Some crazy banshee days experimenting. :)

[Sofia]

Originally Posted by Lerxst

Do you notice any correlation to skill gains and loot? ie more skills=more mobs that loot and less no looters?

Not always so. I have had more days when both are bad or both are good, and also those with more skills and less loot.

[Sofia]

Originally Posted by WoenK

You should maybe try to do that test not on drones but on minerbots and keep away
Especially the electronics and mechanics skill ups are quite good and concerning the price of one scanner sometimes cheaper than crafting.
Also your maths are a bit wrong, a scanner costs 12 ped at TT.

Well, I spent 4 hours on them.. and falling asleep in between, so:

12 PED TT= 60x(20 uses per minute) as 20x60=1200. I used three and a half scanners.

Now, my actual scanning decay was, indeed, 3.5x12=42PED. The amount I lost was larger due to falling asleep, being hit etc. however with 34ped of profit from 42ped spent I would be losing still.

But yes, it might be cheaper than skilling those skills with actual crafting. However then you might as well consider mining a lot as you gain engineering that way, plus you even gain money. Engineering has much more influence on slot machine ..er, crafting stats that allow you to lose more per second by using better blueprints. Unless you own a unique one that has freaking huge markup difference.

[alh]

Nice experiments and thanks for sharing!

It would be interesting if you could guesstimate (unless you have it written down), the skill/hour count too for the different tools also.

Just skill gained in the sessions / time used.

I know this is an eco test, but with your data, if you know how much time you spend, you could show that too, it would be interesting as a comparison

I believe the most eco way to gain first aid is fapping while hunting, transfer some of the armor decay cost to fap cost instead, and get skill for it.
But I havn't really tried to calculate it

[Sofia]

Originally Posted by alh

Nice experiments and thanks for sharing!

It would be interesting if you could guesstimate (unless you have it written down), the skill/hour count too for the different tools also.

Just skill gained in the sessions / time used.

I know this is an eco test, but with your data, if you know how much time you spend, you could show that too, it would be interesting as a comparison

I believe the most eco way to gain first aid is fapping while hunting, transfer some of the armor decay cost to fap cost instead, and get skill for it.
But I havn't really tried to calculate it

Actually my fastest skilling was on Hogglo hunters by serving as a fapper for friends or socmates, or just people willing to hire one. I got about 10ped skillgain per half an hour with ek2600, while I would need twice as more time with t20(L) at its SIB period (I did the experiment at Nea's), no matter how weird it would sound.
FAP-5 takes forever, that I can assure. It is way slower than both of those already mentioned. Takes more than an hour to deplete its TT, and get a bit of skillgains. However I did not do it for that long, I had enough with the scanning already.

Anyway while hunting there can be two extreme cases: either I get skills either I do not. But mostly I get a couple of skillgains at first fap clicks and then nada.

As for cheapest way, as I said, chipping in. Getting paid for being a fapper pays off well if you get the lucky chance, however people these days are less likely to pay for the service and more eager to get three times more decay for themselves just to not make others profit. It is silly, imho, I mean MA takes your decay anyway.

[Lobbe]

haha wow u have done some hard work GJ

+rep

[Jimmy B]

Interesting tests. I'd have liked to see a bit more of the data and calculations that led to your conclusions though.

Originally Posted by Sofia

1) Skillgain value from different kinds of mobs comparing
drone 6.875 pec for each PED spent.
feffoid 6.5 pec for each PED spent.
daikiba 14.154 pec for each PED spent.
(Please note that the data can differ from your results. I used Carebear skill value calculator and multiplied the sum by 0.85 which covers possible losses from markups differing in-game.)

I do the drones almost every day with my classic setting:
KorssH400+A106, BreerM2a(L)+A102 as a finisher, FAP-5, Ek2600 and Valiant+6a.
I get a couple or none of the uncommon items during my hunt on them.

I did the Feffoids with this kind of equipment:
KorssH400+A106, FAP-5, Ek2600 and Kobold.
I got 2x Lesser heal chips during my 30k ammo hunt. And no Korss this time. I had two globals, and lost about 40PED on them, not counting small markups.

I did the Daikibas with this kind of equipment:
Sollomate Opalo+A101, Omegaton TT handgun as a finisher.
I got much more uncommon stuff from them than during the previous times I hunted them. On 50PED ammo I had 3xPixie Shins(M), 11xDaikiba Skin, 7xDaikiba Wool, 9xHair Gel, 97xBombardo.
Counting skillgain and markups, I was breaking even. I did not had to use armor or faps to kill them, Young to Old.


Conclusions: Drones give more skillgain value because they hit me more often. Even with hunting really big Feffoids who were hitting through my armor every now and then and I had to fap with ek2600, I had 1 PEd less decay per PED amount spent on that than on Drones. Thus I had almost no defensive skillups.

Now, Daikibas give ungodly skillups per PEDs spent. However, do note that it takes a very long time to shoot 50PED ammo on them, 4 hours I would say. So it is not the fastest way to skill up, but the most eco way.

