Anyone know the exact formula for ship capture %?

Azratax2

I ask here because there are propably more mechanics-lawyers here than in the normal boards. Anyone know the exact formula used to calculate ship capture %?
Thanks
-Az

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mrxak

I've never seen it before, so it's possible only Matt Burch knows. All I know is that it has to do with your crew size, and supposedly shield/armor values, at least with EV/O. Nova might include the strength value.

Azdara Ace

It also involves the strength or crew size of your escorts.

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(This message has been edited by Azdara Ace (edited 11-24-2003).)

Kame

Quote

Originally posted by Azdara Ace:
**It also involves the strength or crew size of your escorts.

**

No it doesn't. I used to think the same thing but your escorts have no effect on your capture percentage. Which seems stupid to me. And, as I'm sure we all know, your capture percentage can never be better than 75%. Gotta give a crew a fightin chance, albeit a high one.

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Zacha Pedro

Indeed, it's capped at 75%, however there isn't a lower cap. To my knowledge this information has never been told to public. I think the best thing to do would be to acquire as much data as you can (you can obtain your ship's and the boarded ship's crew, you can hit P to know you shield and armor %'s, and you can obtain the % chance of capture if you're registered, which you are, of course) and try to find out the formula. I don't think it is overly complicated, but is that worth the trouble?

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Azdara

Quote

Originally posted by Kame:
No it doesn't. I used to think the same thing but your escorts have no effect on your capture percentage. Which seems stupid to me. And, as I'm sure we all know, your capture percentage can never be better than 75%. Gotta give a crew a fightin chance, albeit a high one.

(/B)

Are you sure? I swear I can remember having a small ship and big ships making capture much, much easier... Maybe they don't add to the 'crew' gross, but rather maybe a third of their crew or something like that.

Anyone got any other ideas? This is certainly something I've thought about before.

~A~

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(This message has been edited by Azdara (edited 11-24-2003).)

pipeline

I'll ask Matt Burch for the algorithm for you.

Dave @ ATMOS

Azratax2

Quote

Originally posted by pipeline:
**I'll ask Matt Burch for the algorithm for you.

Dave @ ATMOS**

Wheee.
Thank you!!
-Az

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pipeline

Okay, guys and gals, here's the scoop. This is straight from the source, Mr. Matt C. Burch.

Quote

Matt says:
(Capture odds) is based on relative crew, but relative ship strength plays a role as well. Escorts contribute too, and there is a randomness factor thrown in.

Basically, capturing other ships is based on a set of rules.

To start with, here are some provisos:

You can't capture ships marked as 'derelict'.
You can't capture ships if you're not a registered user.
You can't capture ships if you're not allowed to have escorts (Vell-os storyline, for example).

First, a value called "Total Strength" is set to your own current ship's strength.

Secondly, a value called "Total Crew" is set to your own ship's inherent crew value, no modifiers applied... yet.

Any non-mission assigned escorts that are combat AI type ships have 10% of their strength and crew added to your own, for capturing purposes only. For example, if I had a crew of 5 on my ship, and I'd already captured a warship with 10 crew, I would have a capturing crew of 6 for any future vessels I tried to board. The same goes for the strength value. As you can see, this implies that the larger and more powerful the ships you have already captured, the greater your chances of capturing further ships... but freighters don't add to your chances at all.

Marines will add either a set value to your crew (say, 10 marines), or a percentage increase to your capture odds. This is where it gets tricky. A "Marines" outfit that adds a set number of crew to your ship will have it's set value added to your Total Crew. However, a "Marines" outfit that gives you a percentage increase to your capture odds adds that percentage to your total calculated capture odds, which includes all your escorts!

Here's the basic algorithm for capture odds:

Capture Odds = (Your Total Crew divided by Your Target's Crew times 10 ) times 100

As you can see, this implies that capturing a ship is very hard; the "home team" has a ten-to-one advantage, if it's just sheer numbers of crew. It's more complex than this, however.

The "capture odds" value now gets modified by any "Marines: Percentage Chance" outfits you might have. It's a straight addition; if your outfit grants you 25% better odds, you get that value added to your capture odds.

Now, we finally get to do something with that Total Strength value we were playing with earlier. If your Total Strength is greater than your target's ship strength times 5 , you get a flat 10% increase to your capture odds. What are you complaining about? You already get a tenth of their crew added to your own.

After all this has happened, your capture odds then get a bit of randomness thrown in, in the form of a plus or minus 5% random value. Cool.

Finally, your capture odds are truncated thusly: if your capture odds are less than zero, you get a flat 1% chance. Hey, it's that stray blaster bolt that hits the captain, you know? If your capture odds are greater than 75%, the odds are truncated back to 75% chance. You can never have a better than 3/4 chance of capturing a ship.

So our final algorithm looks a lot like this:

Total Strength = your ship's strength + 10% of the strengths of all your non-mission warship escorts
Total Crew = your ship's crew + %10 of the crew of all your non-mission warship escorts + any "fixed value" marines outfits
Capture Odds = (Total Crew / (Target Crew * 10)) * 100
Capture Odds = Capture Odds + any "percentage chance" marines outfits
If Total Strength > (Target Strength * 5), add 10% to Capture Odds
Randomly add or subtract up to 5% from Capture Odds
If Capture Odds < 0, Capture Odds will be 1%
If Capture Odds > 75%, Capture Odds will be 75%

Well, there you go. I hope this has helped some!

all the best,

Dave @ ATMOS

ps. Many thanks to Matt Burch for the code fragment that enabled me to come up with this walkthrough.

