Loot cycles?

[eno 1049]

It's probably just a correlation / causation problem but over the last few sessions I've noticed that items seem to spawn in discernible waves. For the last couple sessions I could have picked up a tactical vest for every red shirt who has ever been killed in a Star Trek episode or movie... Last night I looked through Balota, Pavlovo, Zel, Sasnovka, NWAF and Stary and didn't find a single vest... neither did my buddy. 

Same server. 

I know it's not because our vast player base of literally 3 people on average this month vacuumed up all the vests... 

I get it- it's not all supposed to be spoon fed to us but does the CLE just click over to a chamber filled with Pea coats and blast the world with them, then click over to a chamber filled with FNX mags, then bomber jackets... then yellow protector cases... then back to Pea coats... then roosters... Fucking roosters. 

Or is it continuously just randomly respawning loot and my findings are irregular?

I remember there were always items that were hard to find... but they were ALWAYS hard to find. Now it seems that things come in waves- 

Have you experienced this lobsided loot distribution?  Is this the way of the future or an anomaly? 

[Buakaw 274]

sure works in mysterious ways.

I would not worry about loot economy while there are still like 50+ items left waiting to be readded tho.

Edited December 29, 2018 by Buakaw

[pilgrim* 3514]

a Tracy-Widom distribution     ??

re : the appearance of "patterns" (that actually do exist)  in randomness
Even though humans see complex patterns showing non-random "design" - where the designs do not exist

(look it up, but avoid the math?)

heres's an easy one.. the guy - link below -  may seem easy going, but if you check the heavy mathematicians pages, you'll find his name in the middle of this subject.

Look at the figure at the bottom of his page and tell me its NOT randomly generated?

https://kaw.wallenberg.org/en/research/quest-random-patterns

hard to believe, hu?

Edited December 29, 2018 by pilgrim*

[eno 1049]

41 minutes ago, pilgrim* said:

Look at the figure at the bottom of his page and tell me its NOT randomly generated?

https://kaw.wallenberg.org/en/research/quest-random-patterns

hard to believe, hu?

Hmmm. What would be most intriguing to me is how the rooster fits into your analysis.

Kidding- but your insightful association with this complex theory is wasted on me since all this time I thought a hexagon was a stop sign.  

 

Edited December 29, 2018 by eno

[MaxTheSurvivor 152]

3 hours ago, eno said:

It's probably just a correlation / causation problem but over the last few sessions I've noticed that items seem to spawn in discernible waves. For the last couple sessions I could have picked up a tactical vest for every red shirt who has ever been killed in a Star Trek episode or movie... Last night I looked through Balota, Pavlovo, Zel, Sasnovka, NWAF and Stary and didn't find a single vest... neither did my buddy. 

Same server. 

I know it's not because our vast player base of literally 3 people on average this month vacuumed up all the vests... 

I get it- it's not all supposed to be spoon fed to us but does the CLE just click over to a chamber filled with Pea coats and blast the world with them, then click over to a chamber filled with FNX mags, then bomber jackets... then yellow protector cases... then back to Pea coats... then roosters... Fucking roosters. 

Or is it continuously just randomly respawning loot and my findings are irregular?

I remember there were always items that were hard to find... but they were ALWAYS hard to find. Now it seems that things come in waves- 

Have you experienced this lobsided loot distribution?  Is this the way of the future or an anomaly? 

It's not your imagination. Loot indeed cycles, from what I observed loot that has a better value will spawn for a specific amount of days before not spawning anymore; high capacity vests, cargo pants, m65 field jacket (especially the black ones) will spawn normally and all of the sudden you can't find them anymore. I have no specific data to backup my claims but observation tells me there's definitely a loot cycle. Is it the <cost> in types.xml (I don't think so since all seem to be at 100) or the <restock>, some are set at 0 which makes me think that once <lifetime> has reached its maximum it will check the <restock> value that is probably in minutes and will wait unit the <restock> has passed to re-spawn an item. If the <restock> value is set to 0 it will immediately respawn an item if the value of the total amount of this kind of item is lower than the <min> value for the whole server. <max> value is probably only used at the first start of the server or at the start of the server if persistance is disabled in the server config file.

Note that this is just my personal theory as I have no evidence to back up my claims ("Always have a disclaimer before some fool considers you accountable of his own mistakes" by myself, now, here)

[eno 1049]

1 minute ago, MaxTheSurvivor said:

Note that this is just my personal theory as I have no evidence to back up my claims ("Always have a disclaimer before some fool considers you accountable of his own mistakes" by myself, now, here)

Sorry... by the laws of the forums anyone who uses <code> references in their answer shall have their theories forever anchored into the gospel of the irrelevant and any of their credibility erased in the absence of hard facts to back up their otherwise well thought out predictions. 

We don't deal with opinions here, sir- even those calculated with exposure, experience and expertise.

Mostly kidding but I TOTALLY understand the inclination to provide a disclaimer. 

[pilgrim* 3514]

4 hours ago, MaxTheSurvivor said:

if the value of the total amount of this kind of item is lower than the <min> value for the whole server. <max>

the server will respawn an item so that the total NUMBER on the server varies at random between <min> and <max>.

ie it will try to keep the number of that item on the server between those two figures - but NOT counting what is being carried by players or is stashed. There are situations where items remaining between <min> & <max>  cant happen, in fact - (you can figure them) , but this is the aim of the CLE for "one item"

BUT I think there are categories of items, not every single different item has it's own specific <min> & <max> 
Categories work in the same way that loot spawn-location  lists work.. at a given location only <list X> will spawn.. this is why mil tents don't spawn sacks of rice and sheds don't spawn AKMs.  mil is list X, sheds are list Z ..  Spawn maps used to be available but are now outdated.
Some lists overlap. Some locations spawn more than one list. Only one item from a list is chosen - at random - at one spawn point, when a spawn is required.

