Provost Zakharov

Great job Chintan! I'm lovin' those plots. The fact that you're able to use 50% points helps a lot more than I thought it would. Coffee Shock: Now I see what you meant about the locations not being random. (Your wording was quite ambiguous to me and I didn't find the right interpretation -- sorry.) I wonder if admin made it that way intentionally to help us narrow the search? Anyone think the efficiency function should be changed now (made more complex) to spice things up? I think it's just too easy to solve now.

[quote name='Chintan' timestamp='1296391695' post='2611051'] It would be cool to have this as a website which is fully automated, where people enter there coords into the website and it automatically updates the map and suggests what to try next.[/quote] Yeah that would be pretty neato. One thing to be careful about though, is you'll want to avoid recommending the same guess to more than one person, which would be a waste. [quote]Narrowing down your guess initially using a continuous approximation works well if you have 3 non-50% points spaced far apart, but otherwise there might be problems with having 2 possible regions, or a really long arc of possible locations. [/quote] Actually it works well with 2 points as well. If there are two possible regions you want to guess inbetween them to get the average (avoid a chance of getting 50%) and that's exactly what the continuous approx will do. [quote name='Coffee Shock' timestamp='1296427931' post='2611631'] There is a much easier way to reduce the number of possible hotspot locations as they aren’t as random as you may think. Hint: Plot all hotspots found so far. [/quote] I'm talking about reducing the number of evaluations of the efficiency function, not the number of possible hot spots. I never said anything about hotspot locations being "random", so I'm not sure where that's coming from. Also, FYI, giving out "Hints" with winky emoticons comes across somewhat condescending

Cool, so you are going to try to automate the process even more? If you're interested in reducing the complexity of the search from 360*180 evaluations down to a much smaller number, you can compute a continuous approximation to the discrete problem as your initial guess, then just examine a small number of points around that. Of course it's not really necessary with fast computers, but perhaps you find it mathematically interesting. Also, for the record, I was aware that the formula [url="http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=71214&view=findpost&p=2152464"]isn't exact[/url]

[quote name='Zombie Glaucon' timestamp='1295160498' post='2576855'] Nice! What are you using to make this? [/quote] It's made with Mathematica, same thing with the graphics earlier in this thread ([url="http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=64843&view=findpost&p=1879161"]here[/url],[url="http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=64843&view=findpost&p=1879493"]here[/url],[url="http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=64843&view=findpost&p=1885515"]here[/url]). Mathematica rocks [quote name='NuclearTrogo' timestamp='1295355419' post='2581186'] Wonder if there's a 0% effectiveness somewhere... [/quote] The efficiency is clamped above 50%. That's good for lazy players, but it actually makes the hotspot harder to find because any datapoints inside the 50% zone don't give much useful information.

wow, thanks for noticing that. I'm really being absentminded today.

Really? Could've sworn I've seen 2 in the dropdown before. I'll take your word for it since I don't want to spend the cash to test it. Either way, it seems a little pointless to have a dropdown with one item. Also inconsistent with the other purchase screens. Maybe worth fixing anyways admin?

[quote="Cybernations Information Index"]Weapons Research Complex - $150,000,000 - Increases the technology bonus to damage from 0.01% to 0.02% per technology level, [size="5"][b]Increases the number of nukes that can be purchased per day to 2[/b][/size], hurts environment by +1, Increases the purchase costs of all military by 0.01% per technology level. Requires 8,500 infrastructure, 2,000 technology, National Research Lab, Pentagon Wonder.[/quote] Have 14 nukes, Have WRC, but my max nuke purchase is 1. Seems the WRC bonus isn't being applied? Also I haven't purchased nukes for years, so it's not because I already bought 1/2 today. Screenshot attached. EDIT: redacted my current account balance.

Happy new year everyone. [img]http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/8396/moonhotspotjan2011.jpg[/img] EDIT: here's a cool plot that shows all the datapoints for this month's calculation: each ring is one datapoint, and the red dot at their intersection is the hotspot. [img]http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/5623/moonhotspotjan2011datav.png[/img]

ugh, now we have to play the lottery game again trying to get the right resource with the moon mine.

