Rev-Enging Mission Boards

[Ian Doncaster]

I'm at home (i.e. my work pc is turned off and I don't feel like turning it on again in this heat) so I can't triple check but I'm pretty sure light years and lightseconds are floats and worked with as floats.

Interesting. (And entirely fair not to be doing any work right now!)

The reason I was convinced there's some truncation going on of the LY value - by whatever means - is that the revised formula gives exactly correct results for every mission in my sample, and that if I don't use truncation myself I get results like this for my estimate of "Base Reward" - "Ls Component"

There's a very distinct banding and an imperfect correlation.

Whereas if I truncate the LY values

I get a perfect correlation, and a nice round number for the multiplier.

So presumably there's some other effect in the real formula which ends up being possible to model with early truncation of the LY value compensating for an error elsewhere in my formula ... I'll have to think on this some more tomorrow. (Anyone else got any ideas what I'm doing wrong?)

 

[Dominic Corner]

So presumably there's some other effect in the real formula which ends up being possible to model with early truncation of the LY value compensating for an error elsewhere in my formula ... I'll have to think on this some more tomorrow. (Anyone else got any ideas what I'm doing wrong?)

Hi there,

The effect is a subtle bug I just found... I doubt it'll get fixed for a little while because it's incredibly minor and doesn't cause any real issues except being weird, but it does accidentally crush the lightyears down to an integer in a very roundabout way.

There are a couple of other weirdnesses which were in for simplicity when the mission system was more open-ended which reduce reward variety slightly.

Regarding the new formula: I ran it against the real formula and it's close but not quite there. But I don't think I can help you anymore.

Thanks,
Dom

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Regarding the new formula: I ran it against the real formula and it's close but not quite there. But I don't think I can help you anymore.

Thank you for the help you've already given - far more than I expected already.

Now I need more data, I think: if anyone around the bubble can find courier missions outside the parameters I can generate up here that might be necessary to pin down the remaining issues. Examples of what I'm looking for:
- non-Allied missions
- in-system missions or missions over 50LY range (this morning might be a good time to look, if anyone's up)
- missions over (perhaps significantly over, anyone near Hutton?) 20kLs in-system range
If you send me the rep, rank, LY, Ls and payout, please, I may be able to see what I'm missing.

 

[Factabulous]

If you send me the rep, rank, LY, Ls and payout, please, I may be able to see what I'm missing.

Here are some - I assume the Rep is the one that the mission asks for on the board, rather than the Rep I have with the faction (seems more likely, but just in case - I am neutral with all these factions). LY and Ls are from the mission descriptions as I didn't actually run the missions. All Courier missions, some with flavours (like Sensitive, Internal). THT

Mission Rank	Mission Rep	LY	Ls	Reward
Elite	Neutral	14.22	4679.46	45942
Broker	Neutral	15.09	154.17	33215
Entrepreneur	Neutral	10.03	2799.41	30059
Merchant	Neutral	18.14	2499.51	35406
Elite	Neutral	18.32	717.42	50386
Broker	Neutral	7.06	1683756.5	366868
Merchant	Neutral	15.41	347.05	30027
Entrepreneur	Neutral	10.3	167758.22	145410
Merchant	Neutral	13.88	601432.15	200644
Broker	Neutral	12.68	19313.74	43348
Elite	Neutral	17.04	57.93	47460
Elite	Neutral	17.04	1081.47	48588
Tycoon	Neutral	19.61	1995.08	49595
Elite	Neutral	15.92	198.26	43214
Broker	Neutral	16.05	192096.78	147094
Elite	Neutral	16.06	717.42	45986
Entrepreneur	Neutral	15.33	1821.41	38001
Merchant	Neutral	14.25	601411.06	201961
Elite	Neutral	17.44	376.48	47812
Elite	Neutral	14.25	601439.19	329904
Tycoon	Neutral	18.3	266.85	45902
Broker	Neutral	17.46	224.92	36349
Elite	Cordial	19.91	276.3	94209
Merchant	Neutral	13.9	509.76	27493
Broker	Neutral	18.9	1306.2	38724
Tycoon	Neutral	18.93	601411.06	305861
Elite	Neutral	19.91	1841.87	53824
Entrepreneur	Neutral	11.06	61226.94	83238
Elite	Cordial	19.9	121373.77	337107
Elite	Neutral	12.1	13528.09	51277
Elite	Neutral	7.53	14116.68	42576
Broker	Neutral	19.31	593.24	39714
Merchant	Neutral	16.6	80018.71	83929
Elite	Neutral	14.11	97.04	40904

 

[Dominic Corner]

Hi there,

Actually, after thinking about the code more into the early hours of the morning... I'm gonna push for the fix for lightyears to come asap...

