Exploration value formulae

MattG

MattG
CMDR Voci said:
yeah, I jumped in, honked, and then jumped away again (I'm on a time crunch to make it to Colonia and back for Distant Worlds 2), so I probably missed out on the planets that were a lot farther away. However, this was the only system I have discovered so far where the bonus has been this significant, highest I had seen before this was like 200,000.
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I happened to be just a handful of jumps away from that system, so I checked it out. If you're close, it's worth heading back and scanning/mapping some of it. Be quick though, I expect to sell data in a few days, at which point it'll be tagged by me. Also, if you're not FSS scanning systems, you're not just "missing out on the planets that were a lot farther away" - you're missing all planets, with the exception of any that happen to be extremely close to the main star and you accidentally get in auto-scan range of. Those are few and far between. And even a bonus of 200k implies you've missed some gold.

Spansh said:
On this note, I'm trying to see if I can get the main star price right (with the knowledge I have) in my database. So there are three levels of scan:

1. Honk
2. FSS Scan
3. DSS Mapping

The value of the main star "honk" is it's base value (3k or so in the most recent case), plus 1/3 of the FSS Scan value of every other body in the system?
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Whilst looking into this to confirm exactly what's going on, I've encountered some discrepancies - so leave this with me for now and I'll get back to you.
 

MattG

MattG
MattG said:
Whilst looking into this to confirm exactly what's going on, I've encountered some discrepancies - so leave this with me for now and I'll get back to you.
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Right. First off - caveats. I don't have much data to base this on, and am not in a position to verify. You are encouraged to verify independently..

For planetary bodies, I believe the honk bonus applied is this:
Code: 
double honk_bonus_value = Math.Max(500,(k + k * q * Math.Pow(mass,0.2)) / 3 );
honk_bonus_value *= (isUntagged) ? 2.6 : 1;

Which itself doesn't look too different - but the key point here is the division by 3 seems to be applied before the 500 minimum, bringing in many more bodies. Most of the "garbage" 300-k-class bodies end up at the minimum 500 because of this, which was throwing my own calculations off. Note that this minimum doesn't seem to apply to stellar bodies - those seem to be a straight (value / 3).

Additionally, systems that are untagged will get the 2.6 first discoverer multiplier too - despite not getting the tag. Systems already tagged don't get the multiplier.

At least, this is what I think is happening currently.
 

Spansh

S
MattG said:
Right. First off - caveats. I don't have much data to base this on, and am not in a position to verify. You are encouraged to verify independently..

For planetary bodies, I believe the honk bonus applied is this:
Code: 
double honk_bonus_value = Math.Max(500,(k + k * q * Math.Pow(mass,0.2)) / 3 );
honk_bonus_value *= (isUntagged) ? 2.6 : 1;

Which itself doesn't look too different - but the key point here is the division by 3 seems to be applied before the 500 minimum, bringing in many more bodies. Most of the "garbage" 300-k-class bodies end up at the minimum 500 because of this, which was throwing my own calculations off. Note that this minimum doesn't seem to apply to stellar bodies - those seem to be a straight (value / 3).

Additionally, systems that are untagged will get the 2.6 first discoverer multiplier too - despite not getting the tag. Systems already tagged don't get the multiplier.

At least, this is what I think is happening currently.
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Cool, so to clarify it's the FSS value of each body in the system before the 500 minimum divided by 3 (I'm gonna ignore multipliers for this since I don't care about them)
 

MattG

MattG
Spansh said:
Cool, so to clarify it's the FSS value of each body in the system before the 500 minimum divided by 3 (I'm gonna ignore multipliers for this since I don't care about them)
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If you don't care about multipliers, it's the greater of (base FSS value / 3) and 500 for planetary bodies, and simply (base FSS value / 3) for stellar bodies.
 

