Andreah

That marker long since came and went. One of the real-world jobs I had was related, and I enjoy it, especially when it's not 'real'. I suppose it is also fun and habitual. But it's also a bit of a race. Eventually someone's going to get to a Trillion, and I'd like to think I was in that race, even if I was never really anywhere close to leading it.

I estimated the profit around 5 Million per unit, so that sounds spot on! All we need to do now is figure out the profit/minute and profit/keystroke-mouseclick. :D

The test you would want to run would be the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test. You put the two cumulative distributions next to each other, and measure the maximum difference, and then look it up in the appropriate table for significance (I don't remember which density function it follows -- school was LONG ago). You could either treat the Monte Carlo result as a theoretical distribution, or treat them both as samples and do a two-way K-S test. However, I can spare you all that; it's easy enough to replicate the Monte Carlo simulation for many runs of 100, just like Yomo's actual real world example, and then you find the mean and standard deviation Yomo found are consistent with what repeated monte carlo experiments produce, and so the simulations are consistent. We don't really ever say we prove something is right, but we do make the claim there's, at most, very weak evidence it is wrong. Here's a chart showing 1000 repeated 100-trial Monte Carlo Mean/Standard Deviations. The heavy circle is Yomo's result. It's not dead center, but that's fine -- lots of other dots are about that far from the cluster center. If the experimental result had been out on the edge, or worse, way out by itself all alone, that would have said "Go back and look at your model again, something's not right here", but we don't see that.

Results from 10 Million repeated trials in simulation. # # Total Runs = 10000000 # # Minimum = 3 # Mean = 39.430 Standard Error: +/- 0.007 # Stdv = 23.158 # Maximum = 287 # # Frequency of Results: # Range Count Percentage Cumulative # 0 - 4 40659 0.4066 0.4066 # 5 - 9 326289 3.2629 3.6695 # 10 - 14 654478 6.5448 10.2143 # 15 - 19 893858 8.9386 19.1528 # 20 - 24 1010160 10.1016 29.2544 # 25 - 29 1026673 10.2667 39.5212 # 30 - 34 978519 9.7852 49.3064 # 35 - 39 887945 8.8795 58.1858 # 40 - 44 778525 7.7852 65.9711 # 45 - 49 666114 6.6611 72.6322 # 50 - 54 557765 5.5777 78.2099 # 55 - 59 459508 4.5951 82.8049 # 60 - 64 373540 3.7354 86.5403 # 65 - 69 298680 2.9868 89.5271 # 70 - 74 237109 2.3711 91.8982 # 75 - 79 186212 1.8621 93.7603 # 80 - 84 145445 1.4545 95.2148 # 85 - 89 112962 1.1296 96.3444 # 90 - 94 87437 0.8744 97.2188 # 95 - 99 67480 0.6748 97.8936 # 100 - 104 51635 0.5163 98.4099 # 105 - 109 39298 0.3930 98.8029 # 110 - 114 29741 0.2974 99.1003 # 115 - 119 22746 0.2275 99.3278 # 120 - 124 17027 0.1703 99.4980 # 125 - 129 12808 0.1281 99.6261 # 130 - 134 9478 0.0948 99.7209 # 135 - 139 7152 0.0715 99.7924 # 140 - 144 5304 0.0530 99.8455 # 145 - 149 4041 0.0404 99.8859 # 150 - 154 2963 0.0296 99.9155 # 155 - 159 2244 0.0224 99.9379 # 160 - 164 1642 0.0164 99.9544 # 165 - 169 1226 0.0123 99.9666 # 170 - 174 891 0.0089 99.9755 # 175 - 179 640 0.0064 99.9819 # 180 - 184 474 0.0047 99.9867 # 185 - 189 366 0.0037 99.9903 # 190 - 194 256 0.0026 99.9929 # 195 - 199 195 0.0019 99.9948 # 200 - 204 118 0.0012 99.9960 # 205 - 209 106 0.0011 99.9971 # 210 - 214 69 0.0007 99.9978 # 215 - 219 72 0.0007 99.9985 # 220 - 224 34 0.0003 99.9988 # 225 - 229 30 0.0003 99.9991 # 230 - 234 26 0.0003 99.9994 # 235 - 239 15 0.0001 99.9995 # 240 - 244 15 0.0001 99.9997 # 245 - 249 10 0.0001 99.9998 # 250 - 254 4 0.0000 99.9998 # 255 - 259 7 0.0001 99.9999 # 260 - 264 2 0.0000 99.9999 # 265 - 269 2 0.0000 99.9999 # 270 - 274 3 0.0000 100.0000 # 275 - 279 0 0.0000 100.0000 # 280 - 284 1 0.0000 100.0000 # 285 - 289 1 0.0000 100.0000 #

