Oh I see, you counted clic 0 for after playing the card ?
Yup. If a graph starts at 0 (see the 90% graphs), that means that the first click was spent playing procons. Sorry for any confusion.
Really loving the article. Itâs great to see charted why some things never really seemed to work for me.
However I donât really agree with your presentation of quality draw (not that Iâd be able to do it better 
).
The graphs donât tell me much more than that a deck with few economic cards, has more quality draws. The reason why I think event econ is the best is not only for its cred efficiĂ«ncy, but also for the fact that you go through your deck faster, so you see more of the âqualityâ cards you really wanted in your deck. While you do have a lower total amount of quality cards, the consistency with which you see them is a lot higher.
Not having a handsize limit in your program certainly makes it hard to simulate. In reality, most (all) decks have at least sure gamble, just because itâs great to make some money to play some cards to then have room to draw new cards. However I understand why you didnât put SG in each deck, the lines would resemble each other a lot more.
Iâll state again that I really admire your dedication in this article, and the fact that you try to put a complex reality in graphs and stats.
1 Like
Thanks for the comments!
A mind game. We want to find some way to describe why even based econ decks have so many events in them, while so many opus econ decks have programs, hardware, and tutors. Lets go through a sequence of thoughts:
- Events are single-use, while programs/hardware are multiple use.
- To pound out the credits with Opus, you draw zero cards.
- To pound out the credits in an event econ deck, you draw obsessively, often with cards to increase the efficiency of draw.
- When you draw in such event econ decks, many of the cards you see are just there to give you credits and cards, they arenât âanswers or tricksâ.
- Opus decks need no other econ, so every card drawn is an answer or trick (though maybe not the one you need at the time).
Now how can we usefully describe not only the number of cards drawn, but the number of cards drawn that actually progress your board state/position past just getting credits and cards? I would argue that quality draw is that metric. By quality draw metrics, event economy decks do get higher quality draw than opus decks that get almost none (if they just pound for credits). This seems to fit exactly the scenario you present â where event econ decks see more cards you want.
So Iâm missing how quality draw isnât exactly what you are asking for, and describing. Can you further explain?
SG was in every âevtâ deck evaluated, which is all but one. That one was only included for comparison. Again, I think the article does what youâre saying, so I might be missing your point here.
1 Like
Fantastic article! Iâve been hoping for a while that someone would step forward to do an economy analysis like this, and Iâm really looking forward to the followups.
Your discussion of the trade-offs of pacing-between tempo and late game efficiency-is good. It was also great that you examined the consistency of the various engines (although I agree with Nordicstrike that a larger sample would be preferable for that analysis). I believe you could draw more explicit conclusions, however, about the trade-offs between credit efficiency and draw efficiency.
Consider that the credit count in your credit analysis could well be called âquality creditsâ by analogy to your definition of âquality drawsâ. This is because your simulation already subtracts all the credits which are are spending to play further economy cards, and there isnât really any notion of dead credits. Each of these economic engines, therefore, establishes a ratio of quality credits to quality draws which can also be very important to deck design.
When I started playing Netrunner, I was obsessed with Professional Contacts. After building several decks which relied primarily on ProCo for their economies, however, I realized that I kept getting into a situation where I either needed to discard cards that I wanted to keep, or I needed to use clicks just to take money without activating ProCo. This was because my draw efficiency was too high for my credit efficiency, or alternatively because the ratio of quality credits to quality draws was too low and didnât fit the deck.
Not all decks need the same ratio. Consider a deck that uses Faeries with Sacrificial Constructs and Clone Chips for sentry breaking, vs one that uses only Femme Fatale. The first deck uses many different cards to accomplish the sentry breaking task, but the cost to play and use each card is very low. The second deck needs only one card, but it is very expensive to play and it can also be very expensive to operate.
I think that the the runnerâs use of quality credits might be further broken down into play credits for credits used to play quality cards, and action credits for credits used to run servers, trash corps cards, etc. A deck that requires a higher number of action credits, or that requires a higher number of play credits per card played will tend to want an economic engine that focuses on boosting credit efficiency. Conversely, deck which plays may cheap cards, and which has a lower need of action credits (eg. Wizard), may want to focus more on draw efficiency.