Spansh

S
MattG said:
If you don't care about multipliers, it's the greater of (base FSS value / 3) and 500 for planetary bodies, and simply (base FSS value / 3) for stellar bodies.
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OK, so

Main Star Value = Normal Main Star Calculation + Max(Sum(Planetary Body FSS Value) / 3,500) + Sum(Stellar Body FSS Value) / 3

And that is generated via Honk

I'm fine with it being a few hundred off (or even a few thousand, so long as it's within 10k or so in the vast majority of cases)
 
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MattG

MattG
Spansh said:
OK, so

Main Star Value = Normal Main Star Calculation + Max(Sum(Planetary Body FSS Value) / 3,500) + Sum(Stellar Body FSS Value) / 3
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More like:
Main star value = Normal Main Star Calculation + SUM(MAX(Planetary Body FSS Value / 3.0, 500)) + SUM(Stellar Body FSS Value / 3.0)

Each planetary body adds at least 500 to the "honk bonus" added to main star.

I'm fine with it being a few hundred off (or even a few thousand, so long as it's within 10k or so in the vast majority of cases)
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I woudn't be! (except where terraformables are involved, which I have to accept. For now)
 

Spansh

S
MattG said:
More like:
Main star value = Normal Main Star Calculation + SUM(MAX(Planetary Body FSS Value / 3.0, 500)) + SUM(Stellar Body FSS Value / 3.0)

Each planetary body adds at least 500 to the "honk bonus" added to main star.



I woudn't be! (except where terraformables are involved, which I have to accept. For now)
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Awesome thanks, for me I'm just trying to point people towards valuable things to scan, so whilst I want complete accuracy it's not neccesary, the main star honk think was large enough that I wanted to include it though.
 

Frankymole

Frankymole
I just thoroughly mapped (with efficiency bonus on each body) a binary G-class stars' system with 9 planet bodies (no satellites, all main worlds, including a terraformable water world and lots of standard HMCs). The entire system was undiscovered and untagged before I jumped into it and surveyed it.

According to the latest formula idea, "Main star value = Normal Main Star Calculation + SUM(MAX(Planetary Body FSS Value / 3.0, 500)) + SUM(Stellar Body FSS Value / 3.0)", the payout for the primary star (A) should be some 544,997 credits. In fact, Universal Cartographics is offering just 210,639 credits. So something is wrong somewhere...

EDIT: it looks like Waterworld shenanigans again. It's not behaving as Terraformable, and correcting for this brings the result in at 202,646 credits for the primary star, only 8393 credits off.
 
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Leif_Erikson

Leif_Erikson
Tested one of the most common looking systems you can find-a solo M star with two Rocky Ice Worlds and four Ice Worlds with one landable Ice World moon
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According to EDD this is worth 15,128 creds (not sure if this includes bonuses) but fully scanned and mapped with bonuses it comes to 130,415 creds. 52,145 for star and DSS scans,8,000 for completing the system scan and 70,000 for all mapping.
 

Spaceman Si

Spaceman Si
Frankymole said:
Sounds like EDD is using the old pre 3.3 values.
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I have been wondering if that was the case, as the values I kept seeing for HMC and gas-giants looked very familiar. Last night, I sold my data to UC for my recent excursion - EDD was suggesting I was going to get about 20Mcr tops, but UC gave me over 90Mcr. I should have paid more attention to the figures to give an accurate report, but they were in that area.
 

CmdrWill

CmdrWill
Spaceman Si said:
I have been wondering if that was the case, as the values I kept seeing for HMC and gas-giants looked very familiar. Last night, I sold my data to UC for my recent excursion - EDD was suggesting I was going to get about 20Mcr tops, but UC gave me over 90Mcr. I should have paid more attention to the figures to give an accurate report, but they were in that area.
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Can we not just ask Cartographics lol
 

Frankymole

Frankymole
MattG said:
q seems to be a constant. It, too, probably needs tweaking - and I can't help but feel I'm missing it's significance - but it's approximately: 0.56591828
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There has to be one in there for FDev to simply control the size of payouts generally, e.g. when they boosted the payouts across the board under 3.3, they could just alter this constant at their end, rather than rewrite many elements of the formulae.
 

