Thread:Sylvandyr/@comment-5619126-20121014124324/@comment-4830404-20130102171041

I think the Diamond breeding optimization is a good idea.

DragonVale has a filter that considers special dragons before normal ones, so the optimization for a Rainbow Dragon there is based upon the possible failure times for the normal dragons. The only dragons that interfere with its breeding chance are the ones in the same filter (Gold, Silver, Seasonal, etc.)

I do not know what the paradigm is for Dragon Story, but I personally think that it makes much more sense to have the filters like DV. Otherwise how would Fire + Diamond, which only has two possibilities, yield Fire so many times while you get Crusader only very rarely. I do not have proof, but I think the way that it works is this:

Diamond types are placed in the top level filter. If they are a possibility, they are rolled for first. Once that fails, then the other dragons are considered. So the probability of getting a Diamond is the same no matter which combo you use, but the chances of getting a Zombie are higher if you use only Green + Purple as opposed to trying for Zombie and Boo at the same time with Green + Purple + White.

I have absolutely no proof of this except personal experience.

It means more work, and you don't have to do it, but I suggest the following:

1) List all of the possibilities in a table.  I think this is relevant because "best" for breeding Diamond is relative.  Some people might want the lowest failure times, some might want combos with less breeding results, and some might want something in between due to targetting some missing color dragons.

2) Use two different calculations.  One sorts by least number of breeding results (show all possibilities, listing the lowest first).  One sorts by average failure times (this won't be as accurate because you have to take the rarity % chances for the weights by faith).  I don't know how you want to achieve this UI-wise, but a button or a dropdown or something to switch between the sort modes could work.

You could show the actual values side-by-side, with the # of results in one column and the avg. fail times in another column. Maybe you can add a link to the color pool listed and it could pop up the resulting dragon names as well as their incubation times. That would help to put the # of results and avg. fail times into context.

Thoughts?