There is also something to be said for being able to vary your economy based on the actual in-game situation. Just as a toy example, a solo ProCo economy is the height of inflexibility. Sometimes you might need more money to play an expensive card or to break into a server, and sometimes you might have enough money and just need to draw that one key card. While a solo Magnum Opus economy would be even worse than a solo ProCo in terms of overall economic throughput, it gives you complete flexibility to vary your qc/qd ratio as the situation demands.
Just my two cents. Thanks again for the great article, and keep them coming.
5 Likes
Perhaps itâs just the terminology. As you explained in your line about Opus decks, each quality draw is an answer, but maybe not the one you need. I find that in an event deck, the % of quality draw which is actual quality (stuff you need) is higher than in âtrickâ decks, where you often draw copy 2 or 3 of a trick already in hand.
If you do an Opus simulation, definitely include draw events, as they are better in an Opus deck than everywhere else.
My Sure Gamble remark was to point out that many decks use at least this event, even Opus decks. But I understand that you donât include it for simulation, as to better see the differences between the decks. Likewise run events or stuff like modded work really well in ProCon decks. So not including those synergies in your analysis skews it a bit.
With my handsize remark I wanted to point out that event decks are imo the least constrained by having a handsize limit (except for MO decks, but they werenât included in the article). In for example a PC deck, if youâre out of money the best thing is often to keep clicking it and ditching the least useful card, even though you cringe inside for having to discard a potentially powerful card.
This is a great comment. Iâve also been thinking about trying figure out how to assess the impact of SG costing 5 vs. LF costing 3 (i.e. the low-credit scenario), and this idea might help in that.
This is actually what I want the main take-away from the article to be. Every economic packages makes a trade-off between draw and credits. Which is best for your deck is dependent on what your deck requires (cost of progs, cost of runs, etcâŠ). I think weâre on exactly the same page.
Absolutely, all of this.
I think that there are three aspects that are amenable to simulation (I just need to get to a-coding):
- prog/hw installation and rig building. The simulator can study the consistency of getting combinations of rig out, and can feed this into the economy. The cost of the installs will be customized for different decks (faerie vs. femme).
- trashing assets. A co-simulation of the corp and runner would yield a region between the runner trashing all assets, and trashing none (but giving the corp asset-based creds). This is furthest on the simulation horizon.
- run creds. The amount left over, over time, for runs.
Classifying these three types of credit expenditures will enable an even more descriptive simulation, and will further increase the capability to study consistency.
Absolutely these different decks require different qc/qd ratios, and different economic packages provide trade-offs there. This article is meant to enable people to manually make the translation to their decks. Future simulations will hopefully be closer to your suggestions and simulate the whole package.
Your two cents are worth a buck 
Thanks!
1 Like
This would be amazing! I canât wait to see what you come up with. Thanks again.
Did you account for hand limit? (because QT often gives problems that way)
Also, did you try just Diesel + SG + LF + DL + PPVP?
Factors to weigh cost of lucky find vs. other cards
- extra click opportunity cost.
- lower credit cost
- influence cost
- synergy opportunities.
SG/LF allow the player to leverage prepaid. MO allows the player to leverage Test Run, SMC, salvage etc.
Perhaps the way to weight them is the % of times the card is a reasonable or good play. So for example sg got discounted in many anarch builds for the necessity of clicking for cash to fire itâŠ
Thanks for the clarification! I think I understand now, and I agree that trick decks might not have as quality of draw (thought tutors often change that).
I think that a simulation can accommodate that by actually looking at a sequence of intended installs (i.e. which programs do you need when), and, for different decks, figuring out when those programs can actually be installed (taking econ, and drawing the progs into account). Sorry for my misunderstanding, and thanks for clarifying.
WRT SG, Iâm actually an outlier. I donât put SG in most of my decks. However, I understand that Iâm an outlier, so Iâll almost always consider SG.
See the assumptions in the FAQ. No hand size limit. This effectively means that in a game, youâd never discard econ/draw, which is somewhat realistic, but not perfectly accurate. I didnât try that econ package. Realistically, when credits/click > 1, quality time is a net positive.
The simulator should be able to take into account card synergies like the ones you point out (PVP + evts, or opus + tutors), so I think it will accurately reflect those packages. However, a significant weakness is the lack of reasonably taking into account this opportunity cost you point out. It isnât clear how to do that, but it obviously needs to be done.
Thanks!