Proof: Specific Item Deposit Tracking Is Broken
Posted: Thu Oct 07, 2004 2:57 pm
Last night I had a node I used for choice/excellent counterweight stop working for me, presumably because of the season change to winter. This led me to searching for a new choice counterweight node, and the purchase of the minor counterweight prospecting action with 20 of my skill points. This is a detailing of exactly what I went through over 3.5 hours of trying to use this broken skill.
I began by building two actions. First, I created a deposit tracking action with 50m deposit tracking stanza, choice quality stanza, resource preservation stanza 2, 5m range, 20-degree cone, and counterweight specialization. Second, I created a prospecting action with counterweight specialization, excellent quality stanza, resource pres 2, 20-degree cone, and 5m range.
Using the counterweight deposit tracking action, I roamed around until I got a reading, and traced it until I was less than 1m from a deposit location. I used my prospecting action, and no deposit was found. I slowly rotated in one-step increments using the counterweight prospecting action, with no deposits found, although on most of the actions I got the message "You found nothing. Some specified materials were found nearby, though." I decided I must have been standing precisely on the spot, so I backed up and tried again. Nothing.
So this led me to draw a model of my situation and try to solve this mathematically. I drew a dot for where I was standing and called it "A", and drew a circle around it representing the 1m range that the tracking indicated was where the deposit was. I then calculated the distance I would have to step back using a 20-degree cone range to encompass the entire circle in my scan. With a 1m radius and a 20-degree cone angle, the distance you have to step back to scan the entire circle is 2.18m. This is calculated by the following:
You have to make a triangle. Start by drawing a line across the diameter of your circle, and label the endpoints of that line C and D. This diameter is 1m + 1m or 2m total. Then draw another dot some distance away from your circle, representing how far you would have to step back, call that "B". Draw a line from A to B, and make it perpendicular to the line you drew. Now draw a line from the left end point "C" of the diameter to the spot where you would be stepping back "B". You now have a right triangle.
The angle CBA is half of your cone angle, in this case half of 20 or 10 degrees. The sin of 10 degrees is equal to the ratio of the length of the opposite side (AC) to the length of the hypotenuse of the triangle (CB). Hence:
sin(10)=AC/CB
AC=1m, so: sin(10) =1/CB
Using our trig functions on our calculator, we get that sin(10) = .1736, so:
.1736=1/CB
therefore CB=5.7588m
So the distance we are looking for is AB, so we use the pythagorean theorem to find AB. AC^2+AB^2=CB^2
When you insert 1 for AC and 5.7588 for CB, you get 2.18m for AB
Therefore, it is a mathematical certainty that if deposit tracking accurately tells you that you are within 1m of a deposit, and you are using 5m range and 20-degree cone, if you step back 2.18m (a little more than 2m) and scan, you will find the node.
Unfortunately, I did exactly this and got no deposit. The tracker told me I was less than 1m away, I used a landmark, rotated my character until his back was exactly facing the landmark, and paced off 3m backwards, and scanned. I did this many, many, many times in 7 different geographic locations. I even overkilled and used 40-degree with 10m range, stepped back a little more, still didn't work.
Conclusion: One of the following therefore must be true
1. Specific item deposit tracking is inaccurately reporting the distance from you to the deposit.
2. Specific item prospecting doesn't locate the items it is designed to locate or
3. Specific item prospecting doesn't really have the range/cone that it tells us it has.
I would like to see a developer respond to this.
I began by building two actions. First, I created a deposit tracking action with 50m deposit tracking stanza, choice quality stanza, resource preservation stanza 2, 5m range, 20-degree cone, and counterweight specialization. Second, I created a prospecting action with counterweight specialization, excellent quality stanza, resource pres 2, 20-degree cone, and 5m range.
Using the counterweight deposit tracking action, I roamed around until I got a reading, and traced it until I was less than 1m from a deposit location. I used my prospecting action, and no deposit was found. I slowly rotated in one-step increments using the counterweight prospecting action, with no deposits found, although on most of the actions I got the message "You found nothing. Some specified materials were found nearby, though." I decided I must have been standing precisely on the spot, so I backed up and tried again. Nothing.
So this led me to draw a model of my situation and try to solve this mathematically. I drew a dot for where I was standing and called it "A", and drew a circle around it representing the 1m range that the tracking indicated was where the deposit was. I then calculated the distance I would have to step back using a 20-degree cone range to encompass the entire circle in my scan. With a 1m radius and a 20-degree cone angle, the distance you have to step back to scan the entire circle is 2.18m. This is calculated by the following:
You have to make a triangle. Start by drawing a line across the diameter of your circle, and label the endpoints of that line C and D. This diameter is 1m + 1m or 2m total. Then draw another dot some distance away from your circle, representing how far you would have to step back, call that "B". Draw a line from A to B, and make it perpendicular to the line you drew. Now draw a line from the left end point "C" of the diameter to the spot where you would be stepping back "B". You now have a right triangle.
The angle CBA is half of your cone angle, in this case half of 20 or 10 degrees. The sin of 10 degrees is equal to the ratio of the length of the opposite side (AC) to the length of the hypotenuse of the triangle (CB). Hence:
sin(10)=AC/CB
AC=1m, so: sin(10) =1/CB
Using our trig functions on our calculator, we get that sin(10) = .1736, so:
.1736=1/CB
therefore CB=5.7588m
So the distance we are looking for is AB, so we use the pythagorean theorem to find AB. AC^2+AB^2=CB^2
When you insert 1 for AC and 5.7588 for CB, you get 2.18m for AB
Therefore, it is a mathematical certainty that if deposit tracking accurately tells you that you are within 1m of a deposit, and you are using 5m range and 20-degree cone, if you step back 2.18m (a little more than 2m) and scan, you will find the node.
Unfortunately, I did exactly this and got no deposit. The tracker told me I was less than 1m away, I used a landmark, rotated my character until his back was exactly facing the landmark, and paced off 3m backwards, and scanned. I did this many, many, many times in 7 different geographic locations. I even overkilled and used 40-degree with 10m range, stepped back a little more, still didn't work.
Conclusion: One of the following therefore must be true
1. Specific item deposit tracking is inaccurately reporting the distance from you to the deposit.
2. Specific item prospecting doesn't locate the items it is designed to locate or
3. Specific item prospecting doesn't really have the range/cone that it tells us it has.
I would like to see a developer respond to this.