Mining skills questions

[Spartanius]

Skills modifying ore extraction:

Advanced materials collection (+3% RO production per planet per rank. 10% if you are trader specialist)
Interstellar Commerce (+10% resource production per rank on all planets with a matter transmitter)
Power Generation (+2% resource production per rank and factory efficiency per rank)



Other things modifying ore extraction

Specialty - Trader (starts out with 10% RO extraction where other races have 0)
Building - Orbital refinery (10% increase to a planet's resource production)


Ok so we now understand that each rank of advanced materials collection allows access to more of an already decided value of a planet rather than multiplying a base value. This makes the skill 10 times more efficient.

Question 1: Is this also how other skills work? Are they just allowing access to an unseen value or do they multiply a base value? Skills: Power generation and interstellar commerce.

Question 2: If they are modifiers and multiply the planets base value do they multiply the value which you already have access to or do they multiply the planets complete value? For example if a planet has a value of 100 RO and you are able to access 10% or 10 of it right now and you have a matter transmitter on the planet allowing 10% more production does that give you 100*1.1 or does it give you 10*1.1 ?

Question 3: Does this work the same with an orbital refinery? Does it reveal/allow access to more of a value or multiply a base value.

Question 4: Do any of the skills modify the bonus given by an orbital refinery? If not I think the orbital refinery needs a major bonus. Give it like 50% or 100% to mineral production.

Question 5: In version .75b didn't advanced materials collection modify both CO and RO collection? Does it not do this anymore? :(

[Spartanius]

Oh one other question: Do skills compound on each other like in eve online or do they just add together. So if you have rank 9 in power gen and interstellar is it just a 108% bonus or would it be like a 124% bonus. (90*1.18+18)

[Tsagoth]

As a general rule, but not always, a bonus is calculated on an interim value which includes the previous bonus. So if the planet was 100CO and you got two bonuses of 5% and 10% it would be calculated as:
newval = 100x1.1x1.05 rather than newval = 100x1.1 + 100x1.05;

As one of the exceptions, the MT provides it's 10% off the base value with no further bonus applied. So the AMC does not stack with the MT bonus, but will stack with PwrGen.

Generally, percentages are a bonus to a base, rather than a slice of a static value. That base is the value to which you have access, not the full rate. Combat is an exception, you start with the full base values of the ship.

As for Q5, AMC does not currently apply to CO. This might be incorrect, I will check with Lee as to whether it should apply to CO as well.

[Spartanius]

As one of the exceptions, the MT provides it's 10% off the base value with no further bonus applied. So the AMC does not stack with the MT bonus, but will stack with PwrGen.Wait, but AMC isn't a modifier. Zark said it just allows access to more of the RO value at the planet. How can it stack with anything then?

[Tsagoth]

Perhaps I misspoke. AMC alters the base value upon which bonuses stack. So PwrGen is calculated on the value which results from AMC as applied to the base RO value. Thus as your AMC skill rises, the absolute value bonus from something like PwrGen will increase because the base value upon which PwrGen is calculated will increase, while the percentage bonus stays the same. I think of this as stacking.

Edit: So when I say that AMC does not stack with MT, I mean that the base value of RO to which AMC gives you access does not include the extra RO applied to the base RO by virtue of having an MT. So if the planet produces RO and you have an MT and your AMC gives you 10% more RO than normal you get

newval = (normal slice of base+10% [MT bonus])+(AMC slice of base)

vs

newval = AMC slice of(normal slice of base+10% of base [MT bonus])

[Spartanius]

So really then the only bonuses that stack together are power gen and the refinery bonus. AMC creates the value that bonuses apply to and MT gives a bonus but it doesn't "stack" with power gen or a refinery.

So does this sound right? Planet has an RO value of 100. You are a trader with AMC rank 1 so the planet says it is producing 20 RO

The planet has a refinery, power gen rank 9, and MT rank 9. The result is:
(Value*refinery bonus*powergen bonus)+MT bonus = result
(20*1.1*1.18)+20*.9 = 43.96 RO

or does the refinery bonus not stack with powergen? Which would make me cry on my keyboard somehow shorting out the zarksoft website. careful with your answer :P

[Tsagoth]

Correct. With slightly different percentages, I could see the result coming out as 42 rather than 43 due to integer rounding errors. Intermediate results are essentially always whole numbers.