(This message has been edited by pipeline (edited 11-24-2003).)

Azratax2

Wow.
bows
Thanks!
That is great
-Az

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mburch

Quote

Originally posted by pipeline:
You can't capture ships if you're not allowed to have escorts (Vell-os storyline, for example).

A slight clarification: What that actually means is that you can't capture another ship if you already have the maximum number of escorts. (things like the mission bits that prevent hiring escorts in the Vell-os storyline aren't used here)

I believe there's also a check later on for zero-crew ships: they can't be captured.

cheers,
mcb

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Kame

Holy, ****! The actual info from the source. Bookmarking this page for sure.

Quote

Originally posted by pipeline:
Any non-mission assigned escorts that are combat AI type ships have 10% of their strength and crew added to your own, for capturing purposes only.

Well, that explains why it's barely noticeable.

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pipeline

Quote

Originally posted by mburch:
A slight clarification: What that actually means is that you can't capture another ship if you already have the maximum number of escorts. (things like the mission bits that prevent hiring escorts in the Vell-os storyline aren't used here)

Ah, that would explain that. Well, I got it nearly right!

Quote

I believe there's also a check later on for zero-crew ships: they can't be captured.

That's not in that code fragment?

Dave @ ATMOS

mrxak

Posted Image

Much thanks to pipeline and Matt.

James Chin

Great! This was something I was curious about, but had never bothered to ask.

Quote

Originally posted by pipeline:
As you can see, this implies that capturing a ship is very hard; the "home team" has a ten-to-one advantage, if it's just sheer numbers of crew. It's more complex than this, however.

A better way to think about this would probably be to say that you can't risk committing the entire crew of your vessel to the capture operation ( or that not everyone in your crew is trained in boarding operations), you can only risk about 10% of your crew...

Quote

Originally posted by pipeline:
If your capture odds are greater than 75%, the odds are truncated back to 75% chance. You can never have a better than 3/4 chance of capturing a ship.

...and that the size of the vessel being attacked will limit how many attackers can fit inside. For example, you can't have 200 armed marines storming an Asteroid Miner; they just won't all fit inside, not even if you asked the crew to make space so that you could pack them in like passengers on a New York City subway train during rush hour.

Quote

Originally posted by pipeline:

**
**

Zacha Pedro

Quote

Originally posted by pipeline:
Okay, guys and gals, here's the scoop. This is straight from the source, Mr. Matt C. Burch.
<very cool info>

Some very precious piece of information, it is!!! Could a moderator in charge add this to a more stable place for posterity, like "EV plug-in FAQ" or "Bomb's plug-in guide"? Thanks you very much!!!

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Azratax2

I am going to put this on my "Random EV Info" page once I get that up.

By the way, I think there may be a bug in the capture % calculation that occurs when the player has a MASSIVE advantage. In Polycon EV, I have a ship with 250 crew, 2000 assault robots (1 crew each) and 4 sentinels (for 2000 crew each). The grand total is 10250 crew or thereabouts.
However, when I try to capture fighters, the capture % is 1%. Larger ships work fine.
-Az

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It is here. EVNEW Public Beta (url="http://"http://www.aznt.com/EVN/EVNEW")www.aznt.com/EVN/EVNEW(/url)

pipeline

Quote

Originally posted by Azratax2:
**I am going to put this on my "Random EV Info" page once I get that up.

By the way, I think there may be a bug in the capture % calculation that occurs when the player has a MASSIVE advantage. In Polycon EV, I have a ship with 250 crew, 2000 assault robots (1 crew each) and 4 sentinels (for 2000 crew each). The grand total is 10250 crew or thereabouts.
However, when I try to capture fighters, the capture % is 1%. Larger ships work fine.
-Az**

I'll let Matt know. Thanks!

Dave @ ATMOS

Aprosenf

Quote

Originally posted by Azratax2:
**I am going to put this on my "Random EV Info" page once I get that up.

By the way, I think there may be a bug in the capture % calculation that occurs when the player has a MASSIVE advantage. In Polycon EV, I have a ship with 250 crew, 2000 assault robots (1 crew each) and 4 sentinels (for 2000 crew each). The grand total is 10250 crew or thereabouts.
However, when I try to capture fighters, the capture % is 1%. Larger ships work fine.
-Az

**

That sounds like an overflow issue. If using 2-byte signed integers, (10250 / (1 * 10)) * 100 = 102500 = 0x19064 = 0x9064 (using two bytes) = -28572, which would become 1% from the "less-than-0" rule.

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pipeline

Quote

Originally posted by Aprosenf:
That sounds like an overflow issue. If using 2-byte signed integers, (10250 / (1 * 10)) * 100 = 102500 = 0x19064 = 0x9064 (using two bytes) = -28572, which would become 1% from the "less-than-0" rule.

Exactly as I've reported to Matt.

Dave @ ATMOS

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Anyone know the exact formula for ship capture %?