Ranger Archive
Thread: Question to Devs about Grouping & Harvesting
, who gets 50 units off said critter, the lair gives us 12 critters (20% bonus). He harvests 360 units, I get 720. So yeah we get more altogether, but individuallywe both only get 60% of what we would have got solo.Message Edited by JascoSmlee on 11-22-2004 04:29 PM
pkirk25 wrote:
You get the extra 20% even if the other person cannot harvest at all. By not being grouped you are taking a pay cut.
Its worth repeating, this assumes that you don't work as a team. If you work intelligently together, you kill in less than 50% of the time so the bonus for grouping rises over 20%.
Also it assumes you take the smallest group possible.
To work out real harvesting rate is easy. What you harvest by yourself when solo is 100% in these calculations. Assume that you group with 3 others making a group of 4. Your group then takes 8 missions. You now are harvesting at 4 times as many sites. So if you were to have no group reduction, you would be 300% better off. With the 40% group reduction, just multiply the new total harvest (400%) by what is left after the reduction (6/10).
So the calculation is (100 * 4 * 6)/10 = 240. Thats a bonus of 140% for grouping even if you group with people who can't harvest.
Check the math - right now you are losing money by not grouping. Of course money isn't everything. I did all of scout solo and loved it.
Message Edited by pkirk25 on 11-22-2004 04:18 PM
JascoSmlee wrote:Hmm I still dont get what you're saying. As an example:Say I get 100 units of a critter. A lair gives me 10 critters. So I get 1000 units.When grouped with DaveGIf he harvests zero units I still only get 720 units even with 20% increase due to the 60% penalty?!!? So why would I ever group when clearly I would harvest less than when ungrouped?Just to clarify, by 'hunting for money' I mean selling the harvested resources, not missions payouts.
Now I see where you are coming from. Stand back and look out for a massive increase in income coming your way :-)
First off lets assume that your group with DaveG . Now instead of running 2 missions, you will run 4 - your 2 and DaveG's 2. So now insted of getting 1000 twice on your 2 mission, you will get 600 four times. That is 2400. DaveG will help you kill the critters and whack the lair I assume. That will half the time on each lair. So you now are harvesting 2400 in the same lenght of time that you rpreviously harvested 2000.
That is a 20% bonus for grouping.
This also applies if you go to a spawn area like the Sarlacc pit on Dathomir. The natural spawn rate is linked to the number of people in the area and killing things.
DaveG wrote:pkirk25 wrote:
You get the extra 20% even if the other person cannot harvest at all. By not being grouped you are taking a pay cut.
Its worth repeating, this assumes that you don't work as a team. If you work intelligently together, you kill in less than 50% of the time so the bonus for grouping rises over 20%.
Also it assumes you take the smallest group possible.
To work out real harvesting rate is easy. What you harvest by yourself when solo is 100% in these calculations. Assume that you group with 3 others making a group of 4. Your group then takes 8 missions. You now are harvesting at 4 times as many sites. So if you were to have no group reduction, you would be 300% better off. With the 40% group reduction, just multiply the new total harvest (400%) by what is left after the reduction (6/10).
So the calculation is (100 * 4 * 6)/10 = 240. Thats a bonus of 140% for grouping even if you group with people who can't harvest.
Check the math - right now you are losing money by not grouping. Of course money isn't everything. I did all of scout solo and loved it.Message Edited by pkirk25 on 11-22-2004 04:18 PM
I think I see the problems with your calculations.Firstly you're assuming about speed of doing a lair (mission or wild), which leads me to wonder if you've ever seen a master rilfeman in action. I am a master rifleman, and I actually find in most cases that being grouped slows me down. If I do things right, the creatures never see me and I never take aggro, everythign is very swift and clinical. Furthermore, say I'm with a TKM, I usually drop things in less time than it takes the TKM to cover the 60+ meters to run to the target!Then, I don't think you should include the number of missions done, because we need to take it on at least a per-lair basis, because the time taken to do a lair, grouped or otherwise, is highly subjective, as demostrated by my last paragraph versus what you've said.Finally, your calculation is rather vague on what the harvesting skills of what everyone in the said group would be. At best I can interpret that you've made all members master rangers.
Hi DaveG,
Good points all. As master ranger/master swordsman I loved being tank while rifleman tore into the prey. However, I wonder if you might look at this another way.
Take your TKM friend along. Ask him to do no combat if he slows you down. You still get twice the number of lairs close together, each lair pops more prey and you are saved the bike time. You know your own skill way better than I do obvuiusly. But I must say in my experience, TKMs are capable as well. I suspect that if you two agree a plan, you might find that you are doing 4 lairs in less time than 2.
DaveG wrote:Can we please keep all calculations/arguments to a per-lair basis please. I've already said, time taken to do a lair is subjective, you keep saying that as a group you're faster, but there's a reason I don't hunt with anybody if I want to maximise my harvest per hour - it slows me down.You're still also assuming that one person takes the gross harvest home. If not, all concerned are still short.
Calculating on a per lair basis would be wrong as the whole point of grouping is to get more lairs. It would be like saying the credits paid by mission teminals should be the same whetehr or not you are grouped.
Have a quick look at the math - nowhere do I assume that the other person is even able to harvest. The 20% minimum bonus is based on your own harvesting.
pkirk25 wrote:
Hi DaveG,
Good points all. As master ranger/master swordsman I loved being tank while rifleman tore into the prey. However, I wonder if you might look at this another way.
