Spacegate

AlbinoRhino

Active member
Code:
[COLOR=olive]> vsg status[/COLOR]

Visiting the Spacegate     Terminal
Planet Name: Beta Cromulus X (difficulty = 12)
Coordinates:     MXTDHJR

The sky above the horizon is a bleached green.
The     planet's sun (if it has one) is nowhere to be seen.
Two waning moons     punctuate the sky.

Environmental Hazards:
  toxic atmosphere
  high     gravity
Elemental Hazards:
  scary noises
Plant Life:     anomalous (hostile) (sgplantc1.gif)
Animal Life: anomalous (hostile)     (sganimalc1.gif)
Intelligent Life: detected (primitive alien mask @     112,000 Meat) (sgaliena2.gif)
DANGER: Spant chemical signatures     detected (drones)
ALERT: ANCIENT RUINS DETECTED (Procrastinators 2: I'm     Afraid It's Terminal)

You fully explored that planet today.
  Cool     Space Rocks: 3
  I'm Afraid It's Terminal: 1
  Interstellar     Trade: 1
  Space Cave: 2
  Spant drone: 6
  exotic     hostile animal: 3
  exotic hostile plant: 4

You gained     34 pages of Spacegate Research

Hmmm...so the encounters can differ....for some reason I was thinking that the same coordinates always gave the same distribution of encounters?
 

Veracity

Developer
Staff member
Except for the one that appear exactly once - Interstellar Trade and Ancient Ruins, it's random. I noticed that the first planet I visited when I compared to what they had in the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet has comments like "this planet has the highest number of skippable adventures" because their sample of 1 visit had a lot of Space Caves, for example, but it ain't necessarily so.

I also theorize that every planet can have all three kind of rock encounters, and if a particular visit only has two types, that is random numbers at work. Making that assumption, I (and KoL) don't need 3 bits to record which rock encounters are present. I could be wrong about that. It would take multiple visits to the same planet to check that, and I'm doing "random" or "unvisited" to discover (or correct) as many planets as possible, rather than making repeated visits.
 

Veracity

Developer
Staff member
Here's an interesting one. :)

Code:
[color=green]> vsg status[/color]

Visiting the Spacegate Terminal
Planet Name: Tau Martinez VII (difficulty = 6)
Coordinates: GRIMACE

The sky is blue fading into pink near the horizon, dominated by a system of black rings.
The landscape is lit by a brilliant blue sun.
The planet doesn't appear to have any satellites.

Environmental Hazards:
  high gravity
Elemental Hazards:
  nasty gasses
Plant Life: none detected
Animal Life: advanced (hostile) (sganimalb8.gif)
Intelligent Life: detected (hostile) (primitive alien totem) (sgalienb8.gif)
DANGER: Murderbot frequencies detected (drones and soldiers)

You fully explored that planet today.
  Cool Space Rocks: 2
  Murderbot drone: 3
  Murderbot soldier: 3
  Space Cave: 4
  hostile intelligent alien: 6
  large hostile animal: 2

You gained 178 pages of Spacegate Research

You found some shinies!
  primitive alien totem
 

Veracity

Developer
Staff member
Well ... I have 5 characters going to "random" or "unvisited". That's about 220+ planets since the beginning of December, one visit each. This one was "unvisited" - which means I was trying to validate - or correct - what the spreadsheet said. If half of those planets had hostile aliens (high), that'd be 1% of said planets having the aliens potentially drop something - with multiple hostile alien encounters per planet. Which means, at best 0.2% of the aliens I fought dropped the Rare item. So, yeah - rare. We have no idea what the actual percentage is.

Something that amuses me is that this one has never been publicly reported as having this drop. So: new planet with a rare drop!

I have another theory that EVERY planet with hostile aliens has a "trophy" available, but the odds are so low, that almost none of them have revealed which one - and that planets where people HAVE shared it are disproportionately visited, preempting new planets from being explored to reveal which trophy is available there.

Which is why I am content to explore "random" planets: I think the odds of getting a rare drop are equal to going to a planet that has previously been published as having a drop..

Does make me want to extend the "unvisited" command to allow further filtering: "unvisited trophy" to validate spreadsheet data for planets which have a chance to have a rare drop. And maybe "unknown trophy" to go to a visited or unvisited planet with hostile aliens and an unknown trophy..
 
Last edited:

AlbinoRhino

Active member
Hmm...I guess I had been supposing that all along. Now, it's kind of discouraging to think that a planet could have the right monsters but not the rare drops. I'll keep trying though!

