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| Hab and QS races |
Tue, 20 April 2004 09:20  |
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 mazda |
 | Lieutenant |
Messages: 655
Registered: April 2003
Location: Reading, UK | |
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Assertion :- For QS designs you should widen and left or right shift your hab bands into the tapered edges, especially if it gains you RW points in the process.
I've been investigating some minor effects of starting hab bands.
In general, the average starting hab of a green planet is constant regardless of the width of a hab band.
On r.g.c.s I found some figures quoted by Loren Pechtel (that I can confirm with a C program).
Non-immune - average green starting hab is 37%
one-immune - average green starting hab is 56%
for a bi-immune it is 75%, and tri-immune is 100% (obviously)
There are two minor sub-effects in this.
i) a wider band will have a slightly higher average hab.
ii) moving a band into the tapered edges of the T and G also raises the average starting hab.
To see i) consider a hab band.
It has 2 end points where the hab_value is at it's lowest, 1 middle point where it is perfect, and the rest of the points in between.
Now if we widen the hab band the the start and mid points remain exactly the same (borderline and perfect) but there is an increase in the number of other points.
Because the average value of an other-point is higher than the average of the (middle + 2 ends), the more other-points we have then the higher the average of the whole band becomes.
i.e. the lowest average would be a band of width 2, becaue you would have 3 points, 2 of which would be ends.
This is not a descriptive trick. It can be shown mathematically.
It works because the hab band is made of discrete values.
If the hab band was a continuous set of values then effectively the number of other-points would be infinite and this would completely drown out the 2 end and 1 middle points.
Effect ii), moving a hab band into the tapered edge is more obvious, I hope.
If you move a grav hab band from starting at 10 clicks out to starting at 9 clicks out then the point at the left edge is now less likely.
You will now get slightly less planets, however the planets that you have lost are the ones with the lowest hab, so the average hab must go up.
So we now have 2 effects, both of which slightly increase the average starting hab.
i.e. if we widen a hab band and then move it into a tapered edge we will increase the average starting hab of our green planets.
Consider a temp band.
i) -160 to 0 - 40 clicks wide
ii) -184 to -16 - 42 clicks wide
Both of these have the same number of planets available.
To get from i) to ii) you widen by 1 click and then move it 5 clicks left. This should improve the average starting hab, as described above.
I have a C program that does in fact confirm this.
Average green hab goes up by about 2%.
(in fact I wrote the program and then noticed the effect, so tried to explain it)
Why QS races I hear you ask ?
Well, the idea with QS races is to use effects that improve starting speed.
It would seem to me that improving the average value of your starting green planets would fall into this category.
Hence my suggestion that for QS designs you should widen and left or right shift your hab bands into the tapered edges.
The downside effect is that you lose out considerably when you come to start terraforming deep yellow planets, as there won't be as many yellows to terraform.
However, at what stage of the game does a QS start using deep yellows ?
I suppose a 1-imm 2 narrow (1 in 15) might start early, but a non-immune QS wouldn't, would it ?
Hope this is interesting and not blindingly obvious.
M
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