Yonge

Karma: 136

Yonge 1 Oct 2021 21:07 UTC
8 points
on: D&D.Sci 4th Edition: League of Defenders of the Storm
Spoiler protection.
Team colour doesn’t appear to have any meaningful imapct on the chances of winning.
There are onl2 games where the opponents combination was played which is too small to draw any conclusions from, however there are 352 games where a team has had ⁴⁄₅ of these characters.
Teams with Greenery Giant or Nullifying Nightmare in them seem to do unusually well against Dire Druid (Nullifying nightmare does slightly better)

Greenery Giant looks very strong there is no other character that has been part of a winning team > 50% of the time against teams which she has been in, though Lanslide Lord comes close

Nullifying Nightmare and Tidehollow Tyrant seem to do best against Phoenix Paladin

Quartz Questant is also fairly strong, but teams with Blaze Boy in tend to win slightly more often than teams with Quartz Questant in. Greenery Giant and Nullyfing Nightmare also do very well. Rock-n-Roll Ranger however does better than all except Greenery Giant

Against teams with Tidehollow Tyrant in them teams with Greenery Giant, and Rock-n-Roll Ranger do best.

Which suggests the following line up:
- Greenery Giant
- Landslide Lord
- Nullifying Nightmare
- Rock-n-Roll Ranger
- Tidehollow Tyrant

Both times this combination was used it won.
Teams with at least 4 of those characters won 77 percent of times, which suggests this is a strong combination.

I will therefore use the following for both the regular and PvP teams:
- Greenery Giant
- Landslide Lord
- Nullifying Nightmare
- Rock-n-Roll Ranger
- Tidehollow Tyrant

Yonge 7 Mar 2021 17:31 UTC
8 points
on: D&D.Sci III: Mancer Matchups
Spoiler protection
So you foolish mortals, you don’t trust me enough to give your true names,
your worried that I might talk you out of your soul if you allow me to talk to you,
and you feel the need to put in place precautions to stop me sending you anything other than your marching
orders. Despite this you do apparently trust me to take an important decision for you. If everything is
as it appears this set of mortals is even more stupid than the usual lot.

Looking at the the list it start of with the necromancers attacking the geomancers.
The the pyromancers intevene breifly, before the necromacners start attacking the vitamancers
Then the vitamancers and the pyromancers start attacking one another
Then things gets pretty random
Then the necromancers attack ther cryomancers.
Then there are 607 groups of 5 battles where all of the mancers ignoring the electomancer are involved in once.

The groups of 5 battles involve a lot of groups with attacks on both sides territory, which suggest either a
very good spy network predicting one sides attacks, or someone is actively organising this. It also suggests the records are grouped in chronological order.

The so called good mancers have won more battles than the other side, in particular once the group battles
occur their lead over the other mancers appears to increase at a roughly constant rate. Granted some battles
can be more important than others, but it does rather suggest that this plane is in rather more danger of
being taken over by this lot than the other lot. You may call yourselves good, but anyone can call
themselves that.

Assuming the probabilities of each mancers winning a battle only depend on the mancers involved and the
location, and not any other battles suggest that if I want to maximise their chances of winning 5 battles
I should tell them to:
Cryomancer COUNTER v Pyromancer A 100.0 % of WIN Min data points 18
Vitamancer A COUNTER v Pyromancer B 71.42857142857143 % of WIN Min data points 18
Geomancer A DEFEND v Necromancer A 100.0 % of WIN Min data points 18
Vitamancer B COUNTER v Necromancer B 65.21739130434783 % of WIN Min data points 18
Geomancer B DEFEND v Necromancer C 100.0 % of WIN Min data points 18
P(All Win) = 46.58385093167702
P(4 Win) = 71.42857142857143

And if I was to sabotage there efforts by maximising there chances of losing 5 battles:
Vitamancer A DEFEND v Pyromancer A 11.888111888111888 % of WIN Min data points 19
Cryomancer DEFEND v Pyromancer B 12.5 % of WIN Min data points 19
Vitamancer B COUNTER v Necromancer A 0.0 % of WIN Min data points 19
Geomancer A COUNTER v Necromancer B 28.000000000000004 % of WIN Min data points 19
Geomancer B COUNTER v Necromancer C 4.166666666666666 % of WIN Min data points 19
P(All Lose) = 53.197552447552454
P(4 Lose) = 73.88548951048952

Is winning all 5 battles more important than a bigger chance of winning 4 battles . This bunch of incompetents don’t say. In any case it makes no difference if I was to help them, and only a small difference if I wasn’t.

