Some utterly insane tests

[Xen]

Originally Posted by Dorsai

Armour decay having an effect got me thinking, and remembering.

I have no facts or figures to back this up.

I suspect it does play a part, and perhaps a large part. Mobs I used to need armour for, as I stood no chance without it, and can now kill without armour seem to loot far worse than they used to.

Putting armour on (pixie etc) still does not improve the loot, as I can now use the opalo I used to use at 10/10, and evade the attacks, so take no decay on the pixie.
I used to love Snabs, 2 years ago, now they are a waste of time.
Armour decay would explain it all.

Now, I take no armour decay, as they cant hit me.

MA stated a long time ago something like "players are rewarded for challenging themselves". That may have something to do with it.

[Oleg]

Originally Posted by Harvest

I guess the ambu test was a good choice as they loot better than other mobs but would an Exo test be more cost effictive?....guess then it wouldnt be that insane. Kill 50 with opolo then kill 50 with valor. Good test though, keep up the insanity.

As well as the fast regeneration that Jimmy already mentioned, I think the fact that ambus always loot (or, at least, always loot except in very rare cases) helps with the test too. Generally when people do tests on loot, no-looters and globals are considered to be non-standard. What we want to look at is 'normal' loot.

[Phil Surtees]

Good test, I'm glad we have scientific analysts like this helping us out.
I'm inspired to do a test on loot difference between drowned mobs vs. turret killed mobs and dropping seismic probes on the carcass. I might even develop a new mining theory from this!

[Witte]

Some possibilities:

There is an absolute limit to how much a mob can regenerate and gain in loot.

There is a time limit how long damage is remebered.

It is just the way loot works. If you kill an ambu stalker queen with 20000HP we would get similar loots. Normal loot becomes relatively smaller but you have a larger chance on big loots.

[Jimmy B]

Originally Posted by Xen

If i and ii are true, wouldn't that mean that there must be a complicated, arbitrary way to determine loot? MA would have to differentiate between regeneration while "actively shooting" and regeneration while just standing there. How would they do that?

In theory its not too hard. The thread linked at the start has some analysis with a relatively simple formula that estimates the cost to kill reasonably well. MA could quite conceivably use something like that.

Originally Posted by Xen

Or, perhaps there is a hard limit for how much regeneration will be compensated?

Yup that's a possibility, that's why another test with a sensible gun but allowing two regenerations is worthwhile. If the regeneration counts the loot should look something like the loot in the crazy tests.

Originally Posted by Xen

Perhaps a better test would be to kill as fast as possible with an h400, and then another weapon with around 2x the dam/sec?

That doesn't work so well, the cost difference between say H400 and HL14 isn't particularly huge. So saying 'this loot looks different to that loot' would become even dubious than it is already. Like Aske says, even with these extreme tests, it isn't impossible I just shot some a string of nice ambus and the loot wasn't modified in any way. I think its unlikely, but its certainly not entirely impossible. Comparing two weapons like this where the difference in cost would be no more than 30% is near impossible.

Originally Posted by Dorsai

Armour decay having an effect got me thinking, and remembering.

I have no facts or figures to back this up.

I suspect it does play a part, and perhaps a large part. Mobs I used to need armour for, as I stood no chance without it, and can now kill without armour seem to loot far worse than they used to.

Putting armour on (pixie etc) still does not improve the loot, as I can now use the opalo I used to use at 10/10, and evade the attacks, so take no decay on the pixie.
I used to love Snabs, 2 years ago, now they are a waste of time.
Armour decay would explain it all.

Now, I take no armour decay, as they cant hit me.

Armor effects could do with testing too yes. Standing in front of a mid-level atrox for a while seems the best way forward.

Additionally, I think Witte mentioned armor as a possible factor after the first test. Just worth being aware that if armor is a possible factor then so was my decay on the attachments (scope+lasers were decaying 2.78 ped per kill, which was about the same as the armor).

