Agents, stealing and tasks.

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Sovereign01
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Agents, stealing and tasks.

Post by Sovereign01 » Mon, 18. Oct 21, 00:24

Can anyone shed some light on what determines how many tasks a new agent comes with? Lately I've noticed the last few agents I got only came with 4 tasks, both Argon and Paranid when in the past I've gotten agents with twice as many. Is it dependent on standing with a particular race? I'm on at least +7 with both yet the tasks they came with were not what they used to be. Or is it purely RNG dependent or something else? I do have some pending blueprints that I don't currently have the credits to buy, the seriously expensive ones.

I'm currently using agents to buy blueprints for the factories that make the best gear from each race, already got the Ion Cannon, and next up is the Gauss Cannon followed by the Phased Shockwave Generator. The plan is to get the best fabs while I have the standing.

The last corporation I'm working on is Strong Arms and because I can't get their notoriety any higher without lowering my Boron rep the current plan is to steal the blueprints for the remaining 2 forges, though my agents have not been successful so far. Does anyone know what affects the probability of success for stealing blueprints? If I cannot do this I'll have to resort to plan B of boosting my pirate rep so I can buy the PBG and IBL forges. That should kill 2 birds with 1 stone since that will also reduce my Boron rep for Strong Arms as well as all the others hence why I'm trying to buy the high-end stuff while I have the notoriety to do so.

Deathifier
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Re: Agents, stealing and tasks.

Post by Deathifier » Mon, 18. Oct 21, 07:32

As far as I can tell the number of tasks an agent comes with is random - sometimes you will get a run of 7 and 8 agents, sometimes you'll get a lot of 4's a 5's, and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with race or location or agent source or past tasks (e.g. blueprints not yet paid for).

For stealing blueprints I don't know the formula however I think it is reflective of the difficulty in buying the blueprint - so hard to buy blueprints are also hard to steal.
However the chance of success goes up with each failure and after around 5 failures on stealing and around 3 on buying (with max agent tasks invested, though not sure if that makes a difference) the chance of success seems to get very high even for difficult blueprints.

That said the numbers are indicative and subject to randomness - I've had a small number of instances of station blueprints stubbornly refusing to be stolen and taking some 7 or 8 attempts, and of agents failing on what seemed to be 100% success chances of supposedly easy to buy stations.
I did eventually get the blueprints - you just have to keep sending agents.

Sovereign01
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Re: Agents, stealing and tasks.

Post by Sovereign01 » Mon, 18. Oct 21, 18:00

The thing with stealing them is unlike buying you can only spend 2 tasks per attempt, and it doesn't show your probability of success- does that increase per attempt when stealing as it does for buying?

Cycrow
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Re: Agents, stealing and tasks.

Post by Cycrow » Mon, 18. Oct 21, 18:05

It does increase the success after each failure. The rate is lower than if you try to acquire.

The acquires success chance is also effected by your notoriety, stealing isn't.

Generally if you have the notoriety to acquire it, then it's better than trying to steal

BrigandPhantos77
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Re: Agents, stealing and tasks.

Post by BrigandPhantos77 » Wed, 20. Oct 21, 02:44

Sovereign01 wrote:
Mon, 18. Oct 21, 18:00
The thing with stealing them is unlike buying you can only spend 2 tasks per attempt, and it doesn't show your probability of success- does that increase per attempt when stealing as it does for buying?
It took me about 7 tries to steal the prints for the Rastar Refinery L from Split, but 1 try to get the Chelt Aquarium M. Both stolen. In comparison, I cannot steal anything from Strong Arms as the amount required requires more than the allowed maximum amount. (Yea I got -4 red with Strong Arms.) Plus the aggression modifier never goes away for me since they infinitely get blown up in The Hub by my Lasertowers and defenders.

It "will" eventually succeed for you, just gotta keep trying. Don't forget though needed things can show up on Barter and Black Market. My only hope is someday someone adds Jump Beacons to those. Max rep with Terracorp seems a bit hard for me. 20 days in game time passed and I only have +3 notoriety with them.

One day I will take that Aran with brute force. Those Xenon caps will bow before my fleet. Mwa ha ha ha ha! :twisted:

Anything pop up near the insects in Unknown Enemy ahem..... 8)
Peace is a state of mind!
War is absolute!
~ Phantos ~

ArchmageFil
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Re: Agents, stealing and tasks.

Post by ArchmageFil » Tue, 4. Jan 22, 21:50

Cycrow wrote:
Mon, 18. Oct 21, 18:05
It does increase the success after each failure. The rate is lower than if you try to acquire.
...
I would like to clarify.
The chance of theft increases with each mission. What about buying?
With 6 missions of one agent, the chance display increases, but after its failure, the next agent with 2 attempts shows a lower chance.
Is this a flaw in the menu? Or when buying, as opposed to stealing, the chance for the next attempts does not increase, and it is important to send agents with a large number of actions at once?

Andrea92
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Re: Agents, stealing and tasks.

Post by Andrea92 » Tue, 4. Jan 22, 22:18

ArchmageFil wrote:
Tue, 4. Jan 22, 21:50
Cycrow wrote:
Mon, 18. Oct 21, 18:05
It does increase the success after each failure. The rate is lower than if you try to acquire.
...
I would like to clarify.
The chance of theft increases with each mission. What about buying?
With 6 missions of one agent, the chance display increases, but after its failure, the next agent with 2 attempts shows a lower chance.
Is this a flaw in the menu? Or when buying, as opposed to stealing, the chance for the next attempts does not increase, and it is important to send agents with a large number of actions at once?
I'm curious too about this.

