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Shuttle mission calculation

Hi all,
This will be old story for a lot of us but I still don't understand how shuttle numbers are calculated. A few years ago, a player theory about A counting more than B in a A AND B test has been raised. But there was never (AFAIK) a definitive answer from the developers.
Often I see, during Faction events that the order in which the characters are proposed is wrong but then a few days ago I has that situation in a simple faction mission.
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Can someone explain the rational behind that?
Ru'affo and Mudd add 46% and Etana 45%
There is no filtering/manual sorting of any kind.

Have a good day

Captain Hotkiss - The Liberal Alliance

Comments

  • edited September 2021
    Hi all,
    This will be an old story for a lot of us but I still don't understand how shuttle numbers are calculated.

    Ru'affo and Mudd add 46% and Etana 45%
    There is no filtering/manual sorting of any kind.

    Captain Hotkiss - The Liberal Alliance

    I agree. It’s strange, especially as Mudd fits the 854 Eng AND 1225 Sec skills, and Etana only 1.400 ENG skills. (Keeping Ruafo on the first shuttle seat in both cases)

    2.000 from 2 skills should give more success rate than just 1.400 from a one skill.

    But 1% less instead of 5% more?

    @NoNameNamer Pointer towards the calculation behind it, but it seems to be only valid for the sorting of the crew on the right side. With his explanation, the sorting order is correct.

    But what is not correct is, if we ignore the option, if we put Etana on the Eng slot and still gets worse skill probabilities than a combined, where the second skill is not even required...

    Or another point: even after 5 years of gaming I never understood the numbers. and mechanic behind it.

    Why am I getting shown 100% of the skill if only 1/4 of it is available and will be applied?

    Worker1 can do bricklaying and woodwork. Worker2 is only skilled in woodworking. In reality worker one can do both to 100% success rate according to his job description - he doesn't just lose 75% of his skills. If a college asks him for advice, he can give a 100% correct answer and not a 25% maybe, but better ask someone else for advice - I have some memory loss today because I am doing brickwork right now.

    So, sending a Starfleet officer on an away mission, it's due to their Skills, and not what they read about last week on a PADD and want to try it out.

    Either the numbers for Mudd should show

    ENG 224 (25% of 894 rounded up)
    SEC 1.225
    SCI 389

    as those see the available numbers,
    or the mathematical behind the voyage should stop distracting 75% of skill.

    Why would I give preference on 3-skill and 2-skill over 1-skill like Captain Scott who got a bad ranking Tier 10 (I think) on the BoB?

    You prove the point, that 1-skill Captain Tribble can dominate a shuttle - on two skills shuttles, the crew should also use their full potential (or it should be made more clear and transparent in the game - 25% display or showing the adjusted skills for a crew on a specific shuttle seat.

    But as I said: never understood it in 5 years, and your calculation example makes sense but confuses me even more. I must have played the game all wrong all these years ;)
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  • Thank you very much for that quick answer.
    If this has always been like that, I've been wrong since i started to play. And I'm sure I'm not the only one as a lot of people dislike 2 skills characters where they should rule the game.
    I'll try to convince my self this is the way it works and come back to you if I find other things I cannot understand. (For example I'm surprised that Dr Bones Mc Coy is not proposed first for every MED seat).
    And as Riov tr’Khazaan says, its at the least very confusing and unintuitive.
  • edited September 2021
    I cannot believe I did not check the WIKI.
    It confirms what NoNameNamer said on the "display side". But also talked about the older issue I mentioned.

    Success Chances

    The chance of success of a mission is determined by the relevant base (without proficiency) skill level the shuttle crew members have. To determine the result of a mission the skill levels at the start of the mission are used[2], so upgrading crew members away on a shuttle mission will not influence the mission's outcome.