Whew! I've been playing with this and getting statistically very different results -- mean around 26 and not anywhere near 40. I scrubbed my code and found a minor bug, and fixed it .. and it was a trivial difference. Then I scrubbed the process Yomo described to make sure I was actually simulating that, in detail, exactly, and not some not-good-enough look-alike. I found a few things that weren't quite right, but still only resulted in trivial result differences. Then my brain exploded. I was counting Conversions not Converters. LOL. Fixed! I will post results after my long ten million sims finish up.

I'll see what I can put together and run.

I'd be interesting in knowing how many classical 'equally-likely alternatives' there were at each stage. With that, it would be a simple (tho perhaps tedious) thing to adapt my existing Monte Carlo simulator to replicate your results.

I feel for you.

I saw this movie. It was awesomely bad. <3 Possibly intentionally so.

One of the things I do is combine Fold Space and the use of the Ultimate into a single keybind. For example if you wanted to use <key> for this, you could do something like: /bind <key> "powexecname Fold Space$$inspexecname ultimate" This works with Ultimate insps because using one locks out using another until the first expires -- other insps would just pop until you were out of them. If you reverse the order of the power and the insp, then the power would just queue up. One could get fancier, and use a prefix of "+$$" on the front, and do it all in one keystroke, too. And some clever use of rotating binds with this would even get your local-chat announcement in there without repeating it.

Often, if they have ranged attacks, they will stop as soon as they are within range. I've done tanker-pulling in the past as well, and often you have to try to drag them to the other side of the bowl to get them to go to the middle, and then, sometimes you lose leash on them and they start going back out. A well-timed Fold Space pulls them in, and lets you go back for more. When I fold space, I always announce it in local chat, so that the tanker knows there's a good chance they're free to go get more, and also so that others can use their AoE's on the fresh mobs, and make sure they get aggro'd off the puller.

Just to clarify, what [Ultimate] does, apart from generally making you an additional level +1 relative to everything else, is increase the strength of your [Fold Space], [Shadow Slip] and [Wormhole] teleportations such that they can reliably teleport Level 54 Bosses and Elite Bosses. They last 3 minutes each, so the ~30 minute bowl phase of the MSR will use up 8-10 of them to keep the buff constantly up. They cost roughly 1 million Influence each in the auction, and can be bought for (iirc) 20 Threads from the Astral Vendor. For the one using them, it's expensive; effectively, it costs you 1500 Vanguard Merits' worth to buy ten Ultimates. If the use of these increases the average vanguard merits per each member of a full league by 30 or so, it ends up being a net gain for everyone. Imo, it works well.

No, better. It's literally using [Ultimate]. https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Inspirations#Level_Shifting_Inspiration

I use [Ultimate] Fold Space to complete the tanker's pulls into the bowl so they can go get more quickly and efficiently. When it's timed right, it's a beautiful ballet of merit production, and we push closer to 2,000. I've never personally got that many, but some people have claimed so.

I made a Petless Mastermind., and leveled it to 50+tier-3's. Mistake on purpose! :O

I position my convert window such that the convert button is immediately above the enhancement in the tray I'm converting. Then I pick the enhancement up and drop it on the convert button and click in one smooth motion. It's still two mouse actions - one click, drag & drop and one follow-up click, but the total mouse movement seems more precise, faster, and easier on my fingers. I just have to be careful to not keep going after I have the target I want.

