Rifleman Archive
Thread: Rating Food: Eaca Dioheps theory of Relative Efficiency and Buff Calculator **WARNING MATH INSID
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beamstalk
Fri Feb 27, 2004 11:21 am
#1
Eaca wrote:
Hmm, according to my calculator up there... if I can get a factional music and dance buff (125%) and using the food I have in my backpack now, I could have over 3600 mind and 5400 focus and willpower for 6 minutes...
Heh, gonna have to take a screen shot of that
I want to see that too, send me a tell ingame when you do this 
Great posts by the way, should replace the old the food info in the FAQ.
Eaca
Fri Feb 27, 2004 1:03 pm
#2
Copied from the chef forum where I've been playing some lately:
Some of you may recall me posting some interesting experiments I did with some VB over the last few days dealing with determining just how long it takes the stomach to digest food. Some of you may be wondering why a non-chef type person would sit around suffering sheer bordom day after day in the cantina watching food digest when she could be off doing something much more entertaining.
The answer is I was getting the raw data I needed to finalize my system for determining a rating system to assign foods to determin max buff effectiveness,and most importantly, buff sustanability.
The biggest problem I have had since patch was I had so much pre-patch food that I wanted to get rid of it. Food that once allowed for almost indefinite usage now had severe down times where I had to wait for the stomach to finish digesting before being able to re-apply a buff to myself. Also with the new long lasting foods, the generall concensus was to just take as many of the new items as you could to max out the buff, and go have fun while it lasted. My research has shown that this is generally NOT the most wise course of action. New long duration buffs have a buildup cycle where you start off with just one, wait for it to digest a bit, then take another and go about your business. This method greatly increases your buffed state longevity. It also allows for emergency food usage to further enhance your stats should the need arise.
Anyway, the base of my system for rating is the SPF rating of foods and the stomach. SPF stands for seconds per filling, and is calculated by dividing the time to digest or time the buff lasts by the capacity or filling. The Stomach SPF, or what I refer to as Ideal SPF is currently 27spf as determined by my previous experiment.
Stomach SPF = 45min * 60sec/min / 100% = 27spf
Food SPF is calculated similarly, however using the stats on the buff itself, for examply my VB that I was using for my experiment:
VB SPF = 42min * 60sec/min / 50% = 50.4spf
Also the Canap I mentioned:
Canap SPF = 12min * 60sec/min / 40% = 18spf
Note thatthe VB SPFis higher than the Ideal SPF, meaning that it is infact better than ideal.
Initially I was going to use a Filling Per Minute (FPM) system to rate foods, however the numbers that system gave were somewhat misleading.
Stomach FPM = 100% / 45min = 2.22fpm
VB FPM = 50% / 42min = 1.19fpm
So to be better than Ideal you had to have a smaller number, and I realized that for some people the concept of smaller = better is hard to understand, so I went with the SPF system 
This is just the system base though, and while of limited use, the numbers are still somewhat confusing.
In order to simplify it further I devised the Relative Efficiency system. This works by comparing Food SPF to Ideal SPF to come up with a unified number that contains much more meaning and is easier to understand. You take the ratio of food to ideal:
Relative Efficiency = Food SPF / Stomach SPF = 50.4spf / 27spf = 1.87
What this number means. Well a food with a RE of 1 would mean that it lasts as long as it takes the stomach to digest it. Note that this is not indicitive of Filling %, as something with a filling of 2% could still have a RE of 1. The whole number in the RE indicates how many items you can consume without ever having to worry about getting full. Again this is independant of Filling %, as you could maintain 3 charges in effect for a food with 80% filling but an RE of 3. Achieving this requires staggering charge consumption however.
Consumption of foods with an RE < 1 will mean you will eventually become full and unable to continue buffing. Still independant of Filling % as a food with a filling of 10% but an RE of 0.5, you could take 10 charges all at once, but after they run out you will be waiting a while before you can take another one. Alternately you can take one at a time, taking the next one after the first buff wears out and maintain the buff for a while, but you will eventually get full and then be waiting again.
I think the RE can be used to determine how long after you make yourself full till you can use the buff again, but I'm not 100% sure of how to do that. When I figure it out, I'll let you know.
WHY STOMACH DIGESTION TIME IS SO IMPORTANT!!!
