''Rate of decay'' of perishable goods?

Sat Apr 12, 2003 4:13 am by CAPT HTR

Has anybody watched closely, how quickly perishable goods decay?

Clearly they are not all on a simple timer... if this were true, they would all simply poof at the same time (although one could argue that this would approximate real life best).

I also doubt that they are on a 'half-life' timer (half of them poof within the half-life time), because on the moderate-length run of Luxury Food from Cambridge to Manhattan wtih 275 cargo, only approx 6 were lost. I would've expected more to be lost out of 275 for a moderate time, if half-life were being used.

Instead I suspect that the game simply does something like "1 lost every 5 minutes", regardless of how many are in the hold (=no half-life; just a simple loss).

So ... has anybody watched it closely enough to tell which of the above is used? And/or time it?

Note that, I got the impression that nothing spoils while you are docked... you have to be in space. But if anybody has spare time, you could have a save game and sit outside a base with Lux Food (or whatever) while you watch TV, and time it and see if there's a difference if you hold is full or not.

Another question is, "what is perishable". The LR Commodity info says that Alien Orgs, MOX, Lux Food, and Toxic Waste are. I know that Lux Food and MOX are, but have not messed with Alien Orgs enough to see about them. I have hauled around exactly 1 Toxic Waste for hours now, and have yet to see it's "health bar" change at all. (In the meantime, 40 MOX went to 0.) If anybody wants to have fun doing timing as shown above, try the different things and see what times you get. I suspect the LR info is wrong about Toxic Waste.

Some of us may or may not get a campaign going to figure out times between bases, and use it for dollars/time profit calculations. It'd be nice to know how these perishables work, if we ever get this together

Keep your weps hot,

Captain H

Sat Apr 12, 2003 5:11 am by Cham

I believe it's a gradually declining decaying rate (i.e. the fewer units you have the slower it will decay). Which would explain your one unit of toxic waste not decaying. Then again, toxic waste decays much slower than say luxury food or alien organisms.

Sat Apr 12, 2003 5:16 am by bbrock81

I didn't realize that toxic waste decayed at all. Does it say that in-game? I don't remember seeing it. But as far as I can tell, it is just a timer, where you lose one unit every x minutes. It may differ depending on how much you have in your hold, I don't know, I've only traded full dromedary's of perishable goods...

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I'm sick of seeing all your signatures and not having one of my own

Sat Apr 12, 2003 5:24 am by Cham

Toxic Waste

>>> PERISHABLE <<<
The inevitable byproduct of many of the industrial processes used by the different colonies is Toxic Waste. While some companies specialize in waste removal or elimination, many companies still use the more basic but still effective method of simply dumping Toxic Waste into the nearest available stellar body.

Edited by - Cham on 12-04-2003 06:26:01

Sat Apr 12, 2003 6:08 am by Mav

There's also a difference between items that are "highly perishable" and some that are only "perishable", the perishable items usually take about twice as long to dissappear...

Sun Apr 13, 2003 7:42 am by Dillinger

Rate of decay: too goddamn fast. I can't even get a load of lux. meats from Bretonia to Manhattan.

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No funny sig. Deal.

Sun Apr 13, 2003 9:09 am by CAPT HTR

Okeydoke, I just spent a bunch of hours timing rate of decay.

"Highly Perishables" (HP) are Luxury Food and Alien Orgs.

HPs decay at a rate of 0.6 per minute a.k.a. 10 every 6 minutes or 36 per hour. (Since you can get anywhere on the map in less than an hour, it's not so bad in a camel.) The reciprocal way of saying it is, you lose an HP every 100 seconds (a.k.a. 1:40 or 1.67 minutes (1/.6 = 5/3)).

MOX decays at half the rate... 0.3 per minute, 10 every 12 minutes, 18 per hour; lose one every 200 seconds / 3:20 / 3.33 minutes.

Toxic Waste is NOT perishable. I have no idea why the LR site says it is... the game doesn't, nor does it ever decay... maybe it's some beta-test leftover? I'll try to email them, to get them to fix that info. But then, who gives a damn about TW anyway, laff.