Confining the analysis just to the groups of 5 yields slightly different results:
Vitamancer B COUNTER v Pyromancer A 89.1891891891892 % of WIN Min data points 18
Cryomancer COUNTER v Pyromancer B 85.29411764705883 % of WIN Min data points 18
Geomancer A DEFEND v Necromancer A 100.0 % of WIN Min data points 18
Vitamancer A DEFEND v Necromancer B 76.92307692307693 % of WIN Min data points 18
Geomancer B DEFEND v Necromancer C 100.0 % of WIN Min data points 18
P(All Win) = 58.51779381191147
P(4 Win) = 76.0731319554849

Vitamancer A DEFEND v Pyromancer A 9.090909090909092 % of WIN Min data points 12
Cryomancer DEFEND v Pyromancer B 12.5 % of WIN Min data points 12
Vitamancer B COUNTER v Necromancer A 0.0 % of WIN Min data points 12
Geomancer A COUNTER v Necromancer B 31.57894736842105 % of WIN Min data points 12
Geomancer B COUNTER v Necromancer C 4.166666666666666 % of WIN Min data points 12
P(All Lose) = 52.15809409888358
P(4 Lose) = 76.23106060606062

As the situation qualitatively changed when the groups of battles started to occur these are the ones to use
if I want to help or hinder them? But do I? On the available data there is no obvious way to know which outcome would best server my interests. If they are distrustfull enough to take all these precautions they may be expecting me to give them what seems to be the worst possible outcome, and they are trying to trick me by changing the labels so that it is actually the best.

These mind games are what demons should be playing on mortals not the other way around. They are really out of line by putting me in this position! So I won’t give them any advice at all. Whatever they were planning
it is highly unlikely that they would go to the trouble of summoning a demon in the hope that it would
ignore them. And if I ever comes across them again in more normal circumstances I will be sure to teach them a lesson. Now back to some good old fashioning demoning...

Yonge 11 Nov 2021 22:31 UTC
7 points
on: D&D.Sci Dungeoncrawling: The Crown of Command
There is mo obvious correlation between no encounters and probability of success, but it looks like this is caused by better teams of adventurers taking on dungeons with more encounters on average.

There are no teams where more than 2 adventurers are of the same class. There is probably a reason for this.
Where there are duplicate types the dungeon is only beaten 55 percent of the time v 64 percent when there are no duplicates, so I will have 4 different types of adventurers in all my teams.

There is no obvious correlation between the rank of the highest adventurer and the probability of beating the dungeon. Suggests having a balanced team is more important than just maxing one out, unless there is specific evidence to the contrary.

Looking at the probability of defeating an encounter when a particular type of adventurer is missing suggests the following:
Goblins—teams do better than average when a Cleric, Fighter or particularly a Ranger is present
Goblin Chieftain—Teams with a fighter in them do much better than those without, Ranger is second best
Wolves—Are very easy to beat regardless of the team
Orcs—Fighters seem to be best followed by clerics
Orc Warlord—Teams with fighters do much better than ones without.
Orc Shaman—Again fighters are best, though mages and druids seem to be pretty close Skeletons—Easy to beat, though teams with clerics do a bit better than average
Zombies—Teams with clerics do best, though mages come close
Ghosts—Clerics do best
Basilisk—Druids are best followed by fighters and clerics
Lich—Clerics are best followed by Mages
Dragon—The toughest to beat. Fighters and Rangers seem best followed by mages and clerics
Boulder Trap—Fighters do best
Lever Puzzle Room—Easy though rangers seem do do slightly better than most
Riddle Door—Mages and Clerics do better than most, though again this is easy for all
Cursed Altar—CLerics do best
Snake Pit—Easy though Druids do slightly better than most
Poison Needle Trap—Rogues do best

Fighters appear to be the best all round adventurer, followed by clerics.

