What are the chances for find an artifact?

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RickDekkard
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Feb 16, 2010 7:05 am

What are the chances for find an artifact?

Post by RickDekkard »

I started a military career this time, and from time to time you have to get some artifacts by destroying ships and salvage the wreck. But, what are the probabilities of find the artifact in the debris? I mean, if there is a fixed probability you can last ages to get that artifact. But if these probabilities increases as you destroy more and more ships, well at least you can be sure of find at the end.

Now I'm at quest trying to obtain a coalition's afterburner to bring it back to the Starport. The first one was not too hard (in a previous quest), but now I have destroyed about 45 coalition ships and nothing... I started to be a bit tired of engage combat for useless cargo or debris. Don't know even if after destroy a number of ships the probability goes to 100% directly, can be a solution too.

I know this is Starflight, a slow and paused game (as I like, sure), but if your chances depends only in the luck you have and not in your skills, starts to be a bit boring. If you can set any number (no matter the high it can be) of ships to destroy to have the certain of get the artifact, sure one can stand this and go ahead. If not, at least increase the probabilities of get the gadget after destroy an enemy ship, within one battle, so if you engage combat with a large fleet you have a significant chance of get that thing at last.

A second question, is there a way to maximize the view while in battle? Not sure, but I remember that in the previous beta versions.

And finally, this version (1.01) works fine on my W7 x64, but the mouse pointer moves too slow in game, is it a issue of my PC?

Anyway thanks for bring back my all time favorite game, you all did a nice job.
DBG719
Posts: 81
Joined: Fri Apr 22, 2011 5:40 pm

Re: What are the chances for find an artifact?

Post by DBG719 »

Steve sort of answers the probabilty question in the Missions thread in the Older Beta Forum. This happened to me on a couple of missions. Good Luck and Good Shooting.
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Steve
Site Admin
Posts: 167
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2008 4:33 pm

Re: What are the chances for find an artifact?

Post by Steve »

These chances are rerolled every single time an alien ship is destroyed, so technically the probability never increases, similar to flipping a coin 50 times in a row.

Here are the actual raw statistics:

Military Mission #28: 12.6% chance of dropping
Military Mission #29: 10% chance of dropping
Military Mission #30: 10% chance of dropping
Military Mission #31: 10% chance of dropping
Military Mission #32: 10% chance of dropping
Military Mission #35: 90% X 10% = 9% chance of dropping

If you are grabbing every single solitary drop without missing anything and you always roll the 90% chance of having an afterburner not drop, the chances of 45 ships being destroyed without an afterburner is:

0.9 ^ 45 = 0.0087 or 0.87% chance of failure
... or 99.13% chance of success

Obviously I never intended for anyone to have to destroy 45 ships in a row. Possibly the randomize function is not truly random, or some items are getting away, or some other calculation is skewing the percentages. So if I double all of the probabilities then:

20% chance of getting an afterburner after destroying one ship
36% chance ... 2 ships
49% chance ... 3 ships
59% chance ... 4 ships
66% chance ... 5 ships
73% chance ... 6 ships

... or a 0.004% chance of not obtaining an afterburner after destroying 45 ships.

Has anyone else had trouble with item drops on military missions?

The mouse acceleration is not modified as far as I know. If you set the screen resolution in Windows to 1024x768 and adjust the mouse controls at that screen setting within Windows, this should perfectly match the mouse acceleration in game when the game is set to full screen.

The maximize battle view feature was added as a quick hack and then disappeared. I'll look into the reasons why it was removed, if it was not simply accidental.
DBG719
Posts: 81
Joined: Fri Apr 22, 2011 5:40 pm

Re: What are the chances for find an artifact?

Post by DBG719 »

I re-did the Military Quest 32......Premptive Strike....and got the Coalition Afterburner on my sixth kill.
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