Chef Archive

Cant we get uses remaining but on drinks? I really sucks to find some new resource, and try making a better version of your favorite drink, when you cant see uses during experimentation. Food has it, why not drinks?

Nunya Bidness, Master Chef -Master Bio Engineer

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Scash wrote:

Food has it, why not drinks?

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Because alcohol is bad, mm-kay. Don't be bad, don't drink alcohol.Mm-kay.

Seriously, this bug cropped up in a major patch either last month (eclipsed by the stat bug) or the month before (eclipsed by the stuck stack). I distinctly remember being able to see the "uses remaining" when I did my first sunburn experimentation. My best suggestion is to /bug it, and in the meantime make a few practice stacks to see what percentage in the quantity category hits the stack size you want.

Something I've noticed, which I wish I had kept better track of, when I work with Tat Sunburns particularly, it seems the "max" uses is figured at 10. I arrive at this because when I get the quantity experimented up to 60% I get 6 uses. It *seems* like you can calculate that for most things and once you've done that it seems to be valid on the next time you make it too. I do think most items have a different max uses though, since sometimes the quantity % is different for that item. I don't know how much materials affect that though =/ this is just a kind of general indication I use. I usually end up testing by doing a short run or something anyway though. I was just curious if anyone else had noticed anything like this. Hopefully I made sense hehe I'm not much of a math person. 8)

Here's how I think it works:

1) The maximum percentage you can experiment to is based on a weighted sum of the resource stats. In theory, you take each contributing stat from each resource, multiply by the percentage in the schematic for that category, multiply by the quantity of that resource, and divide by the total number of resources.

So say you had this schematic:

Widget: 10 ResourceX, 25 ResourceY

CategoryA: 50% stat1, 25% stat2, 25% stat3

CategoryB: 66% stat1, 33% stat3

So the weighted sum for CategoryA would be:

0.5 * ( ResourceX.stat1 * 10 / 35 + ResourceY.stat1 * 25 / 35 )

+ 0.25 * ( ResourceX.stat2 * 10 / 35 + ResourceY.stat2 * 25 / 35 )

+ 0.25 * ( ResourceX.stat3 * 10 / 35 + ResourceY.stat3 * 25 / 35 )

If a resource does not have the stat, I think that it is left out of the calculation, and the quantity weighting for the other resources removes the quantity of the missing resource. So if ResourceY didn't have stat2, the second line in the above equation would just be "+ 0.25 * ResourceX.stat2 * 10 / 10". That's up for debate, though.

The maximum percentage would be one tenth of the weighted sum. This works fine for other items. If you use a 980 conductivity copper in a crafting tool, you can experiment the effectiveness (based 100% on conductivity) up to 98% before you can't experiment any more. But with the possible exception of Air Cake, the food/drink schematics lie regarding the stat contributions.

2) Food/drinks that do not use components have a hard max on quantity, buff size, and buff duration. The quality of the resources let you get closer to this maximum, and it appears to scale linearly to the percentage. So if the buff cap is +500, experimenting the Nutrition category to 50% would give you a buff of +250. If the quantity cap is 10, experimenting the Quantity category to 70% gets you a seven use stack.

Now, when there are multiple buffs, things get a little tricky because I think experimentation affects each of the "x effectiveness" listed under "Nutrition" separately (possibly with independent success/fails) but the crafting window averages the separate percentages for the "final" percentage. So for something like Starshine which has a strength buff, a stamina buff, and a focus de-buff, internally the effectiveness could be 40%, 48%, and 47%, and the Nutrition shown on the experimentation screen would be 45%.

I think that's why the Flavor & Texture percentage is usually so horrible. That category has both the "x duration" stats (based on flavor, PE, and OQ) and the "filling" stat (presumably based on UT). A succesful experiment can make a decent difference on duration, but the filling doesn't do as well, and drags down the whole category.

3) Food/drinks that use components have two variables: a hard max based on the item type, plus bonuses received from the component. Way back when I first started my way up the Dom Arts skills, I remember seeing carbosyrup and dough listing a buff and duration for all 9 stats. So it made sense at the time that Air Cake would have those little buffs other than action; it inherited them from the two components. Of course, once I started doing things like meatlumps and drinks using alcohol, it seems that for most items, buffs from the component to stats not on the final item get zeroed out.

The experimental percentage scales linearly from the combined cap of the item + component(s). I did some tests with Durindfire using experimented and unexperimented aludian, and while the percentages came out the same from the initial combine, the buff size and durations were improved when using improved components.

Final note: Sunburns and Vegeparsines act a little different. They use "final" items in their assembly (as opposed to pure components that can't be used by themselves). I don't think the stats of the Starshine or Veghash is getting added in, so the only variable is the quality of the other resources.