Color Ties - Who matches them?

Unknown

I've heard that when there is a tie for a color stat, the one you picked in the "middle" will be the "first" character in line which takes priority. But this is simply false.

I started a battle with Level 56 Wolverine in the "middle" position along with a Level 49 Thor. Here are some screenshots:

1) This is the starting position. Picking Wolverine "middle" does indeed put him in the "first" position.
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c248/KholdStare88/MPQ1.jpg

2) Here are Wolverine's stats. Note that he has 26 Yellow and 30 Red.
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c248/KholdStare88/MPQ2.jpg

3) Here are Thor's stats. Note that he has 26 Yellow and 30 Red.
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c248/KholdStare88/MPQ3.jpg

(not embedded because of the 700px restriction)

Now look at the starting position again. The red tiles belong to Wolverine, while the yellow tiles belong to Thor.

What?!?

So here comes my theory. Using these stat gains I plotted the table for Wolverine and Thor's Yellow/Red growths. Here are their regression lines:

Thor Yellow: 0.5006x + 1.8483
Thor Red: 0.5622x + 2.1204
Wolverine Yellow: 0.4362x + 1.7282
Wolverine Red: 0.5006x + 1.8483

Now plugging in the levels:

Thor 49 Yellow: 26.38
Wolv 56 Yellow: 26.16

Thor 49 Red: 29.67
Wolv 56 Red: 29.88

With these values, it is clear that Thor has the yellow advantage while Wolverine has the red advantage. So my theory is that the numbers you are seeing are decimal values that are ROUNDED. Therefore, you can't rely on the "middle" person breaking the tie. The only time that come into play are environmental tiles, which are Wolverine's. This is because for both Wolverine and Thor, they have no growth for environmental tiles, so it's very possible there is an exact tie of 3, giving priority to the "middle" pick.

DirigiblePilot

I believe your theory is correct. The values seen are simply rounded, and many of them are in fact decimals. I think these decimals are actually only used for calculating who makes the match. And correct on the environment tiles, too- most characters have the same value, so center gets the nod. If anybody more knowledgeable wants to correct this, please do, but I do think it's right.

mischiefmaker

Nice work on the regression analysis! I'd suspected for a long time that the values are actually decimals that are rounded, because 200% boosted characters don't always have multiples of 3, but this is super cool -- lets you know exactly who will take tile matches at any given pairing of levels. Great work!

As for environment tiles, I suspect strongly that they are also decimals, for the same reason (some characters have boosted AP levels of 10). I could be wrong though. Easy enough to test -- just take a team into the shield simulator, match an env tile, then switch them around in the selection screen and try it again.

Ronfar

I've sometimes found myself unable to change who matches environment tiles by changing the order... I wonder if critical multiplier is used as a tiebreaker? For example, Black Widow (Modern) and Thor both have 3 for Environment tiles, but Black Widow has a higher critical multiplier and always takes priority over Thor.

mischiefmaker

I tried doing regressions on 3* characters, but for some reason even the ones that had complete information (Ragnarok, e.g.) produced results that aren't quite right. For instance, for Punisher, I'm getting:

Yellow: 3.84 + .05x
Red: 4.51 + .35x
Blue: 4.19 + .05x
Purple: 4.42 + .05x
Green: 5.13 + .40x
Black: 5.74 + .45x

For a level 45 punisher, this produces a predicted line of 5.91/20.10/6.40/6.87/22.95/25.82, but his actual line is 6/20/7/7/23/26 -- pretty close, but the blue isn't quite right. Any idea what I might be doing wrong?

Unknown

Great research. Do you think characters at the same level end up equal? For instance the Hood and 3* Captain Amercia at maxed levels follow the rule of middle-left-right. Do you think they would at other equal levels?

squirrel1120

Also, who gets theoretical priority between the left and right slots? I can never keep that correctly in mind...

I wish there was a quick reference guide stating left/right for positions for all my two star team mates for the ones that matter (ie, where starting position matters). Every time I think I have it figured out, I'll start a match and find out I tinykitty'd myself again. heh.