I think its much more likely that what you're seeing here is the fact that the Opalo gives you more skills per PED than the H400+A106. This isn't all that shocking, its commonly thought that there are two elements, you get some skills for simply performing the act (in essence free skills) and some more for the cost per click. For the Opalo the cost is very low so the free skills are more significant.

I doubt Daikiba's skill significantly quicker than Feffs or Drones, but a better way to test it would be to take the H400+106 and go hunt the Stalkers in the Dark Knights LA.

Originally Posted by Sofia

2) Healing skilling costs with different tools and methods

ek2600 Gives about 1PED of skill value per each 3.18PED spent on decay. A fast way to skill, however not eco. It is good against bigger creatures.

t20(L) Gives about 1PED of skill value per each 4.55PED spent while at its SIB period. It is more eco on battlefield than ek2600 with its 169% markup, however gives you less skills for that.

fap-5 Gives about 1PED of skill value per each 2.77PED spent. I was not doing this test for as much PED than previous ones, I tried to count the skill per click more than that. I stopped because I was not getting any skillups at all like during 100 clicks. Anyway the skillups are painfully rare but it seems this tool is more eco (similar to Opalo) than the bigger brothers, but not time-wise.

chipping Well, it gives about 1PED of skill value per each 1PED spent on chipping in minus the ESI costs. Surely this proves that standing there and just healing for free is a waste of time and money, choosing zero wait time and 3-4 times cheaper fapping skills means - chipping is the way to go. It might seem that paying several k PEDs at once is a lot, however actually by skilling naturally that will cost you about 10k.

Interesting figures. Whilst it does suggest its better to chip medical skills rather than to actually fap, there is the possibility that the act of decaying your fap builds up a personal loot pool so you may get some of the decay back at a later point, when you go hunting or something.

Originally Posted by Sofia

2) The scanning skills do not give any effect whatsoever. They just are.

How did you deduce this?

Originally Posted by Sofia

3) Scanning is a way to directly donate to MindArk and get literally nothing back.

Point 4 below would seem to contradict this.

Originally Posted by Sofia

4) There was an experiment done by Jimmy with putting overly much ammunition into mobs and then killing them. It turned out mobs can have up to 3x loot from ammo spent on them. I now found out it applies to PED spent on mobs... scanning a mob for over 3x PED needed to kill it the usual way will give triple or no loot as well.
This also explains people with low econess saying lots of decay is good; if you count ammo per loot this would be true however they will certainly get less profit back when they count all costs in.

My test was never really completed so the results are very tentative. But yes, it did suggest that by letting mobs regenerate a few times before killing them you could artificially increase the loot they dropped by a factor of about three but no more. However, this was only short term 'base loot', we don't know how your long-term loot including globals etc would be affected by this.

The fact you observed scanning a mob affecting its loot is very interesting though, it suggests you do get some of your decay returned regardless of what activity you do. I'd love to see your data for this.

[Sofia]

Originally Posted by Jimmy B

I think its much more likely that what you're seeing here is the fact that the Opalo gives you more skills per PED than the H400+A106. This isn't all that shocking, its commonly thought that there are two elements, you get some skills for simply performing the act (in essence free skills) and some more for the cost per click. For the Opalo the cost is very low so the free skills are more significant.

I doubt Daikiba's skill significantly quicker than Feffs or Drones, but a better way to test it would be to take the H400+106 and go hunt the Stalkers in the Dark Knights LA.

Well, I am a bit tired of making this experiment so I would not try the big Daikiba version. Hunting them in LA where they are big and i could use the same weapon setting might give me similar results to what I had on Feffoids. I have more Evade than Dodge so I literally get hit less by melee mobs. As Daikibas would go down faster than Feffiods I would save on decay but would lose on tax so the costs/skill value gained might not be exactly the same, as, well, nobody can guarantee that I will save on decay as much as I will lose on tax.

Basically, what saves is the Opalo indeed not the mob itself, which is what I was trying to say in my experiment.

On how I calculated the skillgain/costs: I take into account the ammo I used, and decays, then input the new skill values in entropiatools page and derive the old value I had before the hunt/hunts. Then I divided and rounded up.

I used three 100ped ammo hunts on each feffoids and drones and one 50PED ammo Opalo hunt (took MOST of the time compared to others) as an example. This does not give totally exact data but shows the difference, which is quite obvious, and that was my aim.

Originally Posted by Jimmy B

Interesting figures. Whilst it does suggest its better to chip medical skills rather than to actually fap, there is the possibility that the act of decaying your fap builds up a personal loot pool so you may get some of the decay back at a later point, when you go hunting or something.

Which is an assumption only. Based on this very same assumption some friends of mine hunt/mine by not caring about decay, however they do slightly worse than I do. It is true that Marco had stated that MA does not take all decay as a profit - like, how else would the amplifiers work..? - however we have no proof MindArk takes only a certain % of ANY item decay, and if the % MindArk takes from items are the same.

This is actually a theory that had arisen in my mind back then when I used the OF-211(L) and other finders with lower decay. If MA would take some profit, it would be very similar to the decay % I had every run; By advancing to deeper finders and using amplifiers, the % of TT I got back decreased but I stopped counting at that point as I have work now and I have no time for making detailed charts as before. Sorry.

