Mining excavator speed enhancer mechanics

[kingofaces]

Now that mining speed enhancers have been fixed, I wanted to post some results after running some numbers to confirm it, and show a little bit about how "efficiency" works in excavators. As a reminder, speed enhancers add 10% per slot of an excavator’s base efficiency, or amount per pull. In short, they increase the amount per pull without added decay on the excavator itself. When the enhancers break, you can get the TT value back in shrapnel, but any MU spent on them is lost, so they can speed up mining while possibly increasing the eco of eff/pec stat you see on the wiki.

This is just a really simple experimental design for statistical analysis using linear regression, so nothing crazy. I had a tier 1 Earth Excavator ME/01 and a tier 2 Genesis Star Excavator Improved, so I used each of them both without speed enhancers, and with the maximum number of enhancer slots available to give a range of efficiency to test for TT per pull:

1. Earth Excavator ME/01: Eff = 6.8
2. Earth Excavator ME/01 + Mining Excavator Speed Enhancer 1: Eff = 7.5
3. Genesis Star Excavator Improved: Eff = 15.2
4. Genesis Star Excavator Improved + Mining Excavator Speed Enhancer 1 & 2: Eff = 18.2

For each treatment, I had about 70 pulls I recorded the TT for. This was only done with crude oil and lysterium to reduce rounding error since both are TT = 0.01 per item. More on what happens with higher value resources in a bit

Averages (TT per pull)

1. Earth Excavator ME/01: 0.345
2. Earth Excavator ME/01 + Mining Excavator Speed Enhancer 1: 0.379
3. Genesis Star Excavator Improved: 0.782
4. Genesis Star Excavator Improved + Mining Excavator Speed Enhancer 1 & 2: 0.943

In short, MA definitely fixed the enhancers! As you increase efficiency by 1, there's around a 0.05 increase in TT per pull (r-squared =0.8637) whether efficiency is increased by excavator type or by enhancer. I also ran an analysis of variance just to see what differences could be detected, and statistical differences could be detected no matter what two groups you compare except the unenhanced vs. enhanced ME/01. You can see that in the graph somewhat, and that makes sense since 10% of a small number isn't going to change very much. That's not to say there's no difference if you really ramped up the sample size, but you get more out of an enhancer the bigger the excavator is. If you are using small excavators though, enhancers and tiering may not always be worth it.

Again, this was all will with small TT items like crude or lyst. Efficiency isn't a simple X amount of stones per pull rating unfortunately. At lower TT value items the regression line in this plot will hold true. As you move up in value to other items like Alicenies or Garcen though, the amount taken per pull scales differently. I don't have the numbers handy, but IIRC, getting around 80 Lysterium stones per pull does not mean you will get 80 Alicenies per pull, even if the claim is big enough to support multiple pulls of that size. It could change for even higher value items like Niksarium too, but that's difficult to test without a lot of amping.

I will be doing some new testing on break rates since the last VU that will take awhile, but that's ultimately what feeds into what MU is worth paying from an eco perspective.

 

[True Juan]

Nice work

According to some of my customers so far they see a positive impact on their mining.
Ofcourse much more data is needed, but after first week it seems good.

 

[kingofaces]

Nice work

According to some of my customers so far they see a positive impact on their mining.
Ofcourse much more data is needed, but after first week it seems good.

As long as the break rate is similar to what is was before, I definitely expect current MU to be worth it on my excavator at least. It wouldn't surprise me if MA tweaked something though when fiddling with the system, so definitely worth rechecking break rates just in case.

Also, thanks for having some spare enhancers in your shop. I didn't feel like doing a crafting run at the time, so that was convenient.

 

[Chronophobe]

Unfortunately, like all enhancers, at 300% mu they seem hardly worth it. After running them for a few days and watching them break, the initial excitement at their fix started to fade. Right now the price on all enhancers needs to seriously lower. It is ridiculous.

 

[True Juan]

Friend of mine who is a very good miner says that for him the MU is not a problem at all and after initial 40 pieces he bought another 100 for each of his slots.
He is planning to keep on upgrading his excavator. (It enables him to profit faster). But im not a miner, so I can only take his word for it.

 

[kingofaces]

Friend of mine who is a very good miner says that for him the MU is not a problem at all and after initial 40 pieces he bought another 100 for each of his slots.
He is planning to keep on upgrading his excavator. (It enables him to profit faster). But im not a miner, so I can only take his word for it.

