Excavation

[Edgecrusher]

In addition, shouldn't we be given this information to the public? I, and I assume everyone else has spent 12 frustrating months excavating without having a good idea of how it worked. Now, all sorts of rumors are out there, like level 12s are better than level 20s, excavating is dependent on repair history and so on. We have part of the code here and there's already so much more info in there than I can find in the help pages.

Also, can we drop the mysticism about the alien gadgets? Apart from the fact that no one wants to excavate till 5000 alien knowledge, no one knows if it's even worth it, what the gadgets do and if they are implemented at all.

Finally, unless anyone objects to any suggestion I made, I will summarize them in a post and suggest code changes. Page, is all the code concerning excavating contained in a single file and if so, do you mind giving it to me? I will then give you back a modified file (complete with changelist of course), that can be put into beta so we can test it. My email is trlanger@hotmail.com.

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Well I willingly give any information Kiky or Baalz ask for help pages (well, with exception of the 5k ancients). Also whenever I get asked information by other people I tell them and pass it on to Kiky/Baalz also to put on help pages.

[Baalzamon]

1)I don't think we should get excavating more complicated until it is worked out as it is currently (this is in regards to the multiple types of mines doing different things)
2)If you want them to affect trade routes, then they can, they can affect multipliers of ore and PM if you have the ports check for mines as well as ports when doing the distance factor
3)I have ideas on what 1 one of the alien gadgets do, and I know what one of them does, Azool let it slip to me one time. heh. There is just one that I have no clue about.
4)Can we please raise the affect of the excavation bonus? or even how exactly does it work? also, perhaps an excavation stat on trader creation? There ARE three portions of the game (trading, hunting, excavating) and you can put points into both of the former, but not the latter.

[Edgecrusher]

First, as an answer to baalz' question, the excavation gadget acts as a multiplier to your chances of getting special goods. Equipping the gadget gives a 2x bonus for the first quarter of an asteroid, 1.5x for the second quarter of an asteroid 1.33x for the third quarter and 1.2x for the final quarter. the reason for this is that the bonus for depleting an asteroid is added to the gadget bonus.

All in all, I propose the following code changes:

- The relation between the level of a mine and the amount of special goods it gives is made linear, so a level 20 mines should give 20X times as many special goods as a level 1 mine, and a level 4 mine gives 4X times as many special goods, where X is a variable that determines the sixe of the effect. I suggest we put X to 0.5, so a level 20 mine will have 10 times more goods than a level 1 mine. Currently this is 3 times as much for basic special goods and 7 times as much for alien goods. This change will fix the problem of, for example, a level 15 mine being the same as a level 19 mine.

- We make excavating dependent on repair history. I imagine the formula should be about the same as for trading.

- Alien goods no longer give 1/10th of their amount in knowledge points, but 1/4th. (times the repair history effect of course)

- The bonus of depleting a mine is removed, or at least reduced. I don't understand the logic behind this game feature, and without any way for a player to determine the starting amount of the mine, this is a completely random bonus.

- The effect of the excavation gadget is increased (I suggest we double it). I agree with Baalz that we should have an excavation stat, but this may be more difficult to implement.

- We give out information on the 5k gadgets and if they are implemented or not (why are we keeping this secret anyway?).

- I still think we should limit the number of goods you can get from an asteroid to one, so you can use as a trading mechanism. No need to adapt the multiplier: if you use an asteroid on a 17x17x route, than you can basically trade it at, say, distance 1 for the experience of distance 17. Having the ports check for mines as well as ports would reintroduce the huge lag when examining a port.

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- We make excavating dependent on repair history. I imagine the formula should be about the same as for trading.

- Alien goods no longer give 1/10th of their amount in knowledge points, but 1/4th. (times the repair history effect of course)

With repair history for excavating then I agree that the amount gained needs to increase.

- The bonus of depleting a mine is removed, or at least reduced. I don't understand the logic behind this game feature, and without any way for a player to determine the starting amount of the mine, this is a completely random bonus.

The way I understand this is it was designed to reward people who start with a mine that is full and mine it all the way down to 0. It also relates to as you mine deeper you're more likely to find older, rarer stuff I guess.

- The effect of the excavation gadget is increased (I suggest we double it). I agree with Baalz that we should have an excavation stat, but this may be more difficult to implement.

Excavation stat *shouldn't* be too hard (I say that now though..). But it's effect would need to be decided.

- We give out information on the 5k gadgets and if they are implemented or not (why are we keeping this secret anyway?).

Ethereal allows you to walk through mines unharmed (not sure about undetected) for 5mins.
Tractor Beam allows you to trap everyone in sector for 60 seconds.
Cloak Detector allows you to see through any cloak for x mins (either 1 or 5 I think).

They're all implemented and I believe tested by Azool (I tested Tractor Beam ages ago and it worked)

- I still think we should limit the number of goods you can get from an asteroid to one, so you can use as a trading mechanism. No need to adapt the multiplier: if you use an asteroid on a 17x17x route, than you can basically trade it at, say, distance 1 for the experience of distance 17. Having the ports check for mines as well as ports would reintroduce the huge lag when examining a port.

Limiting the goods to one would (at least as it currently is) mean that ancient goods are even harder to get.
Checking for mines would actually reduce any examine lag (less distance to check through before finding the good), but for gameplay reasons they shouldn't be included - what would be the point of trading ore/pms if it was always di0-2?

