Originally posted by Iamthewalrus
Look, here someone is to say it's too hard.
It's not too hard. My computer can do those calculations in 1/10th the time it takes me to move the mouse cursor from one +N button to another button.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_search_algorithm
"An indeterminate amount of times" is like, maybe 10, max, for the number of times you could possibly click the +5 mana button before running out of time.
If we're binary searching, what is the max value that we're considering for the search? We may miss the actual X value. If the actual max value for X is pretty low, we're wasting a lot of times attempting to calculate autotap solutions for X values that are too high. The autotap algorithm is both complex and expensive, performance-wise. We'd rather run it as infrequently as possible.
Additionally, there are factors in the practical calculation of X that autotap really can't consider. If you're casting [[Erebos's Intervention]] and there's a [[Jubilent Skybonder]] on the field, we don't know what your target is at the time you're picking X. If we think X can be 4 because you can afford 4B and not 5B, you're gonna get an unpayable cost when you pick the Skybonder and have to pay 6B. #wotc_staff