Initially it does look like the MU checks out the same as it did before the fix in terms of break rate (still testing though). Overall, excavator enhancer break rates seem to remain pretty low. Of course, you get more effect the bigger excavator you are using, so there's a chance with the small excavators that the MU doesn't pay off. It's not too hard to calculate what a break-even should be if someone knows the break rate on their particular excavator, so anyone interested should definitely do their own testing with at least a handful of enhancers. Honestly, just going through 10 enhancers should give you more than enough of a ballpark.

 

[Chronophobe]

Friend of mine who is a very good miner says that for him the MU is not a problem at all and after initial 40 pieces he bought another 100 for each of his slots.
He is planning to keep on upgrading his excavator. (It enables him to profit faster). But im not a miner, so I can only take his word for it.

Well, seeing as how your entire business is enhancers, I can see why you would post this. Saying "it enables him to profit faster" is a very misleading statement. Enhancers have nothing to do with profit. Just because mu on enhancers means nothing to your friend, does not mean that markup on enhancers is not ridiculous.

 

[miathan]

Why is the MU so high? The input MU looks pretty low. Not enough BPs?

 

[kingofaces]

Why is the MU so high? The input MU looks pretty low. Not enough BPs?

Part of it is just how enhancers are structured. You can never get more than 1 enhancer per click, so a lot of your TT is coming out as residue instead. When you do the math to figure break-even MU for crafting, it’s quite a bit higher than normal component crafting even with cheap input MU.

 

[Alina]

Why is the MU so high? The input MU looks pretty low. Not enough BPs?

the bp got 95% return (maxed) and 1,8 ped per click , lets say u have low qr and u get 40% > that alone is 2,5 clicks for 1 succes or 0,22 ped tax to MA then mu on mats. But since most wont have the bp maxed they need to recover more mu to break even in order to craft it.

 

[True Juan]

Well, seeing as how your entire business is enhancers, I can see why you would post this. Saying "it enables him to profit faster" is a very misleading statement. Enhancers have nothing to do with profit. Just because mu on enhancers means nothing to your friend, does not mean that markup on enhancers is not ridiculous.

Wow, do you really think a need to make a post on a thread that 95% of the playerbase is never going to read to improve my sales of excavator enhancers which currently make less than 0.1% of my turnover and even those I sell at a loss?

Current price is still under what would create profit - but I don't have maxed BPs and even with that the price won't go down much.

And my post is not misleading at all. If you know how to profit and this enables you to pull faster, you can have more turnover thus more profit. If you don't know how, well then ofcourse it doesn't make sense for you. My friend started with just tier 1 on his excavator and is almost ready to click tier 3. Just to give you an idea.

I'm just saying what I've been told by a very good miner. You can either try and find a way to do the same as him and profit 4 a figures a month like he does or ignore my post. Either way is fine with me

 

[miathan]

Part of it is just how enhancers are structured. You can never get more than 1 enhancer per click, so a lot of your TT is coming out as residue instead. When you do the math to figure break-even MU for crafting, it’s quite a bit higher than normal component crafting even with cheap input MU.

the bp got 95% return (maxed) and 1,8 ped per click , lets say u have low qr and u get 40% > that alone is 2,5 clicks for 1 succes or 0,22 ped tax to MA then mu on mats. But since most wont have the bp maxed they need to recover more mu to break even in order to craft it.

Just compared it to damage enhancer that has more MU input. But many more QR100 BPs there I guess

 

[sponza]

Damn first we were crying that enh do not work now we are crying they are to expensive.
For 1ped=5enh and if 3.5 ped is to much for that then do not use them ffs.

 

[kingofaces]

Had someone PM me asking about if enhancers were fixed, so giving this one a bump.

 

[slither]

I had to dig up 3.7k oil the other day so decided to throw enhancers on my ME-05 and I thought they were well worth it. The tt of enhancers is returned, and with the reduced number of pulls (and therefore decay) it didn't cost too much and saved a hell of a lot of time.

I also got a 420ped valurite today so turned to me trusty old [Demonic Excavator MK-I (L)]. As the minimum pull on any driller is 5 stones the demon can be massively efficient on bigger tt stones (my ME-05 with 2 enhancers giving 10.6 eff only pulls 6 valurite)

As for the markup on enhancers, remember that tt on mining enhancer is 20pec and tt on damage is 80pec so the % markup will obviously be far different.