Alright then. I plan to run extensive test of my own today and post them here once I'm done. I'll vary skill levels, equipment, and race and do five iterations of each test. Here's all the variables I plan to hit:
Skills:
- unskilled
- adept (which is about the midway point between unskilled and legendary)
- legendary
Armor sets:
- full iron plate and one iron chain shirt &cap
- full leather armor and one leather shirt & cap
- unarmored
(by full armor I mean: breastplate, greaves, gauntlets, high boots, helm. Am I forgetting anything?)
Sheilds:
- iron sheilds
- wooden sheilds
- no shields
Weapons:
- iron long swords
- iron two-handed swords
Races:
- dwarves
- humans
- elves (I know they wouldn't normally get iron equip. This is more to test the effects of their racial stats.)
All combatants skills will be equal for any one test; I don't plan to run legendary vs. unskilled for instance. The skills I will modify are Sword, Shield, Armor, Fighting, Dodging and no others. I aslo plan to run 10v10 combatants of the same race against each other, positioned in a straight vertical line with 8 empty spaces between the two teams, forming a 10x10 square. (I have no idea whether the positioning would make any difference to combat results; that's a test that'll be left to another time).
To this end: is there a way to save an arena setup for rapid iteration?