[quote=Skinnyman]Is Blueprint for a Seal of Red Science restricted to a certain choice of the story? :)[/quote]It seems the Blueprint is the item you get from playing The Persona Engine needed to unlock the Season of Skies ending.
This is very thoughtful by FB because you get an extra Red Science option regardless of whether you played only The Persona Engine ("Study the Blueprint"), or the whole Season of Skies ("Recall the Blueprint"). :)
edited by phryne on 5/21/2020
Is it just me, or is the Laboratory among the best echo-grinds if you upgrade it for Fate, have the Silk-Clad Expert for Parabolan Research and use fully tutored Profound/Visionary Students for researching Impossible Theorems (with the Cartographer’s Hoards being not too shaby either?). I did some quick calculations and with one action providing 27 Lab Research on success or 22 on failure, I arrived at ~2.6 - 3 EPA depending on luck with the Watchful challenges. At any rate, it seems more profitable than Silken Thread Expeditions, and quite flexible in that you can easily leave the lab whenever you have something to do in the London… Do any of you have better estimates or any correction?
Apart from echo grinding, I must say I find the entire Lab content as well as the Parabolan Base Camp immensely pleasurable. As a real-life University tutor and lab-rat as well as a habitual dreamer, I couldn’t ask for more faithful and intriguing renditions of both environs. Down to the types of students, all of which I know many examples of in person.
I am particularly fond of the Profound Student, as I suspect I myself am one of those…
I’m not sure about the best source for Parabolan Research, but yes, making Impossible Theorems is a good source of echoes. As is making rifles, perhaps.
I’m also impressed by the choice of students. Anyone with research lab experience has met the shifty, meticulous, and profound student. Gifted students less often, and everyone hopes to be, or employ, a visionary student.
I’ve definitely started looking into the lab grinds. Finding out exactly how profitable they are is tough because you actually have a chance of failure at the specific tasks, and the student sometimes needs to be graduated and a new one trained (when disgruntlement hits 5), so all together I have no idea. I’ll get it eventually.
Anyone know what the advancement/disgruntlement chances are? Is it all 50% for the visionary student?
Impossible Theorem with Cora Bagley and the Visionary student is a particularly good grind.
To farm an impossible Theorme you need 12000 Research and 550 Parabolan Research.
Standard research: you need 1 action to begin the research and 1 action to end it.
Hav Cora Supervise your Visionary Student Yelds 30 Research On a Failure, and 28 Research on a Success.
With (quite) maxed out watchful and a 81% probability of success, this means, on average 29,62 research.
So i will complete standard research in 2 + (12000/29,62) = 2 + 405,13 = 408 actions on average.
Then i will need 550 Parabolan Research.
With Maxed out Parabolan Studies, the Reflection of Cora Bagley hands out 14 Paraboland Research per action.
So that means 550/14 = 39,28 = 40 actions, +2 to get into and out from the lab reflection.
The total number of actions is 408+ 42 = 450.
You spend 100 Prisoner honey (2.00 Echo) to Enter the Mirror.
So this means (1512,5 - 2) echoes of gain for 450 actions, that is 1510,5/450 = 3,36 EPA.
The coolest thing is that you can spend a little bit more actions to have your action bar refilled OUT of the lab, and working in the lab once it’s maxed out, so to profit from the cards in London.
Of course, if you don’t have Cora the grind is definitely worse, but perhaps there is a math-assistant in Mr.Chimes Lost&Found?
edited by Mizr. Edlaine Saphburgh on 5/30/2020
None of the new lab assistants can help with the Theorem, unfortunately.
I thought I heard mention that the Classicist could help train a student more cheaply. Presuming they could be used to bump new Visionaries to better output more rapidly than waiting for them to level naturally or using the costlier training option, that might help a bit even with the Theorem?
Let’s not over-focus on the Theorem here. Other assistants might make different projects equally profitable rather than helping with the biggest one. While I’m sure we all want at least one theorem for Important Reasons (strategically placed in the drawing room where you can comment on it nonchalantly to guests when the butler brings out tea), the money-making might be something different.
For example, running the same calculation for Hephaesta’s special option on a Cartographer’s Hoard (Fate upgrade & ignoring resentment) shows 3.32 EPA. So far I don’t know exactly what most the assistants do, but they might open other opportunities. Rifles could be good money for anyone with bonuses to weapons (Protester?). Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s any repeatable grind for poison specialty yet, but new content is coming rather regularly.
Also, I’ll note that Cora has poor Parabolan Research compared to the other Ambition assistants. Hephaesta could take care of the Parabolan research for a Theorem in 28 actions (savings of 12), and the Esurient Smith could do it in 27 (savings of 13). The action savings on Parabolan research is about one-quarter of the benefit that Cora gives on the regular research (which would take 455 actions with a Visionary Student on their own).
I’m pretty sure the Smith has an advantage with weapons and machines.
It’s quite OK, actually. However, very dependent on high, overcapped Watchful. Also, you have to through in 2-3 actions for failures when actually finalising the research.
