I’ll just chime in to say I haven’t seen evidence of resource caps either. I’ve tried to do some modeling analyses to predict hit rate of things like pyrite, redulite, dianthus, etc. based on auction sales, MU, etc. Changes in those haven’t been a significant predictor of resource hit rate.
What seems more likely, (though more difficult to formally do a scientific test on), is that specific areas do have a certain overall average loot table, but the availability of certain resources in that table vary over time (i.e., a pseudo-loot table). Sort of like a two-tiered RNG. That can give the appearance of loot resource caps when in reality something like redulite just had a low chance of even making it into the loot table at any randomly selected time. I’m doing passive testing on such clustering, but I don’t expect to have results for at least half a year.
I agree they seem to change the loot table hit rates for resources on a regular basis. But for everyone else, this is how i believe it all works.
Back in the day, I did a hit rate on resources. And it showed (not proves) that all areas have a hit rate chance on the available resources. E.G. (too keep it simple) a Belk and Lyst only area would have, 25% belk and 75% lyst. Which meant on average out of say 200 claims, 75% of those would be lyst e.g. 150 claims, and 50 claims would be belk (or 25%).
Now what always screwed the results (slightly, buts sometimes significantly) was the multiplier of each claim. For example, there might be 1% chance to hid redu. And you got your 1 redu claim out of 100 claims. But if you hit that with a large multipler, the tt back would be significantly higher than normal - but the hit rate hadn't changed.
So for me, with the redu it seems like the % hit rate has increased, or did increase, to be as available as lyst or something like that. When people saw it, they went out there with big amps and took advantage of this massively increased hit rate.
I wouldn't be surprised if MA work it out on the fly when someone drops a bomb. Something like this.
Avatar drops bomb: MA's simple algorithm, should it find a claim?
Look at % chance mining claim chance -> roll a dice -> choose what it lands on
No -> nothing found.
Yes -> Now work out what resource it should be.
Look at table of resources for that area (organised by chance out of 100) -> throw a random number between 1 and 100 -> choose the ore/enmatter that roll lands on
Look at multiplier table for that resource -> roll the dice -> choose multiplier it lands on
Work out how many whole stones (probably rounds down) of that resource -> Show avatar what they have found.
(various limits probably introduced. Like look at total loot available, make sure it doesnt go over that - ensuring MA arent out of pocket)
But i really do believe, fundamentally, it is this simple.
Rgds
Ace