Edit: Looking at the code, I see that the MT is broken. It's only providing a flat 10%, it doesn't scale with the skill. I'll fix that.

[Spartanius]

Haha I knew it, I remember spamming those in the last beta and not getting my 90%. This time it will be a whole new ball game baby.

If I could make one majorly huge suggestion it would be that refineries and matter transmitters don't add to object limit. Otherwise its a lot of research and ores for a small bonus used on a couple planets.

[Tsagoth]

Well you might keep in mind that the MT bonus does not stack on itself. If you build 5 MTs at one planet, you only get 1 MT bonus at that planet. I believe the other orbitals behave the same, you get the bonus for having one, you don't get multiple bonuses for having more of the same orbital at a given planet.

[fieryspoon]

If that's the case, maybe there should be a build limit like there are on shipyards.
I built two science stations right off the bat, but I guess I'll blow one up right now :-)

[Tsagoth]

Well you might want to wait on that. I'm just the server guy, I tell you how I think it works. If Lee chimes in and says no, they -should- stack, then they will stack at some point.

[fieryspoon]

Looks like you can't self destruct orbitals or something.

[Tsagoth]

I see that. I'll have to talk to Zark, not sure whose fault this is, although I'm pretty sure it's a client bug :;

[Spartanius]

Oh I never thought or expected that you could build multiple MTs or Refineries and get a bigger bonus. I am just thinking as a trader if I spend that long trying to get the tech I am going to want to put population on all of my mining colonies and built an MT and a Refinery, and that will seriously hurt a trader who relies on having large fleets of smaller ships for protection if it counts against the object limit. at the 2 month period in a game with 1000 players I don't expect a trader having a heck of a lot of population colonies and spending 1/8th of your time just researching for MTs and another 4 days getting it to rank 9 to only essentially add 20*.9=18 more colonies worth of resource production to your empire is lame.


I am going to work toward proving this is a necessary change for the rest of the beta :cool:


[edit] not to mention it costs 500k CO and 8k RO to build just one MT. The payback time on a great world like your homeworld which produces 1k CO which can be modified and maximum 70 RO that can be modified is.... 5 days for the rare ore and 23 days for the common ore. This is ONLY with the skill trained to 9. looks its going to be about 2-4 weeks before you can get an MT on a planet if you train just for MTs. And its going to take a freaking month to pay back the common ore before you start getting any benefit? Only if you train the skill to rank 9? RO isn't even going to be helped much by MTs because RO comes from planets you can't or will rarely put pop on save for water worlds. This is a broken tool for the trade empire.

[zarkwizard]

Spart & fiery : When you guys are done compiling all the notes of how things work can you e-mail it to us so we know how it works... ;) You guys are the reason I'll never win this game.

[Spartanius]

lol, I was actually thinking something similar. ;)

The more facts on how the math works in the game, the more data we can give you on how balanced everything is :D

Though, I don't have as much time to play like I used to so I don't expect to do well in the beta, which is probably why I am trying to be nicer to cheerio on the forums

[zarkwizard]

The big bonus for a MT is it pools the ore you have on that planet with the ore on every planet with a MT. Also keep in mind the traders goal is to acquire the ore, not maintain it. So spending the 4k RO for a MT doesn't matter in the long run. It will just allow you to build cargo ships and things at newer colonies.

When you build something on an MT plant, it takes the ore there, and then starts looking at the other MT planets for ore if it requires it.

[Spartanius]

wait is it that you need to have aquired 999,999,999 ore over the course of the game or is it that you need to have that much at one time? I thought you need to have that much all at once and may have mined much more than that over the course of the game?

[Cheerio]

lol, I was actually thinking something similar. ;)

The more facts on how the math works in the game, the more data we can give you on how balanced everything is :D

Though, I don't have as much time to play like I used to so I don't expect to do well in the beta, which is probably why I am trying to be nicer to cheerio on the forums

that made me laugh in real life :) don't worry... im a trader... on the other side of the galaxy... with a... meager empire :)