While exactly nobody should be surprised that Brain World tops the list, I suspect the next base on the list will cause a few raised eyebrows. I’ve always been a fan of Assur 4 (despite its strange name), but I was not expecting it to show this strong.
Lets take a look at the rest of the top 15:
| Card Name | cost | relative value |
|---|---|---|
| Brain World | 8 | 2.1 |
| Blockade Runner | 1 | 1.8 |
| The Ark | 7 | 1.2 |
| Assur 4 | 5 | 1.2 |
| Orbital Platform | 3 | 1.2 |
| Transit Nexus | 8 | 1.2 |
| The Colossus | 9 | 1.1 |
| The Oracle | 4 | 1.1 |
| Fighter Base | 3 | 1.0 |
| Battle Station | 3 | 1.0 |
| Cutter | 2 | 0.9 |
| Solar Skiff | 1 | 0.9 |
| Blob Fighter | 1 | 0.9 |
| Predator | 2 | 0.9 |
The surprises to me on this list are the 3-cost bases: Orbital Platform, Fighter Base and Battle Station. Battle Station and Fighter Base don’t often jump of the screen to me as great values as 3-cost, but when the model says that a 5-butt outpost is worth 3.4 in card cost all by itself, then it make sense that those 5-butt outposts which cost 3 and bring additional abilities would make the list.
Now let’s take a look at the bottom of the list:
| card name | cost | relative value |
|---|---|---|
| Mech Battleship | 8 | -2.2 |
| Junkyard | 6 | -1.6 |
| Embassy Base | 8 | -1.3 |
| Mech Command Ship | 8 | -1.2 |
| Blob Alpha | 6 | -1.1 |
| Explorer | 2 | -1.1 |
| Battle Mech | 5 | -1.1 |
| Survey Ship | 3 | -1.1 |
| Merc Battlecruiser | 6 | -1.1 |
| Lookout Post | 7 | -1.0 |
| Union Stronghold | 5 | -1.0 |
| Flagship | 6 | -0.9 |
| Frontier Station | 6 | -0.9 |
I take very little issue with this list, although I know many readers will object to Blob Alpha’s inclusion here.
One base that shows up here which does surprise me a little is the Union Stronghold. It feels like a 5-cost to me and not a 4-cost. One point I feel the need to highlight is that is falling victim to a drawback of my analytical process in that I don’t specifically add value to dual faction cards for the fact they can trigger more than one faction.
Value of Butt
| outpost value | oupost value per butt point | non-outpost value | non-outpost value per butt point | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 or less butt | 1.3 | 0.43 | 1.4 | 0.47 |
| 4 butt | 2.7 | 0.67 | 2.5 | 0.63 |
| 5 butt | 3.4 | 0.68 | 2.8 | 0.56 |
| 6 butt | 4.3 | 0.72 | 4.0 | 0.67 |
| 7 or more butt | 5.4 | 0.77 | 5.0 | 0.71 |
Generally, outpost butt is worth a little bit more than non-outpost butt and for both types of bases each incremental butt point is worth a bit more than the last. The value of 2.8 for 5-butt non-outpost is an outlier that must be driven by some nuances of those cards and would suggest those particular bases are undervalued by about half a point in this result set.
Orbital Platform vs. Captured Outpost
One debate that I have seen come up multiple times in the community is the competing 3-cost yellow bases that let you cycle cards. Here’s the tale of the tape for those bases:
| captured outpost | orbital platform | |
|---|---|---|
| Value of Butt | 1.3 | 2.5 |
| Value of Cycle | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| Value of Ally Damage | 0 | 0.7 |
| Total Card Value | 2.3 | 4.2 |
Captured Outpost stans will be quick to point out that the value of the cycle between the two cards should not be the same – being able to draw then discard is more valuable than discard then drew. On that, they are 100% correct. And it highlights another flaw in my analytical process in that I treat all cycling the same regardless of draw/discard order. But by my estimation the difference is worth no more than about 0.25 which would not change the conclusion on which card is superior.
What’s Next?
As the article title still suggests, this is STILL not the last of what I hope to do with this analysis. There is plenty more to dig into with this analytical approach.
- Add dual-faction-trigger cards and high alert invasion.
- Breakouts by set (V/W/R) to quantify power level differences between the sets
- Apply this methodology to heroes and gambits
- Applying judgement to come up with value/rankings
- Do a similar analysis for hero realms
I’d be happy to discuss in more depth with anyone who is interested in further analysis or anyone who has ideas on other directions to take the analysis.
