11-Dec-2012 - Player-Owned Ports

[Demoli]

so.. does snyone know the conclusions tothe storylines and wants to share it, wiki has nothing :/

[So Rowdy]

Finally...I hate this skill so much

 

 

 

 

Almost to pincers!

[muggiwhplar]

Hmm, what about...

 

3 Judges

6 morale

6 combat

5 seafaring

1 witch

1 golem

3 merchants

 

That's almost my setup at the moment, but I have 6 of the standard seafaring crew and only 2 merchants.

 

So far there's only been screenshots posted of the 3 base crew from pincers, and that Oxhead guy. If there are truly only 4 pincers crew member types, then that will affect crew choices I'm sure...

 

It will only affect them in as much as merchants etc. from bowl will be kept.

 

Also @muggi I'd say 6 seafaring is the most important of the base crew because seafaring loses out on hulls (200 less on max) and loses out due to no rams and figureheads; so in terms of reaching stats seafaring crew > morale/combat crew (only slightly but still)

 

Good point, I forgot about that. I'll probably dismiss my golem when I get to the pincers to make room for a 6th seafarer unless the pincers has a steel golem that nobody knows about yet.

[Platinum_Myr]

Ditch the golem and seawitches for oxe-faces, since the oxface has higher stats (600all) compared to the seawitch AND golem's 450/600 combo. Also, the oxface has 600 seafaring/combat so it can function as a decent double in every two-stat mission.

 

As long as there are no other crew My plan is to keep the judge of dice + merchants from bowl and upgrade everything else over time.

 

EDIT:

 

Jeremy or Saradomin Mage, what's the rough difficulty leap going from bowl to pincers?

[Sy_Accursed]

I'm thinking my final crew plan is:

6 Morale

6 Combat

6 Seafaring

2 Ox

3 Merchant

2 Judge

 

Might swap last few about a bit but its gotta be 2.3.2 or 1.4.2 or 1.3.3

[Quyneax]

I don't think three merchants is necessary at all, you rarely get three missions you want to use one on anyway. That's especially true after you maxed your stainless steel upgrades.

[Unknown_Warrior]

If my 25 chi + merchant + fortune of sea succeeds i got enough chi for superior sea singer legs ;x

 

Succeeded plate & laqcuer earlier, those jade statues dont give any +trade goods btw, got 25 laqcuer without any bonusses >.<

 

I'm going to crush your dreams with this but it needs to be said for all to hear; jade statues boost your trade goods by 1%.

That, and the fact that totems are added multiplicatively rather than additively {ie: base x 1.01 x 1.01 rather than base x (1.01+1.01)} AND that boosts round down, means that jade statues have only ONE USE; that is turning the Whaler's final storyline mission's reward from 100 spices to 101 spices (Merchants and FotS not applied).

 

It doesn't work on anything else.

Yeah, you just got Jagex'd, son.

[Grand Lord Dan]

I don't think three merchants is necessary at all, you rarely get three missions you want to use one on anyway. That's especially true after you maxed your stainless steel upgrades.

 

?????

 

If a merchant wasn't worth having on your boat, you're probably done with the Ports in the first place.

 

Get 4 merchants, never let them leave any ships.

[Sy_Accursed]

I don't think three merchants is necessary at all, you rarely get three missions you want to use one on anyway. That's especially true after you maxed your stainless steel upgrades.

 

?????

 

If a merchant wasn't worth having on your boat, you're probably done with the Ports in the first place.

 

Get 4 merchants, never let them leave any ships.

 

Thats just no.

If the voyage is sub-100% you don't want a merchant, better to have a different unit for 100%.

 

I can see Quy's point though I would be of the opinion when you have basically 'finished' ports presumably you'd be able to 100% most trade good missions (which are kinda the only reason to still be there) so surely you would be wanting a merchant on most voyages at that point.

[Grand Lord Dan]

I don't think three merchants is necessary at all, you rarely get three missions you want to use one on anyway. That's especially true after you maxed your stainless steel upgrades.

 

?????

 

If a merchant wasn't worth having on your boat, you're probably done with the Ports in the first place.

 

Get 4 merchants, never let them leave any ships.