Looking at the probability of winning an encounter when particular levels of adventurers are present
suggests the following.
(1) When either a level 6 fighter, ranger or cleric is present an encounter against goblins is almost always
won. Rangers seem to be slightly better.
(2) Where the highest rank of an adventurer is ⇐ 2 the probability of defeating the dungeon is less than 50
percent. Between 3 and 7 it gradually increases from 61 percent to 68 percent, but there is a big jump to
87 when at least one level 8 adventurer is involved (Though there are only 30 cases of this).

Temple of Lemarchland
There are 86 previous dungeons which had encounters which are a subset of those in the first dungeon. It looks very much like a junior dungeon. ⁴⁄₈ teams which were all of rank 1 managed to beat it, which suggests spending relatively little on this.

Infernal Den of Cheliax .
The final encounter of every “Infernal Den” is either a Dragon or a Lich.
Every Den which has either wolves or Orcs encounters has a dragon at the end suggesting that we are
facing a dragon here. A high level figher looks like it is the best bet agasint dragons.

Goblin Warrens of Khaz-Gorond
All dungeons with Goblin in the name have quite a few Goblin encounters, and most have a Goblin Chieftain. Poison Needle Traps, Snakepits and boulder traps are secondary threats. Teams with at least 1 level 6 of several types look like they have nearly a 100 percent chance of winning against, lower level rangers seem like they are slightly better than other types. Fighters seem to be best against a Goblin Chief, though team with a
fighter with level > 3 seem to do worse than ones below it, though this is possibly a statistical artefact
as the numbers are relatively small.

I don’t think I can confidentally identify a good choice based on my current understanding.. Peering through the fog my best current guess is:

Lost Temple of Lemarchland:
level 3 cleric
level 2 rogue
level 2 druid
level 2 mage

Infernal Den of Chelaix:
level 7 fighter
level 2 cleric
level 2 druid
level 3 ranger

Goblin Warrens of Khaz-Gorond
level 6 ranger
level 2 cleric
level 4 fighter
level 1 rogue

Yonge 10 Aug 2022 19:43 UTC
6 points
0
on: Dwarves & D.Sci: Data Fortress
A few observations:
- There is a weak correlation between expedition size and the probability of the fort surviving, so we should choose 13 dwarves.
- Farmers and brewers are crucial to the survival of the city. Specialising in one type seems more efficient than having both. 6 farmers or 6 brewers guarantee survivial, but if you have a mixture you need at least 10. Farmers seem slightly better than brewers. 3 farmers give > 99 percent survival, but 4 brewers are needed to do as well. Warriors marginally increase survival odds when there are fewer farmers and brewers, but nothing else seems to have a positive impact.
- Miners seems to generate most of the value
- Having one woodcutter offers a meaningfull boost, but there doesn’t seem to be much benefit in haveing more. The boost is biggest at low coal values
- Forts with 2 warriors seems to do best, though the gap between 1 and 2 seems to be modest, and maybe due to them haveing fewer lower value types.
- Haveing 1 smith provides a modest beenfit, though haveing more is counterproductive.
- Crafters are similar to warriors, except the effect is much smaller.
- When no smiths or craftsmen are present then the for value is significantly reduced.
- Smiths and crafters do better when different resources are present.