I've also noticed loot 'seeming' to be affected by armor. I pumped about 320 ped into dome 10 (tiny mobs - pluma & prancer stalkers) wearing Zombie+5B. Loot was very good, 420ish back in tt. I then did the same in whatever dome the Snable + Exaro stalkers live in (dome 5 iirc). I hadn't brought any acid armor so I went naked. Loot was really really bad, about 120 ped back from 320 ped. Its not necessarily down to the armor, could be a bad run, but that's a really terrible run for that amount of mobs killed - 120 back from a similar sized run on formicacida, sure it happens but then I haven't killed so many mobs.

Originally Posted by Oleg

As well as the fast regeneration that Jimmy already mentioned, I think the fact that ambus always loot (or, at least, always loot except in very rare cases) helps with the test too.

Yeah it'd be interesting to know what the criteria for always loot is now. Given the regeneration thing with ambus, it could be that an occasional quick kill pushes it into no-loot territory which would be interesting. I had a hypothesis that if it costs more than 5 ped to kill it, each mob gives you at least 10% of that back. If it costs less than 5 ped it can no-loot. But that was pretty much a random thought

[Johned]

Originally Posted by Jimmy B

Conclusion, Part 2

Not looting the mobs you kill is a bad strategy.

Out of all of the experiments you have done and all of the valuable informtion you have provided to the community this is priceless.

Good work Jimmy

[Jimmy B]

Originally Posted by Johned

Out of all of the experiments you have done and all of the valuable informtion you have provided to the community this is priceless.

Good work Jimmy

Never hurts to remind oneself of the basics

[Nicole]

I think this fits in here!


I have noticed while hunting spiders and King fishers that have huge critical hit, that after dieing from one , and tping back and killing it I have a very good chance to global or even hof. I have gotten a lot this way!

Don’t know if it’s the more decay because of the regeneration or maybe even a kill bonus because the mob needed a ch to kill you and you came back and killed it!




Also it should be noted that after unlocking KS , my loots have seemed to go down on average, dont know if that is because of less cost to kill the mobs.

Less cost = less loot??? Less risk = Less possible wins?

[Jimmy B]

Originally Posted by Witte

Some possibilities:

There is an absolute limit to how much a mob can regenerate and gain in loot.

There is a time limit how long damage is remebered.

It is just the way loot works. If you kill an ambu stalker queen with 20000HP we would get similar loots. Normal loot becomes relatively smaller but you have a larger chance on big loots.

All are possibilities yes.

It'd be interesting to know what the ubers think of the last one. Daspletor Stalkers have 16990 HP (comparable to the first test) - what's the smallest loot you can get off one of them? Daspletor Young have 7800 HP (comparable to the UL1 test) - what's the smallest loot you can get off one of them?

Originally Posted by Nicole

I have noticed while hunting spiders and King fishers that have huge critical hit, that after dieing from one , and tping back and killing it I have a very good chance to global or even hof. I have gotten a lot this way!

Don’t know if it’s the more decay because of the regeneration or maybe even a kill bonus because the mob needed a ch to kill you and you came back and killed it!

Cheers Nicole, all worth bearing in mind.

Originally Posted by Nicole

Also it should be noted that after unlocking KS , my loots have seemed to go down on average, dont know if that is because of less cost to kill the mobs.

Less cost = less loot??? Less risk = Less possible wins?

It could be, but I've often noticed a period of bad loot immediately after an unlocked skill or a HP gain. So it could also be something like that. Does KS really reduce your cost to kill that much? Each 1000 points is only 1 level to your damage professions which wouldn't seem to make a vast difference to your economy really.

[Shaggy]

So mabey the damage/pec of a gun isnt that important? Mabey using a UL gun at level 1 wont cause you to lose more ped on hunts? If ma does compansate with higher loots for being less efficiant is there a point to being efficiant?

It seems to me that finding the cheapest way to kill a mob results in a smaller loss of ped overtime but mabey im wrong. If there is a loot multiplier for people who spend more killing a mob, it isnt enought to make hunting with ep-50 at level 20 as eco as korss. I don't think its enought to justify hunting ambu with korss either but mabey I'm wrong about that too.

+rep to JimmyB for doing this test,
now we know that pumping hundreds of ped into an ambu wont automatically give you a global, but it may raise you loot a bit to compensate.