 

Thats just no.

If the voyage is sub-100% you don't want a merchant, better to have a different unit for 100%.

 

I can see Quy's point though I would be of the opinion when you have basically 'finished' ports presumably you'd be able to 100% most trade good missions (which are kinda the only reason to still be there) so surely you would be wanting a merchant on most voyages at that point.

 

Wrong.

 

You "don't" want a merchant on board, if the crew slot they are taking up would hinder your success chance by 30%(Or the amount your current tier merchant gives). Little hint, that isn't possible.

[Thorgmir]

I don't think three merchants is necessary at all, you rarely get three missions you want to use one on anyway. That's especially true after you maxed your stainless steel upgrades.

 

?????

 

If a merchant wasn't worth having on your boat, you're probably done with the Ports in the first place.

 

Get 4 merchants, never let them leave any ships.

 

Thats just no.

If the voyage is sub-100% you don't want a merchant, better to have a different unit for 100%.

 

I can see Quy's point though I would be of the opinion when you have basically 'finished' ports presumably you'd be able to 100% most trade good missions (which are kinda the only reason to still be there) so surely you would be wanting a merchant on most voyages at that point.

 

Absolutely not. Let me give you probability 101 right now. Specific lesson: expected value.

 

Our goal is to maximize the expected return of each mission. There are two factors contributing to the expected value: the probability of success (p) and the amount returned if successful (x). The relationship between them is simple: the expected return on a voyage, E(V), is equal to the probability of success times the amount returned when successful. Thus, E(V) = px.

 

We have two scenarios to consider: one with a merchant, one without a merchant. Without a merchant, suppose the best success rate we can get is P, and the expected return is X. With a merchant, the return given success increases to 1.3X. How much does p decrease due to the lack of a merchant? Well, suppose you lose 2k of unit stats (conservative overestimate), and the mission has requirements of 16k (roughly typical, though it doesn't matter much if this changes). Then that changes p from P to 0.875P, and thus E(V) = 0.875P(1.3X) = 1.1375PX. This is a roughly 14% increase in expected return by using a merchant.

 

Note that as mission requirements increase, it actually becomes more beneficial to use a merchant, as the decrease in p becomes smaller while the increase in x becomes larger.

 

TLDR: ALWAYS use a merchant, on ALL your voyages, except for voyages for 3 or fewer trade goods, where the effect will be rounded down to nothing.

 

You wouldn't want to use a merchant if it decreased your success by more than 30% (roughly, 1/1.3 to be precise), but there are no such missions.

Edited January 27, 2013 by Thorgmir

[cruseder4]

what's the rough difficulty leap going from bowl to pincers?

 

You judge :

 

 

 

 

[muggiwhplar]

Do lifeboats protect ship captains or only the crew?

[Alg]

You judge :

Those requirements look exactly like the ones I'm getting very early the Bowl... :sad:

[strilmus]

the difference here is that the payoffs are relatively lower and the voyage times are higher

[So Rowdy]

the difference here is that the payoffs are relatively lower and the voyage times are higher

 

If i remember right, resource payoffs were pretty low (120) at the beginning of the bowl. Like other regions I assume it increases

 

I just realized I'm almost to pincers and I still have a Scythe combat member in my crew...I never even noticed lol

[Xinxan]

I don't think three merchants is necessary at all, you rarely get three missions you want to use one on anyway. That's especially true after you maxed your stainless steel upgrades.

 

?????

 

If a merchant wasn't worth having on your boat, you're probably done with the Ports in the first place.

 

Get 4 merchants, never let them leave any ships.

 

Thats just no.

If the voyage is sub-100% you don't want a merchant, better to have a different unit for 100%.

 

I can see Quy's point though I would be of the opinion when you have basically 'finished' ports presumably you'd be able to 100% most trade good missions (which are kinda the only reason to still be there) so surely you would be wanting a merchant on most voyages at that point.

 

Absolutely not. Let me give you probability 101 right now. Specific lesson: expected value.

 

Our goal is to maximize the expected return of each mission. There are two factors contributing to the expected value: the probability of success (p) and the amount returned if successful (x). The relationship between them is simple: the expected return on a voyage, E(V), is equal to the probability of success times the amount returned when successful. Thus, E(V) = px.