Which suggests something like this is needed to maximise value, subject to the constraint of minimising the risk of loseing the fort:
− 6 farmers
− 1 warrior
− 1 crafter
− 1 smith
− 4 miners

An alternative strategy which accepted a small risk of fort loss in exchange for makeing much more money would be:
− 3 farmers
− 1 warrior
− 1 woodcutter
− 1 crafter
− 1 smith
− 6 miners

Yonge 17 May 2022 21:03 UTC
6 points
on: D&D.Sci Divination: Nine Black Doves Evaluation & Ruleset
Thank you for posting this.
The need to join to other records was trivial for me.
I think the data model was too complex too fully decipher with a reasonable amount of effort, but this wasn’t a problem as it wasn’t necessary to get a decent answer (I might actually have got the optimal one if I hadn’t blundered and missed that Italia suffered a famine in the previous year—though I was uncertain on a number of points and wasn’t expecting to do as well as I did). In particular the wealth/population dependency completely passed me by.
Overall in terms of difficulty it felt OK.

Yonge 4 Jan 2022 17:56 UTC
6 points
on: D&D.Sci Holiday Special: How the Grinch Pessimized Christmas
Min noise in 9 max is 32, with an average of 16.
Everyone with > 28 noise had a Trum-Troopa. All the really low instances of noise which involved Trum-Troops were wither with a boy paired with a Fum-Foozler or a girl pared with a Who-Whonker.
Girls tend to make much more noise with Fum-Foozler than boys.
There seems to be a slight bias to younger children producing less noise with Sloo-Slonker.
If a child likes/dislikes a Gah-Ginka one year it looks like it will also like/dislike it another year.
Blum-Blooper appears to be consistently unpopular with Fum-Foozler and normally unpopular with Who-Whonker

Which suggests.
Blum-Blooper: Ideally goes with Fum-Foozler but possibly also Who-Wonker.
Fum-Foozler: Only goes to boys
Gah-Ginka: Goes to children that haven’t liked it in previous years.
Sloo-Slonker: Give to younger children
Trun-Troops: Go to either boys with a Fum-Foozler or girls with a Who-Whonker
Who-Whonker: From others
Four Blum-Bloopers
Four Fum-Foozlers
Two Gah-Ginkas
Three Sloo-Slonkers
Three Trum-Troopas
Four Who-Whonkers
Andy Sue Who 12 M Gah-Ginka, Blum-Blooper
Betty Drew Who 11 F Trun-Troops, Who-Whonker
Sally Sue Who 11 F Trun-Troops, Who-Whonker
Phoebe Drew Who 9 F Trun-Troops, Who-Whonker
Freddie Lou Who 8 M Fum-Foozler, Blum-Blooper
Eddie Sue Who 8 M Gah-Ginka, Fum-Foozler
Cindy Drew Who 6 F Blum-Blooper, Who-Whonker
Mary Lou Who 6 F Sloo-Slonker, Blum-Blooper
Ollie Lou Who 5 M Fum-Foozler, Sloo-Slonker
Johnny Drew Who 4 M Fum-Foozler, Sloo-Slonker

Yonge 4 Jun 2023 22:02 UTC
5 points
0
on: D&D.Sci 5E: Return of the League of Defenders
I found this problem late. Could I have an extra day or two please?

Yonge 6 Jun 2022 19:15 UTC
5 points
in reply to: abstractapplic’s comment on: D&D.Sci June 2022: A Goddess Tried To Reincarnate Me Into A Fantasy World, But I Insisted On Using Data Science To Select An Optimal Combination Of Cheat Skills!
* When Monstrous Regeneration and Anomalous Agility is assigned to every hero it results in a
* 36 percent win rate. When they are chosen there is only a 21 percent win rate. The sample
* size is to big for this to be dismissed as a statistical fluctuation. With the DM ruling out
* any difference in God assigned cheats or other time dependent effects it looks like heroes
* are making their decisions based on some hidden variables we don’t have access to.
*
* Many combinations of traits assigned by the Chaos deity also show substantial differences
* (sometime better, sometimes worse), than when they are chosen. This suggests the provisional
* decision to go with Radiant Splendor + Enlightenment probably isn’t optimal after all.
*
* The best set of traits chosen by the Chaos Deity for Heroes in our class is :
* Temporal Distortion + Anomalous Agility. (95 percent win rate based on 20 records)
* Barrier Conjuration + Mind Place (92.3 percent Win rate based on 13 records).
* Rapid XP Gain + Monstrous Regeneration (91.7 percent win rate based on 12 records)
* Barrier Conjuration + temporal Distortion (88 percent win rate based on 25 records)
*
* Temporal Distortion + Anomalous Agility does almost as well when these cheats are chosen as well.
*
* On balance I think it would be a good idea to change my cheats to:
* Temporal Distortion + Anomalous Agility.