I wonder whether Glassman or Correspondent yields more benefits here.
Don’t you need to graduate the student sometimes? At Disgruntlement 5 you get an auto-fire card that costs you stuff, says the wiki. I would guess that dealing with that cost is pretty bad for your EPA especially since you have to fish for the right cards.
So, here’s what I think the math is for Cartographer’s Hoard, with Haphaesta at Watchful 291 at a Lab Level of 7 (my stats).
First, figuring out what’s the research-per-action of using Haphaesta to work with a Visionary Student. It looks to me like the Visionary Student has a 50% chance of being advanced at each step (or becoming disgruntled), so:
1 action to hire the student.
At level 1-2, there’s a Broad (210) watchful challenge, which has an 83% chance of success at Watchful 291. It gives 4+7 = 11 research on success and one less on failure. So on average, it takes (2/0.5/0.83 = 4.81) actions, and gives (2/0.5/0.83)*(10+0.83)=52.19 research.
At level 3-4, there’s a Broad (215) watchful challenge, which has an 81% chance of success at that level, which gives (4+72=18) research on success, one more on an advancement success, and one less on failure. So on average it takes (2/0.4/0.81 = 4.93 actions) and gives ((2/0.5/0.81) * (18 + 0.810.5 - (1-0.81)) = 89.95 research.
At level 5, you switch to having Hephaesta supervise the student. This is a Broad (220) challenge, so is 79% chance at my level. You get 56/2=15 disgruntlements before the student needs to be retired - that’s the point at which an autofire card starts appearing that costs you stuff. It on average will take (15/0.5/0.79 = 37.97) actions to do this. Each action gives (12+72=26) research on a success, and (10+72=24) on a failure, so the average total research of this section is ((15/0.5/0.79)(24 + 0.79*2) = 971.39)
Then it takes one action to graduate the student. So, an average of (971.39 + 89.95 + 52.19)/(1+4.81+4.93+37.97+1) = 22.4 research per action.
As a bonus, this gives one 2.5 echo item for graduating the student so an extra 0.05 EPA :) and an unsellable rumor of the upper river.
OK, so using this method, the 2700 research for a cartographical hoard takes 120.5 actions (and as an aside, generates 6.05 echoes of Broken Giant from graduating students) and, taking account the 2 actions to start/end the research, and 2 actions to enter/leave lab, gives a final value of 2.56 EPA, going through a bit over 2 students per Hoard.
Various tweaks to this EPA: if you leave the lab and come back twice and count those actions, EPA is 2.48.
If your Equipment is 8 (Fate), your EPA is 2.75.
If you have Watchful 300, EPA is still 2.56.
If you have only Watchful 250, your EPA is still 2.54! So Watchful level really matters quite little for the Hoard.
That’s what I’m getting at least. There’s some guesses there at advancement and disgruntlement probabilities, it looks like 50% to me but I don’t have a big dataset.
You need to graduate a student sometimes, but it doesn’t have to be the one doing all the actual work.
Oh! Like, build up whichever student has the best rewards, with research from the Visionary Student?
…hmm, I don’t quite get how that helps… you still need to spend either actions or research to build up that student to level 5 to graduate them, about once every 30 successes in Visionary Student training? I’ll think about it, maybe it’ll make more sense to me after I think about it a bit.
edited by Amalgamate on 5/31/2020
>If your Equipment is 8 (Fate), your EPA is 2.75
Fate gives Equipment 9, I think.
Auto-fire card is on Disgruntlement among the Students 6, not 5.
Fate equipment level is 9.
Excellent. Allowing disgruntlement 6 and taking into account that Fate can give lab-level 9 brings cartogapher’s hoard with Hephaesta EPA up to 3.03 with Fate or 2.63 without.
Still not quite getting how graduating a different student helps. Either way, once you get to Disgruntlement 6 you have to spend some actions and/or some research to get a student to graduation. Either 6 actions/100 research cost, or you can just spend ~12 actions on the visionary student while gaining research but slower. I haven’t mathed it out but it seems to me the visionary student would be the most profitable one to level up and graduate. What am I missing?
I don’t think anyone’s tracked carefully, but it’s possible that the Gifted and Visionary students accumulate Disgruntlement faster than others. If that’s the case, it’s slightly better to level up a Visionary student, then use a maxed Profound student until your Disgruntlement is too high, graduate the Visionary, level up a new Visionary, and then go back the Profound student.
on a side-note; the mirror-lab has an option for getting research from the little statue doodads they hand out at not-valentines, those Antebellum Ubiquities or whatever they’re called (words are hard), with the chance of success linked to how many of the things you have.
might be worth it when the time rolls around again to just spam those to anyone who needs 'em For Science. I certainly wouldn’t mind a few ;V
Currently the Antediluvian Ushabti option is only notable as the one source of Second City Research. Unfortunately, that is currently only usable for an inefficient toxicology-focus option.
maybe so, but they might add more stuff down the line, and more immediately it’s always nice to have the option to read stuff without consulting the wiki; it feels less like cheating, y’know?