Understanding TOS Skill Leveling

A very thorough and comprehensive guide on skill levelling. Many players assume that feeding 1 card at a time 5 times has the same chance of feeding 5 cards at one go. This is not wrong, but if the feeder cards have accumulated skill points as well, you’ll potentially waste many skill points if you feed them one at a time. Below is a case study.

I have 5 Skill level 8 Xi’s. Each has accumulated 2840 battle rounds – this is skill level 8 + 92 rounds.

For best result, I should merge all 5 Xi’s in one feed. Let’s assume, 2 of the 4 feeder cards trigger 2 random skill level ups, this will give me a skill level 14 Xi – assuming battle-rounds take precedence over random skill ups in priority.

However, if you feed them one at a time, with 2 of them still trigger 2 skill level ups, you will get a Xi of either skill level 12 or 13(depending on which 2 trigger the skill ups), but never a skill level 14 one!

ah yes, that's one situation where understanding the assumptions really helps (and I totally agree with your conclusion). very useful case study kitt.

for those following the thread, here's what's going on;

Situation 1: Kitt merges 5 cards into 1 - the mechanics are as follows.
1. 1 card gains 2840 x 5 = 14200 rounds. Guaranteed 12.
2. Triggers random skill ups (usually to a limit of 2)
3. Max possible skill level, 14.

Situation 2: Kitt merges them 1 by 1.
1. Round 1: 1 card gains 2840*2 rounds = 5680. (skill 9). One of the bad case scenarios is if the random skill up comes early, ie. now. (skill 10) - which sets the round count from 5680 to 8185. (2 cards used, 3 cards remaining).
2. Round 2: 8185 + 2840 = 11025. (no change in skill level). Assuming you're really unlucky - and trigger a random skill up, this sets the round count from 11024 to 11192 (skill 10). (2 cards remaining.
3. Then assuming you've used up all the luck you have by getting 2 out of 5 skill ups randomly. 11192 + 2840*2 = 16872, which brings us to skill 12 only, 300 rounds short of skill 13.

Looking at the two scenarios, you can see that you've gotten 2 random skill ups in both scenarios, but in one case you get skill 14, while in the other, you're stuck with skill 12, nearly hitting 13.

Thus, optimally, feeding 5 in one go is the better choice considering rng (and the assumption that round accumulation takes priority over random skill ups is right).