Surviving Mars - extractor dust and deterioration

[vagamer]

Description
extractor dust and deterioration


Windows


Steam

What is your game version?
228.184

Please explain your issue is in as much detail as possible.
I think there is a minor glitch with how deterioration is calculated near concrete extractors.

Base deterioration of wind turbines seems to be 4% per six hours. While I was testing for extra deterioration near concrete extractors, I noted that within about three hexes, deterioration was 91% over five days. At about six hexes from the extractor, the wind turbine deteriorated about 3% every six hours - less than natural deterioration rate.
(I put a bit more detail in a forum post in general forums.)

Can you replicate the issue?
yes - the data was consistent over five days

Attachments

 

[offhand]

Reading through the decompiled code, I have two observations:
- maintenance threshold is randomized to +-20% of base value each time the building is repaired (function RequiresMaintenance:GenerateMaintenanceThreshold)
- added dust does not fade with distance, it is added fully within 7 radius, and not at all outside (function DustGenerator:ThrowDust)

Could just this random variation explain your results?

Edit:
If I count this right, most buildings (not extractors) are expected to require maintenance once every 166 hours on average (133-200 hours after the spread), and with the additional extractor dust this becomes 117 hours (94-141).

 

[vagamer]

There was no maintenance done on the buildings during the time I gathered data. I constructed the wind turbines specifically for this test and gathered the data every six hours. I don't see how either of those two items you mentioned could have affected my results.

One other possibility is that the game keeps track of more digits than it displays. That might account for a little bit of the variation, but it is interesting that it seems to decrease at least somewhat with distance.

Is the seven hex range from the non-moving drum part of the extractor, or is it centered on the whole unit including the moving roller animation? I was measuring hexes from the side of the non-moving drum.

 

[offhand]

Reading your other post, I'm under an impression that you've built 5 turbines in a line and measured their deterioration once. I think they would each get a random maintenance threshold in the range 80000-120000 units, and deteriorate at the same rate of 850 per hour, and so the difference in their deterioration % would depend on that randomness, and not on the distance.

To reproduce accounting for randomness, try fully covering all the area around the extractor with 50 turbines and average out the results at each distance. Or just run the test 10 times in a row.

Unfortunately I don't know how is the distance calculated exactly.

 

[vagamer]

So do you mean that all buildings essentially have a randomized amount of "health" upon construction, and that amount likely changes with each maintenance iteration?

 

[Secataur]

I believe that the 7 hex distance that extractors apply dust is a Euclidean distance, not a hextile distance. To illustrate, I believe that the extractor placement in this image would apply dust to all the solar panels, apply dust to all hexes between the solar panels and the concrete extractor, but apply no dust to any of the hexes outside the ring of solar panels. Since wind turbines cover three hexes each, they can be placed such that only some of their three hexes are outside the extractor's range. In this case it's the wind turbine's center hex that matters.