Planetary raw materials percentages must be amended

[CMDR DUANES]

Why? Because they are most of the times blatantly wrong and don't even mean a thing. If you do simple caclulations you realize that some rare materials show up 20 or even 30 times too little compared to what the planetary scanner gives you (for example you should get roughly 1 Selenium out of 4 Chromes (2.5% vs 10%) but you get 1 out of... 87), while other show up 2 or 3 times too often. It's random, it's really frustrating, and it's complicating the already annoying grinding process.

So, either the real occurence or the shown percentage must be amended so that it reflects reality.

 

[varonica]

It's random, it's really frustrating, and it's complicating the already annoying grinding process.

So, either the real occurence or the shown percentage must be amended so that it reflects reality.

Yes that's how it works, the planetary percentages can be correct and you still might only find an unblananced number, this is due to different areas in theory having different concentrations of material. For instance if you are on the earth and looking for diamonds randomly you probably won't find any, unless you dig a big hole in the volcanic vent, but your results in finding diamonds if you just chose a random spot would be 0% and you might conclude the earth contains no diamonds.

Ideally what we need is a system like the bio scanner that can show areas where certain minerals are more likely found, but whatever the issue is, a given mineral is not going to be found spread evenly all across the planet surface, if you land in one spot there is going to be a concentration of materials in that area that won't necessarily reflect the percentage figures, and if all you do is search in that one spot then that's not going to tell you anything about the planetary spread of minerals. Of course to test this you would need to select maybe ten or so random spots of differing geological makeup and do a proper survey of the mineral drops over a given time period and see what the graphs look like.

 

[varonica]

some rare materials show up 20 or even 30 times too little

The concentration of rare material is usually quite high around volcanic areas, try those, you might find you get better results.

 

[DemiserofD]

Why? Because they are most of the times blatantly wrong and don't even mean a thing. If you do simple caclulations you realize that some rare materials show up 20 or even 30 times too little compared to what the planetary scanner gives you (for example you should get roughly 1 Selenium out of 4 Chromes (2.5% vs 10%) but you get 1 out of... 87), while other show up 2 or 3 times too often. It's random, it's really frustrating, and it's complicating the already annoying grinding process.

So, either the real occurence or the shown percentage must be amended so that it reflects reality.

It's probably fine. The numbers probably aren't wrong, or even regionally different like was speculated above; it's just the nature of random chance that you will sometimes find a lot of one thing and a little of another out of random chance.

 

[varonica]

Just another point, the percentages of minerals on the planets isn't generated by the planets themselves, these details are passed on to the algorithms that generate the planet by the Stellar Forge itself, so these percentages are the result of the evolution of the solar system from first principals based on the percentage of materials in the origianl accretion disk then shared among the planets depending on where they formed in the system and whether they are ice or rocky or metallic etc. The fact is it's quite possible that many of the elements are subsurface, which is why such materials as Polonium are found in much higher concentrations around volcanic vents and bio that have root systems that can bring it to the surface. It's not just a simple matter of changing that number because that number comes from the program that creates the galaxy, and we don't mess with that!

 

[CMDR DUANES]

The concentration of rare material is usually quite high around volcanic areas, try those, you might find you get better results.

No, I don't agree, if you do rough calculations numbers make no sense. Obviously you have to fine tune your search and look for the best spot, but there is no pattern. As an exemple, consider what you get with rare materials linked to High Intensity Signals: if you do your homework, you will find them quite easily, I mean you can improve your odds by thinking your search in advance. Same thing can be said for planetary exploration. In my experience, rare raw materials, you basically depend on random luck, which should not be the case.

 

[CMDR DUANES]

It's probably fine. The numbers probably aren't wrong, or even regionally different like was speculated above; it's just the nature of random chance that you will sometimes find a lot of one thing and a little of another out of random chance.

I don't agree, the numbers must be (at least loosely) coherent one with another, or else, why giving us percentages?

 

[DemiserofD]

I don't agree, the numbers must be (at least loosely) coherent one with another, or else, why giving us percentages?

That's just it; they actually are perfectly coherent, it's just that rolling the dice gives results that don't always feel right to us.