Yonge 20 Feb 2022 22:16 UTC
5 points
on: D&D.SCP: Anomalous Acquisitions
Infiltrate:
3273
4449
4027
Legal:
5058
3850
2325
Paramilitary
3440
2719
4027

Yonge 9 Sep 2021 22:07 UTC
5 points
on: D&D.Sci Pathfinder: Return of the Gray Swan Evaluation & Ruleset
This was my favourite dand sci problem so far, and I would have spent longer looking at it if it hadn’t coincided with a period when I had less free time than usual.

The one niggle I had with this is that the data wasn’t in the most user friendly format, and a significant fraction of the time I spent on this was used munging the data into a more useable format. Maybe a useful exercise for problems of this complexity would be for the author to attempt to solve it using just the given data, and adjust it accordingly?

Making every problem this complex feels like it would be taking things too far, but I would like the occasional one like it.

Yonge 13 Dec 2021 21:46 UTC
4 points
on: D&D.Sci GURPS Dec 2021: Hunters of Monsters
The known Genus in the monster file appear to be grouped. Together with hints about data being obscured by poor handwriting it suggests the unknown ones belong to the group they are in:
Toxicala = Beast
Earthmover = Beast
Raging Windrider = Avian
Flying Storm = Drake

Within a genus the data is consistent with being ordered by size suggesting:
Rimewinder ⇐ Scary
Dull Viper >= Rinewinder, ⇐ Scary
Peaksnake >= Dull Viper, ⇐ Scary
Wrathrope >= Peaksnake, ⇐ Scary
Earthmover >= medium, ⇐ legendary
Macrophant >= Earthmover, ⇐ legendary
Flamu >= small, ⇐ large
Puffdrake ⇐ small
Sandcrawler >= Medium
Thunderclap Wyvern >= Sandcrawler
Sightings by biologists:
All times/During weeks 6-15
Cassowarrior ⁴⁶⁄₁₃
Cold Parrot ⁴⁷⁄₄
Downhanger ⁹⁸⁄₂₂
Dull viper ⁶⁵⁄₁₆
Earthmover ⁷¹⁄₁₅
Flamu ⁵³⁄₁₂
Flying Storm ⁴⁵⁄₁₈
Macrophant ³⁵⁄₅
Northern Badger ⁷⁷⁄₇
Peaksnake ⁴¹⁄₃
Puffdrake ³³⁄₀
Rimewinder ²⁵⁄₆
Sandcrawler ⁵³⁄₇
Thunderclap Wyvern ³¹⁄₁₄
Toxicala ¹⁹⁄₀
Wrathrope ⁴¹⁄₈

So the Toxicala is the most desirable specimen for the biologists, followed by the Rimewinder, Puffdrake, and Macrophant. The Toxicala and Puffdrake have never been seen between weeks 6 and 15. and the Rimewinder is quite likely to be a small beast. The name of the Macrophant together with it’s position in the list suggests it is probably a large beast, suggesting this is the most desirable one to find on balance. During this time of the year in the past it has only been seen in the The Lordesteppes, suggesting that is a good place to go. Hunts in this location also seem to be more successful on average than the average hunt. Posion Plate armour from the Poison element has been used on more than half of the succesfull Macrophant hunts, suggesting that is the best choice for them. A sword with the wind element is the most succcessful weapon.