Also re: my earlier questions, the rate is not at all dependent on how many you have; it is a simple fixed number as stated above. Whether I had 10 or I had 275, the rate of decay was the same. I tested all four (including Toxic Waste) commods, from high cargo count to low.

Some other tidbits: They do not decay when you are docked. I tested myself being in the inventory screen and the bar for dozens of minutes; I can only imagine the other screens are the same. This includes if you bought them at point A and rest while docked at point B: they do not decay when docked, period. Also, once in space, they decay at the stated rate, whether in open space, trade lane, or even when jumping. Finally, in case you haven't noticed, you can see exactly how much the "top one" is decayed (and get real good numbers for timing tests

) by holding your cursor directly over the 'health bar' at the bottom of each commodity icon.

To make a long story short, decay doesn't seem to be much of an issue, unless you get totally sidetracked and e.g. spend the night with another one of those Kushari babes in your ship's sleeper cab, somewhere in the Crab nebula.

Sun Apr 13, 2003 8:29 pm by bbrock81

Cool, thanks for all the great info. I didn't think I saw perishable on the toxic waste in the game. That's why I asked if it said that *in the game* but apparently it's easy to confuse "in-game" with "at this website". Oh, well.

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I'm sick of seeing all your signatures and not having one of my own

Mon Apr 14, 2003 6:09 am by Cham

Hauling Luxury Food from Cambridge to Denver makes you lose no less than 12-15 units. I'd say that's quite a chunk out of a VHF's 70-cargohold.

Mon Apr 14, 2003 5:23 pm by Haenlomal

This may be considered a 'cheap' trick/exploitation of a bug with regards to perishables, but here goes:

Selling perishable commodities to bases in between your destination seems to RESET the decay counter for the 'top' level item! So, what you do is land at the base, sell the commodity, then buy it back (can't remember if you have to go to a different room first so that the commodity trader's screen resets). Over a long run especially with highly perishable goods, the savings can be significant.
So, if you're into bug exploitation, this might help.

-- The Haen.

Wed Apr 16, 2003 5:50 am by CAPT HTR

A few more thoughts...

I see that LR removed "perishable" from the Toxic Waste commodity info... cool, there's the nail in that myth...

If anybody is doing timing tests themselves, be careful when using the health bar... when it says you have 275 MOX and the health bar is at 48/100, you actually have 274.48... so watch out for putting an extra 1 in your calcs...

Haenlomal, that's a real interesting concept, if somebody were to "refresh" their perishables like that. But I got thinking about it when doing a god awful long trade runs, lol, and while it's fine for somebody who's just enjoying the game, it probably really eats into profit if you consider it as money per unit of (real life) time ... Stopping at a base and doing the buy/sell thing probably takes at least 30 seconds if not 60, compared to simply flying past full blast (i.e., taking decel, docking, relaunch, accel, etc. into account)... meanwhile, you have to do this every 100 seconds or, more likely on the average, you'll be doing it say every 80 seconds, cuz there won't always be a base right there at your 100-second mark... to make a long story short, you probably increase your overall trip time by 50% (adding approx. 40 seconds to every approx. 80 seconds) ... so it seems real unlikely it's doing much good if you are looking for best money per unit of real-life time. Then again, if you don't care about time, just making money and/or checking out all the babes in the station bars, it's a big universe

It's also occurring to me that I do too much thinking when I'm flying long trade routes, laugh.

Wed Apr 16, 2003 3:34 pm by Haenlomal

Oh, most definitely it kills the timing issue if you dock and refresh your perishables. I don't do it personally myself because I find that I end up only maybe instead of losing (say) 10 luxury food, I lose only 5. The extra income brought in by the 5 may not be enuf to justify the extra time spent, though I have not made any detailed timing tests.

btw, you don't have to dock at every base along the route...you just make a judgement call when you arrive at a base...though keep in mind that there are certain areas where the distance between two bases are so long that you're bound to lose one or two units of cargo.

But like you wrote, if you don't care about time at all, then you definitely make a bit more money using the dock/refresh trick.

-- The Haen.

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