Science & Industry

This topic is to highlight an issue with ore compression that I originally posted in the response part of the Reprocessing Changes Dev Blog that needs to be addressed.

There is an error in the ore compression change that needs to be fixed. Ore compression as it is currently shown in the dev blog will result in a loss of materials.

Example: (using the new numbers published in the dev blog)

Crokite gives 3.67 Zydrine/Unit of Crokite ( 367 / 100 = 3.67 )
Multiply by the unchanged compression amount, 1250, and you get 4587.5.

However the stated refined amount of Zydrine for Compressed Crokite stated in the dev blog is 4579. This gives a loss of 8.5 units. This type of loss due to compression occurs in most instances in the new compression numbers.

The loss for this example is quite small, just 0.12% of the value, however I believe this error wasn't intended and it occurred from the use of rounding that makes the 1.381 modifier vary.

There is an easy fix!!! Instead of applying the amount modifier of 1.381 to the compressed ore refining amounts, calculate the amount of minerals for a single piece of the ore from the new ore refining amounts and multiply it by the amounts of that ore needed to make one compressed ore of that type. This will result in no loss from compression and the needed increase in mineral amounts is still applied.


This method also has the advantage of using game mechanics to calculate the refining amounts for the compressed ore. It also removes the variability found in the 1.381 modifier (explained below).

---

How the error occurred: Variability of the 1.381 modifier by rounding

Ore used: Crokite, Mineral used: Tritanium

Let's assume we don't know the modifier used to make the changes to basic Crokite refining and solve for it.

Now let's solve for the ratio found in the Compressed Crokite refining amount.

There is obviously a discrepancy between these two modifiers. The first is above the stated amount because of rounding. To show this I will use the stated modifier of 1.381 to calculate the unrounded amount for Tritanium found refining 1 batch of normal Crokite.

This shows that a decent amount of rounding did occur. Rounding this way is expected, but it does cause issues.

The issue is that the rounding causes the modifier to be variable and when different modifiers are used to change the basic ore and the compressed mineral amounts, a loss of material will occur when this action is taken.