I think being able to focus the 'unvisited'/'unknown' commands like that is a great idea. I'm mostly interested in seeing some of those rares drop for me, so I suspect I would use that in place of just random planets. Of course, I'm currently only playing the gate in between ascensions...so at less than one attempt per day...I will probably not see any rares for a while.
 

Veracity

Developer
Staff member
How about this?

Code:
[color=green]> vsg suggest unvisited procrastinator, trophy[/color]

Considering 1400 planets.
After filtering on 'procrastinator 2', 63 left.
After filtering on 'trophy', 24 left.

I suggest that you visit the planet at coordinates EASYACE
Here's what I know about that planet:

Planet Name: Hippidipsus Wallace V (difficulty = 4)
Coordinates: EASYACE

Environmental Hazards:
  irradiated
Plant Life: advanced (hostile)
Animal Life: primitive
Intelligent Life: detected (hostile) (unknown alien trophy)
ALERT: ANCIENT RUINS DETECTED (Procrastinators 2: I'm Afraid It's Terminal)

[color=green]> vsg suggest known procrastinator, trophy[/color]

Considering 1655 planets.
After filtering on 'procrastinator 2', 75 left.
After filtering on 'trophy', 27 left.

I suggest that you visit the planet at coordinates OIIIIOO
Here's what I know about that planet:

Planet Name: Lambda Capulet VIII (difficulty = 14)
Coordinates: OIIIIOO

Environmental Hazards:
  high gravity
  high winds
Elemental Hazards:
  hot solar flares
Plant Life: none detected
Animal Life: none detected
Intelligent Life: detected (hostile) (unknown alien trophy)
DANGER: Spant chemical signatures detected (drones and soldiers)
DANGER: Murderbot frequencies detected (drones)
ALERT: ANCIENT RUINS DETECTED (Procrastinators 2: I'm Afraid It's Terminal)

[color=green]> vsg suggest procrastinator, trophy[/color]

Considering 1655 planets.
After filtering on 'procrastinator 2', 75 left.
After filtering on 'trophy', 27 left.
There are 8 planets with non-hostile plants.
There are 4 planets with non-hostile animals.
There are 1 planets with non-hostile plants AND non-hostile animals.
After filtering for non-hostile plants AND non-hostile animals, 1 left.

I suggest that you visit the planet at coordinates DPQRJNP
Here's what I know about that planet:

Planet Name: Lepidopterus McNichols X (difficulty = 3)
Coordinates: DPQRJNP

Environmental Hazards:
  magnetic storms
Plant Life: advanced
Animal Life: primitive
Intelligent Life: detected (hostile) (unknown alien trophy)
DANGER: Spant chemical signatures detected (drones and soldiers)
DANGER: Murderbot frequencies detected (drones)
ALERT: ANCIENT RUINS DETECTED (Procrastinators 2: I'm Afraid It's Terminal)
"random" generates random coordinates, filtered by difficulty
"known" considers all planets in the database, filtered by goals and difficulty, and then selects a random planet from that set
"unvisited" considers all planets in database you have not been to before, filtered by goals and difficulty, and then selects a random planet from that set

with none of the above, considers all planets in the database, filtered by goals and difficulty, does additional filtering to reduce other non-skippable encounters, and then selects the hardest planet from that set. (I was interested to see that my "non hostile plants and animals" also had "spants AND murderbots". Perhaps I could refine that some more...)

"trophy" means "any planet with hostile intelligent life", whether or not you know what the trophy is
"trophy totem" means "any planet with hostile intelligent life that (supposedly) drops a primitive alien totem"

I have no way of saying "only unknown trophies". I suppose that would be useful for trying to dig out new trophy planets. There are so few publicized trophy planets, that's not a big deal, yet. I suppose I could do that via "trophy unknown".

Revision 172 has all that (except for "trophy unknown") as well as all the planet/trophy data I've spaded so far this month.
 

Veracity

Developer
Staff member
I think my own spading multies that are currently going for "unvisited" will do "unvisited trophy", or something, to spade planets with hostile intelligent life first, just in case I can shake out some trophies.
 

