Resources?

[mrs_smartt]

Can you still get all the drops from spraying the toilet even if you haven't unlocked the treasure chest and everything else yet? I don't want to waste my time trying to spray a lot when I can't even get the items to finish everything and completely unlock the island.

[Perturbee]

Can you still get all the drops from spraying the toilet even if you haven't unlocked the treasure chest and everything else yet? I don't want to waste my time trying to spray a lot when I can't even get the items to finish everything and completely unlock the island.

You can always give it a try at a neighbour's town who has their monuments built up high. It doesn't take long to get the first ones normally.

[Palmjill]

I think one needs to finish the quest to get the boat treasure chest first ie upgrade the terra monument to level 2 before the other monuments are unlocked for collecting resources. The other monuments are also unlocked at certain levels (can't remember which at what level now). In other words you can only get drops of pickaxe/gold/granite until you finish the quest, which of course limits the number of resources you can get.

[dandydoodle]

When the island quest started, I was at level 34 in my town. I was only able to collect resources for the monuments that were available at that level. The springs of fortune monument wasn't available until level 40. My goal was to reach level 40 as soon as I could. Thanks to Perturbee's high level flames of wisdom monument, and uncounted hours of spraying her bathroom, I finally reached level 40 last night. In the process, I collected enough resources to level the first 3 monuments to level 9 without spending many lp's. My goal now is to recover from the cramp in my arm...lol.

[Bixas]

I seem to be getting lots of drops for one type of resource - Granite/Gold/Limestone for me, and practically nothing of another - pickaxes and pearls drop rarely for me!

Hmmm... your observation is the exact opposite of my stats... I get TONS of pickaxes from the febreeze (and BTW: WHO would have thought that febreeze would have gotten SO much advertising out of that campaign) and almost no Granite at all.

Which would lead me to the following conclusion based on what I have seen from a variety of different posts:

*Ahem* <<climbs on soapbox>>

"There is no statistical advantage whatsoever to any particular action."

Here is how I see the code works. There is a base percentage amount for any action (let us say 1%, although we can assume it might not be so clean as a whole number) of producing a resource - Then the "Big Wheel of Fun" spins and decides what resource you get (and if you are a shlub like me who is only level 30 and can only get resources for 2 of the 4 statues... if it is a type you can't use, it disappears into the grass).

Because the trigger to spin the wheel is already on the edge case, we (as individual players) don't get enough personal tries at the wheel to get a normalized distribution set. It would be like flipping a coin 5 times, coming up heads each time and concluding that you have a magic coin that will always come up heads (take that belief to Las Vegas and see how long you keep your car).

The theory that there is NO preference to having action X (diving, cooking..) produce a greater chance of returning resource Y (pearls, magma..) makes sense from a number of programmatic concepts - the most obvious one being KISS (keep it simple, stupid).

If you, as a programmer, wanted to have preferential treatment to have action X favor resource Y, then for EVERY action out there (and there are quite a few), you would need a look up table, that not only would have the base percentage amount to trigger a resource (would a 9 hour diving session have a greater chance to get a resource than a 4 minute), but then a SECOND lookup table to determine the percentage weighting of the Big Wheel of Fun should the Sim get a chance to spin.

While that is possible - Let's Pretend that we got to sit in a programmer meeting at Firemonkey (remember this is the programming house that couldn't figure out that leaving a sim at another person's house during an upgrade would be bad). I will play the part of the Product Manager, and you get to be the developers:

"Hey there," I say, "we are about to introduce a new resource system that randomly spawns during the game. We can either make the results a flat random chance for every action, or you each can spend the next two months developing and coding a 3 tier statistical look up system that will need to be individually tuned by hand for each and every action and resource combination in the system, PLUS the month of testing to get a proper return on the in-play value to ensure that there are no glitchy exploits... So who votes for the Flat system instead of the highly complex and fragile one?"

Now ask yourself if your hand did not go up as well.

<<gets down off the soapbox - realizes he was in the park by himself and no one was listening>>

TL;DR - I don't think actions statistically favor one resource over another.

[blackbrit]

I seem to be getting lots of drops for one type of resource - Granite/Gold/Limestone for me, and practically nothing of another - pickaxes and pearls drop rarely for me!

Hmmm... your observation is the exact opposite of my stats... I get TONS of pickaxes from the febreeze (and BTW: WHO would have thought that febreeze would have gotten SO much advertising out of that campaign) and almost no Granite at all.

Which would lead me to the following conclusion based on what I have seen from a variety of different posts:

*Ahem* <<climbs on soapbox>>

"There is no statistical advantage whatsoever to any particular action."

Here is how I see the code works. There is a base percentage amount for any action (let us say 1%, although we can assume it might not be so clean as a whole number) of producing a resource - Then the "Big Wheel of Fun" spins and decides what resource you get (and if you are a shlub like me who is only level 30 and can only get resources for 2 of the 4 statues... if it is a type you can't use, it disappears into the grass).

Because the trigger to spin the wheel is already on the edge case, we (as individual players) don't get enough personal tries at the wheel to get a normalized distribution set. It would be like flipping a coin 5 times, coming up heads each time and concluding that you have a magic coin that will always come up heads (take that belief to Las Vegas and see how long you keep your car).

