| How are cloaking and scanner ranges rounded? |
Sat, 08 June 2019 07:51  |
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 mrvan |
 | Officer Cadet 1st Year |
Messages: 220
Registered: May 2014 | |
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The interface displays cloaking as a whole percentage from 0 to 98%, and scanner ranges as whole integers. We also know that stars! likes integer math quite a bit. However, does anyone know for sure:
- Are cloak % rounded, or can you have 97.4% cloak? I'm assuming the answer is that it's rounded.
- Are effective scanner ranges rounded? I.e., .98 cloak * 880 range = 17.6. Will the ship be detected at 17ly, 17.6ly, or 18ly?
- Are cloak % for merged fleets rounded? I.e., if I combine a 97% cloak and 98% cloaked ship, depending on relative mass the final cloak will be 97.xx%. Is this rounded down (e.g. always 97%), rounded (98% if >=97.5%), or taken as fractional value?
[interestingly, these are the numbers according to Posey's spreadsheet and the calculator for merging a 97% (10 super cloak) with a 98% (12 super cloak) ship:
mass(97%) | mass(98%) | posey | starscal
100 | 249 | 97.4986% | 97%
100 | 250 | 97.5000% | 97%
100 | 317 | 97.5803% | 97%
100 | 318 | 97.5813% | 98%
So, it seems starscal and posey do the calculations differently as the .5 or rounding breakpoint seems quite different. ]
And i guess same questions for tachyon detectors:
- Is cloak reduction rounded (down)?
- Are effective cloak and scanner ranges rounded (down)?
I could presumably testbed most of these, but if any of the answers are common knowledge it is simpler to just ask 
[Updated on: Sat, 08 June 2019 07:51] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: How are cloaking and scanner ranges rounded? |
Sat, 08 June 2019 08:19  |
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| mrvan |
| Officer Cadet 1st Year |
Messages: 220
Registered: May 2014 | |
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OK, I was bored, so ran a couple simple tests. I'll edit this post to add results as they come in.
All experiments use 97% and 98% cloaked ships against a 620ly planetary scanner. Table of calculated ranges:
Cloak | Scanning range
98.00% | 12.4
97.76% | 13.9
97.57% | 15.0
97.00% | 18.6
(Experiment 1) I merged a 98% and 97% cloaked ship whose relative masses should give it 97% (interface) / 97% (starscal) / 97.57% (Posey) cloaking.
Result: Merged ships were visible at 18ly or 18.4ly, but not at 18.79ly or 19ly
Interpretation: Effective scanner ranges are fractional (18.4 is difference from 18.8 ), but the combined cloak percentage is rounded.
(Experiment 2) I merged 2 98% ships with 1 97% ship, giving it 98% (interface) / 98% (starscal) / 97.76% (posey) cloaking.
Result: Fleets are visible at 12ly but not at 13ly.
Interpretation: 98% combined cloaking is actually fully 98%.
(Experiment 3) I made a new 98% ship with a mass just a little bit (30kt) more than the old one, which should push the combined cloak from 97% to 98% according to starscal.
Result: identical to experiment 2, so interface agrees with starscal and fleet behaves as 98% cloaked.
Interpretation: starscal seems to be pretty good at calculating combined cloak.
Conclusions:
1. Effective scanner ranges are fractional
2. Combined cloaking is rounded, and the game UI and Starscal seem correct so far. Posey's spreadsheet is wrong as it assumes fractional cloaking.
[Updated on: Sat, 08 June 2019 08:42] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: How are cloaking and scanner ranges rounded? |
Mon, 10 June 2019 10:22 |
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| magic9mushroom |
 | Commander |
Messages: 1361
Registered: May 2008 | |
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Okay, so I think I've sussed it out.
From 0% to 50% cloak, each %cloak requires 2 cloak units/kT (total: 100).
From 50% to 75% cloak, each %cloak requires 8 cloak units/kT (total: 300).
From 75% to 88% cloak, each %cloak requires 24 cloak units/kT (total: 612).
From 88% to 96% cloak, each %cloak requires 64 cloak units/kT (total: 1124).
97% cloak requires 1380 cloak units/kT (256 more than 96%).
98% cloak requires 1612 cloak units/kT (232 more than 97% - yes, it's less).
All of these points are the exact integer - 1379.96 is confirmed to not be enough for 97%.
Posey's mistake was in assuming the third breakpoint was at 87.5% instead of 88%; he also assumed there was a fourth breakpoint at 93.75% where it went to 160 cloak units/kT, rather than the 64/kT continuing to 96 and then the top two being set as special cases.
I could not replicate the 1400*100+1680*(317,318) result, as I don't actually know how to get ten Super-Stealth Cloaks onto a 100kT ship. I suspect that Stars! calculator has 1613 instead of 1612 as the 98% breakpoint, but the interface definitely has 1612.
All of these are from the interface, but from what you said the interface is accurate.
[Updated on: Mon, 10 June 2019 10:48] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: How are cloaking and scanner ranges rounded? |
Tue, 11 June 2019 00:11 |
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| magic9mushroom |
| Commander |
Messages: 1361
Registered: May 2008 | |
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Confirmed via scanner ranges that the 98% requirement is 1612, not 1613. I built a 264kT Meta Morph with 12 Super-Stealth Cloaks (for 1680 cloak units/kT) and loaded it with 11kT of pop (making the fleet mass 275kT, and the cloak units/kT of the fleet 1612.8 ). With a Scoper 280, non-NAS, the ship was visible at 5.1 ly but not at 5.66 ly.
[Updated on: Tue, 11 June 2019 00:11] Report message to a moderator
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