[quote name='Ironfist' timestamp='1288766435' post='2500693'] Something like what exactly? For the record, that person mustn't be making that much profit... the game mechanics aren't really built for that kind of size. His bills would be through the roof O.o [/quote] I figure he's making about 15M/day at 30K compared to 20M/day at optimal level (~21k), so a 25% loss. More infra has advantages but 25% seems like a big hit to take... I really don't see how it could be justified to buy that much with the mechanics how they are.

Should be one of these three: {26, 85} {26, 86} {27, 86}

[quote name='Golan 1st' date='02 May 2010 - 07:50 AM' timestamp='1272811822' post='2283755'] Try (-70, 160) It's not necessarily the hotspot, but it should give us a better idea [/quote] I guess that one would be around 90%. (-70, 118) should be at least 97%

[quote name='Golan 1st' date='02 April 2010 - 08:51 AM' timestamp='1270223477' post='2245402'] I cannot guarantee that, but it's possible that using (3.00000001, -9.0) will solve the problem and give you 100% [/quote] where'd you get that 3.00000001 from? according to [url=http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=64843&view=findpost&p=1930324]Rich333's table[/url], it should be one of the following: [quote]+2.99999991 +2.99999993 +2.99999994 +2.99999995 +2.99999998 +2.99999999 +3.00000002 +3.00000003 +3.00000004 +3.00000006 +3.00000007 +3.00000008[/quote]

[img]http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/7258/moonhotspotapril2010.png[/img]

I need at least one more datapoint to get a good approximation. {36, -129} is the least squares estimate given Shinnra's two datapoints, so that would be your best bet if you want to try a guess at this point.

Huh, weird. I am now seeing 100% there as well. I swear it was 99% last time I looked. The only thing I can think of is I was somehow looking at the wrong one of my bases, though I'm not sure how that could have happened. Regardless, we have the hotspot now. So until next month, Cheers!

-29,164: 97% -27,163: 99% -26,162: 99% It's weird, I can't seem to find the exact spot for some reason. It just doesn't seem to be working out. Perhaps someone else can figure it this time.

[quote name='evilkokonut' date='01 February 2010 - 10:38 PM' timestamp='1265092707' post='2152554'] 5, -150 got me 92%. good enough.. [/quote] You missed the negative sign in front of the 5. Lucky for you, 5 to -5 isn't that big of a difference On the bright side, your new datapoint was enough to calculate the hotspot: [img]http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/7307/moonhotspotfeb2010.png[/img]

[quote name='TrilobyteMan' date='01 February 2010 - 10:41 PM' timestamp='1265092876' post='2152564'] -34, -44 yields 100%. [/quote] Awesome, now we have k to 2 decimal places!

These datapoints are too close together, so I can't get a single answer. I guess {-5, -150} should be at least 95% but I need more points to find the hotspot.

I was a little too sure of myself in the previous post, I forgot that the k parameter is still not fully known. My guess has worked well for previous months but the data from this month seems to be really sensitive to small changes. [quote name='Provost Zakharov' date='09 December 2009 - 04:13 AM' timestamp='1260360798' post='2019501'] I've been playing with it a bit and my conclusion is that perhaps one of the constants in the efficiency formula needs to be tweaked.The formula I determined experimentally for the moon is:eff(hs,p) = 100*(1 - k/pi*d(hs,p))with k = 1.25. I chose k=1.25 based on curve fitting and because it's equivalent to 5/4 which is a nice number which I thought admin might type by hand.However, I went back and looked at it more closely, and it appears that the real constant isn't 1.25, but rather something which lies in the interval (1.2287, 1.2446).Any number from that interval works for both the old moon data and the new mars data. [/quote] With this month's data, we can refine k further when the hotspot is known: [1.23725, 1.24095], if the hotspot is {-34, -43} [1.24135, 1.24460], if the hotspot is {-34, -44} I will edit this post once the hotspot has been found.

[quote name='Slayer1557' date='01 February 2010 - 01:14 PM' timestamp='1265058869' post='2151042'] useless for calculations, but at least you know where NOT to go. [/quote] True, you could plot circles around the 50% points (with radius corresponding to 50% eff.) and everything inside the circle is guaranteed not to be the hotspot.

50% measurements are useless, don't bother posting unless it's above 50%.

Looks like it's either {-33, -46} or {-32, -49}. If someone is feeling lucky, you can try one.

best guess -72.00000001, -124