For the locations the biologists look for specimens the following stand out:
They enver go to the Devils Maw between weeks 37 and 39 or between weeks 46 and 49
They never go to Miresmouth Forest in weeks 13 or weeks 33-45
They never go to Scorchsan between weeks 1 and 6 and between weeks 46 and 52
They never go to the Lordesteppes between weeks 20 and 32, and also in week 52
They never go to Thunderwood Peaks in weeks 7-19

Looking though the hunters logs hunts suggests:

Hunts in the gap periods in Devils Maw are either unsucessful or yield a Sliding Queen Shash (only in the first period) which has a scary size. Possibly this is only present during these times and the ancient biologists were
to scared to got there then? That monster has not been seen anywhere else or at any other times which is consistent with this.

Hunts in Miresmouth Forest between weeks 33-45 are unusually unsuccessful. Maybe the biologists are avoiding it because of poor pickings. Or more likely the Legendary Crow That Breaks The Sky frightened the biologists off, The hunters never caught one of these outside of this window which suggests the crows may only be present during this time? The times at which the crows have been caught in the Lordsteppes and Thunderwood Peaks also correspond to time when the biologists don’t go there.. No crows were caught in Scorchan during the gap, however it they are migratory birds that are always present in one location then the gap would perfectly align with the time at which their location was not otherwise known, suggesting the cause of this gap is the same.

Yonge 22 Sep 2022 22:55 UTC
3 points
0
on: D&D.Sci September 2022: The Allocation Helm
Some traits definitely go better with some houses, however I couldn’t see much in the way of clear cut rules. I constructed the following highly provisional allocation by considering students that were sorted when the helm was still reasonably reliable, and then combining the probabilities of a student with each of the 5 ratings being sorted into each house, and selecting the one which on balance seemed most likely.
A Dragonslayer
B Thought-Talon
C Serpentyne
D Dragonslayer
E Humblescrumble
F Serpentyne
G Dragonslayer
H Humblescrumble
I Humblescrumble
J Thought-Talon
K Dragonslayer
L Dragonslayer
M Dragonslayer
N Dragonslayer
O Serpentyne
P Thought-Talon
Q Dragonslayer
R Humblescrumble
S Serpentyne
T Humblescrumble

Yonge 12 Aug 2022 20:05 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Yonge’s comment on: Dwarves & D.Sci: Data Fortress
After staring at the data a bit more:
- Woodcutters are only valuable at low coal levels. At coal level 1 an extra miner is consistently more valuable than a woodsman
- Brewers seem to be actively harmful to fort value.
- There is a big fall in fort value when no warriors are present.
- The previously observed drop off in the value of additional miners after 5 seem to occur because it makes it less likely for other valuable types to be present, not because it is intrinsically bad. 6 miners and 2 smiths/crafters seems to be much better than 5 miners and 3 smiths/crafters.
My final selection for the fort of Magh Loduhr is therefore:
- 4 farmers
- 6 miners
- 1 smith
- 1 crafter
- 1 warrior

Yonge 17 Jul 2022 20:36 UTC
3 points
0
on: Ars D&D.sci: Mysteries of Mana
I only had time for a very superficial analysis, however hopefully the following isn’t too bad:
- Rainbow Rays of Rahl
- Alatar’s Abyssal Armor
- Solomon’s Solar Shield

Yonge 13 May 2022 20:41 UTC
3 points
on: D&D.Sci Divination: Nine Black Doves
Some omens/disasters are clearly correlated with what happens next year, though I couldn’t find anything that stood out and made a given disaster nearly certain to happen this year. Some of the signs were also contradictory. I couldn’t find any additional clear cut pattern by looking at previous years, though given that several disasters come in clumps I wouldn’t be surprised if there was something to learn by looking for correlations > 1 year in the past. I suspect a complicated algorithm could need to be used to pull everything together to produce a highly accurate prediction, however my relatively simple analysis suggests that the following may not be too bad:
Interventions I am very confident are optimal:
- Italia Famine Relief(10000Dn)
- Grecia Plague Prevention(10000Dn)
Interventions that look reasonably likely to be optimal:
- Hispania Famine relief(10000Dn)
- Italia Plague Prevention(10000Dn)
Interventions that look moderately useful, but I suspect aren’t optimal:
- Grecia Fire Prevention(10000Dn)
- Hsipania Fire Prevention (10000Dn)

