ManageAlice - more than you ever wanted to know about Alice Items

fronobulax

Developer
Staff member
ManageAlice 1.0.3

This script provides information about Alice's Army items that can be purchased for credits or sold for meat. After an initialization pass it lists the Alice Items that are not available to the player - "Items I need". Then, using mall prices and expected values for card packs, it lists the items in ascending order of meat per credit. As a bonus, it also lists the sales volume for the item according to ColdFront for the past week.

Next it calculates the minimum yield for each kind of card pack assuming that the pack generates four of the cheapest common and one of the cheapest uncommon.

It then looks at the worst case result of purchasing, with credits, a Single Foil and a Foil Pack and considers the impact of selling the results. Finally it looks at buying a card sleeve or tattoo for credit and selling in the mall.

The script was written for the collector - what is missing and what is the most meat effective way to get it. For the collector who has everything or the player who can Summon but just wants to make a profit it will advise a decision about whether or not it makes sense to strive for credits or just sell cards outright.

The sales volume code was lifted from ZapWizard and uses the same file to cache results, although not the same caching strategy. Much of the code mapping cards to credits and so on was lifted from StoreCredit. A major reason to write this was to expand on some of the ideas in my Alice which was originally written to help me decide what parameters to feed StoreCredit.

As it stands I would not exhibit the script as a good example of clean, efficient code. I will probably revise it to address a few of those points. Given limited goals - obtain one of everything or sell cards now for meat or accumulate credits towards a card sleeve a future improvement may be to devise a strategy to achieve a goal and eventually an option to execute the strategy. I'm open to suggestions as well.

1.0.1 - 22 MAR 2012 - Added version checking which I thought was already there. I hope the five people who have looked at this so far will manually discover the update.

1.0.2 - 03 APR 2012 - Added more interesting information such as current store credits. Highlighted best meat per credit. First pass at identifying profit opportunities.

1.0.3 - 12 APR 2012 - Converted to use CFStat. Added computation for pack meat per credit when a pack is bought at mall price but valued at the minimum credit yield.
 

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  • ManageAlice.ash
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fronobulax

Developer
Staff member
1.0.1

So the version I posted as 1.0.0 did not have one line to actually check the version and let people know about updates. Pass me a napkin so I can wipe the egg off of my face.

While contemplating the results a couple of things jump out. First it would be nice if StoreCredit valued packs of cards at the minimum value and not at the expected value. Unless you are buying a lot of packs it suits my conservative nature to be pleasantly surprised to get more than expected from a pack than to realize the RNG worked against me and I need to buy another pack to get what I hoped. Writing a code snippit for Bale to incorporate is on my ToDo list.

I'm also thinking that for the non-collector a reasonable meat making strategy would be to pick a meat per credit threshold. Turn in all cards below that threshold and sell the remainder. Accumulate credits until you can buy an item (card sleeves or tattoos depending upon how impatient you are for the sale), do so and sell it. A future update may implement that.
 

Winterbay

Active member
I've still to actually run the script :)
Intended to do so today, but forgot before logging out... On both my characters...
 

fronobulax

Developer
Staff member
Does StoreCredit do anything that this script does not do better?

At the moment yes. The current version provides information but does not act on that information. I envision a Bright Shining Future where the information gathered is automagically saved as an AliceGoal and then steps are taken to achieve that goal. Invoking StoreCredit would be part of that goal. I have to confess that I am a little in awe of StoreCredit since I have never given any serious thought as to how to buy an item from the mall at a particular price or less other than the obvious kludge of closeting everything but the desired amount and then just buying. StoreCredit has a much more elegant solution.
 

fronobulax

Developer
Staff member
So I started looking for opportunities to profit and found out that there is a game imposed limitation on card sleeves. They are definitely a one per ascension item and as such not necessarily a good source of profit. So 1.0.2 is out but take the opportunity advice with a whole shaker of salt.
 
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