This will mess with your numbers a little so thought you should have a heads up so it isn't a surprise if suddenly things go a little wonky...

On the plus side, it should give a very minor buff to mission rewards.

Thanks,
Dom

 

[Jmanis]

Hi there,

Actually, after thinking about the code more into the early hours of the morning... I'm gonna push for the fix for lightyears to come asap...

This will mess with your numbers a little so thought you should have a heads up so it isn't a surprise if suddenly things go a little wonky...

On the plus side, it should give a very minor buff to mission rewards.

Thanks,
Dom

I smell a potential "Multiply by zero" case

Quick and somewhat unrelated note; I've noticed little changes here and there either sneak in unmentioned on patch notes, or potentially come in even between updates. Can some aspects of the mission boards be tweaked without requiring any downtime/being part of a patch cycle?

 

[Dominic Corner]

Can some aspects of the mission boards be tweaked without requiring any downtime/being part of a patch cycle?

Hi there,

Mission boards are completely decoupled from client updates.

Templates live in the web (No downtime or patch) and generation is handled on the missions server (Server downtime but can be a rolling reboot so invisible).

The client only needs to know about changes which affect it directly like new types of information it needs to display or new mission progression elements.

Thanks,
Dom

 

[Viajero]

On the plus side, it should give a very minor buff to mission rewards.

On the topic of rewards, as you may be (or not) aware, there has been significant feedback during the FC beta requesting a better balancing of cr rewards/revenue sources, i.e. missions cr rewards, combat/bounty revenue, mining revenue, trading revenue, explo revenue etc. Any info you can share if any kind of cr reward general re-balancing discussions may be going on in the team atm?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

This one was a bit tougher, but I've got the formula for (non-follow-up, non-wing) allied cargo delivery missions.

EDIT: based on the conversation below about courier missions and assuming that Ls aren't rounded here (but continuing to model LY as rounded for now for convenience) I've adjusted a few parameters, differences highlighted:
C2 = raw unrounded Ls
=10000+FLOOR(((A2/9))*(1029570+(3.96*K2)+(27720*J2))+(7.925*C2)))
Still not perfect but it now gives within about 50 credits at all times and usually within 20

Interestingly, assuming Ls were unrounded (as works for courier) turned out to be the wrong thing to do with these missions.

I noticed that there was a common factor of about 3.96 in the calculation, which is 9 (number of ranks) * 4 (a number) * 1.1 (the factor of the board flip), so I shuffled that around a bit to get
=10000+FLOOR(1.1*(0.4*rank)*(260000 + (Cargo Value) + (7000 * adjusted LY) + (2 * adjusted Ls))
...and allowing for a couple of records which I think are probably data entry problems on my side, this now gives either the exact answer or just one credit off for Allied cargo missions.

The adjustment to Ls needed is, however, a bit weird: I needed to round it down to the next lowest multiple of 5 (so e.g. 15.00 -> 19.99 are all counted as 15) to take out some 'stepped' errors. Based on what Dominic has said this clearly isn't what's actually happening and it's presumably a consequence of my payment factors being out by a constant multiple, and the final conversion to an integer number of credits therefore having the same overall effect in the end ... but the formula does nevertheless work.