Powers in a video game need to be precisely defined and operate within the rigid mechanical context of the game. Hit points, endurance, holds, buffs and debuffs, and so forth. Powers in comics tend to be more free form, and limited only by the writers imagination, willing adherence to the setting background, and the ability of artists to draw. Edit: I'll add the game's environment is basically immutable as well. You may be super strong, but you can't lift a chair or punch through a wall unless it's been set there in advance anticipation for you.

The big and significant sources for vanguard merits are group content like the LGTF and especially, the MSR. Just last night I got 1600+ vanguard merits from one MSR. All 47 other players in the league got similar amounts, I'm sure.

I don't think I've ever seen this happen. If you can provide a case example, and document it, it's something they should fix. However, it's certainly possible to cycle through the same IO and back again while converting within a class. For example, if one's converting inside a set, there's at most six possibilities, and you're going to come back around to previous ones at least every six conversions. It doesn't 'remember' which one you started from and could easily come back to that one many times over, but if it converts from a piece to that same exact piece in one try, that's a bug.

I don't mind the RNG. It's not like there's incredible 1 in a Thousand or a million chances we're going for. It does put some possibility of frustration in the system, but it's very manageable to those who use it enough to have a high chance of encountering long unlucky streaks.

For the curious, I found a page which describes the probabilities of runs of the same outcome in what are basically dice rolls. https://www.gregegan.net/QUARANTINE/Runs/Runs.html In the OP's case, there were 14 one out of two fails in a row -- coin flips, basically. The linked page includes a calculator at the very bottom, and using it, we can see that if we were to toss a coin 1,000 times, (d=2, M=1000) then the chance of getting 14 of a specific result in a row (N=14) is about 3%. Not particularly low. I do a few thousand conversions each month, so in the course of a year, I probably do 20-30,000 of them. In this case, my chance of seeing a similarly frustrating case is likely over 50%. If there are ten or twenty other marketeers doing the same, chances are a result like this pops up every few weeks, for someone, somewhere. One of the things in the news that amuses me is how astounded people get when facially very rare events occur, without really thinking about how many different chances to get these kinds of events there actually are. When you throw the dice enough times, you get some weird stuff. And when you go looking for them, they're pretty easy to find.

The possibility it will take a long time is one of the key deterrents for many people to try doing conversions. Instead, they go to the market. (The other big ones being, they don't know how, or that they don't know it's even possible). A professional converter knows there will occasionally be a long string of fails, but presses on, secure in the knowledge that the law of large numbers is on their side, and it will all average out to a net profit.

I occasionally create fairly deep backgrounds for my characters. Usually, I try to compartment that background headcanon away from the existing game's well established canon, specifically to avoid glaring contradictions. For example, a character maybe from another city, country, or even an entirely different dimension with its own history and take on superhumans. This way, when I present my character's background to others, I can be definitive about it, and not be concerned I'll step on someone else's. In that light, what I find another player presenting their headcanon as if it were already agreed-upon and accepted game canon, I'm a bit bothered. It doesn't happen that often, but it sticks out to me. I'm sure I do this myself from time to time, but I hope I am at least somewhat aware of it and try to give a fair attempt to avoiding it. A big part of this is to know one's audience, and try to roll with it a bit, and be flexible about what happened, or its significance, or how widely it would be known -- even if, to the small tight group who participated, it literally saved the universe.

I still dislike dimension shift in team content and prefer when teammates simply don't use it. I wouldn't directly complain about it, but it's the sort of thing I'd go look for another team over if it kept up. Black hole, as is, is worse ofc. I would ask people not to use it, and I would leave if they continued. That's rarely a problem, since most team leaders will boot someone for continuing to use it after being asked to stop. I'd say that's motivation enough to do some fixing on the power. If it at least behaved more like Dimension Shift, it would be less awful. But I'd like both to get some further fixing.