Bug - Not A Bug Maximizer is recommending I swap gear to the detriment of the desired stat

I really don't know what's going on here. I've got KoLMafia 19.9 (the official build off of sourceforge, not a daily/hourly build). I'm on a normal Bees Hate You run, and I'm out of Ronin. I got to the Sorceress' tower, and opened the maximizer to maximize combat initiative, for the fastest adventurer contest. I tell it to filter just by equipment on hand (I've already pulled everything out of storage). For my three accessories, it recommends I wear beaten-up Chucks, a furniture dolly, and Lord Spookyraven's ear trumpet. So I click equip all, but then it hits me: Don't I have three pairs of beaten-up Chucks? And doesn't that particular accessory give me the biggest initiative bonus?

I go into my inventory manually, and see that yes, I have three pairs of Chucks. I equip them manually, and then, curious, go back to the maximizer. I hit "update", and...
maximizerbeingweird.png

My current initiative is 330. It's recommending I swap out two pairs of chucks for the dolly and the ear trumpet, for a total of 305. What the heck??

To make things stranger, I tried changing the equipment to "pullable/buyable" even though nothing is in my storage, and after hitting update, it now only recommended I swap one pair of Chucks for the dolly. Then I noticed that when the filter was on "pullable/buyable", it was recommending a pixel grappling hook for the off-hand and a plaid skirt for the pants, so I acquired those and equipped them. But the maximizer is still suggesting I swap the third pair of Chucks for a furniture dolly now, when the filter is on "on hand" and on "pullable/buyable".

The only thing I can think of that might explain this is that it's trying to limit the number of B's in my equipment. But why would it care?

And it's returning "FAILED" on almost every item when I click it, even on the ones already equipped. Not sure if that's related or not.
 

lostcalpolydude

Developer
Staff member
The only thing I can think of that might explain this is that it's trying to limit the number of B's in my equipment. But why would it care?

The 'Bees Hate You' challenge path adds a beeosity keyword, which specifies the maximum number of 'B's allowed in the names of your equipment items (each of which causes 10% of your maximum HP in damage at the start of every combat). The default is 2 at the moment. The value you specify will automatically be increased if you use a +equip or +outfit keyword (described below) that requires more 'B's to satisfy.
From the "help" text that no one ever reads.
 

fredg1

Member
Well, for his defense, the "help" texts are not frequently updated, just like the kolmafia wiki is far from being up-to-date with a lot of somewhat recent changes (stuff from, like, 5 years ago isn't there, sometimes), so when you get a behavior that seems "new and unexpected" for you, you don't expect the "help" to contain an answer as to why...

Moreover, when skimming the text, with how it is formatted (bold words=keywords) you get the feeling that you'd only want to read that part if you TYPED or ARE INTERESTED in this feature.
Even when reading it more extensively, frankly, the way it's worded kinda makes it sound like the modifier maximizer will itself WRITE this keyword in the search query, and so, not seeing it (there's only "initiative", not "initiative, beeosity", so i'm good?) makes you think this part doesn't apply to this situation.
 

fronobulax

Developer
Staff member
Well, for his defense, the "help" texts are not frequently updated, just like the kolmafia wiki is far from being up-to-date

You are certainly allowed to become part of the solution rather than just standing to the side and complaining about the problem. Specifically, if you rewrite the maximizer help text so that it addresses your concerns I will be glad to review it and check it in. As far as the KoLmafia wiki, people who have KoLmafia.us accounts and ask, have been granted permission to edit the KoLmafia wiki, so you can certainly take steps to contribute. The people who actually do the work are a small community and it is getting smaller, yet there is much that could be done.
 

fredg1

Member
Helping to update the help texts could be nice, it's just that I don't know how this kind of process works.
I wasn't complaining about the problem, I was highlighting it; it was, then, the duty?/chance?/option? of an dev like you to state if this kind of change is even as much as accessible to non-devs (though if it includes a dev reviewing it first, i guess that makes more sense. Little problem is, I think this starts with the premise that it would be "big" changes, but I was more thinking about "on the spot", "when you see there's a fix make-able" kind of changes (just like the KoLwiki), and that would potentially mean frequent small changes)

For the kolmafia wiki, I AM helping with it's updating, but since I don't know the ins and outs of kolmafia, the only kind of thing I can contribute is things like the preferences...

Though, in retrospective, I guess there's a wide gap in the skill needed to make a change versus documenting it, so having people knowing kolmafia simply listing the kind of things the wiki is missing and reviewing the changes in the wiki, while letting others do/write those changes could be an idea...
 

fronobulax

Developer
Staff member
The maximizer help file is maximizer-help.html at https://svn.code.sf.net/p/kolmafia/code/src/data

If you are comfortable with editing HTML, make a copy and have at it. If not you can add or rewrite paragraphs and I can deal with the HTML. Or it can just stay as it is until someone has the time and motivation to update it.

In general the files in the KoLmafia jar file are added by people who have commit access at SourceForge. People who do not have commit access but want to contribute usually start asking questions or just asking for someone to review and submit files with their proposed changes.

The wiki has no review process but it is certainly reasonable to ask questions or just make changes and ask for review.

At this point if it needs to be done then either ask if someone will do it or do it yourself and ask for help "releasing it".

Remember the stereotype that people who write code often ignore writing documentation, but also note Veracity's scripts which are extremely well documented.
 

fredg1

Member
Remember the stereotype that people who write code often ignore writing documentation, but also note Veracity's scripts which are extremely well documented.

It's not that much that no documentation is written, at least here. It's more that the wiki is an ADDITIONAL documentation to write; there's already a need to document what changes were made at each revision; the wiki is just an EXTRA step, but in which you actually need to FIND which page(s) should be changed...
 
Thanks for the replies. I was 40% sure that it was related to the "beeosity", so it's nice to get that clarified.

Where is this help text that lostcalpolydude mentioned? I should probably peruse that.
 
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