Veracity

Developer
Staff member
I already had the following:

detected trade -> friendly aliens but don't know trade item and/or price
detected murderbots -> Murderbot frequencies of unknown origin
detected spants -> Spant chemical traces of unknown origin
detected ruins -> Ancient ruins, unknown quest and quest step

I added:

detected trophy -> hostile aliens, unknown trophy

Revision 173
 

Veracity

Developer
Staff member
Going with "unvisited detected trophy, procrastinator", I got this:

Code:
[color=green]> vsg status[/color]

Visiting the Spacegate Terminal
Planet Name: Cheetus Westinghouse IV (difficulty = 14)
Coordinates: OIOIIIO

The sky above the horizon is an oppressive red, speckled with puffy black clouds.
The landscape is lit by a dim red sun.
The sky is moonless.

Environmental Hazards:
  toxic atmosphere
  magnetic storms
Elemental Hazards:
  frigid zones
Plant Life: advanced (hostile) (sgplantb10.gif)
Animal Life: none detected
Intelligent Life: detected (hostile) (primitive alien necklace) (sgalienb10.gif)
DANGER: Murderbot frequencies detected (drones)
ALERT: ANCIENT RUINS DETECTED (Procrastinators 2: I'm Afraid It's Terminal)

You fully explored that planet today.
  Cool Space Rocks: 1
  I'm Afraid It's Terminal: 1
  Murderbot drone: 3
  Space Cave: 5
  hostile intelligent alien: 4
  large hostile plant: 6

You gained 69 pages of Spacegate Research

You found some shinies!
  primitive alien necklace
Curses! I did not advance my Procrastinator Quest.
Wait a minute - I did. I now have a Procrastinator locker key.
Oh, wait. I found something else...

I have a bug, but I am happy to have found another primitive alien trophy.
 

Veracity

Developer
Staff member
Code:
[color=green]> vsg status[/color]

Visiting the Spacegate Terminal
Planet Name: Kappa Abbrevianus III (difficulty = 0)
Coordinates: AAAAABP

The planet's sky is a hazy chartreuse, dotted by occasional wispy pale blue clouds.
The landscape is lit by a bright red sun.
Three hazy moons hang in the sky.

Environmental Hazards:
  high winds
Plant Life: none detected
Animal Life: primitive (sganimala1.gif)
Intelligent Life: detected (hostile) (unknown alien trophy) (sgalienb1.gif)
DANGER: Murderbot frequencies detected (drones)
ALERT: ANCIENT RUINS DETECTED (Space Baby 2: Mother May I)

You fully explored that planet today.
  Cool Space Rocks: 2
  Mother May I: 1
  Murderbot drone: 4
  Space Cave: 5
  The Animals, The Animals: 7
  hostile intelligent alien: 1

You gained 78 pages of Spacegate Research
yeah. I got the space baby bawbaw. Obviously, I am not picking up the "shiny" rewards from choice dventures. I'll look at this by and by..
 

Veracity

Developer
Staff member
Interesting.

Code:
[color=green]> vsg status[/color]

Visiting the Spacegate Terminal
Planet Name: Iota Bubblicius XI (difficulty = 25)
Coordinates: ZPZLMNF

The planet's sky is an oppressive green, with a dense covering of brown-colored clouds.
The landscape is lit by a bright yellow sun.
A single massive moon dominates the dome of the sky.

Environmental Hazards:
  toxic atmosphere
  high gravity
  high winds
Elemental Hazards:
  hot solar flares
  scary noises
  lewd rock formations
Plant Life: advanced (hostile) (sgplantb6.gif)
Animal Life: none detected
Intelligent Life: detected (hostile) (unknown alien trophy) (sgalienb6.gif)
DANGER: Spant chemical signatures detected (drones)
DANGER: Murderbot frequencies detected (drones)
ALERT: ANCIENT RUINS DETECTED (Procrastinators 1: That's No Moonlith, it's a Monolith!)

You fully explored that planet today.
  Cool Space Rocks: 2
  Murderbot drone: 5
  Space Cave: 2
  Spant drone: 5
  hostile intelligent alien: 4
  large hostile plant: 2

You gained 108 pages of Spacegate Research
This was an "univisited" planet, which meant it was from the spreadsheet, but I hadn't been there to verify.
Notice that the spreadsheet says there are Procrastinator ruins, but I saw no ruins.
The Spacegate terminal really does say "ALERT: ANCIENT RUINS DETECTED", but the RNG did not give me a ruins adventure.
I didn't know that was possible.
 

AlbinoRhino

Active member
Huh...the ruins were so ancient that they have faded to dust!

