New Content - Implemented Spacegate access badge

Ah, but the Wiki has the image, at least.

Revision 17978 adds that monster. It also puts all of the monsters into the Through the Spacegate zone and adds item drops, as gleaned from my session logs.
 
Oh my. I didn't realize there was also a Spant soldier! So many factoids to hunt once we locate the planet to hunt them.
 
I suspect that it is the Spant soldier that drops the spant spear - part of the Spant Armor outfit - which does not appear to have a recipe to make it out of spant chitin and tendons. It is holding a spear.

It's non-tradeable, unlike the murderbot plasma rifle, which drops from the Murderbot soldier.

I don't understand the decisions they made about some items:

tradeable: Space Baby childrens' book, space pirate treasure map, Space Baby bawbaw
quest items: murderbot data core, Procrastinator locker key

You can buy & sell items to advance the Space Baby and Space pirate quests, but not the Procrastinator quest.
 
Veracity said:
I don't understand the decisions they made about some items:
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It shows that Jick had lead on this month. He makes the weirdest decisions. Like the Clan Floundry, where the -combat items get awesome bonuses that the +combat items lack, in addition to just being better than +combat. Or most of Gingerbread City, especially the idea of hiding the shop 15 or 20 adventures in. Of course, the Protonic Accelerator Pack was awesome all the way through so I cannot pick on that one. Jick is flawless one time out of four.
 
Revision 17982 attempts to handle the choice adventures (3 per) for the Procrastinator, Space Baby, and Space Pirate quests regarding item loss and Language Fluency.

I have not seen them all, so I did my best guess of how some of them work. I am fairly sure I handle the "success" cases, since I (mostly) look for "You acquire an item", but failure cases are not complete.

- What happens if you find the Monolith with no data cores? Guess: you don't get option 1.
- What happens if you find the Terminal with no (or too little) Procrastinator Language? I'd assume you'd gain a little - as with Half a Ship, for Space Pirates - but how much?
- What happens if you find Mother with no (or too little) Space Baby Language? Do you gain a little? How much?

After I succeed on all three paths, I'll check out the failure cases, unless I hear back from others who have been there.
 
On G-D, Darzil asked:

Has study of scaling been done? I've not met many monsters yet, but found today that on ZBAAAAA the large hostile animals scale at +635 (ie Attack = your moxie + ML +635, Def = your muscle + ML + 635)

I'd guess it'll ramp up with first letter or some other combo.
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Yendor says:

Based on my observations, it starts at +10 and goes up by +25 for each letter in the alphabet. I got +335 at N and +435 at R.
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We need to parse the results of Choice 1235.

At the very least, to save the planet name - and the scale factor derived from it - which we could use in monster stat expressions.

I'd also like it to save the environmental factors, the elemental hazards, plants, animals, aliens, Murderbots, Spants, Ruins.

For spading purposes, it'd be nice to log all of that into the session log. Somebody could then easily write a parser which scooped up the planet info and all the combats and NCs.
 
Bale said:
Does anyone know how or where to encounter Exotic Animals or Plants? Is there a trick to it? My factoid gathering is hitting a wall.
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I'm now wondering about this, myself, since no planets with anomalous plants or animals are showing up on the spreadsheet.

Ryo_Sangnoir's post says this:

As I understand it, here's the current possible separate adventures available through the space gate:

Rocks: 3 rock non-combats: Space Cave, Cool Space Rocks and Wide Open Spaces
Animals / Plants: One non-combat and one combat for each of small, advanced and anomalous. Haven't seen any anomalous since the planets were reshuffled. Advanced give more things than small. The plant NCs are A Simple Plant, A Complicated Plant, and ?. The animal NCs are "The Animals, The Animals", "Buffalo-Like Animal, Won't You Come Out Tonight" and ?.
Alien: One non-combat for friendly (Interstellar Trade), one combat for hostile.
Murderbot: Fight a drone or soldier, or one non-combat (Recovering the Satellite)
Spant: Fight a drone or soldier, or one non-combat (Here There Be No Spants)
Ruins: Split into pirate, procrastinator and baby, three non-combats each.

One of the pirates' (Land Ho) gives +10% fluency (and maybe swap a treasure map for something?). Half The Ship it Used to Be lets you get +5% fluency (or a treasure map?). The one with the sun is probably another pirate ruin.

One of the procrastinators' (That's No Moonlith, it's a Monolith!) lets you swap a murderbot cube for 20% fluency. One is a terminal that probably gives a reward for the fluent (I'm Afraid It's Terminal). The last one is the locker.

