zeratul 2.0

Lieutenant Colonel
Thank for this note, I'll actually cover it in my general guide eventually (Curated and Simplified Guides for FoE by the Ages). We can always measure the efficiency of your land usage with FP/Square (how many daily FP harvests/# land the building is taking up). But other than FP yields of 1.9 vs swaps, we should also look at the efficiency of the swap system vs. the 1.9 system. They should be measured against the convenience factor or the time. How quickly a 1.9 position would be filled vs a swap.

I think this is again a guild by guild comparison. In O world, I've never moved to any other higher ranking guilds in the top 10s (Freedom Fighters hovers in the teens usually). But I've got a lot of friends that tried most of the top 10s, and unequivocally, while they are much better at GBG. None of them could fill the 1.9 spots or swap positions as fast as Freedom Fighters. I think this is partially because FF is guild for growing FoE players mostly. While we are active in the end game GBG (you really need to have a high Traz and most of the matured fighting GBs to sustain thousands of fights per player to prevail in the Diamond League), that is not yet our forte yet.
OK I stop pick bones from egg and would like to appreciate the good side of your guide and research. Because, while the end results may be the same (after all the calculations, only to find it is zero-sum), the process is equally important, especially when we consider there are players who never ever think about it at all, and they post in swaps expecting rewards. In the end they might fail to receive the rewards they expected, and they get disappointed, and angry and sad, without finding out why.
 
When I take swaps, I mostly do it to help guild mates with their GB's; not so much to gain a profit from it. I'd never over-swap a guild mate to get a better reward spot in a GB (in'guild sniping). For fp profit I snipe the hood.
And you are a true gentleman or lady then, klods hans. If all guild officers and members can think like that, an honest and active would be then possible ("a unicorn"?). If and only if then, my maths would become possible.
 
... there are players who never ever think about it at all, and they post in swaps expecting rewards. In the end they might fail to receive the rewards they expected, and they get disappointed, and angry and sad, without finding out why.
Swaps are not a safe way to secure a reward spot (unless you "top up" and lock a spot). Swappers should be aware of that. If you swap 10-20-50 fps to this and that GB, you should know, that it doesn't secure you a reward spot. Nothing to whine about if you don't get a reward. Unless maybe a guild member "sniped" you either by topping up from a lower position or by jumping in on a top spot without using swaps.
Swappers should also be aware, that if a guild GB gets filled gradually by small guild swaps, at some point it might become ripe for snipers from outside.
 
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OK that above reply is not a FAIR argument. It is a mean, malicious attack. (I also listened to a Spotify program about Monopoly which says that somehow, in the sure way to win, the final step is to go to prison, in other words, lock yourself up...)

Now a fair argument, the flaw or fault in your logic / reasoning / inference is: what if everybody else does exactly the same as you do? That is, they all use x1.9 thread for valuable spots, meaning 1st and 2nd, or 1st, 2nd and 3rd. And then they swap for 4th and 5th. In that case, you cannot gain "an average" of 50% return. Because, on "equal footing" against x1.9, you need to first secure the swapping partner's 4th and 5th, with the same cost as if securing, with no return, your own 4th and 5th for eligibility in x1.9.

That would be my goal actually. It'd be a fairer system, which means there are no dumb players using the swap system the wrong way. Which gives the rate of returns of P4 and P5 you'd probably looking at 30% - 50% on average return. The only reason that I could get a 75% swap return on average is that there are players swapping positions they really should be using 1.9 thread. In effect, they are giving those FPs to their swapping partners (provided they have not been snipped). I actually actively trying to tell these players to stop. This is the reason I wrote this article. So hopefully, I could stop repeating myself one day.

Btw, If you plug in the 40% into the Infinite Geometric Series, that would still give you 5/3 or 166.67% - 100% = 66.67% in aggregated return. It is still higher than the P4 return in my example via 1.9 (51%). I think somewhere in between 30% - 40% on average is where swap loses its yield superiority against 1.9.

Having said that, maybe my A world guild (Ares) not providing the swap channels is a good idea. It kind of forces everyone to not be dumb. But I'm worried about the lowbies not having enough FPs to use 1.9 channel effectively.
 
I do not understand what you are saying but (by chance) I watched a Youtube video today and feel it might be somehow related:

There are three types of income: wages (honest pay for honest work); capital-gain (use money to gain money); and cash flow.

Many people have already learned about the difference between the former two, but it goes deeper. That is, with cash flow comes passive income, for which you never pay taxes!

