Like many of you (I suspect), I came to Calypso to leave behind a life inviable. Here's to hoping that I can find a new one worth living here. Here's how it all started.

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Phase 1 Postmortem: Expensive Getaway to Two

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Posted 05-26-2009 at 21:13 by Doer
Updated 05-26-2009 at 22:09 by Doer (Added Evader level, deaths)

Tags analysis, dome 2, phase 1, postmortem, summary

And so i bid farewell to Dome 2 for the nonce. This was my most frustrating trip to CP, with fewer globals than in the past. From the others i have spoken to about their experience during the same period, it seems i picked a bad weekend from a bad month (or two) to concentrate my entire experience. Nevertheless, i had the full range of CP loot types, even if the manifestation was smaller than normal:

a small HOF-class loot with an uncommon drop (X5 (L))
a medium HOF-class loot with common items (oils)
a moderately-sized ESI and some small ESIs
cycles between good and bad periods (especially obvious by global frequency)
cycles between small and high maturity spawning
cycles in crit frequency

I encountered all of these things or a subset of them in other visits to CP, and again when i camped Scipulors. In other words, i think phase one of this project could be considered a good baseline for most statistics. Lets get the numbers out of the way and then do some analysis.

Looted Items
Significant items:

HL6 (L) x2 (only ~110% markup though)
X5 (L) (over 200%)
ESI (2 small, one ~100 PEDs)
Some high-markup components

I sold off the explosive cells and all the oils in batches except for the adrenal and thyroid oil, which the tt paid reasonable rates for. Here's the residual of what i was packing around when i took the one-way TP to Calypso:

Code:

Summary loot:	#	TT
Alien Bits		
Alien Blood	120	55.2
Alien Resin	46	5.52
Alien Acid	21	7.14
Dense Plate	15	67.5
Soft Plate	6	21
Chitin Scale	17	68
Aurli Claw	11	49.5
Shock Flsh	69	53.82
Aurli Fangs	26	46.8
Bone Piece	13	96.2
		
Tailoring		
Wool Cloth	1276	765.6
Wool Thread	388	291
Fine Textile	74	88.8
Generic Leather	9775	293.25
Soft Leather	424	127.2
Fine Leather	31	23.25
		
Paint		
Burnt Umber	20	3
Umber        	45	5.85
Yellow        	100	3
Brigadier      	1	0.5
Navy           	2	0.2
Dark Umber	1	0.36
Darkslate Grey	2	1.5
Cornsilk      	6	1.44
Dark Purple  	3	0.24
		
Extractors		
Inferior Cloth	3403	34.03
2nd-Rate Cloth	84	0.84
Enhanced Cloth	51	0.51
Weak Cloth 	47	0.47
Advanced Wood	10	0.1

The total markup of all that is about 65 PEDs; the total weight? 163 kg.

The moral of this story? You can save yourself a whole lot of weight and hassle by chucking everything alien or extractor in the tt. But i'm a confirmed pack rat.

Man, i miss the days when a bone piece or two was the equivalent of a global.

I said it a year or two ago, i'll say it again: MA needs to introduce a bunch of new (L) plate BPs that use alien bits, with the bones going into the most uber. They might as well throw some Electronic Fluid whatzits in there as well. Those are worthless, anyway.

Except for the brilliant Mentor Edition 6A and 5B plates, the development of armor plating has been ignored for years. It would be great to see some special event plates like the special event armors. Or at least named plates. You know, like the Super-Duper High Doer-ability Plate.

Blue Skies . . . . . . . .

Summary
Theoretical Economy: 2.95 dmg/pec
Evader level: 36
Health: 160

Total Output (weapon decay and ammo): 11830 PEDs
Total Cost (Output + armor & FAP decay): 12660 PEDs
Total Loot (tt): 10670 PEDs
TT P/L: -1980 PEDs
TT Return: 84%

Total Markup: 1500 PEDs (mostly the 100 PED ESI and X5 (L))
Overall P/L: ~-500 PEDs

Total Time: 1774 minutes

Detailed Summary

Decay

Armor Gremlin + 5B 777.62
FAP Imp. FAP 54.98
Weapon Imk2 + A204 + 2xHunnir + 2500RS 2240.17
Tagger ML35 + Dante + 2xSE600 + 1900RS 30.95

Defensive Costs: 6.58%
Defensive Time (time spent on FAP use):
8.68% Use time (total theoretical item use time)
5.34% Total (elapsed) time

Total Mobs Killed: 1526
Average cost/mob: 8.3 PEDs
Average loot/mob: 7.02 PEDs
Average time/mob: 1.16 minutes

Total Globals: 34
Total Global value: 3793
Portion of total loot: 36%
Mobs/global: 44.88 (Average ~2/hunt)

Skill Gain

Net value: 512 PEDs
Laser Sniper (Hit) increase (by progress calculator):
0.48 levels
81.55 PEDs volume (86.8 adjusted to 100% contrib.)
30.9 repetitions of this phase to reach Commando (level 70)

Ranged Laser (Dmg) increase:
0.29 levels
67.90 PEDs volume (77.2 adjusted to 100% contrib.)
106(!) repetitions of this phase to reach Kill Strike

Evader increase:
0.3 levels
19.22 PEDs volume
187(!!) repetitions of this phase to reach Quickness (level 55)

Deaths: 17

Home, sweet home . . . . . . . . . .

Comparison

Cost-Normalized CP Camping Statistics

It sure would be nice if EF supported some rudimentary table markup.

Conclusion

The comparison table lends some support to my earlier assertion that the loot outcome of this phase of CP camping was atypical. Both Mice and Adamas had significantly more globals per PED expenditure, and the globals represented a larger portion of their total loot. When considering that Adamas had a higher percentage of costs going to defense and a lower economy on the weapon, it seems likely that in a longer-term test, my results would have been better. This is further reinforced by the observation that, even with less globals, my TT return rate was slightly higher. Even in poor loot situations, economy of action helps reduce overall losses.

It is interesting just how similar the relative defense costs are for the three of us. Looking at Adamas' armor decay values as i tallied them up, it seems he did a much better job of avoiding scenarios where he has lots of mobs chewing on him at once.

This phase could be considered a success, a break-even, if skill value is considered. The fact that it would take 30+ more extended weekends blasting away for almost 30 hours to unlock Commando is rather discouraging. I guess that's not going to be a goal for 2009.

What's Next

Now that i have a baseline for Dome 2, i want to try Dome 1, especially with lighter armor. I also plan on using Witte's damage parser utility to evaluate my actual hit rate and therefore effective dmg/pec. I still feel like i'm missing much more than my HA would tend to allow. I will try one of those hunts without attachments to revisit the effect of attachments. I feel they work as entropedia's chart handles it, as that is what my previous tests showed. Still, it doesn't hurt to repeat.

I will also try to be more responsive to loot conditions in some future phase as i have been in the past by taking a short break when nothing good is happening. In any case, i expect to have better results next time when it comes to cash flow.

It's not clear when i'll have time to start phase two; taking this much time for EU is not a luxury i can afford for a while.