Imperial Navy Intervention and Rescue presents INTRA, a new service for Commanders, designed to help bounty-hunters locate valuable pairs of systems for accepting and completing pirate Massacre missions.
An INIV prototype of this has been supplying me with very nice locations for quite a while. Following some very successful experiments in finding locations for other Commanders, including one for whom we replaced a four-system circuit with a single eight-faction Starport, we built it into a comprehensive utility for all to enjoy.
Faction states which impact negatively the offering of pirate Massacre missions—or other conditions which prevent said missions—will cause a faction to be considered not useful within a given Shop. Being at war is a common temporary reason, while being an Anarchy faction precludes Shop usefulness permanently. Conversely, one Anarchy faction is required for an Arena to be matched.
For Commanders seeking only a place to hunt with no concern for missions, INTRA supports searching just for a loose Arena system. As a simple courtesy for Commanders not seeking combat, one may also search just for a faction-heavy Shop system without the Arena constraints.
Enter the INTRA Agent, a plug-in for EDMC or any compatible Journal service.
The plug-in reports the CNB statuses of systems you visit, and also any RES signals discovered. Using the Discovery Scanner is enough to update the former, and scanning any (personally) undiscovered ringed planets with the FSS will report the latter. This action alone affects the Arena rankings; a system known to contain a Hazardous RES—plus existing knowledge of its ringed planets—is enough to boost its Arena value.
After a system with rings gains a RES report, INTRA then allows Commanders to -declare- the specific ringed body for that RES type, referring to the closest such case to the arrival star. The Arena valuation for that system will then be equivalent to INIV confirming its RESs internally.
For example, an INTRA search lead me to HIP 37735. I encountered all four RES types there, then visited that page to tell it that the Hazardous and Medium were around planet 7 and the High and Low were around planet 5. Of course, ring information declared publicly this way could be mistaken, but any damage is minimal given that the RES ultimately exists somewhere in the system. Moreover, we want to trust Commanders to make useful declarations.
Unlike any existing source we could find, INTRA produces the hourly snapshot of its Arena data for anyone to use. The original data deficiency was one of our motivating factors in the first place, so providing ours is very much our way of helping to alleviate the problem, or at least not to exacerbate it.
The above aside, we want to welcome any reliable CNB/RES data, if offered. Merging existing efforts should be no problem for us, as long as the format is clear and consistent!
For sake of retaining an example:
In addition to sharpening the Search function, the INTRA plug-in also reports bounty claim statistics. These are categorised by Starship type and by pilot rank of the pirates you eliminate. INTRA also records whether you used a Kill Warrant Scanner, and separates the bounty claims into the local and foreign parts.
If you ever wanted to know how bounty payouts differ between Expert and Elite, between Anaconda and Fer-de-Lance or between fitting and removing your Kill Warrant Scanner—this is the answer. Record a lot of bounty claims, and display aggregated results.
Of course, that page contains a lot of numbers. Displaying those tables visually is the first major goal after this release, and behind any great suggestions or data-merging INIV may implement first. At present it displays tables with minimum, average and maximum for local claims and for combined totals with Kill Warrant Scanner; following some conversations with Commanders, it will be a goal to provide numbers only for those cases where a Kill Warrant Scanner revealed a foreign bounty, and a quick chart of how often it reveals multiple foreign bounties.
Downloadable bounty data samples are also planned, presently with caution for monitoring how large a bounty data set may grow. If it looks feasible, the plan is that it could be archived annually; the first set would be kept updated with data from launch, then become fixed on the cusp of 3309, after which a 3309 set commences.
For some lighter entertainment, Commanders are invited to peruse the Starship statistics page. It is quite biased at present, with the majority of its bounty entries being my own, however we are quite excited to see how it evolves.
For testing and useful discussion, I wish to thank CMDRs. Grawmad, Frank Likes Pie and Firehawk894.
I also wish to thank everyone engaging in interesting bounty-related conversation here; I read much more than I participate, and it helps greatly when it reveals small intricacies not previously considered.
Comments, suggestions and useful data sources are most welcome!
CMDR Aleks Zuno
Imperial Navy Intervention and Rescue
An INIV prototype of this has been supplying me with very nice locations for quite a while. Following some very successful experiments in finding locations for other Commanders, including one for whom we replaced a four-system circuit with a single eight-faction Starport, we built it into a comprehensive utility for all to enjoy.
Searching
The primary goal of the INTRA Search utility is to find a Shop system with as many useful factions as it can, from which Massacre missions can be obtained, all of which concern a single Arena system with good places to hunt.- Eligible system pairs are tracked constantly by monitoring EDDN faction activity over time.
- Pairs are ranked by accounting for the number of useful factions, Supercruise distances, CNB/RES presence and Powerplay effects.