Yonge 16 Nov 2021 17:14 UTC
3 points
on: D&D.Sci Dungeoncrawling: The Crown of Command Evaluation & Ruleset
Thank you for posting this. Overall I felt the level of complexity was about right for an average DandD problem. I was able to extract some useful information with a moderate amount of effort, but reading through the ruleset I doubt anyone could figure out the perfect team from the dataset without a lot of luck.

Yonge 17 Aug 2021 16:30 UTC
3 points
on: D&D.Sci August 2021: The Oracle and the Monk
Solar—Appears to operate on approximately a 27 day cycle which suggests it’s value should be around 50 on day 384. However this has risen to anomalously high values recently (The supernova being a star may be the cause), so there is a risk it may not behave as predicted in the immediate future.

Lunar—Seems to go through a pattern of relative highs and lows that repeat every 27-28 days, probably not coincentally the same as the orbital period of the moon. On day 356-357 lunar was at a relatively high value of 46 − 39, so this looks like a good prospect.

Ocean—Can be very strong, but also very weak at times with no obvious pattern.

Breeze - Has never been more than 20 or less than 6. This is unlikely to be good enough.

Flame—Can be anywhere between 11 and 41 with no obvious pattern

Ash—Is consistently ⇐ 10 , so should probably be avoided

Earth—Another one that can easily be very high or low with no obvious pattern.

Void—Highly erratic osscillations between 17 and 30,

Doom—The qualitative pattern seems to repeat itself once every 8 days, suggesting it’s value on day 384
will be about 30.

Spite—Is 0 about half the time. It takes on a high value regularly once every 28 days though. The last time
this happened was on day 369 which is no good for us. On other days it is either 0 or a relatively low
value, so this is one to avoid.

Looking at the ones that seem reasonably predictable Solar + Lunar should yield over 90 so this should be a good prospect, providing the supernova doesn’t unexpectedly disrupt things.

Lunar + Doom is another possibility, however unless the supernove disrupts things it has a lower expected value.

On balance I think Solar + Lunar looks like the best bet.

Yonge 24 May 2021 6:53 UTC
3 points
on: A.D&D.Sci May 2021: Interdimensional Monster Carcass Auction
My first thought was that if I’m bidding against different versions of me then we should all co-operate and bid at most 1sp in order to maximise our profits. However we would most likely be up against NPC who won’t do this which wrecks this strategy. In the absence of any indicateion of how the NPC and other bidders would bid I generated a random price between 0.9* average price and 0.9* minimum price, and then manually adjusted a couple that didn’t look right which resulted in the following bids:
Lot 1 Red Dragon 1 days since killed 73sp
Lot 2 Jungle Mammoth 1 days since killed 35sp
Lot 3 Mild Boar 5 days since killed 14sp
Lot 4 Jungle Mammoth 5 days since killed 22sp
Lot 5 Mild Boar 1 days since killed 14sp
Lot 6 Green Dragon 2 days since killed 63sp
Lot 7 Mild Boar 2 days since killed 16sp
Lot 8 Mild Boar 5 days since killed 7sp
Lot 9 Mild Boar 8 days since killed 5sp
Lot 10 Mild Boar 6 days since killed 10sp
Lot 11 Mild Boar 8 days since killed 2sp
Lot 12 Blue Dragon 8 days since killed 18sp
Lot 13 Jewel Beetle 1 days since killed 4sp
Lot 14 Mild Boar 1 days since killed 14sp
Lot 15 Jungle Mammoth 4 days since killed 29sp
Lot 16 Jungle Mammoth 2 days since killed 29sp
Lot 17 Mild Boar 5 days since killed 10sp
Lot 18 Red Dragon 6 days since killed 44sp
Lot 19 Mild Boar 5 days since killed 14sp
Lot 20 Jungle Mammoth 1 days since killed 34sp

