[BUG REPORT] Dranuur Colony mission Collect Battery Provisions not providing reliable rewards

krwolcott

While farming Colony Provisions for an upcoming fleet project, I played the Collect Battery Provisions minigame on several characters. The rewards from the task were not uniform and required frankly unrealistic performance to achieve full points. I am able to regularly score above 700 on the Radiation Scan game, but 735 points only yields 200 battery provisions. Even scoring 895 points only scores 225 out of a possible 250.

This is made more frustrating by the fact that a couple of my toons got the full 250 battery provisions for point totals in between those scores. It is for sure unfair, and almost certainly a bug. It is especially frustrating on Dranuur, because the mission only completes with the full 250 provisions, and has a 20 hour cooldown.

In every other comparable minigame, for instance the dilithium mining game, 735 points is enough to get full credit and maximum dilithium. Despite the Radiation Scan being functionally identical to the dilithium game, scaling points and filling the charge meter at the same rates, the Radiation Scan yields lower and even unreliable results.

On a hunch, remembering a similar issue that made me despise New Romulus ground farming, I ran around New Romulus last night doing as many Radiation Scans there as I could, and I found the same behavior. At 735, you get 25 Radiation Reports. At 855, you get 28 Radiation Reports. This suggests not only that the bug is somewhere inside the Radiation Scan game code, but also that it has been in the game since the launch of New Romulus, 13 November 2012.

I'm hoping this information will help the team find the bug and fix it. Knowing how old it is, it should now be much easier to locate.

Hugs,
Scout


P.S. I have reported this issue, (Ticket #116957), venting a bit,
found confirmation that this is not an isolated incident in this Forum Post., added comments, with mild venting,
found more confirmation, from around the time the colony holding was launched, on Reddit, thread was closed so no venting for them,
and am posting here again, last one didn't seem to upload, possibly for venting too much.

kaithan1975

krwolcott wrote: »

While farming Colony Provisions for an upcoming fleet project, I played the Collect Battery Provisions minigame on several characters. The rewards from the task were not uniform and required frankly unrealistic performance to achieve full points. I am able to regularly score above 700 on the Radiation Scan game, but 735 points only yields 200 battery provisions. Even scoring 895 points only scores 225 out of a possible 250.

This is made more frustrating by the fact that a couple of my toons got the full 250 battery provisions for point totals in between those scores. It is for sure unfair, and almost certainly a bug. It is especially frustrating on Dranuur, because the mission only completes with the full 250 provisions, and has a 20 hour cooldown.

How is this a bug and unfair? If you get 225 batteries, you play again and get 25. You always get 250 batteries.

As for the rest of your post, you claim it's bugged because it doesn't scale the same as other mini games? Just because certain missions use the same interface doesn't mean the rewards are scaled the same. Mini games such as the radiation scan are used throughout the game and often have no reward to them at all.

krwolcott

I appreciate your comment. It is a bug because it is observably intermittent, and unfair because full credit not achievable by an ordinary player. Look, I enjoy this game, I really do. And honestly I don't mind losing a game, but I prefer losing a game because I'm a lame derpdeedoo, not because the victory conditions have been placed so far out of reach I'd need an autoclicker, a convolutional neural network visual processor, and a positronic circuit out of the skull of Commander Freakin Data! No offense, I get someone not being bothered, but reality is reality, and this code is not only clearly not working as intended, since it doesn't behave the same way every time, but also unfair and by extension demoralizing, since the rewards I get in this minigame are completely decoupled from effort, making any attempt at improvement or overcoming a punishing but fair challenge null, since overcoming is outside the normal ability of a corporeal carbon-based human. Cryptic has said they're already working on it, and I have all the faith in the world they'll sort it soon. This isn't an attack on the game. This is me reaching out so that someone with any helpful data about the bug can add that information, making it easier for the devs to track down and destroy the bug. Stability of code is important, my friend, and instability can cause bugs in far-flung corners of code no one can predict. Say, from New Romulus to Dranuur, for example.

Hugs,
Scout