- Many further options are available for filtering the Shop and the Arena, and using Hyperspace distance to affect the ranking.
Faction states which impact negatively the offering of pirate Massacre missions—or other conditions which prevent said missions—will cause a faction to be considered not useful within a given Shop. Being at war is a common temporary reason, while being an Anarchy faction precludes Shop usefulness permanently. Conversely, one Anarchy faction is required for an Arena to be matched.
For Commanders seeking only a place to hunt with no concern for missions, INTRA supports searching just for a loose Arena system. As a simple courtesy for Commanders not seeking combat, one may also search just for a faction-heavy Shop system without the Arena constraints.
Arena data
INTRA has but one asterisk inherent to its nascency: We are building its body of CNB and RES information ourselves.- We know some limited forms of CNB/RES data exist in a few places, including for the purpose of searching, but we could not find anything downloadable.
- We know that CNBs can change and can differ between Elite 3 and Elite 4; INTRA already tracks both.
- We know that cataloguing RESs is a massive effort; INTRA makes this as streamlined as we could imagine it working.
Enter the INTRA Agent, a plug-in for EDMC or any compatible Journal service.
The plug-in reports the CNB statuses of systems you visit, and also any RES signals discovered. Using the Discovery Scanner is enough to update the former, and scanning any (personally) undiscovered ringed planets with the FSS will report the latter. This action alone affects the Arena rankings; a system known to contain a Hazardous RES—plus existing knowledge of its ringed planets—is enough to boost its Arena value.
After a system with rings gains a RES report, INTRA then allows Commanders to -declare- the specific ringed body for that RES type, referring to the closest such case to the arrival star. The Arena valuation for that system will then be equivalent to INIV confirming its RESs internally.
For example, an INTRA search lead me to HIP 37735. I encountered all four RES types there, then visited that page to tell it that the Hazardous and Medium were around planet 7 and the High and Low were around planet 5. Of course, ring information declared publicly this way could be mistaken, but any damage is minimal given that the RES ultimately exists somewhere in the system. Moreover, we want to trust Commanders to make useful declarations.
Unlike any existing source we could find, INTRA produces the hourly snapshot of its Arena data for anyone to use. The original data deficiency was one of our motivating factors in the first place, so providing ours is very much our way of helping to alleviate the problem, or at least not to exacerbate it.
The above aside, we want to welcome any reliable CNB/RES data, if offered. Merging existing efforts should be no problem for us, as long as the format is clear and consistent!
For sake of retaining an example:
- HIP 37735 will remain in the Reported state publicly rather than being Confirmed internally.
- We trust Commanders to leave it set correctly with Hazardous 7, High 5, Medium 7, Low 5.
- Commanders are welcome to test INTRA by changing the declarations in HIP 37735, though please restore them afterwards.
Statistics
Finally, and by far my favourite part!In addition to sharpening the Search function, the INTRA plug-in also reports bounty claim statistics. These are categorised by Starship type and by pilot rank of the pirates you eliminate. INTRA also records whether you used a Kill Warrant Scanner, and separates the bounty claims into the local and foreign parts.
If you ever wanted to know how bounty payouts differ between Expert and Elite, between Anaconda and Fer-de-Lance or between fitting and removing your Kill Warrant Scanner—this is the answer. Record a lot of bounty claims, and display aggregated results.
Of course, that page contains a lot of numbers. Displaying those tables visually is the first major goal after this release, and behind any great suggestions or data-merging INIV may implement first. At present it displays tables with minimum, average and maximum for local claims and for combined totals with Kill Warrant Scanner; following some conversations with Commanders, it will be a goal to provide numbers only for those cases where a Kill Warrant Scanner revealed a foreign bounty, and a quick chart of how often it reveals multiple foreign bounties.
Downloadable bounty data samples are also planned, presently with caution for monitoring how large a bounty data set may grow. If it looks feasible, the plan is that it could be archived annually; the first set would be kept updated with data from launch, then become fixed on the cusp of 3309, after which a 3309 set commences.
For some lighter entertainment, Commanders are invited to peruse the Starship statistics page. It is quite biased at present, with the majority of its bounty entries being my own, however we are quite excited to see how it evolves.
Thanks
A lot of thanks to CMDR Vulkarius for making a lot of different technical pieces work together.For testing and useful discussion, I wish to thank CMDRs. Grawmad, Frank Likes Pie and Firehawk894.
I also wish to thank everyone engaging in interesting bounty-related conversation here; I read much more than I participate, and it helps greatly when it reveals small intricacies not previously considered.
Comments, suggestions and useful data sources are most welcome!
CMDR Aleks Zuno
Imperial Navy Intervention and Rescue