Take your TKM friend along. Ask him to do no combat if he slows you down. You still get twice the number of lairs close together, each lair pops more prey and you are saved the bike time. You know your own skill way better than I do obvuiusly. But I must say in my experience, TKMs are capable as well. I suspect that if you two agree a plan, you might find that you are doing 4 lairs in less time than 2.
Message Edited by DaveG on 11-22-2004 05:00 PM
pkirk25 wrote:
Calculating on a per lair basis would be wrong as the whole point of grouping is to get more lairs. It would be like saying the credits paid by mission teminals should be the same whetehr or not you are grouped.
...
Well actually, with the recent mission system changes, that's how things work now.
I think we should calculate on a per-lair basis because the only reason for speaking otherwise is on the basis of speed. However, speed grouped or ungroued is highly subjective, and not reliable enough to put into a general calculation.
While I'm moving from terminal to lair, lair to lair, lair to terminal, I can track down wild spawns anyway. So if I choose missions packed together well, and I use tracking, I can get quite a few 'spawns' (wildand mission) on my own.
Message Edited by DaveG on 11-22-2004 05:08 PM
You have pointed out something I didn't take into account, namely that your team-mates slow you down.
I assumed your TKM cannot harvest so you only have what you get yourself. Now instead of 2 missions close together, you have 4 missions close together. But you are only getting 60% of the amount from each critter killed. Even if not a single extra critter spawns, thats 20% more harvest to you.
However, you do know a lot more will spawn if there are 2 of you. Also, the random spawns come faster if 2 people are in an area than just one. So you will still be better off but not by a guaranteed amount.
The flaw in my logic is that I assumed the TKM is not getting in the way. If he is really slowing you down so much that the benefit of extra creatures popping from the lair and the benefits of the extra 2 missions are cancelled, then in that case, it makes NO sense to group.
If you are are a level of combat skill where having a team-mate slows you down, then you will be better off to solo. Kudos! Sadly, as master swordsman I always found team-mates helped, even if only with a cdef pistol so never saw the point you are making.
JascoSmlee wrote:
Just to follow up what DaveG says, I too am Master Rifleman, and I can kill critters faster than the next one can spawn when tapping a liar. I honestly dont see how I could harvest faster even if grouped (I use a droid too). If you just blast away at the lair too fast you obliterate it before its spawned all its critters, so you do have to wait a certain amount of time anyway if you want your fullquota. I don't think me doing4 lairs solo would take any longer than me and DaveG doing 4 lairs together.
pkirk25 wrote:
I assumed your TKM cannot harvest so you only have what you get yourself. Now instead of 2 missions close together, you have 4 missions close together. But you are only getting 60% of the amount from each critter killed. Even if not a single extra critter spawns, thats 20% more harvest to you.
Message Edited by Zapper_Weisman on 11-22-2004 09:55 AM
Zapper_Weisman wrote:
As an example, my boyfriend kills things for me when I need meat, I stand back and watch then harvest. One time we had a pistoleer/chef come with us because she also needed the same meat. She was fighting, but the things werent dropping any faster than my boyfriend did them alone because he could spin attack them all at once. Also, we ended up loosing time because she wasnt used to the rhythm of how we hunt.
Hunting in groups and the speed that things get done in is SO dependent on who is in the group. If what you're fighting has decently low kinetic, and you have one TKM, then anyone else is going to be highly superfluous. So, to say the speed with which a goup kills things is doubled when two people are hacking at it, you have to assume that both people are master of the same combat profession AND that they hunt often enough together to know what the other person is going to do.
Zapper_Weisman wrote:
pkirk25 wrote:
I assumed your TKM cannot harvest so you only have what you get yourself. Now instead of 2 missions close together, you have 4 missions close together. But you are only getting 60% of the amount from each critter killed. Even if not a single extra critter spawns, thats 20% more harvest to you.
True. But if you're working from a terminal in a player city or a remote world, you can usually get missions closeto the mission terminal(500-800m) if you look. Doing two and then returning and going out to do two more isnt a huge waste of time at that point.
The only problem is that SOME missions you HAVE to be grouped to take. I dont know if it works to drop the group after you get the missions, but thats more of a hassle than just hunting more things to get your proper amount of harvest, because we'll probably spend more time trying to get back into a group to take more missions. We shouldn't have to do that, honestly.
Once again, the problem comes with the CU.... which everyone is very conveniently forgetting was why this problem was brought up in the first place. The whole system of how it works now and why its justifiable now is completely moot at that point.
Message Edited by Zapper_Weisman on 11-22-2004 09:55 AM
Well, I'm hoping the combat revamp doesn't change things *that* much. As a lone hunter I know my limits. The most difficult things I tend to go after are things like Squills, Gurk Kings, Greater Sludge Panthas, and I never use doc buffs to do so (and only use armour when I'm in trouble). I do all these with Strafeshot2 or headshot3, (as long as I'm not being attacked by them). I don't go trying to solo things like rancors or night sisters, and the biggest thing I've killed are dune kimo's (not GDK's, just ordinary dune kimo's) by using /takecover, /concealand /concealshot for about 10 minutes per kimo.
If the combat revamp prevents people like me, doing as I do, then I prey there will be an absolute outcry that will make them revert such changes.
Slighty off topic, but I've been saying for months, the combat revamp isn't needed, just nerf doc buffs (and reduce comp encumbrance), this will remove the "instant god mode" effect, and force people to group up for high end content.