[Edgecrusher]

- The bonus of depleting a mine is removed, or at least reduced. I don't understand the logic behind this game feature, and without any way for a player to determine the starting amount of the mine, this is a completely random bonus.

The way I understand this is it was designed to reward people who start with a mine that is full and mine it all the way down to 0. It also relates to as you mine deeper you're more likely to find older, rarer stuff I guess.

Well, okay, that could be an argument, but the effect is far too strong, and the starting amount should be visible to players that excavate, or this feature will be hidden to everyone.

- The effect of the excavation gadget is increased (I suggest we double it). I agree with Baalz that we should have an excavation stat, but this may be more difficult to implement.

Excavation stat *shouldn't* be too hard (I say that now though..). But it's effect would need to be decided.

It's effect based on the given code is simple: it has the same effect as the excavate gadget. That's also easy to implement (effectwise). I would say the effect would be a 1.33 multiplier to the excavate bonus per 100 stat points.

Ethereal allows you to walk through mines unharmed (not sure about undetected) for 5mins.
Tractor Beam allows you to trap everyone in sector for 60 seconds.
Cloak Detector allows you to see through any cloak for x mins (either 1 or 5 I think).

Thanks for the info. Can Kiky or Baalz put that in gadget help page? Also, do we have spacy icons with that?

- I still think we should limit the number of goods you can get from an asteroid to one, so you can use as a trading mechanism. No need to adapt the multiplier: if you use an asteroid on a 17x17x route, than you can basically trade it at, say, distance 1 for the experience of distance 17. Having the ports check for mines as well as ports would reintroduce the huge lag when examining a port.

Limiting the goods to one would (at least as it currently is) mean that ancient goods are even harder to get.
Checking for mines would actually reduce any examine lag (less distance to check through before finding the good), but for gameplay reasons they shouldn't be included - what would be the point of trading ore/pms if it was always di0-2?

Well, no, it would not decrease the chance of getting aliens, but increase it significantly. It would reduce the size of the goods_we_get array and therefore make it more likely that a randomly selected good from this array is aliens. I'd need some time to calculate the effect of this, but I suspect it is large.

As to the distance index: you're right on both aspects.

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- The effect of the excavation gadget is increased (I suggest we double it). I agree with Baalz that we should have an excavation stat, but this may be more difficult to implement.

Excavation stat *shouldn't* be too hard (I say that now though..). But it's effect would need to be decided.

It's effect based on the given code is simple: it has the same effect as the excavate gadget. That's also easy to implement (effectwise). I would say the effect would be a 1.33 multiplier to the excavate bonus per 100 stat points.

I did mean the multiplier per stats, not which part of mining it should affect.

- I still think we should limit the number of goods you can get from an asteroid to one, so you can use as a trading mechanism. No need to adapt the multiplier: if you use an asteroid on a 17x17x route, than you can basically trade it at, say, distance 1 for the experience of distance 17. Having the ports check for mines as well as ports would reintroduce the huge lag when examining a port.

Limiting the goods to one would (at least as it currently is) mean that ancient goods are even harder to get.
Checking for mines would actually reduce any examine lag (less distance to check through before finding the good), but for gameplay reasons they shouldn't be included - what would be the point of trading ore/pms if it was always di0-2?

Well, no, it would not decrease the chance of getting aliens, but increase it significantly. It would reduce the size of the goods_we_get array and therefore make it more likely that a randomly selected good from this array is aliens. I'd need some time to calculate the effect of this, but I suspect it is large.

As to the distance index: you're right on both aspects.

The limit is not on the size of goods_we_get but on the number of elements chosen from it, you yourself complained about the limit to goods chosen in a previous post.

[Infinity]

Can Kiky or Baalz put that in gadget help page? Also, do we have spacy icons with that?

Done. Missing icon for cloak detector.

[Edgecrusher]

The limit is not on the size of goods_we_get but on the number of elements chosen from it, you yourself complained about the limit to goods chosen in a previous post.

Okay, let me break this down again. Unless I really misinterpret the code or am missing an important peace, this is how it goes:

First, an array of goods_we_get is constructed. This is done by first filling the array with the commn goods: ore and precmet. At this point, the array contains two items. Then, depending on a random variable that in turn depends on the mine score, one, two or three goods are added. At the end of this routine, the array goods_we_get hold 3, 4 or 5 items.

Then, in some process (I assume another random function that gives a number between 2 and 4), the number of goods is selected, and depending on this, 2, 3 or 4 goodsget selected from an array with a size of 2, 3, 4 or 5. When you try to select 2 goods from an array of size 5, then this introduces a chance of not picking aliens, although they have been picked and out into goods_we_get. If you try to select 4 goods from an array that only has 2 items, then you also have a problem, but this does not affect the amount of aliens you get, because there weren't any in that size 2 array anyway.

Now imagine we would only have 1 common good per asteroid, then the size of goods_we_get, would not be between 2 and 5 but between 1 and 4. Because its size is smaller, regardless of whether you pick 2, 3 or 4 goods from the array, the chance of picking aliens (if goods_we_get has aliens) is larger. In the best case (when the array holds only the common good and aliens), when picking two goods it increases from 2/3 to 2/2, in the worst case (when the array holds every good it can) it increases from 2/5 to 2/4.

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Ah, so you want to limit the number of common_goods to 1, makes sense now :)