Anyways, in order to determine a precise result on this we would need "lootpool-clean", new avatars who have not had any other decays before and only test them on one item long-term to find out what % of TT does MA exactly take from a personal lootpool. My guess is that items as amplifiers or melee weapons feeding solely or almost only on decay are giving something back to the lootpool while items with a determined decay % like weapons or tools have a known share of MindArk.
However, I do not know whether FAPs, armors and, say, refiners give any contribution to lootpool.

Originally Posted by Jimmy B

My test was never really completed so the results are very tentative. But yes, it did suggest that by letting mobs regenerate a few times before killing them you could artificially increase the loot they dropped by a factor of about three but no more. However, this was only short term 'base loot', we don't know how your long-term loot including globals etc would be affected by this.

The fact you observed scanning a mob affecting its loot is very interesting though, it suggests you do get some of your decay returned regardless of what activity you do. I'd love to see your data for this.

I did only kill twelve Drones this way (because of necessity to move away from dense spawn/other payers) so it is not much of a fine experiment. Well, here you go, maturity 01-02:
1. 0.00
2. 1.84
3. 1.93
4. 0.00
5. 21.33
6. 0.00
7. 6.89
8. 0.61
9. 0.00
10. 2.35
11. 2.26
12. 0.00

Now, I get about 0.75 to 2.20 usually, which means most of the loots were around the maximum value. Drones 4-8 are killed one after another es they spawned onto me like that. Others were killed separately.

That still does not mean you will "keep" this TT in case if it does not go to your lootpool after all.

It might as well be that system has a double accounting system where it gives back a certain % of the cost contributed (the % of return can change at different login or play times for some reason), which is especially weird as the return literally gets "fixed" if you do similar size runs.. during my Drone runs 21-30 all except 30 and 26 were giving me one or more minis when my initial 10k light energy cell stack was nearly depleted , and if the run started very well I had several of them, if it was average the correction was also mediocre and if it was really bad I would most likely get no fix at all. So this is the "playtime return %" set as a gambit for each stack of ammo you use. Relogging can sometimes reset the values, especially if you do that repeatedly or after a longer break.
....
Back to the subject. So you get back that % of your TT decay and ammo/stackables, etc. However the part which goes back to your personal lootpool is predetermined. You may have TT profit from MA at some point, or MA have insane TT profit from you at some point, but the system should even this difference out in longer term. This is why players (me also) might get less return after or before large HOFs.
This makes two theories:
1) All decays contributes to the lootpool so players should not worry about eco;
2) What you get back is pre-determined so you should spend on decay as little as possible.

While I do not know whether all decays contribute to lootpool and how much exactly do they give to MA, I will hold onto version 2). However this really needs some serious testing, unfortunately I don't feel like depositing ever again so it won't be me doing this. I could however try to determine the % of decay MA takes from using the OA-101 amplifiers.

Also I would like to hear opinions/receive data from people constantly using healing tools as fappers/sweater healers about whether that does affect their lootpool in other activities.

[Immortal]

Read the fapskilling thread. (how did you miss it )

As with dockangey's fapskilling thread, and jimmy's scanning test thread, with regards to skills gains, there seems to be a minimum skill gain that can be achieved for each action (doer's high skill gain/ped spent on impfap is a high proportion, jimmy's high skill gain/ped spent using TT give high ratio but overall a very low skill gain/time increment). I wonder if fap-value is incorporated into loot - i can say with some testing with battle scanning is that there seems to be heightened loot near the scanning action (for example, 7 ped in two cases instead of 5 for the same mobs, when 7 ped was -never- achieved without some scanning) - when I say near, it does not necessarily mean "in the next loot".

I think you'd need to do much bigger tests (I have been doing 400ped ammo runs +half a ur-125+~100ped armor decay+150ped weapon+amp decay). Looking at individual loots I feel is subject to Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
(and don't try calling me out on where and where I can not apply :p)
Just doing an action once, then expecting it to directly affect the next loot is shortsighted. It is also hard to track (unbelievably hard) when such small amounts of data is use (for a start, the skill scanner has a resolution of 0.01ped - this translates to a value resolution of 0.7 i.e. your figures should be

1±0.7ped of skill for XXX ped spent

Since good experiments require you to have a uncertainty at the same resolution, your figure is
1±1ped of skill per XXXX (actually, it's probably worse since you're talking about inverses here - and inverse uncertainties usually are grossly uncertain (there is uncertainty in the uncertainty))

If you want your figures to have meaning, you need to get uncertainty down. A lot. To do this, you should do N runs, and average giving you sqrt(N)/N uncertainty. N must be >34 (because your first run has uncertainty in the uncertainty). Either that or find some other way to reduce the likelihood of anomalous results.

[Sofia]

Originally Posted by Immortal

If you want your figures to have meaning, you need to get uncertainty down. A lot. To do this, you should do N runs, and average giving you sqrt(N)/N uncertainty. N must be >34 (because your first run has uncertainty in the uncertainty). Either that or find some other way to reduce the likelihood of anomalous results.

Originally Posted by Sofia

However this really needs some serious testing, unfortunately I don't feel like depositing ever again so it won't be me doing this.

....