Info: Carpet Bombing Tactics: Area Coverage vs Overlap

[bran]

Greetings mining community,

Im sure every miner is familiar with the concept of carpet bombing. One might argue that it is a better way of mining compared to just dropping bombs random or in a line as you are more likely to find 'the good hit' in your target area.

I have only returned to eu a few weeks ago but years ago I used to mine a grid with 100m between drops as this was easy to monitor on the map. Considering that the extra overlap allowed me to have a higher "Area coverage" I believed that this compensated the overlap compared to going 110m between drops and missing out. Now after all these years I couldnt resist the urge to once again drop a probe and find some ores. I did however calculate how much overlap I used to have in my runs. The calculation yielded that i have about 87% of the target area covered looking at the problem in 2 dimensions. It does however have close to 9% in overlap in actual searched area. If anyone is good with a mathematical programs and has some spare time I would ask that you do a calculation using a spheroid with the finder depth as 3rd dimension. As this will decrease amount of overlap. But im sure some will argue that they found a 1000m+ claim at the outer edge of their finder range which kind of disproves the while thing.

Since my return I have been doing the same thing but with 120m between hits to get zero overlap while having some play to have a smooth run. This method has only about 65% area coverage but 0% overlap.

As some of you might know the highest possible rates of coverage without overlap is about 90%. This is achieved with a hexagonal positioning of your probes. This would require that you shift your position by 95 & 55 m e.g if for example go in E-W direction and your next line would be more north, you would have to go north 95m and either W or E 55m and then continue at every 110m in E-W direction. I havent really tried this method as I just now calculated it.

Now what im really after is ofcourse the mythical loot theory . Does higher Area Coverage yield more hofs/unusual loots or is there no difference.

I'd like to ask for the help of the mining community to provide some feedback but what im really looking for is for people to share their overall hofs vs tt returns or bombs dropped (ofcourse amps need to factored in) sticking to either of the methods I have described. Personally I'll be posting my own finding using the 120m system.

Results might give us a better understanding of the way mining works nowadays

Lets get some data in here and see if we can come to a consensus of how to carpet properly

Cheerz,
Bran

 

[bran]

ups double post, delete this one

 

[Shapememory]

my opinion, more efficient use of the available are makes more efficient use of your time. not sure about claim rate, i havnt seen anything indicating otherwise.

probably claims are determined with a simple set of rules like: empty area?->yes, chance to loots says yes?=loots configured based on area loots table,-->position claim in available area

 

[Neil Stockton]

I think percent coverage is inversely proportional to hit rate since I believe the individual ore spawns are usually bigger than one circle. I don't see why carpet bombing would yield better results than mining in a line (as long as you don't follow high traffic lines of course)... I view it the other way around: miners tend to carpet bomb, so if several miners have been through your area recently, you're putting all your eggs into one basket, so to speak, if you're carpet bombing. Since you can find more than one claim in a given area, I'd be surprised if 100m vs 110m vs 120m produce detectably different results (unamped, at least).

I recommend using LBML for mapping drops, it makes it so much easier than fiddling with coordinates. In fact, if you want to space all your drops 120m apart, you can set the circle radius to 60m and see exactly where you should drop.

 

[Sibolovin]

Not sure if everybodys consensus as long as dont overlap - tt return is going to be the same. I would only ever carpet bomb if a small area has a resource. I normally run/fly/drive and drop bombs making sure dont overlap.

Use a tool like little big mining to make sure not. my 2 cents any way

 

[Dane]

I think percent coverage is inversely proportional to hit rate since I believe the individual ore spawns are usually bigger than one circle. I don't see why carpet bombing would yield better results than mining in a line (as long as you don't follow high traffic lines of course)... I view it the other way around: miners tend to carpet bomb, so if several miners have been through your area recently, you're putting all your eggs into one basket, so to speak, if you're carpet bombing. Since you can find more than one claim in a given area, I'd be surprised if 100m vs 110m vs 120m produce detectably different results (unamped, at least).

I recommend using LBML for mapping drops, it makes it so much easier than fiddling with coordinates. In fact, if you want to space all your drops 120m apart, you can set the circle radius to 60m and see exactly where you should drop.

How does LBML help mapping drops as you're mining? Does it give you the next set of coords to drop based on your previous drop? Is it that hard to do simple math and add or subtract 110, 110 or 120m from your current coords?

I suppose it would be useful if you are not travelling strickly N E S or W.