With the stomach decay time at 45 minutes the SPF for the stomach is 27. If the stomach decayed at the speficied time of 30 minutes, the Ideal SPF would drop to 18. This in turn affects RE of every single food item. The VB I mentioned before with a current RE of 1.87 would suddenly become 2.8, and the canap I mentioned earlier with an SPF of 18, its current RE is 0.67 which means while eating it you will eventually become full. If stomach decay time were fixed, the canaps RE becomes 1!!! This means you can constantly have one of these in your stomach at all times and never get full. Also if the VB had one or two more exp points put in duration instead of strength or charges, its RE could easily exceed 3, meaning you could always be under the influence of 3 of those VBs without your stomach ever filling. So if the stomach decay time was as advertised, you could concievably be under the influence of 1 BE Canap and 3 BE VB's at all times, and with the VB's being a 400 point buff and the Canap being a 700 point buff, you could walk around with an extra 1200 mind and 1900 secondaries at all times. As it is now, you can only be guaranteed an 800 point buff due to eventual filling of the stomach.
Eaca
Fri Feb 27, 2004 1:04 pm
#3
With this in mind along with some other research I made this: Buff Calculator V1.0(Thanks to sciguyCO for hosting this for me for now)
This will let you play with your food buffs and see the effect on your stats without actually having to eat and drink them. This lets you play with timings and pre-loadings to get the maximum efficiency from your food and drink.
I think its pretty straight forward, but then again I made it so what else would I think? >
>I locked the spreadsheets so only the values that will have an effect are modifyable, in order to make it easier to use.
On the first page (Buff Setup) there are 5 main sections.
Base stats are what your stats would be normally, so whatever you have on your character screen, put these stats in there.
There is room for 4 different buffs to be played with right now. May add more in a future version.
Fill in the name of the buff, the type of buff, either "Food" or "Drink" (without the quotes). Under the stats portion fill in the different stats that the food modifies. Filling put the filling % and duration put how long it lasts, rounded down to the nearest minute. The other blank is currently not functioning, but may some day let you see how long other food buffs last, like other stat modifiers.
Also on the first page you can modify the stomach decay time, to see how food would work if the decay times were changed.
Also the first page calculates SPF and RE for the foods, based on my other posts.
The second page (Buff Calculator) is where you can see how the buffs interact. The only fields you can modify are the ones that list your buffs. In order to eat or drink that item, placethe desired number of items to eatin the space for the time you wish to use it, so if you want todrink one brandy, put a "1" in the brandy column at the time you wish to consume(without the quotes). To not eat or drink at a given time, delete the number you entered.
Assuming you entered the stats right on the first page the calculator will then show how your stats and the stomach will react to the event. It keeps track of both food and drink stomachs, and will tell you you are "TOO FULL" ifeither stomach ever exceeds 100. The calculator currently goes out to the 2 hour mark, though it is easy to expand with copy and paste.
I locked all the pages so you could only modify the customizable variables, however there is no password so you can unlock and change anything you wish.
It is very wide due to the large amount of information, so you might have to scroll over to see all of the stats and stomachs
Eaca
Fri Feb 27, 2004 1:33 pm
#4
Hmm, according to my calculator up there... if I can get a factional music and dance buff (125%) and using the food I have in my backpack now, I could have over 3600 mind and 5400 focus and willpower for 6 minutes...
Heh, gonna have to take a screen shot of that
Eaca
Sun Feb 29, 2004 1:14 am
#6
Crap, forgot to mention I fixed a bug with the focus calculation, so if you already downloaded it do it again as it should be working more correctly now
GA3LA1N
Sun Feb 29, 2004 7:37 am
#7
Heya Peeps,
Heya Eaca,
Say from what I have seen any buff over 1500 on secondaries is unnecessary since you can't dent your pools by spamming rifle specials at 1500 or over. I mastered rifle recently and seldom use strafe shot 2 pve since flushing shot 2 gives similar damage ( a little lower ), also has stun effects,AND has a much lower ham cost. I hardly ever use master headshot except in pvp since most times I am grouped with folks that cannot hit the mind pool, but I suspect that might not be true for the mind secondaries. I will be interested in the extreme to hear what foods you are using since our templates are identical. Oh by the way, I have squirreled away some ryshcate if you need some. : )
T'a Anifi
Master Entertainer, Master Musician, Master Rifle, Novice Medic.
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