One of the babies' lets you get a children's book (Time Enough at Last). The other two are probably Mother May I and Please Baby Baby Please. The former gives milk with high enough fluency.
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That was good information, for April 9th.

Note his observations:

There are (were) exotic animals and plants.
There are monsters for hostile ones.
There are choice adventures for non-hostile ones.

I will also point out the following items:

Code: 
9415	edible alien plant bit	306788819	plantbit.gif	food	t,d	4
9416	alien plant fibers	876928996	plantfibers.gif	none	d	5
9417	alien plant sample	662601741	dna.gif	none	d	10
9418	complex alien plant sample	754099238	dna.gif	none	d	25
9419
9420	alien plant goo	538908723	plantgoo.gif	spleen, usable	t,d	15	globs of alien plant goo
Something to eat, something worth some research, and simple, complex, (and exotic) things, obtainable with a botanical kit (?), and some goo.

Code: 
9423	alien meat	672000286	alienmeat.gif	food	t,d	8	pieces of alien meat
9424	alien toenails	191705518	alientoenails.gif	none	d	5	piles of alien toenails
9425	alien zoological sample	746407603	dna.gif	none	d	10
9426
9427	fascinating alien zoological sample	326307398	dna.gif	none	d	50
9428	alien animal goo	432889167	blankoutglob.gif	spleen, usable	t,d	30	globs of alien animal goo
The same things, except, look! they have an item for the "exotic" animal from, we assume, the zoological kit.

So. At least one person found a hostile exotic animal and extracted that item from it.

However, after the coordinate reset, nobody has published a planet with exotic animals or plants, hostile or not, on it.

I see a number of possibilities:

1) Those who are actively contributing spading data have not found any such planet. Bad luck?
2) Some people have found such planets, but are hoarding the info.
3) The coordinate scramble made it impossible to find exotic animals, exotic plants, hostile exotic animals, and hostile exotic plants.
4) There is, in fact, some trick to get "exotic" critters to show up, even though the planet says "simple" or "advanced".

I'm beginning to suspect #3, but we have no way of knowing.

I'd submit a bug report/query, but I am confident that it would be ignored.

Perhaps a dev could check to see if anomalous plants & animals are no longer possible - and, if so, lobby to have them restored.
 
Veracity said:
Perhaps a dev could check to see if anomalous plants & animals are no longer possible - and, if so, lobby to have them restored.
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I'm pretty sure you know more about the content than I do right now. I can ignore the daily limit when checking, but it would be completely random coordinates, and there's a large possibility space...
 
Please make it known to the other devs that there may be a bug in the current coordinate system that precludes exotic plants and animals. We probably don't want to mess with the coordinates again, but perhaps CDM could make the animal and plant encounters exotic 10% of the time?
 
Code: 
--------------------
9426	complex alien zoological sample	537135662	dna.gif	none	d	25
# Item complex alien zoological sample: Worth 10 pages of Spacegate Research
--------------------
 
Yea! Except for the re-spading needed to find desirable planets for various of the quests.
But getting anomalous/exotic plants and animals again will make it all worth it, IMO.
 
Revision 17995 parses the Spacegate Terminal when you visit and saves settings recording the details of your current plant.

I used Smelltastic's settings - and started with his regexps, although I tweaked/improved them (to my eye).

Code: 
user	_spacegateAnimalLife
user	_spacegateCoordinates
user	_spacegateHazards
user	_spacegateIntelligentLife
user	_spacegateMurderbot	false
user	_spacegatePlanetName
user	_spacegatePlantLife
user	_spacegateRuins	false
user	_spacegateSpant	false
user	_spacegateTurnsLeft	0
When you dial a planet, it also records the settings to your session log.
 
Revision 17998 adds _spacegatePlanetIndex - number from 0-25 - which is used in the scale formulas for Spacegate monsters.

We are close to finishing this, I think. There seem to get a number of primitive alien trade goods which we don't have yet.

I've been pondering the ongoing spading.

- A planet with alien ruins has one of 9 choice adventures: 3 each for 3 languages
- A planet with Spants has either the noncombat (eggs), drones, or drones+soldiers
- A planet with Murderbots has either the noncombat (data cores), drones, or drones+soldiers
- A planet with peaceful aliens always offers the same trade good - and the spreadsheet gives multiple prices for the same good
- A planet can have hostile aliens
- A planet can have no, simple, complex, or anomalous animals
- A planet can have no, simple, complex, or anomalous plants
- A planet can have environmental hazards

I noticed that when I went to a particular planet with anomalous plants, I always got the same image. Yet, there are 3 different images possible.