Cycrow
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Re: Agents, stealing and tasks.

Post by Cycrow » Tue, 4. Jan 22, 22:25

both stealing and acquire have thier success chance increase after failure.

however, its link to the station, so if you try it at another station, you wont get the same increase

ArchmageFil
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Re: Agents, stealing and tasks.

Post by ArchmageFil » Wed, 5. Jan 22, 06:13

Looks like I'm blind, next time I took screenshots and the chance really grows.
But if my pixel hunting is correct, then it is more profitable to send an agent with a lot of missions.
Image
In this test, the baseline odds were about:
26.7% for 3 missions, 48% for 5 missions and 80% for 8.
After sending on 5 missions and failing, the remaining 3 missions seem to give 42.7%, which gives a total chance of about 70%. Thus, agents with a large number of missions at a time are not only more profitable in terms of spending influence, but also give a greater chance of success than a few "tired" ones.
Although not seeing the numbers, only by the strip, of course, it is difficult to judge.

DanKara
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Re: Agents, stealing and tasks.

Post by DanKara » Wed, 5. Jan 22, 07:01

Don't underestimate the importance of your standing with the faction you want to buy station-blueprints from. (And keep your Influence-Bonus up at 80%).

With a faction-rank of up to +7 I had "Buy's" fail with (first) success probabilitiy of over 95%. Whereas with rank +9 I could aquire all mines and food-stations (I + II) with a single task, even if the (first) success probabillitiy is shown as 75% (or less). So with one 4-task-agent I bought all 4 mine-blueprints of a faction.
I just had completed my blueprint-list for Paranid (again,). At the end I had some stations that woud have aquired an 8-task-agent (of wich i got non at the time). So did send teams, like a 5-task-agent immediately followed by a leftover-2-task-agent to buy the same blueprint and got it (sometimes from the first, sometimes from the second agent).

For follow-up Buy-trys I don't always see a heightend success-probability shown in the menu... but it is there.

For steals the faction-reputation seems to be of no importance. I stole all blueprints from Goner/Pirate/Yaki twice and Strongarm once. The Goner-Temple I stole in one playtrough at rank +7 (i think) in first trry and in another playtrough at rank -2 - also in first try. Blueprints stolen from Criminals (all at rank -3 or lower) seem to be completly random, once I lucked out and stole the blueprint for the IBL-Forge in first try where as another time I needed 8 tries to steal the S-upgrade-kit... It will happen, eventually.

Andrea92
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Re: Agents, stealing and tasks.

Post by Andrea92 » Wed, 5. Jan 22, 10:41

ArchmageFil wrote:
Wed, 5. Jan 22, 06:13
Looks like I'm blind, next time I took screenshots and the chance really grows.
But if my pixel hunting is correct, then it is more profitable to send an agent with a lot of missions.
Image
In this test, the baseline odds were about:
26.7% for 3 missions, 48% for 5 missions and 80% for 8.
After sending on 5 missions and failing, the remaining 3 missions seem to give 42.7%, which gives a total chance of about 70%. Thus, agents with a large number of missions at a time are not only more profitable in terms of spending influence, but also give a greater chance of success than a few "tired" ones.
Although not seeing the numbers, only by the strip, of course, it is difficult to judge.
can you please test it with 1 mission instead of 5 on the first try and see if the bonus you get next time is different?

ArchmageFil
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Re: Agents, stealing and tasks.

Post by ArchmageFil » Thu, 6. Jan 22, 06:12

Andrea92 wrote:
Wed, 5. Jan 22, 10:41
can you please test it with 1 mission instead of 5 on the first try and see if the bonus you get next time is different?
Yes, it interested me too.
I took as a basis a factory with a medium chance of getting a blueprint, in order to better see the difference. I don't think there are other formulas in another range.
Raw data first.
Spoiler
Show
Image
A small table with the resulting data.

Code: Select all

Base chance
attempts	chance	chance-diff
1		36%		36%	*seems base chance = 20%  +16% for 1 att.
2		47%		10%
3		57%		10%
4		68%		10%
5		78%		10%
6		88%		10%

After 1st mission
attempts	chance	chance-diff
1		52%		16%	*52%-36% in base-1
2		62%		10%
3		73%		10%
4		83%		10%
5		94%		10%
6		100%		6%	*maximum reached*

After 2nd mission
attempts	chance	 chance-diff
1		68%		16%	*68%-52% in 1st mission
2		78%		10%
3		88%		10%
4		99%		10%
5		100%		1%	*maximum reached*
6		100%		0%	*maximum reached*
Now the conclusions.
  • There is a basic chance, on which it depends, it is not clear (on the relationship with the force?)
  • The first attempt gives a bonus chance(Х1.6?), then a linear increase.
  • Each send increases the base chance linearly by the size of the first attempt.
  • The number of attempts for one send does not affect the increase at all - only the fact of sending is taken into account.
  • It turns out that for low-chance blueprints, it is beneficial to get a discount and then spam agents one try at a time. And for high-chances, on the contrary, try to get it at once in 6-8 attempts in a mission.

P.S. I think formatting this message took me longer than getting the data :cry:

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