There can be several spawn points in one location (one small area) .. they CAN include different lists.  <but we all know pretty much which list appears in which location>.

So there are already TWO random factors operating  for each individual item spawn. . If you then have players who choose what they want and leave what they don't want - and some things they use, some things they keep, some they move off server - then what "actually appears" and is on the ground when you turn up in a given spawn location, becomes complex.

Because the server knows the total number of  item XXX on a server, then it doesn't need  a TIMER to give "spawn times" .. It only requires a spawn check somewhere in the server click list (the sequential list of things the server does "all the time" ).

You only (might) need a TIME variable for spawning wolf packs, crash sites, cows .. ya know? - those things..

* 

[this is OLD info so if i'm outdated put me straight. thanx. No prob.]

Edited December 29, 2018 by pilgrim*

[Tabbykatze 23]

One loot cycle we found bazillions of rounds of 45 acp but no fx or usg. Now we find bazillions of FX and mags but no 45 rounds. Last night was a metric ton of 9mm but no 7.62x54s. We found about 20 universal rifle torches which we normally only find one a day. Definitely comes in drips, drabs and droves. 

[eno 1049]

2 hours ago, Tabbykatze said:

One loot cycle we found bazillions of rounds of 45 acp but no fx or usg. Now we find bazillions of FX and mags but no 45 rounds. Last night was a metric ton of 9mm but no 7.62x54s. We found about 20 universal rifle torches which we normally only find one a day. Definitely comes in drips, drabs and droves. 

Yeah that definitely seems consistent with what we're finding.

[Tabbykatze 23]

It's only recent though, like in the last week, I've never seen happen before. But then again i did only restart playing dzsa about a month ago. 

Maybe the dramatic influx of players has cause the loot cycles to go crazy. 

What i described happened on UK experimental 01

[eno 1049]

We're running just a normal low pop pub and our numbers aren't high enough to suspect an influx of players is to blame... 

I am back from a 2 year or so hiatus as well and I don't remember it being quite so definitively skewed. I hadn't found a battery in a week and last night I found 6 in an hour- 4 of them on zombies. I remain curious about which part of the CLE is either working as intended or not causing this type of thing to happen lately...

[Tabbykatze 23]

Oh yeah, i find the majority of my survival equipment on Zombies, i actually actively aggro zombies just to loot them because there seems to be so much on them

[Tabbykatze 23]

So just played for 3.5 hours on 420 vanilla server and i encountered 180 rounds of 45acp, 9 USG mags, 292 rounds of 7.62x39, 3 AK mags, 14 9mm, 1 9mm pistol, 0 7.62x54, 350 rounds of 5.56x54, 4 Stanag mags, 22 pistol flashlights, 16 universal flashlights, 2 batteries. Also, i found 13 field vests but very little of anything. A megaton of canned food, very little drinks cans.

I also found about 25 of the KA wooden handguards and 20 odd of the wooden stocks. 

And the cream on the pudding, i found 8 SVD mags... 

0 firearms (except one pistol) 

It was really frustating, i hit most buildings and every military building from Cherno spawn, 3 tents in cherno, NW military of cherno, all military buildings on way to NWAF, every military building and tent in NWAF then hit every tent and building in NW military base in the corner. 

So yeah, loot cycle wasn't friendly to me tonight. 

[eno 1049]

Yeah... I was loot spawning around Balota tonight trying to get a black assault pack. Went through a cycle of finding nothing but rail attachments for M4s as well as a variety of mags for Mp5ks and FNXs... A metric fuck ton of .45ACP... and hunter boots. Cleared all those out- had a couple of polymer attachments mixed in. Went back... then it was field vest mayhem (where was that a couple days ago) where I found at least a half a dozen... then it was glow sticks- in almost every spawn location. Then every variety of camo pant / jacket... CCU... so many bomber jackets. Then a volley of officer hats. 45ACP seems to be a constant... packaged... mags... 

I mean I guess it can really only spawn so much stuff right now since they've pulled so much out of the game... but does it have to be this linear? 

Not sure. 

[Tabbykatze 23]

Is loot spawning same as the old l9ot spawn method , remove all items from their spawn locations and wait an hour? 

[eno 1049]

2 hours ago, Tabbykatze said:

Is loot spawning same as the old l9ot spawn method , remove all items from their spawn locations and wait an hour? 

More like 15 minutes now. But yes. 

[eno 1049]

On 1/1/2019 at 3:45 AM, Tabbykatze said:

Is loot spawning same as the old l9ot spawn method , remove all items from their spawn locations and wait an hour? 

Seems military loot takes longer than civ loot. I was trying to get some gardening supplies last night and found that spawn time was very fast- like a couple minutes or less- but still cycled very, very obviously.  Denim shorts to Capri pants to those trail shoes... thin glasses at one point. 

Its not a big deal- but it seems off. Not sure if it’s a bug though. 

[LucianX 1]

I run my private server, I have searched about CLE a lot, I know about idle time and restock from types.xml. But still something is not clear.

Suppose I have some item with nominal 150 and minimum 100. If I want to lower this numbers to 50 nominal ans 25 minimum, how will this change take effect? Since item is already spread over the map and no player touched it, will the CLE cleanu-up these items? If yes, based on which timer? Or do I have to make a loot wipe then apply this change?