Question to the Devs: Hotspot Maths

[Ian Doncaster]

This is literally impossible, unless their code is an utter mess with all kind of hidden bugs lurking in the background, bugs they never actually bothered to fix, only masked away using lazy tweaks. Bugs you leave unfixed in your code before you implement a whole new feature on top of the project (something they have been doing notoriously for years now) will always surface sooner or later, in a very hard to track down form...

Normal (laser mineable) material content has absolutely no problem respawning the intended way (after some time, irrespectively of relogging and the distance from the rocks). They should have followed the exact same respawn mechanism with SSD's as well, simple as that.

My guess is that the laser mining respawn is unusable for SSDs

Laser mining has individualised depletion - the game remembers which asteroids you've personally touched for 2 hours, but you can mine a rock someone else has mined, even if you can see them mine it.

Core mining has shared depletion - blow up a rock, it's blown up for everyone

Abrasion and SSD used to have instanced depletion - everyone in the same instance sees the same thing but there's no persistence - leading to relog exploits.

Changing abrasion to individualised would have the odd effect that if you were mining in pairs, you'd see the other person blast a chunk off, but you'd still see the deposit be there. If they tried to avoid that by changing it to shared instead (perhaps with a shorter respawn time than cores) then I think this would be a plausible result, even though they may have thought they were using reliably working code for it.

They could perhaps have left abrasion as it was, but we all know that just means an abrasion-related relog exploit showing up in 3.8

(Regardless, they should have tested it better pre-release to pick up on this sort of thing)

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Abrasion blaster and SSD troubles. Now, I have two hardpoints freed up on my mining ships.

 

[MarkAusten]

This is literally impossible.

Demonstrably not.

I'd suggest that the problem maybe caused by some unexpected coupling between the two features possibly at some remote from the code that deals with the effects and therefore just a tad difficult to figure out. You know, something in both objects calls something else which then calls the same thing deep in the code somewhere. That sort of thing.

 

[galahad2069]

Abrasion and SSD used to have instanced depletion - everyone in the same instance sees the same thing but there's no persistence - leading to relog exploits.

Relogging was utterly unnecessary in the original form of the egg bug. All you had to do was retreating about 25 kms from the rock and then going back to it (this was what SLF's made more comfortable - you just parked your SLF 25 kms away with its thrusters turned off to make it stay there, and teleporting to the SLF and back had the same effect as gaining distance using the mothership itself).

Their 1st patch added a cooldown timer which only activated when you left the instance. After this patch relogging was not only unnecessary, it was outright detrimental: you could still make the SSD's respawn using the "gain distance" method (or using the SLF trick), but once you have left the instance (waked out or logged off), the SSD's stopped respawning for about 2 hours, no matter how far you wandered away from the rocks. Which means that while you were closer than 25 kms to the rock or once you have left the instance, the game had absolutely no problem remembering that the egg was already depleted.

I still fail to see why it was impossible for the game to remember the depleted state of the SSD's if you stayed in the instance but somehow gained at least 25 kms of distance from the egg.

 

[galahad2069]

Demonstrably not.

I'd suggest that the problem maybe caused by some unexpected coupling between the two features possibly at some remote from the code that deals with the effects and therefore just a tad difficult to figure out. You know, something in both objects calls something else which then calls the same thing deep in the code somewhere. That sort of thing.

Which covers pretty well the "unless" part of my post

 

[MarkAusten]

Which covers pretty well the "except for" part of my post

Fair point.

Although the "code mess" bit is what I was replying to mainly.

 

[z64555]

I've made a reddit post that covers falloff curves and possible overlap blending methods. I don't want retype all of that here so I'm just going to link it to you.

Falloff Curves, Overlaps, and You

 

[z64555]

If FDev went down the scientific path, I'd expect a normal distribution (Gaussian or Laplace-Gauss distribution, because of the shape of its probability density function also called bell curve). It could be characterised by height at its maximum and the distance from center / width at some percentage of its peak (above background), e.g. a 1-sigma-radius.
(I, too, leave this comment mostly to track this thread, though ; )
Edit: Illustration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Standard_deviation_diagram.svg

Gaussian curves is another popular distribution curve, but without them telling us what it is we'll have to put tens or hundreds of thousands prospectors to the rocks to find out what it is.

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

Thanks for explaining that, nice thread.

 

[badibeat]

Gaussian curves is another popular distribution curve, but without them telling us what it is we'll have to put tens or hundreds of thousands prospectors to the rocks to find out what it is.

If you manage to collect and extract the statistical data from the logs as you posted earlier (hopefully after a quick patch), then an analysis should also tell you about the curve. That's why distributions are so useful and can tell whole stories, which simple averages can't.

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

Why not wait till they change it (again) before amassing data?
It's likely not going to stay the same?

The game code really needs a deep clean before more gets tacked on.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Fools that you are, you assume hotspots are even relevant. FDev just randomly distributes minerals and relies entirely on the placebo effect.

I went into a favorite location that was a hotspot, and I felt I had simply dropped into a random part of the rock garden. My opinion, of course. It's only one session.

Also, over time, another effect has been taking place for me. Mining has become less enjoyable. We rely on it so much for revenue, that the experience of mining has devolved into drudgery. I don't think I'm alone.

 

[Maolagin]

I went into a favorite location that was a hotspot, and I felt I had simply dropped into a random part of the rock garden. My opinion, of course. It's only one session.

Also, over time, another effect has been taking place for me. Mining has become less enjoyable. We rely on it so much for revenue, that the experience of mining has devolved into drudgery. I don't think I'm alone.

Right, and that's why I would say, probably don't do that. If you've been mining out billions to afford that carrier before they nerf it, then it's understandable that you might be burned out on mining. But other than affording a carrier, there's really no reason you need the revenues from intensive mining. Carrier upkeep, upgrading ships, and such like is very possible using other money making mechanics in the game. Give the mining a rest if you're burned out, and go back to treating it as a casual activity that you do once in awhile, and your bank balance will be fine.