What's up with loot in 1.8?

General discussion about anything related to Transcendence.
Post Reply
rhuber
Anarchist
Anarchist
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Feb 28, 2019 8:15 pm

I thought it was just a one-off thing at first, but loot is definitely weird in 1.8. It's most noticeable when looting end-game bases like Ares Communes and Shipyards. I'll get a stack of 20 or so pieces of armor, or 50 crates of tea, or 5 copies of a shield, or 10 copies of a weapon.

I guess this is a nice way to make money, but generally by the time I'm attacking these buildings, I'm looking for very specific things like heavy Iocrym armor or diamond field crystals. Very often, the Ares Communes/Shipyards will have a smaller variety of items that they did in the past, but they will have stacks of the items they do have.
NMS
Militia Captain
Militia Captain
Posts: 569
Joined: Tue Mar 05, 2013 8:26 am

This is probably due to the changes to enable level-based treasure value in API 39. Maybe it's picking one item and scaling up the quantity to the specified value rather than picking more items. Unfortunately, the logic is buried in many levels of helper functions and I can't find the relevant part at the moment. (Somewhere around CGroupOfGenerators::AddItems maybe?)
Derakon
Militia Lieutenant
Militia Lieutenant
Posts: 175
Joined: Sat Jan 21, 2017 2:53 am

It's a known issue, though I can't find a Ministry record for it offhand, so it's possible that George isn't aware of it. I once found 326 plasma cannons in a Gaian Processor wreck.
rhuber
Anarchist
Anarchist
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Feb 28, 2019 8:15 pm

Derakon wrote:
Sat Mar 16, 2019 6:12 pm
It's a known issue, though I can't find a Ministry record for it offhand, so it's possible that George isn't aware of it. I once found 326 plasma cannons in a Gaian Processor wreck.
That's a lot of plasma cannons!

The last Ares Shipyard I looted (ten minutes ago) dropped around 40 barrels of New Coke, 29 crates of caviar, and one or two other luxury food items. That was it ... all food. The shipyard before that dropped all armor -- around four different types, in stacks of 20 to 40.
NMS
Militia Captain
Militia Captain
Posts: 569
Joined: Tue Mar 05, 2013 8:26 am

So there seem to be two issues:
1. The number of distinct items generated is too small for tables with large multipliers, resulting in very large quantities being needed to add up to enough value.
2. All the items may be drawn from the same entry in the Items table, resulting in several kinds of armor, consumables, or devices, but not a mix.

For reference, an Ares Shipyard's loot table is:

Code: Select all

		<Items value="standard:level=9:x=6">
			<Table>
				<Lookup chance="25" count="1d3" table="&trConsumables9;"/>
				<Lookup chance="25" count="1"	table="&trConsumables10;"/>
				<Lookup chance="25" count="1"	table="&trMinorItem9;"/>
				<Lookup chance="15" count="1"	table="&trMinorItem10;"/>
				<Lookup chance="10" count="1"	table="&trMajorItem9;"/>
			</Table>
		</Items>
relanat
Militia Captain
Militia Captain
Posts: 941
Joined: Tue Nov 05, 2013 9:56 am

I've added a ticket to the Ministry.

It looks be something to do with the 'x=' value in the <Items> XML for the Ares shipyard as shown above. It is a multiplier according to info in the link supplied by NMS.

The value of 6 seems to be very high.
Anarchist settlements, a station which I associate with lots of loot, uses a value of 3.
Dwarg fortresses use 4 and Marauder strongholds use 2.5.
Most stations use a value of around 1 or less.

There is also a marked increase in loot amount between Ares shipyards in level 9 vs level 10 systems. Shipyards in level 9 systems contain a fair bit of loot but it increases massively once in a level 10 system.

I overwrote the shipyard item tables to use an 'x=1.5' value and that reduced loot amounts significantly in level 10 systems. Loot was still plentiful and one shipyard had 37 cases of New Coke and moderate quantities of two other items but this was the exception. Most only had moderate levels of one to three items.
Unfortunately there aren't any non-Ares level 10 enemy stations to compare against although the Ares communes use an 'x' value of 8 and show a similar massive increase with system level.

This doesn't explain massive Gaian loot though. Gaians don't use a multiplier 'x' value in the Items XML. Also I haven't been able to find any Gaians with large amounts of loot when testing. The two Ares stations reliably produce excessive loot in level 10 systems. Something else must be generating the excesive loot in Gaians.
Stupid code. Do what I want, not what I typed in!
NMS
Militia Captain
Militia Captain
Posts: 569
Joined: Tue Mar 05, 2013 8:26 am

Seems like there might be yet another bug. I think "level=9" is supposed to override the system level, so the loot shouldn't depend on system level.

"x=" multiplies the total value of the items to be generated, and there's some formula to determine how much to multiply the number appearing of each item generated, so it should generate less than x times as many different items.
Tiber
Militia Lieutenant
Militia Lieutenant
Posts: 163
Joined: Tue Dec 18, 2018 4:12 pm

IMO not sure it is broken, i kinda like the PIÑATA DE UNICORNIO (aka Ares shipyards) giving me a 20stack of heavy massive locrym armors ^^

Image
Derakon
Militia Lieutenant
Militia Lieutenant
Posts: 175
Joined: Sat Jan 21, 2017 2:53 am

It's possible that the Gaian issue was from mods I was running. Elemental Shift significantly expands the plasma weapon line. But it's hard to know.
Post Reply