 

[Retropolitan]

 

[Jmanis]

(First things first, no number-running recently, because I've got multiple conflicts of interest going on)

So, I've noticed two interesting things just recently while running Hijack missions recently.
1. There's two "types"; A normal "space" one, and one with a surface/horizons marker. The two are pretty indistinguishable from each other though, certainly, stacked as a bunch I don't notice any difference when I run them.
2. There's definitely certain mission templates which can't spawn in certain conditions. I have a host of follow-on hijack missions for diplo bags/political prisoners at the moment ("You didn't get all the stuff, we need you to get the rest), and a small handful of assassination/cargo delivery chains. I've ducked into a system where that faction is at war, and the Assassination and Delivery missions appear, but the Hijack ones don't. This is a little intriguing, as I was under the impression there were hijack missions for Military Intelligence during War state (Under the assumption that they, like many other wartime missions, get drowned out by the oppressive spawn rate of wartime massacre missions). But I know the max amount of chain missions which can appear on a single faction's board is five... after multiple attempts to render the board during wartime I only get two or three missions, none of which are hijack. But go to any other system, I see them again.

So, yeah, maybe Hijack missions can't spawn in the war state? (which is a shame )

EDIT: Or, maybe they just don't appear outside the election system where I got them... I can't get them spawning anywhere else today!

EDIT2: Yeah... I just went back to the system I got these from and they've reappeared... I guess they do stick to state?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Here are some - I assume the Rep is the one that the mission asks for on the board, rather than the Rep I have with the faction (seems more likely, but just in case - I am neutral with all these factions). LY and Ls are from the mission descriptions as I didn't actually run the missions. All Courier missions, some with flavours (like Sensitive, Internal).

Many thanks for these. This I think gets the formula for all courier missions (or at least, it gives the right answer for everything except the ultra-long range ones and the Cordial paying 94209 which the model says should be 94205):
- Rep: Neutral = 1, Cordial = 2, Allied = 4 (and presumably Friendly = 3 and you either can't get courier missions if Unfriendly or they pay exactly 10000 credits?)

10000 + FLOOR( ((1+Rank)*(Rep/2)*1.1) * FLOOR((400*adjust(FLOOR(LY)) + (0.2*adjust(Ls)))

adjust(LY) as before is 0.25 bonus LY for every LY below 10 or above 25.
adjust(Ls) seems to be Ls for distances below ~100kLs. Above ~100kLs (maybe above 75kLs or 80kLs?) the formula seems to change to a quadratic of the form -ax^2+bx+c to cap the very long-range missions. I don't have enough data for a good extrapolation yet - more missions above 75kLs are needed, any rep or rank - but it seems likely that there's another change in payouts before 3MLs where the quadratic term would turn negative.

 

[Jmanis]

Gah,, felt like I was onto something with Hijack missions, but the extreme cases have stuffed me up... I based it off the Planetary Scan logic. There is a random factor, and cargo is matters I think (since Hijack Hostage missions pay 4-5m, where Hostages are 34,000 average price; pumping an average cost up to that for rescuing 8 gets between ~4.7 and 5.4, per mission, which is what i'd expect off the top of my head... meanwhile 4t of Precious Gems (@139,000 avg) fetches 7-9m, again, as expected.

I was rolling with Rank = 10 (Elite) downwards, and a formula of:
=((200000 + Avg Cost * Quantity) * Rank) * (Rank/10) * RAND(1,1.2)

Rank​	Reward​	Distance LY​	Cargo​	Avg Cost​	Qty​	Min Predicted​	Max Predicted​
8​	1483416​	8.7​	PP​	6242​	4​	1439795.20​	1727754.24​
6​	1130490​	8.7​	DB​	945​	8​	747216.00​	896659.20​
7​	1238054​	8.7​	PP​	6242​	4​	1102343.20​	1322811.84​
8​	1642381​	8.7​	DB​	945​	8​	1328384.00​	1594060.80​
10​	2139656​	3.38​	PP​	6242​	4​	2249680.00​	2699616.00​
10​	2194351.00​	5.68​	DB​	945​	8​	2075600.00​	2490720.00​
10​	2375838.00​	8.70​	DB​	945​	8​	2075600.00​	2490720.00​
10​	2381778.00​	8.70​	DB​	945​	8​	2075600.00​	2490720.00​
6​	1016284.00​	8.70​	DB​	6242​	4​	809884.80​	971861.76​

It's close, but I can't crunch the fine numbers (I rev-eng systems, not numbers, I once got the molar mass of air to be about a tonne...)

I've worked out part of my problem here.

