Author Topic: New Geological Survey Team Mechanics  (Read 6396 times)

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Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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New Geological Survey Team Mechanics
« on: April 08, 2012, 09:31:33 AM »
A common complaint about geological teams is that they can spend years on a small body such as an asteroid without either finding anything or confirming that nothing exists. Therefore I am completely changing the mechanics for geology teams in v5.70.

The chance of completing a survey team check during one year will be simply based on a combination of planet size and team skill. The formula is (1000 / BodyRadius^(1/3))  * (TeamSkill / 100)

So a team with a skill of 100 surveying the Earth would have a 53.9% chance of completing the task each year
A team with a skill of 120 surveying the Moon would have a 99.8% chance of completeing the task each year
A team with a skill of 150 surveying an asteroid with a 50km radius would have a 407.2% chance of completing the task each year.

During each 5-day increment, the chance will be equal to: Yearly Chance * (Increment Length in Seconds / Seconds in a Year). So in a 5-day increment of 450,000 seconds, a 100% annual chance would be a 1.45% increment chance.

If the check is successful a new mineral generation check takes place for that body. This check is identical to the one performed when the system was originally generated, except the chance for each individual mineral to be generated is 25% of normal. If the check for any of the individual minerals is successful, the size of the new deposit is compared to the one originally generated. If the size of the new deposit is greater then the amount of the original one, the amount of the mineral is changed to the new amount. If the accessibility is also higher then that is increased to the new level. If the size of the new deposit is less than the existing one but the accessibility is higher then the accessibility is increased to the new value.

I considered changing accessibility to a the weighted average of the old and new. However, if I did use a weighted average to increase accessibility of larger existing deposits, I would also realistically have to decrease accessibility in the case of a larger new deposit with lower accessibility. Players would often prefer smaller high accessibility deposits so this would often be a penalty not a bonus. In the end I decided simply changing it to the higher value was easier. The player benefits in all cases and the 75% reduction in generation chance should prevent this being too overpowered.

For example, assume a planet currently has:

Duranium: 100,000 at 0.8
Neutronium 50,000 at 0.6
Tritanium: 25,000 at 0.7

The team makes a successful survey completion roll and a new mineral generation check is performed.
A deposit of 30,000 tons of Gallicite is generated. There is no existing Gallicite deposit so that new deposit is added to the planet.
A deposit of 160,000 tons of Duranium at 0.7 accessibility is generated. The existing deposit is changed to 160,000 and retains the existing 0.8 accessibility
A deposit of 20,000 tons of accessibility 0.9 Neitronium is generated, The existing deposit remains at 50,000 tons and the accessibility is increased to 0.9.
No new Tritanium deposit is found so that remains as it is.

Whatever happens as a result of the successful check, including no new minerals, the survey is completed. The chance of the survey team making multiple discoveries over a long period is now replaced with a chance of multiple discoveries during the single check.

EDIT: I've also changed the experience mechanic for geo survey teams. They now have a chance of XP at any point while they are working rather than after a task is complete. This because of the widely varying length of the task for different size bodies.

Steve
« Last Edit: April 08, 2012, 09:49:54 AM by Steve Walmsley »
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: New Geological Survey Team Mechanics
« Reply #1 on: April 08, 2012, 10:01:40 AM »
Sounds good at 50,000 feet, but it seems like you might get some weird behavior due to using "original size/accessibility" in some places and "existing size/accessibility" in others.  I'm thinking of cases where the original size is bigger than the generated size, but the deposit has pretty much been mined out.  Would it be simpler to say that the new {size, acc} is just {max(oldSize,newSize), max(oldAcc,newAcc)}, where oldSize is always either originalSize or existingSize?  I personally would prefer oldSize to be existingSize (so a new find could rejuvenate a mined-out planet), but originalSize is probably more consistent (in that whether or not the new minerals are "thrown away" doesn't depend on whether you've already mined stuff).  If you want to give the rejuvenation possibility, then {oldSize+newSize, max(oldAcc, newAcc)} would work and be everywhere consistent.

John
 

Offline Garfunkel

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Re: New Geological Survey Team Mechanics
« Reply #2 on: April 08, 2012, 12:55:21 PM »
Well this will definitely help with surveying asteroids and so on.
 

Offline Tarran

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Re: New Geological Survey Team Mechanics
« Reply #3 on: April 08, 2012, 11:57:38 PM »
Hm. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, it makes it possible to mine an entire system and get a lot of minerals much quicker. On the other, it nerfs individual body surveys and it makes things a lot less random on how good the surveys will go.

Eh. I'm probably just too attached to the old way of thinking or something. This will probably turn out just fine.
 

Offline Thiosk

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Re: New Geological Survey Team Mechanics
« Reply #4 on: April 09, 2012, 12:13:50 AM »
Is training still capped at 60?
 

Offline xeryon

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Re: New Geological Survey Team Mechanics
« Reply #5 on: April 09, 2012, 06:56:32 AM »
I think there needs to be a way to go back and resurvey completed bodies with a sufficiently skilled team.  To me it makes sense that a 50 skill team claims a body is done and their superiors check up on their work a few years later with a 200 skill team and go WOAH!  Look at all this stuff you slackers missed!
 

Offline Marthnn

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Re: New Geological Survey Team Mechanics
« Reply #6 on: April 10, 2012, 07:58:14 AM »
Will the added amount still be capped to something like 1000 for asteroids and 100 000 for planets? If there's no cap, we will be able to survey Venus and be certain to get millions of each mineral at low-mid accessibility. That in itself can be acceptable...