If this is true of all life forms:

simple animals and plants - 20 images each
complex animals and plants - 10 images each
exotic animals and plants - 3 images each
hostile aliens (sgalienb) - 10 images
- and peaceful aliens (sgaliena) - 10 images

(are there pseudo-monsters, with image cycles, for non-hostile animals and plants?)

In any case, if it is true that a given planet always has the same image for plants, animals, aliens - and different planets have different images - this says that the number of bits to record animals, for example, is more than [0-3] = none, simple, complex, exotic; [1] = peaceful, hostile, since the TYPE (i.e. image) is also saved.

I wonder if each trade good (X kinds) has a different price depending which of the 10 peaceful aliens sells it.

The spreadsheet is not saving enough information; it is not saving the image file name of animals, plants, and aliens.
 
7 letters. That is 8,031,810,176 different planets. That's a little less than 33 bits worth of information.

The first determines the difficulty.
- How monsters scale
- Higher difficulty = more hazards

A-E = 1 environmental
F-I = 1 environmental, 1 elemental
J-O = 2 environmental, 1 elemental
P-S = 2 environmental, 2 elemental
T-Z = 3 environmental, 2 elemental
Z = 3 environmental, 3 elemental

Setting aside the first letter, which does not, by itself, provide any bits to determine what is on the planet (I posit), 6 letters provides 308,915,776. That's about 28.5 bits of information.

Environmental hazards: 5 bits (of which 1-3 willl be set)
Elemental Hazards: 5 bits (of which 1-3 will be set)
plants: none, simple, complex, anomalous = 2 bits; peaceful/hostile = 1 bit; image (1-20) = 5 bits
animals: none, simple, complex, anomalous = 2 bits; peaceful/hostile = 1 bit; image (1-20) = 5 bits
aliens: no, yes = 1 bit; peaceful/hostile = 1 bit; image (1-10) = 4 bits; trade good (1-8?) = 3 bits
spants: no, yes = 1 bit; nc/combat = 1 bit
murderbots: no, yes = 1 bit; nc/combat = 1 bit
ruins: no,yes = 1 bit; which one of 9 possible = 4 bits

There is obviously more information than available bits. I expect that some things - like monster images - are simply derived via "mod", say, rather than being a bit field. The price modifier for trade goods likely has some such factor, as well. Heck, the particular trade good could be, as well - especially if there are 9 of them (items 9432-9440). Perhaps 9440 is a spant egg or something. Ditto for the ruins; there are 9, which cries out "mod" rather than "bit field".

I expect it will be quite a while before we know how to decode a set of coordinates and predict exactly what will be there. And then, the more interesting (or useful, at least) calculation of taking a set of planet parameters and generating coordinates to find such a planet.
 
It is possible to not get any spant/murdebot related combats or non-combats on planets where the signals and/or signatures are detected, even if you go to the same planet repeatedly. The RNG is definitely at play to some extent, regarding them.
 
Sure. But a particular planet with spants or murderbots will be either all combat or all non-combat - and that is procedurally generated from the coordinates; if you find spant soldiers or drones, you will never see Here there be no Spants, or vice versa.

How many of which combat or non-combat a planet has is affected by the RNG. That's a whole different axis of spading.

Personally, I'd like to be able to say "I want hostile exotic plants, hostile exotic animals, peaceful aliens selling X for Y, and Space Pirate Ruin #3", for example.

hostile exotic plants
hostile exotic animals
peaceful aliens
alien ruins

- are all, probably, bit fields.

Space Pirate Choice #3, the trade good and its price are probably modulos of the configuration bits and therefore might not necessarily be possible, given other specified things.

And the hazards are likely not to be bitfields per se. Instead, a particular difficulty will have:

(5 take 1) = 5 environmental hazards
(5 take 2) = 10 possible pairs of environmental hazards
(5 take 3) = 10 possible triples of environmental hazards

depending on planet difficulty, and

0 elemental hazards
(5 take 1) = 5 elemental hazards
(5 take 2) = 10 possible pairs of elemental hazards
(5 take 3) = 10 possible triples of elemental hazards

which are likely modulos of configuration bits. Which is to say, which set of 2 elemental hazards - cold + hot, cold + sleaze, etc. - is determined by a (mod 10) somewhere.

But who knows what, exactly, Jick did. I am confident we will be able to reverse engineer it, eventually.
 
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