Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => VB6 Mechanics => Topic started by: Steve Walmsley on April 08, 2012, 09:31:33 AM
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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
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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
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Well this will definitely help with surveying asteroids and so on.
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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.
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Is training still capped at 60?
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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!
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. . . . ?
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Will there be an event that says the survey is 100% complete eventually? I wouldn't want to keep a survey team there forever.
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Doesn't accessibility really boil down to how easy it is to pull the stuff out of the ground? I think potential accessibility increases should be linked to mining rate research increases. When the mining rate increases due to research then survey teams should be able to reevaluate the accessibilities of each mineral based on the new technology.
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i was thinking it more had to do with where the minerals are located. Even at high accessibility, once you eat up half of it it starts dropping. Thats because you've gotten the easy stuff and now its harder to extract.
High volume / low accessibility planets thus might simply have very dilute concentrations of the elements. For instance, germanium is a quite abundant element on the earth. But there are no point sources-- it exists all over the place in extremely dilute concentrations. Theres no great germanium mines. You have to mine for something else, and then get the 1% germanium as a by product, and thats why its expensive.
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I have been playing this game for 2 years now and this is my first post. I am excited about the prospect of the mineral mechanic being addressed. Obviously, my favorite thing about exploring is finding old outposts or cities to exploit, but my 2nd favorite is finding minerals. Especially minerals that are numerous and easily accessible, but I feel I probably speak for everyone on this point.
One thing that I wonder how hard it would be to implement: Strip Mining. I know that is an ugly word, but lets say there is an option to strip mine a planet. It could have huge benefits initially in the extraction but at a cost of habitability. Huge amounts of infrastructure would have to be put into place to make any inhabitants able to tolerate a basically decimated planet. Also, over time, the process of strip mining would drastically reduce the accessibility, as having to move around a cratered planet filled with huge piles of excavated material would slow mining tremendously.
I don't know how this mechanic might work with asteroids because they are not habitable anyway, so striping them wouldn't really have any detrimental affect. Maybe just decrease the accessibility MUCH faster?
I tend to want to turn every planet I find into another Eden. If, however, I find a mineral rich planet that I deem to be a "Mining Planet" and don't worry about its habitability rating, my whole approach to planets would change.
Oooo, IDEA. . . wonder if you could mine a planet to the point of causing it to become unstable and basically break apart and form an asteroid field? That would be interesting.
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In a slightly broader interpretation of what you are proposing: We have the ability to alter the atmosphere of target planets for the purpose of making them more or less habitable but our actions have no effect on the habitability of the planet. This idea seems pretty nice now that I mull it over. I'm going to post about it in the suggestions thread right now.
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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'm going to chime in and say that I would prefer option A, with a theoretically unlimited supply of transnewtonian minerals available to anyone able to survey a body - given an equally unlimited supply of time, of course. I recall mention of NPRs undergoing a mineral crash, running out of available stockpiles of some vital mineral in fairly short order; perhaps the ability to continuously resurvey would help blunt this?
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I haven't gotten into the meat and potatoes of the reasoning of the minerals and their use. I think it has something to do with the whole Trans Newtonian aspect of the game. I think, however, it would be better to say that a planet never actually runs out of mineral... just continue the accessibility to a smaller and smaller amount. I mean, a .00001 accessibility would be effectively "run out" but not a zero amount.
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On the topic of strip mining and other ecologically negative activities, you could make "pollutants" an atmospheric gas that adds colony cost with something like pollutant pressure *10. Something very generic, but with enough investment in ecological rebuilding (terraformers), it would be possible to reverse the damage. Some planets may even be generated with pollutants. /randomthought
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I like option B for the re-surveying mechanics.
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I'd prefer A, honestly. I personally don't really like the idea of things being kept from me.
Ussugu's suggestion is also decent.
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I like option 'B', but with a warning when you really are just wasting your time. It would be nice if higher survey team skill means a larger percentage of the minerals is found each time, and it would make it less detrimental from a meta-game viewpoint to let a low skill team have a crack at a major colony world. They'll simply take longer finding all the minerals then a higher skilled team would need.
The problem I have with option 'A' is that you very well could have a survey team sitting full time on Earth and every so often getting lucky and finding a new 1,000,000+ ton deposit of some mineral or another.
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I've thought about it... and now I see that option A is horribly unbalanced, as Gryfalcon explains. And B is just denying the player minerals that you used to get in the previous version. Both are bad choices in my opinion.
Maybe... the chance for a further survey starts at something like 1/4, but each time the survey completes the denominator increases by 2 or so? That would mean the first time, the chance would be 25% normal, the second, 16.7%, the third, 12.5%, the fourth, 10%... Or a system something like that. That way, it becomes less and less worthwhile for a survey team to remain on planet, without making it worthless. And there's also a curve in percentage decrease, so a body doesn't become worthless too quickly.
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I haven't gotten into the meat and potatoes of the reasoning of the minerals and their use. I think it has something to do with the whole Trans Newtonian aspect of the game. I think, however, it would be better to say that a planet never actually runs out of mineral. . . just continue the accessibility to a smaller and smaller amount. I mean, a . 00001 accessibility would be effectively "run out" but not a zero amount.