    Shuttle success is based on the average skill (AvgSkill) across all available slots the mission has. For each slot, the skill supplied is the the base proficiency of the stat that matches the slot. Where the slot is an OR of two stats, the higher value will be taken. Where the slot is an AND of two stats, the higher base skill is added to 1/4th of the lower base skill. [3]
    TotalSkill=HigherSkill+LowerSkill/4

    ItemError.png BUG: The AND slots percentage success rates are being calculated as described above, however the real success rate is being calculated by the first skill listed being added to 1/4th of the second skill listed regardless of their values.
    reported: 2018-05-01
    acknowledged: 2018-05-01
    [4]


    https://stt.wiki/wiki/Faction_Missions
  • I gave up trying to figure out those stats long ago. I just make my initial shuttle sacrifice to RNGesus and it all seems to work out. ;)
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  • AviTrekAviTrek ✭✭✭✭✭
    Long ago, someone here did a significant set of tests using who-knows-how-many merits and week or so of repeating the same shuttles and confirmed that the first skill in an AND combination was always calculated higher regardless of what the displayed number was. This had been suspected for a long time, but the powers that be/were claimed all was well.

    Shortly after that, we all got a surprise test of a new feature where we could pull a lot of faction-specific items for free. The idea was that this would be a new thing, but it has never come back. At the same time, an update made unspecified changes to the look of shuttles. This was most obviously that it no longer said failed, but completed.

    Many of us believe that the AND bug was fixed at that time. Others still think it wasn't fixed. My own limited tests make me not worry about it at all. But no one has repeated the long scientific test to prove it. Of course the people who run the game have never said a word about the issue.

    The closest we got was Shan acknowledging the concern and promising to pass it on. Never a peep after.

    It certainly felt like they were intentionally avoiding commenting to avoid acknowledging the shuttles were broken for years while they denied they were broken. Regardless I think there was a limited player test of non-event shuttles that made it seem like the issue was fixed. Not as extensive as when they tracked the bug, but there was some data.
  • Ishmael MarxIshmael Marx ✭✭✭✭✭
    If you want to calculate/verify the predicted (unboosted) %success for an event shuttle at 4K VP missions, this is the formula I use in Excel (fairly sure I stole it from the wiki, but I'm too lazy to check). (I also use a really old version of Excel, so hopefully they haven't altered the formula structure for you up-to-date folks.)

    =ROUNDDOWN(1/(1+EXP(3.5*(0.5-(###/2000)))),2)

    Where ### is the average value of all crew on the shuttle, with individual crew scores calculated as @NoNameNamer has described (i.e., largest skill + 1/4 of smaller skill); remember to apply the 2x/3x event bonuses as applicable to the individual crew. The 2000 in the denominator is the "difficulty" value that corresponds to the 4K shuttles.

    For reference, this is the result you get for some average scores:
    1500 = 70%
    2000 = 85%
    2500 = 93%
    3000 = 97%
  • NoNameNamerNoNameNamer ✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2021
    2k is the highest event shuttle difficulty. The max daily shuttle difficulty is 1568.
  • [SSR] GTMET[SSR] GTMET ✭✭✭✭✭
    AviTrek wrote: »
    Long ago, someone here did a significant set of tests using who-knows-how-many merits and week or so of repeating the same shuttles and confirmed that the first skill in an AND combination was always calculated higher regardless of what the displayed number was. This had been suspected for a long time, but the powers that be/were claimed all was well.

    Shortly after that, we all got a surprise test of a new feature where we could pull a lot of faction-specific items for free. The idea was that this would be a new thing, but it has never come back. At the same time, an update made unspecified changes to the look of shuttles. This was most obviously that it no longer said failed, but completed.

    Many of us believe that the AND bug was fixed at that time. Others still think it wasn't fixed. My own limited tests make me not worry about it at all. But no one has repeated the long scientific test to prove it. Of course the people who run the game have never said a word about the issue.

    The closest we got was Shan acknowledging the concern and promising to pass it on. Never a peep after.

    It certainly felt like they were intentionally avoiding commenting to avoid acknowledging the shuttles were broken for years while they denied they were broken. Regardless I think there was a limited player test of non-event shuttles that made it seem like the issue was fixed. Not as extensive as when they tracked the bug, but there was some data.

    Yep, I few of us did a rough test with a few shuttles and it looks like everything is working now as intended. Not a huge sample but enough to be meaningful given the shuttle/crew combos we choose.

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