 

We have two scenarios to consider: one with a merchant, one without a merchant. Without a merchant, suppose the best success rate we can get is P, and the expected return is X. With a merchant, the return given success increases to 1.3X. How much does p decrease due to the lack of a merchant? Well, suppose you lose 2k of unit stats (conservative overestimate), and the mission has requirements of 16k (roughly typical, though it doesn't matter much if this changes). Then that changes p from P to 0.875P, and thus E(V) = 0.875P(1.3X) = 1.1375PX. This is a roughly 14% increase in expected return by using a merchant.

 

Note that as mission requirements increase, it actually becomes more beneficial to use a merchant, as the decrease in p becomes smaller while the increase in x becomes larger.

 

TLDR: ALWAYS use a merchant, on ALL your voyages, except for voyages for 3 or fewer trade goods, where the effect will be rounded down to nothing.

 

You wouldn't want to use a merchant if it decreased your success by more than 30% (roughly, 1/1.3 to be precise), but there are no such missions.

 

Except you are not factoring in one thing... Time (as in overall time needed to harvest resources).

 

Yeah, i do get that ON AVERAGE and in the long run, you get more resources by always deploying a merchant on your trips. But picture this scenario: Every mission you fail, sets you back on the race* for first tetsu plate/seasinger thingamajig/scrimshaw X by the same time that mission lasted+. On Scythe or Bowl missions (especially the first ones, as you are trying to get new crew/ship parts/occasional port upgrades), this can be very hurtfull because it can POTENTIALLY raise to many hours lost.

Also, when you first arrive to a new region the gap between what stats you can dish out and the actual requirements is greater while using the merchant, so you risk bigger penalties.

 

And you could say that on the Scythe and Bowl, since it already takes days to move on to the next region, the sample is big enough to just risk it, because it will probably even out. But you can also say, that half the people taking your approach will have either ok to good to excelent progression, and the other half will have ok to bad to really poor progression; following a normal distribution... I'm not saying that people that always go for better stats don't have this too, because i know even then you can't ace all missions, but the lower the risk involved, the lower the variability of results.

 

That's why I THINK it's not so inefficient to follow a more guaranteed approach, or a mixed one (using merchants only after getting a bit more familiar with a new region), because the greater the risk, the more penalties# you should be prepared to face.

 

 

* I'm assuming that you want to reach the pincers for faster resource gathering. Please correct me if i'm wrong.

+ The delay is even more if you lose resources/crew/captains, even though lifeboats help here.

# Even though this can go the other way around (major winning) with equal probability...

[Zhangoes]

quick questions, for units like the judge of dice, do you have to put him in the first slot for the crew? for the purposes of maximizing solidarity?

[chenw]

I don't think it matters where you put him, as long as he is on the ship.

 

Also JoD isn't suited for single stat voyages, so it isn't always on the ship (just like the Merchant), but he is there majority of the time

[Urza285]

Lost another crew member... Nothing big. Probably only the third one throughout the whole thing.

 

Also...

 

 

One more and I get it in today in another 5 hours. After that I think I'll just do the melee critical scrimshaw then the mage one.

[Yoko Kurama]

No scroll voyage today makes me sad.

 

Still working on Crew.

[homer205]

The Judge being first is because abilities that don't stack take the first ability from the left, so it only matters if you have a bureaucrat or other solidarity unit on your ship too, I don't know why you'd have that happen though.

[So Rowdy]

Don't remember who said it, but I remember seeing "1 random per day, no more no less", the 'no less' part is not true as I just went from reset to reset with no randoms.

[Z_Berenice]

The voyages for scrolls on the bowl are a huge gap for my current crew/ship upgrades. I'm thinking about making the totems for scrolls and then hunt for some scrolls when I have to go back to the scythe for more cwood for port upgrades. I'm taking longer because I've been busy gathering stuff for port upgrades; so far cwood and/or slate port upgrades are completely done, need to work on improving jade crew / ship upgrades first and then go back to scythe for cwood + jade port ugrades (such as bar).

[F33dME]

Does anyone has seen or have jade portal?