The Butterfly Effect

It's really hard starting a thread like this and expecting someone to understand it's fullest implications but I will try once again to explain it.

The game is chaotic, yes, this I absolutely agree with you 100% but having an excel worksheet that works almost 100% of the time when the conditions are correct, that is no joke.

Allow me to try and explain this again. The game uses the actions and locations of actual players as variables when determining how resources are distributed. One player is easy to predict, I enter a few coordinates into the magic little excel sheet and it spits out mining hits of a set type at a set location and that continues until I get company. Any action within the same SERVER as my avatar changes the layout of what I am going to call a field or array.

The field centres itself around the location of the action of the last avatar and covers the entire server, in the case of multiple avatars, I can only make educated guesses as to what happens.

One option is nothing, which creates a huge exploit. If I know the origin of the field I can predict it's endpoints. It does not take much to get a friend to sit at a set location, probing the ground with a md1 just before I wish to access a specific location.

Second option that I can think of is to use a centroid which is a very good answer, grab the middle point of all the players in the area and set the middle of it as the middle of the field ... This at the moment shuts me down, I do not have the data of the coordinates of all players and I cannot tell where they are moving to or when their next action is.

Third option is of course, F U you are wrong. Yes I could be wrong but log after log, sheet after sheet, run after run is providing a lot of support for the hypothesis. (As well as the fact that I go hunting for active players when I start to miss but 8192m is a huge area to cover.

Personally I like the centroid as it would be the most fair option, there are multiple avatars in an area, spending ped at variable locations, grabbing the centre of that spending and using as a distribution anchor or hub makes the most sense.

I have an idea as to literally "take over" an area that multiple players are spending ped in and will let you all know what the idea was and how it went.

Cheers.

Look up some old posts made by Kalanen.

Spawn said:

Look up some old posts made by Kalanen.

Click to expand...

I have no idea what I will find, but will do, thanks.

Spawn said:

Look up some old posts made by Kalanen.

Click to expand...

Very funny.... At least I am thinking about such things as centroids, spirals, hexes and the math that goes into their construction. Heck I even constructed a macro that converts points on a circle to a square and visa versa.

I even have a sheet that filters out ........ (not telling)

My next move is to apply the centroid to the field that I generate and use that as my centre. Hopefully that will improve my hitrate when under the effects of other avatar's fields.

Ludvig is checking this out

hello,

i read all your threads, i find them interesting because i see u apply some math skills in them.

this time while i was reading i wondered how is you return in mining.

If u are close to discover the algorithm you should do very well.

cheers and GL !

Antrace said:

hello,

i read all your threads, i find them interesting because i see u apply some math skills in them.

this time while i was reading i wondered how is you return in mining.

If u are close to discover the algorithm you should do very well.

cheers and GL !

Click to expand...

Yesterday I hit I think 4 or 5 XI's of Ign that were literally next to each other. The goal is not really to profit but to balance, to literally get 96% or more of what was put into the system out per run.

The "algorithm" is based off of one that I have been using since forever.

cos(2*PI()*sqrt(header))*64*sqrt(header)
sin(2*PI()*sqrt(header))*64*sqrt(header)

Above is the basic version of the real heart of the idea, which I first used 8 years ago about to gr8 effect. As for the types of loot itself, I merely split the headers into sets of 3 and assign a type to each one.

I understand that I may be treading on dangerous territory as the game literally enables and requires you to "steal" from each other via a central control mechanism.


Thanks for the support.

livius said:

Ludvig is checking this out

Click to expand...

I am trying to be as above board as possible without giving away too many specifics. The excel sheet does not obtain any data from any network transmissions or anything that is exclusively available from the client, everything goes from the game via my memory into the excel sheet. I do copy and paste the result from excel back into the game as a coordinate pair which I announce in local chat, nothing more.

Actually here's a very easy way to explain it....

I tailed a miner yesterday evening and I tried to understand what she was doing, your standard 110m carpet bomb stuff. So I started to imagine how her field / array saw her movements.