I am guessing that the terminal information is gathered straight from that page? It's not always clear to me what information presented in those reports originates with the spreadsheet and what the script has gathered itself. I don't remember the spreadsheet mentioning file names so I think that information was gathered by the script? The terminal page text seems fairly recognizable since I have looked at that page enough...but maybe not to everyone.

Anyway, apparently, - detected ruins - are just a possibility of an encounter then?
 

Veracity

Developer
Staff member
I load the "expected" planet data from the spreadsheet data, for a known planet.
I visit the terminal and correct the planet data as needed.

For example, if the spreadsheet said hostile plants, but there are no plants or non-hostile plants, we believe the terminal.
If the spreadsheet says there are (Murderbots, Spants, Ancient Ruins), but the terminal says there are none, we believe the terminal.
If the spreadsheet says there are no (Murderbots, Spants, Ancient Ruins), but the terminal says there are, we believe the terminal and mark them as "detected", since we don't know what kind.
If the spreadsheet says there are (Murderbots, Spants, Ancient Ruins) and the terminal agrees, we assume that the spreadsheet data is right, but will correct during adventuring, if needed.

So, if the spreadsheet says Spant egg casings, but we find drones and/or soldiers, we know the spreadsheet is wrong.
If the spreadsheet says Space Baby 2, but we find Space Baby 3 or Procrastinator 1 or whatever, we know the spreadsheet is wrong.
If the spreadsheet says Procrastinator 1 but we find no ruins, we believe the spreadsheet. It could still be wrong - it could be Procrastinator 2 or Space Baby 1 or whatever - but we didn't see an encounter to prove it was wrong.

That's what just happened; since the terminal did say Ancient Ruins, I assumed we'd correct which ruins when we found the encounter, but KoL did not give a ruins encounter.
 

Veracity

Developer
Staff member
My third trophy, using command "unvisited detected trophy, detected ruins".
In other words, I am visiting planets from the spreadsheet I have not been to before that have hostile alien life and detected but unidentified ruins.
It's seeming more and more likely that ANY hostile aliens planet has some trophy.

Code:
[color=green]> vsg status[/color]

Visiting the Spacegate Terminal
Planet Name: Delta Easthouse VII (difficulty = 18)
Coordinates: SEXDOLL

The sky above the horizon is an oppressive blue, with a dense covering of grey clouds.
The landscape is lit by an incredibly close red sun.
There are no moons visible.

Environmental Hazards:
  toxic atmosphere
  magnetic storms
Elemental Hazards:
  hot solar flares
  scary noises
Plant Life: primitive (sgplanta6.gif)
Animal Life: advanced (hostile) (sganimalb3.gif)
Intelligent Life: detected (hostile) (primitive alien blowgun) (sgalienb3.gif)
ALERT: ANCIENT RUINS DETECTED (Procrastinators 3: Curses, a Hex)

You fully explored that planet today.
  A Simple Plant: 3
  Cool Space Rocks: 3
  Curses, a Hex: 1
  Space Cave: 6
  hostile intelligent alien: 3
  large hostile animal: 4

You gained 53 pages of Spacegate Research

You found some shinies!
  primitive alien blowgun
 

Veracity

Developer
Staff member
Revision 174 does this:

- Fixes issue of shinies from step 2 of the quests not being recorded (simply needed to add the three choice adventures to a case statement...)
- More planet and trophy data from planets I've personally visited.
 

Veracity

Developer
Staff member
This looks like a super promising planet to visit repeatedly.
Discovered it by visiting a random planet.

Hostile anomalous plants AND hostile anomalous animals AND hostile intelligent aliens.
Having visited it exactly once, I have no idea what trophy might be there. :)

Code:
[color=green]> vsg status[/color]

Visiting the Spacegate Terminal
Planet Name: Iota Waldorf VI (difficulty = 17)
Coordinates: RSCJVKH

The planet's sky is an oppressive pink, with a dense covering of pale orange clouds.
The landscape is lit by a sky-dominating yellow sun.
The sky is moonless.

Environmental Hazards:
  magnetic storms
  high winds
Elemental Hazards:
  hot solar flares
  nasty gasses
Plant Life: anomalous (hostile) (sgplantc1.gif)
Animal Life: anomalous (hostile) (sganimalc1.gif)
Intelligent Life: detected (hostile) (unknown alien trophy) (sgalienb3.gif)

You fully explored that planet today.
  Cool Space Rocks: 4
  Space Cave: 3
  exotic hostile animal: 4
  exotic hostile plant: 4
  hostile intelligent alien: 5
 
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