Yonge 14 Apr 2021 16:34 UTC
3 points
on: D&D.Sci April 2021: Voyages of the Gray Swan
Spoiler protection
Known harpy, kraken, merpeople, and shark attacks seem to be on a gentle rising trend.
Known pirate attacks fall substantially from 1401 onwards, but are still the most common. Despite this the year and month doesn’t appear to have much impact on losses, and there is no obvious correlation between the month and the frequency of a given attack.
The direction doesn’t appear to have much impact either.
Looking at how the damage is distributed across known encounters
- Harpy peaks at around 10-15 then falls away, none have done more than 23
- Kraken peaks at around 55 then falls away, none have done more than 78
- Pirates peaks around 15-20, and falls away, none have done more than 64
- Sharks peaks at around 20 −25 then falls away, none have done more than 56
- water elemental is strongly peaked around 80, but falls away rapidly, none have done more than 85
Suggests the only serious threats are:
- crabmonsters
- demon whale
- merpeople
- nessie
All of these peaked below 100 percent damage with 1 exception the demon whale, which suggests this is the biggest threat. With this in mind I should definitely invest in all 20 oars for 20 gp.
Nessie is responsible the causing the second highest number of incidents with very heavy damage, so investing another 30gp in cannons looks sensible.
Merpeople are the next biggest threat, but bribing them could make matters worse if it leads to more dangerous encounters. There were 2678 known merpeople encounters. If we assume they are spread evenly across the other 8 encounter types that means at least 334 demon whale attacks. Looking at the distribution of damage caused by the demon whale attacks it looks like the peak is likely to be well over 100 percent damage, and they represent a very real threat even with all the extra oars. It is not at all clear if this would represent a net reduction in risk, and when I consider that the high cost would prevent me investing in crabmonster defenses the benefits of this look dubious.
The crabmonsters are the only other encounter that do a large amount of damage, so arming the carpenters for 20gp looks sensible.
For the remaining 35 gp investing money to reduce a minute risk to my life and impressing the admiralty with less damage done to the ship seems a lot more attractive than minutely increasing the risk to my life and impressing them with saving money. Of the lesser threats the water elementals do the most damage, so if any of them are going to get me it is most likely to be them, so I will invest the last of the gold in the foam swords.
Final decision:
- 20 oars @ 20gp
- 3 cannons @ 30gp
- Arm the carpenters @ 20gp
- Foam swords for the deck crew @ 15gp
- 15 gp under budget

Yonge 21 Jan 2024 13:40 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Yonge’s comment on: D&D.Sci(-fi): Colonizing the SuperHyperSphere
Looking at this further, by far the strongest effect is the latitude, and that looks more like a rectangular effect than a trigonometric one. Replacing the trigonometric fit with one that modelled a rectangulat latitude effect and no other yielded a model that explained most of the variation. By itself this looks better than the previous model.
The next biggest effect looks like it is due to variation in murphys constant. This looked vaguely quadratic.
The next biggest effect looked like it was due to variations in the value of Pi. It looked vaguely triangular, with the point ust below 3.15.
The next biggest effect looked like a vaguely sinusoidal variation due to the longitude.
Including all of these in a model yielded one with a standard deviation of 4.9, and predicted that the following 12 locations were the best:
76804 VALUE:87.95301643603202
16965 VALUE:88.18566645580597
104815 VALUE:88.34280034001172
8415 VALUE:88.39346893009704
18123 VALUE:88.50303192064138
107929 VALUE:88.5221749787355
99595 VALUE:88.59004262250107
80395 VALUE:88.59313676878352
42742 VALUE:88.72736581213306
40639 VALUE:88.80584599223495
65607 VALUE:90.36919375244607
94304 VALUE:90.63981001558145
This is currently my best estimate. As the predicted values are all < 100 I will have to file a report on this with the empires colonisation department in case there is every any interest in making another attempt, but I won’t risk the empresses’ rath by attempting to colonise any of them.