Ooh, I would love this, myself. I mean, even real-world mines don't usually get run dry in this fashion; it's not to say that they can't run out, but rather that at a certain point, it becomes uneconomical to mine it out further (whether it's because cheaper mines are elsewhere, all the low-hanging fruit has been picked, or so forth) and the people running the mines close up shop. Even the Great Copper Mountain, shut down now for twenty years, still contains some copper even though it's been mined constantly for almost a thousand years, and locally, we've been seeing a restart in activity in the Mesabi Range due to the currency shifts and increasing demand. It also makes it harder to completely cripple yourself by accident or due to a bad start (almost no Neutronium in the solar system except the small Earth start and a couple minor asteroids, for one extreme example I had >_<). It may also help with the NPR mineral crash mentioned above. As long as the extraction rates are low (on the order of hundredths or thousandths at the highest), it would just be more of a supplement and not something to really rely on unless you're in a dire situation.
I like B, myself. I don't think of it really as denial of resources, especially since I would presume that planet mineral generation caps would be increased to account for the new method. It's just shifting the second resource generation check from the geological survey team to the original geosurvey ship; the geosurvey team merely unlocks it now, the same way xenology teams unlock ruin discoveries and scientists unlock tech. A warning when you do reach 100% of the planet surveyed would be nice, but may not be necessary depending on how long teams take to come up with results. To be honest, my problem with geosurvey teams has always been a combination of two issues: low-skill teams have lower yields than high-skill teams (which is fine), and you only ever get to use one geosurvey team per planet (which is. . . not so fine). If you change the second one, you can bring a low-skill team to a planet and if they come up with nothing, then bring in the experts later to review their work with a fine-toothed comb. If you change the first one (say, making the low-skill teams just take longer to do the same work), you'll eventually get what you need in a single survey, even if it takes years compared to months.
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I like B, myself. I don't think of it really as denial of resources, especially since I would presume that planet mineral generation caps would be increased to account for the new method.
I don't think he mentioned increasing the generation caps. If he really is increasing the amount that can be generated, I'd likely view option B in a better light. But so far, he has not actually mentioned increasing the cap as far as I know.
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I took option B to mean that ultimately the total resources gleaned from any given body are on par with current mineral supplies. The change the options presented was to make locating the resources more logical.
As I took it to mean, the initial body scan by the survey craft might be survey sensor power + officer skill bonus = variable % of available minerals found roughly based on skill totals. This way you won't really know how much is available without rescanning later. Geo teams have combined skill totals so will have even better results on rescans and will make greater quantities of materials available but take a lot longer. Each scan is a variable % based on the team skill level but better teams have a higher chance for better results. If you leave your team there long enough you would eventually roll a perfect but after a certain point you get diminishing return for the time you spend.
That is the way I was envisioning it.
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Thank you Steve for this...it always struck me as odd that the dudes on earth could find minerals at a drop of a hat, yet it took them YEARS UPON YEARS to poke around a rock that is not more then 100 diameter at average....
And I vote for A and B.
When initially geosurveyed set the max amount and accessability that you can eventually get too. You of course have a fair chance of NOT finding those numbers right off the bat. For that you need to do some actual work instead of watching girlies on your computer while it scans the planet. So you send in the geosurvey teams! The mighty men with picks! And they putz around, and putz around...and they find things...much like they do now...major amount of the time its just adding up to what the original max amounts are. But some of the time its adding above and beyond them. Now, this goes on for however long, you have discovered (or overdiscovered) the orginal amounts that where rolled up with the initial geosurvey. Now, you have your diminishing returns with each discovery, and by diminishing I mean the chances for the next discovery, not the amounts found. Each new discovery after this should give less of a chance to find the next discovery. And so on.
So you have this :
Geosurvery 'We totally watched some por...er...scanned the planet...sir...ya...'
Geo Team up to original max 'Sir, we have like...TOTALLY gotten our robots to do a good ol' job of rooting around in the ground'
Geo Team up to x chance after originals passed 'Sir, I can't believe it, but Bob over there totally went off the trail to take a leak and found a nice new lode!'
Geo team past x chance after originals passed 'Sir....you gotta be kidding us....Fish eyed sam, you know, the guy who's mom screamed in horror when his mom was handed him as a baby?...ya..him...seriously sir, he's got more of a chance to hook up with that dancer over on Titan that everyones talking about then we do of finding something more for your slavedriver type self to dig up...'
But, I leave it up to you math man to figure out the deep stuff....
And speaking of planetoids, pluto is a damn planet! PLANET! SCREW THEM ASTRONOMERS! Just because you found new ones doesn't mean you need to change the one...ONE!.. old one. pffft...
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you know, just brainstorming here, but maybe resurvey shouldnt be skill based at all. Instead, advancing geosurvey sensor tech lets you resurvey. So the survey status of a planet would be rated as per the sensor tech, and maybe with the skill rating of the survey in parenthesis.
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I see where you are coming from, but I do like the personal aspect of my geo team pulling down a rock hound victory.