Suggestion: Detailed Statistics

[eyerouge]

What & Why
I believe Wesnoth has a great deal more to offer when it comes to the statistics that are shown to the player. Exactly what they would bring to the game would depend on the number in question.

What is rather obvious though is that they would affect gameplay in the longer run if a player uses them as a component of his/her analysis of a game. Statistics are great because they work like a raw material we often need to draw certain conclusions about what's going on in a specific game and/or our general and personal style of play.

Statistics could also, when gathered in greater masses, aid the map makers in designing better balanced maps or direct the maps on a path that leads to the maps specific purpose/plays syle/challange if such exists,

• The statistics can, if need arises, be divided into three types:
• The stat-screen that is already available within the game, while a game is ongoing and
• a nice summary report with graphs & what not after the game ends (if a checkbox in settings is checked, else ending is like it is now, meaning nothing happens.) This last category draws it's inspiration from the screen you'd see in classic RTS games like SC/WC and other 4x games.
• Individual statistics - info associated with a specific unit. (I.e. again, in SC one can mark a unit and see the number of kills it has. Personally I find this the least interesting/useful, but it still could add flavour, even more so in campaigns. )

I won't go into details where each statistic should be shown in-game or if they should be shown in more than one place. Each and one of these categories could act independent of each other - to implement the idea of expanded statistics one doesn't have to buy the full package, only parts of it would still lead to improvements.

Examples of statistics

• Commands given: How many commands has a player issued? A command is equal to a) recruiting b) moving c) attacking. in total during the game. How many commands has he issued this round? What's the average number of commands per turn in the game for each of the players? Or average commands per unit? How many % of the commands did each unit type stand for?
• Army power & HP: Numbers that display a subtotal of a players armys summed up potential basic damage and it's summed up HP. The last one, adding up every units HP into an army total, is easy and straight forward. The first one gets a little bit more complicated, but it can still be done in a meaningful and easy way: Every unit has a potential basic damage of x*y, not counting ToD and targets resistance etc. When calculating the army total just take x*y of every units weapon, compare them, then select the weapon with the highest potential basic damage. Do this for all units in your army and add up the numbers, and you'd have "army power", at least a very rough and basic estimate which is still more than currently.
• Total damage dealt: a) By individual unit. I.e. to somehow be able to see the total damage an archer called "Elderas" has caused the enemy forces. b) By unit type. Same, but based on unit types instead. Would i.e. show the total amount of damage that all the Woses have dealt together during the game this far. c) By damage type.
• Distance traveled: As the above, but shows number of hexes in total instead of damage.
• Gold spent on unit type: Shows exactly how much gold and it's share in % of the total budget was spent on i.e. on recruiting Woses.
• Number of attacks: How many attacks has each individual unit launched? How many has each unit type launched? Real numbers and also seen in % of number of total attacks.
• Kill list: Shows info in numbers and % about which types of units the choosen unit type has killed. Example: If you choose Wose as your unit type it would display that your Woses have killed: 3 (75%) Gryphons, 1 (15%) Berserker.
• Loss list: Same as above but inverted: Would display what unit types killed off your Woses.
• Healed counter: Number of how much HP has been healed by a) support units and b) in villages during the game.
• Misc. Spell counter: Numbers that show how many times a spell type has been used, no matter whch unit types that casted it. Example: If unit type A and unit type B both cast "Slow" then every time they would do so would make the counter go up 1.
• Misc. Spell Influence counter: Shows how many turns in % i.e. your Woses were subjects to the Slow-spell.
• Village captures & losses: How many times have you, during the game and/or this point, captured villages? Each time a village is captured this $variable++. Same thing but inverted for village losses, using another counter of course.
• Village control: a) How many turns in total have you controlled a specific village? b) How many villages have you controlled per turn, in average & median, during the whole game? Would be displayed after game ends ofc.
• Unit placement: Show numbers and % of what terrain units have been placed on during the game. Example: If we look at the unit type "elvish archers", we might see that during this game they were in the forest 65% of the turns, on mountains 30% and plains only 5% of the game.
• Couplings: Show how many times in % and real numbers a unit type has found itself placed within the ZoC of another unit type. One stat for friendly, another for enemy units.
• RNG Statistics per unit type: CUrrently we can see if we have the RNG gods with us or against us but we lack info about how this is distributed among the different unit types. I.e. I like to see if I'm "lucky" more often with my Woses than with my Fighter (yes, proper math answer is known to me already, but that's beside my point)
• Average time used per turn: Self-explanatory. If timer was enabled I'd like to know that.
• Total Time Used per player: See above.
• Commands issued in average per minute / hour: Couple the total time statistics with the "commands given" statistic explained in the top of this list and you'd see how "effective" a player is.
• ToD Subcategories: Many of the stats above would also benefit if they could be further divided into numbers that showed info in relation to Time of Day. Example: If 50% of the damage I have dealt my opponent was made by my Woses, how many % of those 50 were dealt during the day? Or night? Etc...

As written already, these are mere examples of what expanded statistics could include. Some would be very easy to code, others require a little more work than that.

I'd welcome more of them as long as they could somehow be used to analyze and understand the gameplay better. (I.e. I'd be against including a statistic that showed how many times a unit was male or female, since it has zero effect on game play.) I'm however not interested in debating each stats usage since we all have different interests and understanding of the game, and would leave that up to whoever implemented it.

Interface
enable / disable
Statistic heavy games tend to frighten new players. I fear it would become even more so in a strategical game like Wesnoth since it's already enough complicated to give newcomers plenty to think of. Because of that I suggest that expanded statistics are disabled per default when the game is installed. They are not shown to the player and can't be accessed until the player him/herself enables them in ctrl+p.

presentation
All of the expanded statistics should all be nicely presented and arranged in categories, making them easy to find and use once a player chooses to view them. (A deluxe feature would also be if they could be made graphical with simple diagrams/charts that summed up the most important ones. The charts can be turned on/off for players wanting only plain text).

Profiles
What would be nice, but not required for the above ideas, is if a player could create a profile within the game. Each profile has it's own game preferences assciated and also it's own meta-statistics, which is the above statistics of each game all summed up, but still categorized in single/multiplayer etc.

[pauxlo]

I'd welcome more of them as long as they could somehow be used to analyze and understand the gameplay better. (I.e. I'd be against including a statistic that showed how many times a unit was male or female, since it has zero effect on game play.)

But I want to see whether the male or female archers/mages hit better (or are used more/less often)

[Rigor]

very very interesting...is there any progress on it yet ?

[Yogibear]

very very interesting...is there any progress on it yet ?

Unfortunately no .

[batoonike]

The "number of units killed by a unit" stat would be the most interesting for me of those youve mentioned. Especially in campaigns. Though it is already kinda visible by the xp of the unit.