It broke down as follows, using relative positioning NOT absolute positioning.

Move forward 110m
Drop Probe till she got a hit...

So lets analyze this

Imagine an invisible claim in front of her, worth say 3.69 ped (27.1%).
Move and drop 1. Miss, her origin becomes her current position. Claim charges to 1 ped
Move and drop 2. Miss, her origin becomes her current position. Claim charges to 2 ped
Move and drop 3 Miss, her origin becomes her current position. Claim charges to 3 ped
Move and drop 4 Hit , her origin does not change. 3.69ped in resources become available. Claim charges to .31 ped

She can now move beyond 1x her tools radius for the first time even though she has moved 440m. Next time she misses, it resets to default, with her sitting at the origin.

As for other players in her server, they see a completely different picture. Each time she drops a probe all these points spiral out from around her filling the server with claims that she does not have access to as she is only moving to block 5 in front of her...

Welcome to entropia...

R4tt3xx said:

Actually here's a very easy way to explain it....

I tailed a miner yesterday evening and I tried to understand what she was doing, your standard 110m carpet bomb stuff. So I started to imagine how her field / array saw her movements.

It broke down as follows, using relative positioning NOT absolute positioning.

Move forward 110m
Drop Probe till she got a hit...

So lets analyze this

Imagine an invisible claim in front of her, worth say 3.69 ped (27.1%).
Move and drop 1. Miss, her origin becomes her current position. Claim charges to 1 ped
Move and drop 2. Miss, her origin becomes her current position. Claim charges to 2 ped
Move and drop 3 Miss, her origin becomes her current position. Claim charges to 3 ped
Move and drop 4 Hit , her origin does not change. 3.69ped in resources become available. Claim charges to .31 ped

She can now move beyond 1x her tools radius for the first time even though she has moved 440m. Next time she misses, it resets to default, with her sitting at the origin.

As for other players in her server, they see a completely different picture. Each time she drops a probe all these points spiral out from around her filling the server with claims that she does not have access to as she is only moving to block 5 in front of her...

Welcome to entropia...

Click to expand...

Now this bit of information I can actually substantiate with my experiences and sheets.

The spirals are real, but largely depends on your timing/initial positioning

I think I can understand what you are saying.

One option would be that the "spiral" takes a shape similar to a natural log spiral, but that would condense more claims near origin which seems opposite to what you are claiming.

The other is that the angle of the spiral to the radius approaches 90 degrees(a circle) as the radius increases. This would create an optimum distance to mine away from other miners. In your tests, this should have increased returns for your friend as well as you would switch off becoming origin(if I'm following your assertion correctly)

An alternative possibility for your logs following your theory would be that human nature leads us(all miners) to mine certain locations more on average, and being a certain distance from those points will have you mine more on average as you are mining locations that are probed less often. Just a possible alternative.

I'd be willing to test it out with you if you want. We can stand that magic relative distance from each other(where the angle of the spiral to the radius approaches 90degrees), both run parallel in some cardinal direction and drop every 110 meters. This should have us swapping off as origin back and forth optimizing each other's claims.(if I'm getting this right)

Just a question... when game developers made this game and how loot is generated why did they complicate their job by inputing location in this formula? Or better why do you think they had to complicate

I'm not sure if maybe you are over complicating the system?
Usually programmers try to find the simplest way when designing the code as it leads to less potential bugs/exploits.

R4tt3xx said:

Yesterday I hit I think 4 or 5 XI's of Ign that were literally next to each other. The goal is not really to profit but to balance, to literally get 96% or more of what was put into the system out per run.

The "algorithm" is based off of one that I have been using since forever.

cos(2*PI()*sqrt(header))*64*sqrt(header)
sin(2*PI()*sqrt(header))*64*sqrt(header)

Above is the basic version of the real heart of the idea, which I first used 8 years ago about to gr8 effect. As for the types of loot itself, I merely split the headers into sets of 3 and assign a type to each one.