1. Rank is wrong (1-9, Not 2-10, thanks Dom)

2. I'm multiplying the initial 200000 by the rank/9 along the way, which is wrong-ish. Base reward is 200,000×Rank, but that 200k gets adjusted for cargo volume and value along the way. This isn't observable for elite rank missions as it resolves to 1, but my high cargo value missions (have a precious gems mission for 6m) is also out by a couple hundred thousand, so I'm missing something.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

=10000+FLOOR(1.1*(0.4*rank)*(260000 + (Cargo Value) + (7000 * adjusted LY) + (2 * adjusted Ls))
...and allowing for a couple of records which I think are probably data entry problems on my side, this now gives either the exact answer or just one credit off for Allied cargo missions.

I had a go with applying this formula for legal cargo delivery to the equivalent smuggling mission - I knew they paid worse but it's impressive just how much worse they pay. A Broker delivery of 96 Combat Stabilisers from Ratraii to Ogmar, which would have paid 1,873,206 as a legal mission ... actually paid 346,500 - about 5.4 times less, and about 10,000 credits less than the actual (galactic average) value of the stabilisers!

 

[Jmanis]

This is just funny... I have war, expansion and outbreak going on right now in the one system, then this gem popped up

Come here and get your "medicine"...

I had a go with applying this formula for legal cargo delivery to the equivalent smuggling mission - I knew they paid worse but it's impressive just how much worse they pay. A Broker delivery of 96 Combat Stabilisers from Ratraii to Ogmar, which would have paid 1,873,206 as a legal mission ... actually paid 346,500 - about 5.4 times less, and about 10,000 credits less than the actual (galactic average) value of the stabilisers!

Wow... surely that's a bug right?

 

[Jmanis]

I had a go with applying this formula for legal cargo delivery to the equivalent smuggling mission - I knew they paid worse but it's impressive just how much worse they pay. A Broker delivery of 96 Combat Stabilisers from Ratraii to Ogmar, which would have paid 1,873,206 as a legal mission ... actually paid 346,500 - about 5.4 times less, and about 10,000 credits less than the actual (galactic average) value of the stabilisers!

Incidental observation... something I've heard often cited by people, but doesn't seem to have any impact on rewards, is state.

The general commentary I've seen historically has been that Boom/Investment "... make missions pay out more"... but based on what Ian's finding so far... I don't think that's the case at all.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

The general commentary I've seen historically has been that Boom/Investment "... make missions pay out more"... but based on what Ian's finding so far... I don't think that's the case at all.

If it does then it's an indirect mechanism by increasing mission ranks, or more likely by making the sorts of missions people want to do show up more often, but agreed, no direct impact (fortunately, because I didn't even think to control for that!).

 

[Jmanis]

If it does then it's an indirect mechanism by increasing mission ranks, or more likely by making the sorts of missions people want to do show up more often, but agreed, no direct impact (fortunately, because I didn't even think to control for that!).

So, something I do notice is that Boom/Investment change the type of materials needed for Mining missions.

In a None state... mining missions are a mix of mineables and market-sourcable materials. In Boom/Investment, it's exclusively mining-only materials.

I have a theory that Boom/Investment might make delivery/source missions use the more expensive cargoes... but if that's true, it's only an incresaed chance, as I've not seen any explicit difference like in the mining case.

 

[Factabulous]

Ah, this thread re-emerging reminds me - I did some more courier missions if they help - I was holding off posting as I haven't managed to get one around the 80k ls that Ian asked for, but in case I don't get around to it:

Rank	Rep	Ly	Ls	CR
Elite	Neutral	17.36	116681.82	166574
Merchant	Neutral	12.6	19839.74	38931
Elite	Neutral	18.15	66755.7	123030
Merchant	Neutral	18.95	169740.05	122774
Elite	Neutral	13.63	245267.61	228493
Merchant	Neutral	15.27	97081.44	93872
Entrepreneur	Neutral	19.86	31639.96	71278

 

[goemon]

In Boom/Investment, it's exclusively mining-only materials.

doesn't fit what i am seeing:

" Mission Mining Boom from [Faction], Reward:1.668.651 cr, System:[System], Station: [Station]
Commodity:Water"

"Mission Mining Boom from [faction], Reward:9.992.171 cr, System:[system], Station: [station]
Commodity:Bertrandite"

etc.