Little Mistakes Having Big Impacts

[GraspingVileTerror]

I'm working on a "little" project and wanted to do some calculations on the average number of enemies needed to be defeated to progress through City of Heroes, giving a calculation of roughly where the halfway points would be in terms of work (rather than just halfway point of total experience).  So, I got the numbers for Experience per Class of enemies (Minion, Lieutenant, Boss) at each level and divided those in to the number of experience points to get to the next level.  I then also tallied up the total experience at each level (verified against the chart on the Wiki), and applied the same divisions for the Classes of Enemies to determine the total number of enemies necessary per level.
 
Did anyone catch my mistake in all that?
 
Took me a whole day to realize what I did wrong.
 
I was getting a total number of Bosses as like 2,500’ish.  It seemed a bit low, but I didn’t think it was a huge deal, and I trudged along doing the rest of my calculations.  But then I thought “hold on.  If it takes over 300 enemies to get from 49 to 50, AND over 300 enemies for 48 to 49, AND . . . I’m seeing a pattern here.”
In dividing the Experience per Enemy PER LEVEL, I was introducing an error where I was dividing Total Experience to Level only against a specific level’s Experience Rewards.  That ain’t right.
So, I had to just use the same summing function that I did for total Experience on the Total Enemies per Class instead.  5993+ Bosses to reach level 50.  THAT makes much more sense.
Naturally this chart doesn’t take in to account things like Teaming or upping the Notoriety Settings, but I just wanted a loose model to get an idea of roughly how long each “phase” of levelling would take for a default character.  I’ll chart out something more detailed if my peer review determines the duration of progress is really skewed.
 
With all that context out of the way . . . would anyone else care to share with the community a recitation of a time they realized they were making a little mistake that had a big impact on something they were working on?  Bonus points for it being in the context of City.

[Glacier Peak]

4 hours ago, GraspingVileTerror said:

I'm working on a "little" project and wanted to do some calculations on the average number of enemies needed to be defeated to progress through City of Heroes, giving a calculation of roughly where the halfway points would be in terms of work (rather than just halfway point of total experience).  So, I got the numbers for Experience per Class of enemies (Minion, Lieutenant, Boss) at each level and divided those in to the number of experience points to get to the next level.  I then also tallied up the total experience at each level (verified against the chart on the Wiki), and applied the same divisions for the Classes of Enemies to determine the total number of enemies necessary per level.
 
Did anyone catch my mistake in all that?
 
Took me a whole day to realize what I did wrong.
 
I was getting a total number of Bosses as like 2,500’ish.  It seemed a bit low, but I didn’t think it was a huge deal, and I trudged along doing the rest of my calculations.  But then I thought “hold on.  If it takes over 300 enemies to get from 49 to 50, AND over 300 enemies for 48 to 49, AND . . . I’m seeing a pattern here.”
In dividing the Experience per Enemy PER LEVEL, I was introducing an error where I was dividing Total Experience to Level only against a specific level’s Experience Rewards.  That ain’t right.
So, I had to just use the same summing function that I did for total Experience on the Total Enemies per Class instead.  5993+ Bosses to reach level 50.  THAT makes much more sense.
Naturally this chart doesn’t take in to account things like Teaming or upping the Notoriety Settings, but I just wanted a loose model to get an idea of roughly how long each “phase” of levelling would take for a default character.  I’ll chart out something more detailed if my peer review determines the duration of progress is really skewed.
 
With all that context out of the way . . . would anyone else care to share with the community a recitation of a time they realized they were making a little mistake that had a big impact on something they were working on?  Bonus points for it being in the context of City.

I got one! I default all my new alts to no xp on. I like to run them around a bit at the low level just to get a feel before I starting leveling them. Well, I made an alt that I intended to powerlevel and put them in to Pocket D with double xp active. Got my farmer and the alt in the mission and started the grind. Well around the two hour mark, I wanted to see if I'd hit level 50 yet, which is my normal time frame for my farmer to powerlevel level 1 to 50. Jumped over to the other screen, hovered over the xp meter, and that sucker said Level 1! 

 

After that, I started to default to xp on, then manually enabling xp off lol

[Luminara]

Righty-o, let's see here, this power's cycle time is <number>, and this one's is <number>, and this one... <number>.  Ah, I can make a full attack chain out of these three attacks!

 

*respec*

*pew pew pew pause*

 

What?

*pew pew pew pause*

 

Is that... a gap, in which nothing is recharged, in my attack chain?

 

*pew pew pew pause*

 

WHAT IN THE FUDGE POP FACTORY IS GOI-... oh.  I factored for total cycle time of each power, rather than looking at the animation times in comparison to the recharge times.

 

*sad-face re-respec*

 

-

 

Bonus round!

 

After weeks of clearing, digging, pouring concrete, setting posts, pouring more concrete, I was finally at the point of actually building the floor of my cabin.  Had the lumber laid out and started going at it with real enthusiasm.  Got to the last board, a 16 footer, and for the life of me, I could not get it in without bowing out the exterior.  Spent most of a day alternating between glaring at it, adjusting it and trying to figure out what was wrong, then gave up, nailed it in place and started putting down sheets of OSB.

 

The next morning, as soon as I was awake, I knew what the problem was.  I'd forgotten to account for the exterior boards' thickness.  I should've taken 1.5" off of the 16 footer.

 

No, I never corrected it.

 

Yes, it still annoys me.

[Ukase]

When my grandfather passed away, I was bequeathed a very nice ivory (and I suppose ebony) chess set. Really a beautiful set. The only problem was that the board had become horribly discolored and damaged. 

So, I bought some Maple and Mahogany and measured out the slats that would make my new chess set. I found the process of making the set quite interesting. A chess set is 8 x 8, and given the size of the chess pieces, I felt 2 inch squares would be the best way to go, and it would make the math easier than 1.75 inches. 

4 slats of maple, each 2 inches wide, and 4 slats of Mahogany, also each 2 inches wide.  

Then, I'd just take slats 2, 4, 6 and 8, flip them over so the colors alternate as they should - then just glue it together. 

My big mistake was to not account for the width of the damn saw blade. I had this perfect straight line on the 2" mark...but after the blade when through it, it was closer to 1 and 7/8ths. My square board was no longer square! It came out "good enough", but it certainly didn't look right, playing on a board where the "squares" on the board weren't truly square. 

[Doomguide2005]

     Not sure it's intended but it won't account for bonus xp for mission completion which if your burning through newspaper/radio missions is a big chunk of your total xp.

[srmalloy]

5 hours ago, Ukase said:

Then, I'd just take slats 2, 4, 6 and 8, flip them over so the colors alternate as they should - then just glue it together. 

Now, if you'd just cut your slats for each wood from a single 8-inch-wide piece, you'd have had a much smaller amount of error, since the cuts to make the slats would have trimmed each one, and could have gotten it dead on with a tiny bit of edge plane work.

[nihilii]

On 9/3/2021 at 10:59 PM, GraspingVileTerror said:

would anyone else care to share with the community a recitation of a time they realized they were making a little mistake that had a big impact on something they were working on?

 

April 2019: "surely, trying out this City of Heroes private server won't suck up all my time away from work. It's been years, I've moved on. I just need to hop in for nostalgia's sake. Won't play more than a couple hours a day for a week or two."

Edited September 5, 2021 by nihilii