I have kept loose track of my IP payouts in the past 5 wars-- meaning, any time I was home at my laptop, and had a target to dump gold on. Unfortunately, my list wasn't nearly as extensive as I thought was when I had it in a single Notepad file-- it includes 1550 attacks, which obviously I've done quite a bit more than in the past 6 syndicate wars. I also seem to have missed recording a war or two entirely for some reason, and as a result, my data wasn't quite as crystal clear in demonstrating what I thought it'd demonstrate. But I've been sitting on it for a while and figured I might as well get it out now.
Really briefly, by "max IP per attack," I am referring to the IP payout you get when you hit a sufficiently high level target. With +25% IP bonus, which all of my figures are, this is a range of 281-563 IP, with a 422.5 IP average. If your IP bonus is different from +25%, you simply need to divide each of those figures by 1.25, and multiply the result by (1 + your IP bonus).
Eg. if you have +15% IP, a 422.5 IP avg becomes: (422.5 / 1.25) = 338 * (1 + 0.15) = 388.7 IP max avg with +15% IP.
The first and ONLY factor in determining max IP payout is your opponent's level-- more specifically, the key difference is the XP difference.
That is to say that NO, you do NOT get more IP in syndicate wars for attacking stronger targets or players with higher defenses. I'm fairly sure of this, because I had to red/green the only hittable target on a team, a level 215 iteachem back when the Indians were worth a **** (err, I mean a Top 3 team) and we matched them for our last battle as DFA was clinging to Top 25. I didn't record IP payouts for that match (nor IP payouts on targets that I weren't positive would give me max IP), so I don't know the exactly where you can draw the XP difference line for max points, but if it were true that attacking a higher defense target gave more points, this would manifest itself in my overall IP average, which it did not, it stayed a static 420 IP/attack (+25% IP). I have thousands of screenshots, so if needed, I can dig up my overall IP total before and after that Indian match, but hopefully you'll take my word.
This "XP difference" being the only factor that determines when you get max IP for hitting a target explains why you need a much greater level difference at low levels to earn max IP-- because while the difference between level 152 and 153 is about 11.5k XP, that same amount of XP would take you from level 1 to level 30. So killing a player "29 levels above you" is a much bigger deal at higher levels, when a player 29 levels above you has tens of thousands of XP more than you. That is to say, the higher level you are, the smaller the level distance is to reaching "max IP" payouts. Again, I don't have any meaningful data records of this, as when I was level 100 I was attacking level 170+, and as soon as I hit level 200 I was hitting 250s, etc. But I was still hitting max IP less than 30 levels above me when I was level 220, whereas the same is most certainly not true when I was level 100.
Next, I am fairly confident that once you are hitting a sufficiently high level target, the IP payout is uniformly distributed. This means that any single value in the specified range, 281 to 563, is equally likely. All this mumbo-jumbo about "too many people hitting the same target at the same time drops IP payout" is simply superstition. I made a histogram of my IP payouts:
Now, that doesn't look very uniformly distributed, but I suspect it is because I have too few data point for bin ranges that narrow. So if I widen the bin range a bit, it looks a bit more uniform:
The general point here is that with sufficiently many attacks on a sufficiently high level target, your IP average will approach 422.5 IP, which is the midpoint of such a uniform distribution.
This means that, to earn maximum IP in wars, you need to hit the highest level target you can safely beat. There is an obviously limit to this, as a level 100 player will average the same IP average regardless of whether he's hitting a level 200 or hitting a level 250, as 100 levels is more than a large enough XP difference to earn max points. I regret that I can't pinpoint the exact ranges, but hopefully you see it's understandable why I would only unload gold attacks on targets on players that I knew would payout max IP. In my opinion "safely beat" means someone whose defense is 30% less than your attack.
I made a spreadsheet of my data, which includes my level and attack stat at the time, the opponent's level and defense, as well as their syndicate (initially I figured it might be possible that you'd get more points for attacking better syndicates, so I figured I may as well keep track).
I'm no good at Google Docs, and a large amount of data was cut off in the Doc, but you can download the original file there. The rightmost targets are GoTTi's Revenge (twice), and Goodfellas, and they don't show up in the Google Doc viewer, but they are there if you download the spreadsheet. Any suggestions how to fix the preview, let me know: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8ih...JROTFta00/edit. Probably easier to download it and open it in Excel to view it properly.
Any questions, let me know.
Summary:
- The only factor that affects IP payout is XP difference. Anything else is superstition.
- IP payout is uniformly distributed on a given range, depending on the XP difference. This means that, given enough attacks, your IP average per attack will approach whatever the midpoint is on that range. The range is obviously different when attacking someone at your level (e.g. another 250) or attacking someone X levels above you or below you, etc.
Originally Posted by billythekid123
WHEN THE MOONS LINE UP SHOOT FOR THE STARS
