Selecting minables by value may prefer less valuable targets over very valuable ones needing high prospecting

[SomeTroglodyte]

Problem Description

With extremely good asteroid scan power, and some modded minables that have very low chance to drop very valuable loot ¹, it becomes evident that the prospecting mechanism is not taken into account at all for the value calculation that determines what the "V" key will select with the "target asteroid based on" = value setting.

Related Issue Links

none found

Desired Solution

Since value is currently calculated only once, taking the actual prospecting potential of your fleet into account would be a lot of code change and potentially performance heavy. Thus I propose simply assuming some likely average - maybe between human and korath dedicated mining weapons. That would mean when the minable has taken maxHull damage, it would have accumulated 75% of that in prospecting.

as tested patch

Subject: [PATCH] Change Minable value calculation to assume some prospecting
---
Index: source/Minable.cpp
IDEA additional info:
Subsystem: com.intellij.openapi.diff.impl.patch.CharsetEP
<+>UTF-8
===================================================================
diff --git a/source/Minable.cpp b/source/Minable.cpp
--- a/source/Minable.cpp	(revision ef72fe3b38daffe1e31c946e3d19e7dab1d2e561)
+++ b/source/Minable.cpp	(revision 3be576bf161842c097aa0aa63edc624ca93d0c67)
@@ -103,14 +103,24 @@
 }
 
 
+double Minable::calculateDropRate(double prospecting, const Payload& payload) {
+	double dropRate = payload.dropRate;
+	if(prospecting > 0. && dropRate < 1.)
+		dropRate += (1. - dropRate) / (1. + payload.toughness / prospecting);
+	return dropRate;
+}
 
 // Calculate the expected payload value of this Minable after all outfits have been fully loaded.
 void Minable::FinishLoading()
 {
-	for(const auto &it : payload)
-		value += it.outfit->Cost() * it.maxDrops * it.dropRate;
+	for(const auto &it : payload) {
+		// Calculate value based on an assumed prospecting somewhere between human and korath mining weapons
+		double dropRate = calculateDropRate(maxHull * 0.75, it);
+		if(dropRate <= 0.)
+			continue;
+		value += it.outfit->Cost() * it.maxDrops * dropRate;
+	}
 }
-
 
 
 const string &Minable::TrueName() const
@@ -218,11 +228,9 @@
 		{
 			// Each payload has a default 25% chance of surviving. This
 			// creates a distribution with occasional very good payoffs.
-			double dropRate = it.dropRate;
 			// Special weapons are capable of increasing this drop rate through
 			// prospecting.
-			if(prospecting > 0. && dropRate < 1.)
-				dropRate += (1. - dropRate) / (1. + it.toughness / prospecting);
+			double dropRate = calculateDropRate(prospecting, it);
 			if(dropRate <= 0.)
 				continue;
 			for(int amount = Random::Binomial(it.maxDrops, dropRate); amount > 0; amount -= Flotsam::TONS_PER_BOX)
Index: source/Minable.h
IDEA additional info:
Subsystem: com.intellij.openapi.diff.impl.patch.CharsetEP
<+>UTF-8
===================================================================
diff --git a/source/Minable.h b/source/Minable.h
--- a/source/Minable.h	(revision ef72fe3b38daffe1e31c946e3d19e7dab1d2e561)
+++ b/source/Minable.h	(revision 3be576bf161842c097aa0aa63edc624ca93d0c67)
@@ -131,6 +131,8 @@
 	std::map<const Effect *, int> explosions;
 	// The expected value of the payload of this minable.
 	int64_t value = 0.;
+	// Calculates actual drop rate with a given prospecting value.
+	double calculateDropRate(double prospecting, const Payload& payload);
 };
 
 

Alternative Approaches

Just bite the bullet and ignore unintuitive "v" behaviour - especially as the base game has no "surprise" minables, all hull-to-toughness ratios are close.

Additional Context

No response

Footnotes

1. say, a hull 20k 'roid dropping a blue sun reactor with drop rate .0000001 and toughness 40k ↩