you may very well have seen on the forums the term "simspeed" being thrown around, and wondered what it is. you may also have noted that simspeed is displayed in-game too.

what simspeed is, is both a measure of CPU performance, AND a measure of gamespeed. though, in the case of the latter only indirectly so.

in-game, all players have a maximum simspeed listed; this is the limit to how fast that computer can calculate all the stuff going on. more stuff, more things to work on, and the lower the simspeed. don't be confused by this though; the game cannot actually run faster on one computer than another. just think about it; it simply makes no sense.

now, back on topic, it doesn't take a genius to note that higher numbers are better. however, it appears there's lots of confusion on how the scale works.

i see many people, and i've left out the names of the culprits to save public humiliation, say;

"a +4 simspeed means you can play it at four-times normal speed."

this, is simply wrong. want to know why? well, may i ask how fast does a simspeed of +1 play? is that normal speed, or just above normal?

further;

what about +0 simspeed? surely, this means the game is paused,

and of course -1 means the game is going backwards!

we all know that neither are true; so we can see that above statement about +4 equating to 4x is wrong.

since i've got your attention, and held it until this point i shall now teach you show you how to interpret the simspeed properly.

start by grabbing a stopwatch. yes, your phone will do too. now, play a game at a speed of +3. take note of how long abilities take to recharge.

who here noticed that they were recharging pretty much at twice the normal (normal being +0) speed? now, do this again, except play at +6. the game is now running at twice as fast as before; four times normal speed.

continue this, but do the opposite, and play at -3 and -6 and you'll see that the game is playing at half and quarter power.

in order to translate simspeed into an equivalent multiple of how many times of normal speed a game is, you use the following;

t = 1.26 ^ n

in this case, n is the simspeed (it can be either positive or negative, it works both ways), and t is the multiple of normal time.

get your calculator (Google calculator is really handy here too) and try it by replacing n with 0, 3, 6, and so on.

it's pretty damn close, isn't it?

say, you and i are in a match together, your max simspeed is +4 and mine is +7. do the maths;

t = 1.26 ^ +4

t ~ 2.52

the fastest your computer will run currently is about 2.5x normal.

mine on the other hand;

t = 1.26 ^ +7

t ~ 5.04

as you can see, mine is smack-bang on twice yours. the same goes for negative numbers too, and even one negative and one positive! if we wanted to play an insanely sped-up game, and we try to up the game speed to +10; my computer can only reach +7 speeds, however we will reach the your +4 limit before that. in this case, we can play at a maximum of +4.

the maths. behind this funny exponential system are actually used in science, math, and engineering all the time. take sound for example; it's measured in decibel (dB). say i measure a sound to be 60dB loud, and then another sound to be 54dB. the first will appear to be twice as loud as the second, and if i measure a third sound at 66dB it'll be twice as loud as the first. earthquakes are like this too; a magnitude 7 earthquake is ten times bigger than a magnitude 6 earthquake.

so, how will you find this useful when playing Demigod? well, when you look at everyone's max simspeed values; those with values 3 higher than you can process upto twice as fast as you, relative to the maximum your computer can process. the game still runs at the speed of the slowest compute. i'm going to shamelessly steal part of Spooky's post from below.

thanks.

just remember; when you're in a five-on-five and everyone has killer computers, except that one person, who is at -2 and your game is crawling along; it's his fault! gank him, and make his life a living hell, hopefully he'll rage-quit and let your game continue in peace. XP

[EDIT:] updated some things based off the feedback i've recieved.

GL; HF.