Your article appears to be all about math, but it is nothing about math. It is all about money (forge points)! Basically, "three green houses, one red hotel", "three green houses, one red hotel", ... and Repeat! -- You are not playing FoE. In the essence you are playing monopoly!

Have you also considered "always use your credit card to build more credit" and "never use your debit card"? I don't know exactly what it means, or how that principle would apply here; but maybe, it has something to do with "let's not talk about my FP production (wages), nor my capital gain (investment from inventory); let's talk instead about the future rewards on my GB spots -- what will be mine if the liquidity, a.k.a. the flow, a.k.a. the swapping keeps going on and on...

Oh boy, I double majored in Computer Science and Economics. I think I could write a thesis on what you are talking about. But as a new dad, I just don't have that kind of time. By the way, the "3 types of income" idea was proposed by Adam Smith (father of Economics). Let's expand on your analogy here:

  1. Wage (production in exchange for income) in FoE would be the Forge Points you actually earn via hourly FP meter gain, quests rewards, fighting in GBG, etc.
  2. Capital Gain (stock transactions: you buy low and sell high later, or you can consider it exchange time for money) would be closer to a Swapping system. In order to fully realize your total gains of swapping, you need to go through all of the rounds of swaps, so your aggregated total FPs could be fully realized. And this is actually a great analogy. Who could say our stock markets around the world are not full of croaks and dishonest players?
  3. Cash Flow (or rent basically) is actually 1.9 thread. You pay and leveled up your Arc to 80 once but you would reap ridiculous returns from 1.9 thread over and over again. It'd be “fair” and safe. Which again, does hold this analogy true comparing your GBs to real estate.
 
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Zeratul 2.0

Lieutenant Colonel
Oh boy, I double majored in Computer Science and Economics. I think I could write a thesis on what you are talking about. But as a new dad, I just don't have that kind of time. By the way, the "3 types of income" idea was proposed by Adam Smith (father of Economics). Let's expand on your analogy here:

  1. Wage (production in exchange for income) in FoE would be the Forge Points you actually earn via hourly FP meter gain, quests rewards, fighting in GBG, etc.
  2. Capital Gain (stock transactions: you buy low and sell high later, or you can consider it exchange time for money) would be closer to a Swapping system. In order to fully realize your total gains of swapping, you need to go through all of the rounds of swaps, so your aggregated total FPs could be fully realized. And this is actually a great analogy. Who could say our stock markets around the world are not full of croaks and dishonest players?
  3. Cash Flow (or rent basically) is actually 1.9 thread. You pay and leveled up your Arc to 80 once but you would reap ridiculous returns from 1.9 thread over and over again. It'd be “fair” and safe. Which again, does hold this analogy true comparing your GBs to real estate.

Thanks for the explanation. That's what I was looking for -- "I stumbled upon a little of this-this-this concept, it seems relevant and can someone explain more (because the way I see it, it seems the tip of an iceberg, and we do not want Titanic to sink :lol:)"

Now about the Diminishing Marginal Return and stuff, I think it is just one of those evil laws in so called Economics, Finance, etc. as opposed to the "good laws" in physics, meaning all the "conservation" laws, where matters and energy can only go from one place to another and one form into another, but the total never changes, up to the point of "weak interactions", beyond gravity; to that point, there is parity nonconservation, such nonconservation we can accept because it has gone so far, to the edge of the universe. But the "evil laws" in Economics, where things "should be one way" but against common sense, it is not. It acts / functions the wrong way and no one can do anything about it (where the wrong way "just is")... More workers, more outcome; still more workers, all of a sudden less increase in outcome -- and the Economists call that a law? How about just call it evil.
 

Powe

Brigadier-General
Thanks for the explanation. That's what I was looking for -- "I stumbled upon a little of this-this-this concept, it seems relevant and can someone explain more (because the way I see it, it seems the tip of an iceberg, and we do not want Titanic to sink :lol:)"

Now about the Diminishing Marginal Return and stuff, I think it is just one of those evil laws in so called Economics, Finance, etc. as opposed to the "good laws" in physics, meaning all the "conservation" laws, where matters and energy can only go from one place to another and one form into another, but the total never changes, up to the point of "weak interactions", beyond gravity; to that point, there is parity nonconservation, such nonconservation we can accept because it has gone so far, to the edge of the universe. But the "evil laws" in Economics, where things "should be one way" but against common sense, it is not. It acts / functions the wrong way and no one can do anything about it (where the wrong way "just is")... More workers, more outcome; still more workers, all of a sudden less increase in outcome -- and the Economists call that a law? How about just call it evil.
This post is seriously off-topic.
 
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