OK I am going to try and describe how this works calmly and rationally. This game plays with our sense of scale. Imagine compressing all the possible resource points in the game into a single point, they would all be there but the distance between them would be minuscule. Sort of like a reverse big bang. Now reverse the process, increasing the gap between each resource node in the game.. The more you profit, the more it expands, the more you loose, the more it contracts until a sort of "breathing" equilibrium is reached. Am I making sense ?
Its like the avatar is "ant-man" but they cannot control their powers.
Radius2=Radius*exp( n )
We also need a base "construct" that is self similar at different scales. .....
A Sacks Spiral will do. I really like this spiral as each individual point can be identified by it's distance and angle.
Imagine this is what the inner radius of your finder looks like so if you are using a md1 inside the range of 54m. It's a single strip, rolled up in the form of a spiral. It is full of these points that can rotate and scale up and down as needed. Each point represents a resource node. So in the above figure of 16 points, its worth 16*.005 ped.
Just like a fractal each one of these points can contain copies of itself infinitely. There is also another spiral that is relatively the same.
Phyllotaxis Spiral, that uses a different angle which is 0.618*n. N in this context represents the number of the "point" that was used to create the spiral.
Speaking of the points. The In-game depth value could be the number N, thematically it fits as N does represent how far "down" in the sequence you are.
Come to think of it, if this is the case then the game can be reverse engineered.
First a few equations.
The size of the grid = Number Of Headers^(1/Exponent)*Radius*2
Amount Of Headers = (Grid/2/Radius)^Exponent
Radius = (Grid/2)/Headers^(1/Exponent)
Exponent = LOG(Headers,(Grid/2)/Radius)
Below is a list of equations that make up the spiral that involve the points on the spiral
Header =Point in the Spiral.
Header Radius = Header^(1/Log)*Radius
Theta = Header^(1/exponent)
x=cos(2*pi()*Header^(1/log))*H Radius or x=cos(2*pi()*Header*0.618)*H Radius -
Phyllotaxis Spiral
y=sin(2*pi()*Header^(1/log))*H Radius or y=sin(2*pi()*Header*0.618)*H Radius -
Phyllotaxis Spiral
I took the above straight from Excel, so I hope they are clear enough.
In Project Entropia the spiral was Sacks, consisted of 60 points that rotated out of existence one each minute. Quickest way to beat it was to drop a bomb, move sqrt(60)*radius, drop another bomb and mine back @radius along the turnings of the spiral until you missed, rinse, repeat.. Easy money..
This system did come with a major flaw, other players could disrupt your mining if they dropped a probe within your "domain". It was really cool missing a drop and knowing that somewhere near me was another miner.