APPENDIX
Call:
lm(formula = Cost ~ Outpost3LButt + Outpost4Butt + Outpost5Butt +
Outpost6Butt + Outpost7MButt + NonOutpost3LButt + NonOutpost4Butt +
NonOutpost5Butt + NonOutpost6Butt + NonOutpost7MButt + +ToPlayCombat1 +
ToPlayCombat2 + ToPlayCombat3 + ToPlayCombat4 + ToPlayCombat5 +
ToPlayCombat6 + ToPlayCombat7 + ToPlayCombat8 + ToPlayCombat10 +
ToPlay1Trade + ToPlay2Trade + ToPlay3Trade + ToPlay4Trade +
ToPlayHeal + ToPlayDraw + ToPlayCycle + ToPlayDiscard + ToPlayPunch +
ToPlayScrap1 + ToPlayScrap2 + ToPlayDestroyBase + ToHand +
Requisition + AllyCombat + AllyTrade + AllyHeal + AllyDraw +
AllyCycle + AllyDiscard + AllyScrap + AllyDestroyBase + AllyShipToTop +
TrashCombat + TrashTrade + TrashDraw + TrashDiscard + TrashScrapAny +
TrashDestroyBase, data = df_all)
Residuals:
Min 1Q Median 3Q Max
-2.15921 -0.36799 0.00589 0.37267 2.18446
Coefficients:
Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
(Intercept) -0.06995 0.28910 -0.242 0.809185
Outpost3LButt 1.32884 0.61371 2.165 0.032125 *
Outpost4Butt 2.74941 0.28912 9.510 < 2e-16 ***
Outpost5Butt 3.41882 0.26220 13.039 < 2e-16 ***
Outpost6Butt 4.30080 0.26237 16.392 < 2e-16 ***
Outpost7MButt 5.44639 0.82684 6.587 9.20e-10 ***
NonOutpost3LButt 1.43991 0.47538 3.029 0.002941 **
NonOutpost4Butt 2.55500 0.36850 6.933 1.54e-10 ***
NonOutpost5Butt 2.79424 0.30837 9.061 1.30e-15 ***
NonOutpost6Butt 4.04259 0.32647 12.383 < 2e-16 ***
NonOutpost7MButt 4.95388 0.45756 10.827 < 2e-16 ***
ToPlayCombat1 0.19613 0.42067 0.466 0.641799
ToPlayCombat2 0.26790 0.29538 0.907 0.366046
ToPlayCombat3 0.67918 0.24102 2.818 0.005560 **
ToPlayCombat4 1.65095 0.26766 6.168 7.51e-09 ***
ToPlayCombat5 2.40953 0.26422 9.119 9.34e-16 ***
ToPlayCombat6 3.27644 0.32791 9.992 < 2e-16 ***
ToPlayCombat7 4.31601 0.38309 11.266 < 2e-16 ***
ToPlayCombat8 4.37608 0.48851 8.958 2.34e-15 ***
ToPlayCombat10 4.96261 0.58409 8.496 3.18e-14 ***
ToPlay1Trade -0.17347 0.28142 -0.616 0.538661
ToPlay2Trade 0.72140 0.23544 3.064 0.002637 **
ToPlay3Trade 2.05341 0.26395 7.779 1.68e-12 ***
ToPlay4Trade 2.85719 0.39599 7.215 3.50e-11 ***
ToPlayHeal 0.32882 0.04751 6.921 1.65e-10 ***
ToPlayDraw 1.73823 0.13398 12.974 < 2e-16 ***
ToPlayCycle 0.99355 0.21558 4.609 9.28e-06 ***
ToPlayDiscard 0.59350 0.30457 1.949 0.053410 .
ToPlayPunch 0.23059 0.25531 0.903 0.368036
ToPlayScrap1 1.03006 0.20787 4.955 2.12e-06 ***
ToPlayScrap2 2.45190 0.30649 8.000 5.02e-13 ***
ToPlayDestroyBase 1.56267 0.59691 2.618 0.009857 **
ToHand 1.22076 0.46101 2.648 0.009061 **
Requisition 0.24484 0.35826 0.683 0.495515
AllyCombat 0.24108 0.05304 4.545 1.21e-05 ***
AllyTrade 0.25043 0.12710 1.970 0.050841 .
AllyHeal 0.19960 0.06797 2.936 0.003906 **
AllyDraw 1.33068 0.20489 6.494 1.47e-09 ***
AllyCycle 1.32584 0.52339 2.533 0.012447 *
AllyDiscard 0.64492 0.28514 2.262 0.025308 *
AllyScrap 0.72480 0.26078 2.779 0.006223 **
AllyDestroyBase 1.15101 0.29171 3.946 0.000127 ***
AllyShipToTop 1.27849 0.40799 3.134 0.002119 **
TrashCombat 0.12892 0.05260 2.451 0.015524 *
TrashTrade 0.15281 0.10234 1.493 0.137724
TrashDraw 0.46156 0.24009 1.922 0.056655 .
TrashDiscard 0.44317 0.33105 1.339 0.182933
TrashScrapAny 0.25437 0.55875 0.455 0.649668
TrashDestroyBase -0.07207 0.36146 -0.199 0.842264
—
Signif. codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1
Residual standard error: 0.7333 on 135 degrees of freedom
Multiple R-squared: 0.9222, Adjusted R-squared: 0.8945
F-statistic: 33.34 on 48 and 135 DF, p-value: < 2.2e-16
Megahaulin Blog for Star Realm Strategy 