MattG

MattG
Leif_Erikson said:
Tested one of the most common looking systems you can find-a solo M star with two Rocky Ice Worlds and four Ice Worlds with one landable Ice World moon


According to EDD this is worth 15,128 creds (not sure if this includes bonuses) but fully scanned and mapped with bonuses it comes to 130,415 creds. 52,145 for star and DSS scans,8,000 for completing the system scan and 70,000 for all mapping.
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I looked up the details of the system on EDSM. The main star base value is 1205, and the "honk bonus" ends up the minimum 500 for each other body - so 3500 - giving 4705. On top of that, it'll get first discovery bonus, giving 12233.
The bodies themselves, with first mapping and first discovery (and assuming efficiency) are worth:

star12233
15584
25604
35800
45502
56188
66289
6a5218


There is a bonus of 1k per body for fully FSSing the system (so 8k), and a bonus of 10k per mapable body for fully mapping the system (so 70k).

In total, I make it 130418. Pretty close to the 130415 you got. If you just FSS the system, and exclude the fully FSSed bonus, the value is just 4743 (which is what EDSM gives as an estimate).

Not sure about EDD, but the honk bonus was revised only yesterday, I'd be surprised if that's implemented already. It's also hard/(impossible?) to tell if bodies are already tagged or mapped, so they may be making assumptions there.
 

MattG

MattG
Frankymole said:
There has to be one in there for FDev to simply control the size of payouts generally, e.g. when they boosted the payouts across the board under 3.3, they could just alter this constant at their end, rather than rewrite many elements of the formulae.
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Except that they didn't. This was there before 3.3, and estimated at (3/5.3). With the bigger payouts since 3.3, it's been possibly to refine the value somewhat. The boosted payouts for 3.3 are very much new/revised multipliers. Even the k values, although I've tweaked them for 3.3 I think even those actually remained the same under the hood and there was actually another multiplier in play e.g. I'm saying k for a rocky body is 300. Previously, I said 720. The very first buff to exploration doubled scan values. A later one added a further 20%. 300 * 2 * 1.2 = 720. So I don't think k values changed, I think it was always 300 for these bodies, we just didn't do "* 2 * 1.2" to the base value.

All part of the fun of trying to work out a formula from just the results :).
 

AnthorNet

AnthorNet
MattG said:
I looked up the details of the system on EDSM. The main star base value is 1205, and the "honk bonus" ends up the minimum 500 for each other body - so 3500 - giving 4705. On top of that, it'll get first discovery bonus, giving 12233.
The bodies themselves, with first mapping and first discovery (and assuming efficiency) are worth:

star12233
15584
25604
35800
45502
56188
66289
6a5218


There is a bonus of 1k per body for fully FSSing the system (so 8k), and a bonus of 10k per mapable body for fully mapping the system (so 70k).

In total, I make it 130418. Pretty close to the 130415 you got. If you just FSS the system, and exclude the fully FSSed bonus, the value is just 4743 (which is what EDSM gives as an estimate).

Not sure about EDD, but the honk bonus was revised only yesterday, I'd be surprised if that's implemented already. It's also hard/(impossible?) to tell if bodies are already tagged or mapped, so they may be making assumptions there.
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Ha new bonus to implement! There's quite a lot of different cases to handle on this new release :D
 

iain666

iain666
Spaceman Si said:
I have been wondering if that was the case, as the values I kept seeing for HMC and gas-giants looked very familiar. Last night, I sold my data to UC for my recent excursion - EDD was suggesting I was going to get about 20Mcr tops, but UC gave me over 90Mcr. I should have paid more attention to the figures to give an accurate report, but they were in that area.
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EDD is updated (assuming you are up to date - 10.4.4 latest release). The values we are giving for each individual scan or mapping, excluding any first bonuses are using these formulae and pretty much bang on with the game by my testing however we don't include any first discovery bonus or other bonuses so it will be even more of an underestimate than it used to be.

An 'assume I get first discovery/mapped tags on everything' mode has been requested and may appear at some point.
 
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