I understand that I may be treading on dangerous territory as the game literally enables and requires you to "steal" from each other via a central control mechanism.


Thanks for the support.

Click to expand...

Hey R4tt3xx,

Patterns are everywhere as noted according to EU's embedded algorithmic coding and "dynamic" fluctuations, shifting altercations, and deviations per each VU, thanks for sharing m8.




(Note: the cluster pattern of Igni and copper here in accordance to OP's post)


Pic (pre-loot 2.0 on 16JUN2017) is referenced from my mining pics gathered over a few years: https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forums/showthread.php?278901-Vi-s-Mining-Pics

Darth Revan said:

I'm not sure if maybe you are over complicating the system?
Usually programmers try to find the simplest way when designing the code as it leads to less potential bugs/exploits.

Click to expand...

Heres some code...

Distance to claim = sqrt(time in minutes)*radius .... That's how simple it was back in the days of Project Entropia with the veins.
But such simple code evolves into more complex forms Distance to claim = (current timer tick)^(1/log)*radius

Or would it simply be if randbetween(0,100)=<27.1 then hit (Im no programmer so pardon the pseudo-code)

Doing the above opens an exploit as it should allow multiple probes to result in a success at the same location.

demie said:

I think I can understand what you are saying.

One option would be that the "spiral" takes a shape similar to a natural log spiral, but that would condense more claims near origin which seems opposite to what you are claiming.

The other is that the angle of the spiral to the radius approaches 90 degrees(a circle) as the radius increases. This would create an optimum distance to mine away from other miners. In your tests, this should have increased returns for your friend as well as you would switch off becoming origin(if I'm following your assertion correctly)

An alternative possibility for your logs following your theory would be that human nature leads us(all miners) to mine certain locations more on average, and being a certain distance from those points will have you mine more on average as you are mining locations that are probed less often. Just a possible alternative.

I'd be willing to test it out with you if you want. We can stand that magic relative distance from each other(where the angle of the spiral to the radius approaches 90degrees), both run parallel in some cardinal direction and drop every 110 meters. This should have us swapping off as origin back and forth optimizing each other's claims.(if I'm getting this right)

Click to expand...

You seem to grasp the basics .... But I am using a straight "root 2" spiral ie the log is 2. I like the spiral idea too as I can simple change it into any dimension I wish by simply changing the log. Log 1 makes a straight line, log 2 a square, log 3 a cube etc etc and so on.

But things get really interesting once you start to make certain observations. Like for example back in the old days, the spiral rotating and loosing some of it's points, just like a clock.
I got tired of following the clock so I altered the spiral, by taking the base location of point 1 at time index 0 and shifting it to time index 1. I did that to all the other points thereby eliminating the rotation of the spiral. The vanishing points problem was removed by having the spiral start at point 0, then move to point 1, then move to point 2 from point 1 as if it was point 0. So I basically make the move from point 0 to point x at point (x-1). Extending the array beyond its maximum amount of points broke the system.

I'm still using something similar as it's still a good counter to the avatars doing random stuff at random locations issue that I have now. Except that it is "multi-dimensional" from log 1 to 2 using the same idea as above, each header sits with the log of 1+(point/max points).

Below is the situation and next to it is the counter that the spiral employs.

Avatar moves more than 1 diameter when mining . Counter, move from origin to all points in the array
Avatar changes direction when mining. Counter, spiral rotates to all possible angles in the array
Avatar side-strafes increasing their dimension. Counter increase the dimension of the array slowly per point.
Avatar start location / multiple avatars acting on the same server at the same time. ??????? Do I start at all locations in the array ? How do I do this ? I know that when an action is performed on a location that is a part of the array, the array does not move

LokoMotive said:

Just a question... when game developers made this game and how loot is generated why did they complicate their job by inputing location in this formula? Or better why do you think they had to complicate

Click to expand...

Why have loot pre-generated ? Just generate it on the fly around an avatar. Anything that "spawns" generates this field.