The theory that there is NO preference to having action X (diving, cooking..) produce a greater chance of returning resource Y (pearls, magma..) makes sense from a number of programmatic concepts - the most obvious one being KISS (keep it simple, stupid).

If you, as a programmer, wanted to have preferential treatment to have action X favor resource Y, then for EVERY action out there (and there are quite a few), you would need a look up table, that not only would have the base percentage amount to trigger a resource (would a 9 hour diving session have a greater chance to get a resource than a 4 minute), but then a SECOND lookup table to determine the percentage weighting of the Big Wheel of Fun should the Sim get a chance to spin.

While that is possible - Let's Pretend that we got to sit in a programmer meeting at Firemonkey (remember this is the programming house that couldn't figure out that leaving a sim at another person's house during an upgrade would be bad). I will play the part of the Product Manager, and you get to be the developers:

"Hey there," I say, "we are about to introduce a new resource system that randomly spawns during the game. We can either make the results a flat random chance for every action, or you each can spend the next two months developing and coding a 3 tier statistical look up system that will need to be individually tuned by hand for each and every action and resource combination in the system, PLUS the month of testing to get a proper return on the in-play value to ensure that there are no glitchy exploits... So who votes for the Flat system instead of the highly complex and fragile one?"

Now ask yourself if your hand did not go up as well.

<<gets down off the soapbox - realizes he was in the park by himself and no one was listening>>

TL;DR - I don't think actions statistically favor one resource over another.

Hi Bixas!

Use that soapbox anytime. I think your analysis makes sense, and you developed the argument beautifully. Now, to see if I got to be one of Perturbee's 500 GC friends so I can go spray her toilet.

[dandydoodle]

I'm curious..has anyone seen any different results in collecting certain resources based on the particular sim performing the action? I haven't explored this idea yet, but wondered if maybe a sim with say 100% diving hobby level would yield more chance of collecting pearls than one with a different hobby. Just a thought.

[ZeeGee]

I seem to be getting lots of drops for one type of resource - Granite/Gold/Limestone for me, and practically nothing of another - pickaxes and pearls drop rarely for me!

Hmmm... your observation is the exact opposite of my stats... I get TONS of pickaxes from the febreeze (and BTW: WHO would have thought that febreeze would have gotten SO much advertising out of that campaign) and almost no Granite at all.

Which would lead me to the following conclusion based on what I have seen from a variety of different posts:

*Ahem* <<climbs on soapbox>>

"There is no statistical advantage whatsoever to any particular action."

Here is how I see the code works. There is a base percentage amount for any action (let us say 1%, although we can assume it might not be so clean as a whole number) of producing a resource - Then the "Big Wheel of Fun" spins and decides what resource you get (and if you are a shlub like me who is only level 30 and can only get resources for 2 of the 4 statues... if it is a type you can't use, it disappears into the grass).

Because the trigger to spin the wheel is already on the edge case, we (as individual players) don't get enough personal tries at the wheel to get a normalized distribution set. It would be like flipping a coin 5 times, coming up heads each time and concluding that you have a magic coin that will always come up heads (take that belief to Las Vegas and see how long you keep your car).

The theory that there is NO preference to having action X (diving, cooking..) produce a greater chance of returning resource Y (pearls, magma..) makes sense from a number of programmatic concepts - the most obvious one being KISS (keep it simple, stupid).

If you, as a programmer, wanted to have preferential treatment to have action X favor resource Y, then for EVERY action out there (and there are quite a few), you would need a look up table, that not only would have the base percentage amount to trigger a resource (would a 9 hour diving session have a greater chance to get a resource than a 4 minute), but then a SECOND lookup table to determine the percentage weighting of the Big Wheel of Fun should the Sim get a chance to spin.

While that is possible - Let's Pretend that we got to sit in a programmer meeting at Firemonkey (remember this is the programming house that couldn't figure out that leaving a sim at another person's house during an upgrade would be bad). I will play the part of the Product Manager, and you get to be the developers:

"Hey there," I say, "we are about to introduce a new resource system that randomly spawns during the game. We can either make the results a flat random chance for every action, or you each can spend the next two months developing and coding a 3 tier statistical look up system that will need to be individually tuned by hand for each and every action and resource combination in the system, PLUS the month of testing to get a proper return on the in-play value to ensure that there are no glitchy exploits... So who votes for the Flat system instead of the highly complex and fragile one?"

Now ask yourself if your hand did not go up as well.

<<gets down off the soapbox - realizes he was in the park by himself and no one was listening>>

TL;DR - I don't think actions statistically favor one resource over another.

Lol and thank you for putting that in a way that makes sense to us non techies

[Dilly]

This thread is GREAT!
I've been missing the Resources thread from the other Forum (now that i FINALLY have resources to collect!) and this really helps. THANK YOU Contributors!

[animagif]

For me, the magma embers have the least amount of drops. Other resources drops are pretty even out though. Oh and I get most of my resources from either gardening or the febreeze toilet.