And what tends to happen is, you only notice things when they go against you, and not when they go for you. A dozen players might go there and get what they need immediately, and promptly forget about it. Meanwhile, you go there, don't get what you want in a reasonable time frame, and complain.

But taken as an average across all players, it will eventually approach the stated percentages.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

But taken as an average across all players, it will eventually approach the stated percentages.

At least for ratios within a material class, perhaps.

The Chromium - Selenium ratio I'd expect to be somewhere close to the ratio between the percentages because they're both the same geological grade
The Chromium - Tin ratio I'd expect to be nowhere near because they're not, so it really depends on what material sources exist and how frequently they're generated.

For example, Needle Crystals are guaranteed Geological-4 which is usually around 1% or less on the mineral concentration, but Needle Crystals are much more common than 1/100 at volcanic sites. Similarly it's not unusual for a metallic meteorite to contain 2 or even 3 Geological-4 fragments, and well over 1/100 meteorites are metallic on most planets.

(The ones people seem to have most trouble with are the Geological-2 ones which are rare for Geological-2 - Arsenic, especially - probably because that's where the most competition is: there are always two other much more likely things that grade 2 fragment could be instead)

 

[varonica]

Similarly it's not unusual for a metallic meteorite to contain 2 or even 3 Geological-4 fragments, and well over 1/100 meteorites are metallic on most planets.

Does the percentage take into account meteorites though, I've a mind it doesn't, because the percentage is calculated from the Stellar Forge whereas meteor deposits are in theory generated just for the players instance.

In my experience, rare raw materials, you basically depend on random luck, which should not be the case.

I usually fill up on rares and trade down, in 4 days I can have a full set of mats of every kind, and yes in the old days of the POI locations I tested many times by basically harvesting all the mats in a single POI and calculating percentages, and rares like Polonium were present at 10x the rate you would expect from the planetary percentage numbers. They messed up a lot of the mat generation when they changed the planetary tech of course, we were for a while only getting low level mats like iron, but recently in testing it appears the types of drops have been changed back and finding a highly volcanic area will give plenty of drops of rare mats.

I have zero problems finding mats, but if you are just randomly dropping in the you are getting the results I would expect from random chance...random drops.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Does the percentage take into account meteorites though, I've a mind it doesn't, because the percentage is calculated from the Stellar Forge whereas meteor deposits are in theory generated just for the players instance.

My theory is that the mineral source determines the geological grade of material to generate as fragments, and then the percentages are used to determine what those fragments are within the grade. I did wonder if the percentages also affected the chance of any particular deposit type being generated in the first place, but I'm not convinced.

 

[varonica]

My theory is that the mineral source determines the geological grade of material to generate as fragments, and then the percentages are used to determine what those fragments are within the grade. I did wonder if the percentages also affected the chance of any particular deposit type being generated in the first place, but I'm not convinced.

That's possible I suppose, would need to be tested though through harvesting large numbers of meteorites and running the numbers.

 

[grandpa-t]

Strange, once I figured out the volcanic vent thing I had no problem finding Selenium. It is water soluble, so I searched out a moon with volcanic activity that was water vents and had a high % of selenium (5%). Landed at a geological site and started collecting. I then noticed that Crystalline Fragments were the ones giving Selenium about 50% of the time so I stuck to collecting them.

Went from 3 to 75 Selenium in about an hr. Which is not bad for collecting mats in an MMO.

 

[varonica]

Strange, once I figured out the volcanic vent thing I had no problem finding Selenium. It is water soluble, so I searched out a moon with volcanic activity that was water vents and had a high % of selenium (5%). Landed at a geological site and started collecting. I then noticed that Crystalline Fragments were the ones giving Selenium about 50% of the time so I stuck to collecting them.

Went from 3 to 75 Selenium in about an hr. Which is not bad for collecting mats in an MMO.

In the old days different types of fragments yielded different quality mats, that was broken for quite a while with Odyssey update and the new planetary tech, recent tests of mine do seem to indicate this is working properly now, so to get high tier mats you target the high level growths, which in the case of vulcanism it's Crystaline Fragments, on bio (the old Horizons bio, the Odyssey bio doesn't drop mats) it's Phloem Excretions, so you just skip the rest if you are after high grade mats.