An absolutely brilliant example of this is forcing your avatar to spawn either by logging out then back in again or exiting a vehicle. Most of the time (I guess round about 80% of the time) a claim will be generated within mining radius range. The appearance of a claim is also a spawn and generates possible spawns around it and so on and so forth.

Performing this operation multiple times yields diminishing returns.

You can think of this I suppose as a random number generator seed. Any ingame ratio can be used as a seed for example My Lvl / Max Level, Current tool value / Full Tool Value. These ratios generate claims around the avatar that triggered the ratios. Another example, switching to a tt extractor triggers a lvl 0 event at the coordinates of the change.

Permanently moving fields can also be generated and will be completely inaccessible to the avatar generating them as the field moves with the avatar.

I am only beginning to scratch the surface of what is possible with this kind of overlapping system and will start to experiment with using centroids and level averages to come up with even more claim location possibilities.

The actual math is relatively easy to construct. It's a 1000 point modified fermat spiral array spanning 8192m using my tools diameter as it's radius and it's origin is the coordinates of any action. The amount of times the 1000 point array is repeated is equal to the level or ratio I am using.

What is amazing is when you look at the transformed array, it looks just like a set of randomly placed dots.

LokoMotive said:

Just a question... when game developers made this game and how loot is generated why did they complicate their job by inputing location in this formula? Or better why do you think they had to complicate

Click to expand...

I think of it like this, the system has to be deterministic and non random, if it was random, it would be classified as gambling and would need a license, warnings, blah, blah, blah, etc.

Using each avatar's location and action would create a very dynamic feel, without being random.

If I knew the locations and actions of all avatars in an area in real time, I would be able to plot multiple fields and look for where they intersect. The model as it is now, simulates movement, it generates a static field based on the parameters I give to it and using rules that I coded into excel, shifts the position of all points in the "circular" field to where I expect the avatars to be.

Lets track the path of a clock, there are 60 points that we need to track, the distance between the origin and point x is sqrt(x), the angle can also be similarity calculated. Any person that understands maths will see exactly where this is going....

Here is a quick image of the result. Gee this looks remarkably similar to a log spiral ....

Lets plot movement, the origin for each minute is the coordinate 0,0, lets change that to the end point of the previous minute. Here is a pic, not much different except that most of the points are out of bounds from the original clock, lets fix that...

If we take any points that go outside the clock's square area and pull them inside, we get this. Hard to imagine that it's the same picture with the points shifted.

Thats a simple example of how it works. Its not perfect but it will do....

Playing Devil's Advocate.

Would MA make a game where loot can be predicted by an algorithm?

And in terms of gambling issues, how about them explosive projectiles? I suspect MA is not really concerned about the legal issues involved in online gambling (either they have a solid case that it is not gambling or they don't care much because they don't think the US govt will spend the energy to bring a case against them, or something else)

I am more curious the computing overhead. Remember that whatever we do impacts the entire economy, so the individual calculations still have to be within the server(s) limits. Loot 2.0 has already created some of the most wonderful universe-wide lag spikes And that's just tracking each avatar's hunting actions.

Jhereg said:

Playing Devil's Advocate.

Would MA make a game where loot can be predicted by an algorithm?

And in terms of gambling issues, how about them explosive projectiles? I suspect MA is not really concerned about the legal issues involved in online gambling (either they have a solid case that it is not gambling or they don't care much because they don't think the US govt will spend the energy to bring a case against them, or something else)

Click to expand...

I don't think that it can be, the algorithm can predict where resources are of a certain level. I just recently learnt tonight due to heavy losses that I cannot force a spawn if the resources do not exist ingame to support it. I have to drop the level of loot. The level of loot that is accessible is in the hands of OTHER players and their spending habits.

Eli said:

I am more curious the computing overhead. Remember that whatever we do impacts the entire economy, so the individual calculations still have to be within the server(s) limits. Loot 2.0 has already created some of the most wonderful universe-wide lag spikes And that's just tracking each avatar's hunting actions.

Click to expand...

Who says that MA has not always been tracking the players actions ?