If the mineral check is unsuccessful for all minerals, or none of the new deposits give any new amounts/accessibilities, what happens? Is the survey completed without any bonus, or the team keeps at it until something is found? Do we have the garantee of finding *something* on every single surveyed body? I can imagine the 400+ small bodies in Sol, each with several thousand ressources each. Now THAT would require asteroid miners with default orders.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: New Geological Survey Team Mechanics
« Reply #7 on: April 10, 2012, 12:51:57 PM »
I think there needs to be a way to go back and resurvey completed bodies with a sufficiently skilled team.  To me it makes sense that a 50 skill team claims a body is done and their superiors check up on their work a few years later with a 200 skill team and go WOAH!  Look at all this stuff you slackers missed!

I have been thinking about a couple of options.

a) You can always resurvey a planet but the chance to find additional minerals is very low - maybe 1/10th normal or less

b) The initial mineral generation of a body is fixed but the chance of a survey finding everything is less than 100%. So when your survey ship finishes the survey, it may not have found everything. Each subsequent survey attempt by a geo team has a chance of finding the additional minerals. You can resurvey for as long as you like but you will be wasting your time if you already found everything.

Steve
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: New Geological Survey Team Mechanics
« Reply #8 on: April 10, 2012, 12:52:55 PM »
Will the added amount still be capped to something like 1000 for asteroids and 100 000 for planets? If there's no cap, we will be able to survey Venus and be certain to get millions of each mineral at low-mid accessibility. That in itself can be acceptable...

If the mineral check is unsuccessful for all minerals, or none of the new deposits give any new amounts/accessibilities, what happens? Is the survey completed without any bonus, or the team keeps at it until something is found? Do we have the garantee of finding *something* on every single surveyed body? I can imagine the 400+ small bodies in Sol, each with several thousand ressources each. Now THAT would require asteroid miners with default orders.

The amount won't be capped.

Whatever happens as a result of the successful check, including no new minerals, the survey is completed. The chance of the survey team making multiple discoveries over a long period is now replaced with a chance of multiple discoveries during the single check.

Steve
 

Offline xeryon

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Re: New Geological Survey Team Mechanics
« Reply #9 on: April 10, 2012, 01:59:55 PM »
I have been thinking about a couple of options.

a) You can always resurvey a planet but the chance to find additional minerals is very low - maybe 1/10th normal or less

b) The initial mineral generation of a body is fixed but the chance of a survey finding everything is less than 100%. So when your survey ship finishes the survey, it may not have found everything. Each subsequent survey attempt by a geo team has a chance of finding the additional minerals. You can resurvey for as long as you like but you will be wasting your time if you already found everything.

Steve

I actually really like option B.  Provided the original generation of minerals isn't a fixed quantity based on body size that people will be able to figure out (i.e. randomized is better).  The ability to truly figure out if a body has been fully discovered could also be tied to the ability of the team.  Rather then have the worse team kill the ability to scan the planet they are just clueless and spend an inordinate amount of time searching for minerals that are not.  The more skilled team not only finds minerals faster/better they are better able to determine when the resources have been fully mapped and would give you updates indicating limited ROI of leaving them there any longer.  The better the team the more efficient they are at knowing when to throw in the towel.
 

Offline Topher

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Re: New Geological Survey Team Mechanics
« Reply #10 on: April 11, 2012, 01:30:04 PM »
I'd just like to chime in my support for option B.  Since I first began playing Aurora the mechanics of geological survey teams has been the one system that always felt too "gamey" for me and is the system I'd most like to see altered.  I'm incredibly excited to see that changes to this may be in the works.
 

Offline Thiosk

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Re: New Geological Survey Team Mechanics
« Reply #11 on: April 11, 2012, 03:34:18 PM »
Im not sure I like option B.

My favorite thing that happens in aurora is when some plucky geo survey team turns the 0.1 accessibility of a couple million-strong minerals to 0.9.  As long as that can still happen, albeit rarely, anythign is fine.
 

Offline xeryon

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Re: New Geological Survey Team Mechanics
« Reply #12 on: April 11, 2012, 03:57:48 PM »
It still could as proposed.  Say a survey craft scanned a body and found 50,000 tons of 0.1 Duranium.  There is nothing to say that the people scanning the planet initially weren't playing Aurora instead of scanning and they only found 0.1% of the bodies capacity of Duranium.  A return visit with a Geo team unearths the other 4,950,000 0.9 Duranium years later.
 

Offline Lav

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Re: New Geological Survey Team Mechanics
« Reply #13 on: April 11, 2012, 09:50:50 PM »
Quote from: Thiosk link=topic=4791. msg48645#msg48645 date=1334176458
Im not sure I like option B.

My favorite thing that happens in aurora is when some plucky geo survey team turns the 0. 1 accessibility of a couple million-strong minerals to 0. 9.   As long as that can still happen, albeit rarely, anythign is fine.

I agree entirely! Maybe the secondary/tertiary surveys could have a chance to increase accessibility, perhaps after all minerals are discovered? Or a similar mechanism. . . . ?
 

Offline Zed 6

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Re: New Geological Survey Team Mechanics
« Reply #14 on: April 11, 2012, 10:20:57 PM »
Will there be an event that says the survey is 100% complete eventually? I wouldn't want to keep a survey team there forever.