Companion Bonus: Efficiency vs. Crit

[Drewhat]

So I think I've read in here before that when you do the math that the 15% efficiency bonus and the +5% crit bonus are pretty comparable when you are considering just how long it would take to crit something.

 

I did the math and found this to be about the case with the +5% crit just being about 3%-7% better in "how long it takes to crit craft/mission crit something (Time to Crit [TTC])".

 

Crafting:

So this would mean that for crafting, the +crit% would be quite a bit better for crafters trying to make an augments slot on gear, because it would mean, on average, an easy recipe would only have to be made/crafted 4 rather than 5 times (15% base + 5% affection + 5% companion bonus = 25% max crit chance). This would be most useful for orange gear crafters, and then for those for whom critting gives you double your recipe (biochem, some cybertech, some augment crafting).

 

The advantage of efficiency over crit comes much more into play though when you are trying to quickly research. This is plain to see mostly for those recipes who's critting will not yield double. The more you can make per hour the more you can RE.

 

Mission/Gathering:

The story is different with these skills however. Having greater efficiency matters much more with these missions than crit chance does. Because you can run many more missions over the same period of time with +15% efficiency than +5% crit chance, you will end up critting 20% more over the same period of time and you will be getting about 20% more material. However, the material itself will cost almost exactly the same amount to get because you would be paying the same amount per mission and paying for more missions over the same amount of time.

[SpatterJack]

The TIME required may well be the same, but the cost of the eventual critted item won't be.

[Sithhelmet]

From a quick look at the numbers, crit rate is better for materials missions.

 

If I use Gault, my Bounty Hunter's companion, who has +10 underworld trading efficiency, and run the rank 6 UT metal mission that costs 1700 credits he will complete it in 47 minutes. Say it's a 20% chance to crit. On average it will take me 5 tries to get the crit, spending 8500 credits.

 

Now if I used Andronikos Revel, my Assassin's companion, who has 5% crit bonus on UT missions at a 25% chance to crit, it would take me 4 missions on average, taking 1h 2m each time, averaging 6800 credits per crit on average.

 

Now let's look at the time this takes. Five 47 min missions is around 4h, 10 min. Six 1h 2m missions is...4h, 10 min. The same time, but the higher crit saves money.

 

Either my lack of sleep has caused me to miss something, but it looks like crit wins out.

[psandak]

the time required may well be the same, but the cost of the eventual critted item won't be.

 

qft...

[Drewhat]

The TIME required may well be the same, but the cost of the eventual critted item won't be.

 

If we are talking about mission generated artifact materials then yes you are right. If it normally costs on average 5000 credits worth of missions to get one Mandalorian Iron, then +5% crit will reduce that cost by 5% to 4,750 credits whereas efficiency doesn't change the price, just how long it takes to get the items.

 

If we are talking about the cost of a critted piece of armor then like I said above, +crit is best for crafting orange armor (RIGHT NOW), so I would probably agree with you again. This is because non-augmented oranges are sold for so cheap and augmented are sold for like 20x the cost to make them.

 

But +efficiency is also pretty significant for crafting non-artifact armor market. The markup that I've seen that people get for augmented goods in this category is significantly less than that of oranges. I also suspect that 1.3 will deflate what you can markup critted [augmented] gear for.

 

The other factors to consider are, are you REing or selling that other 25% more goods (5%/20%)you are making to get the crit... If you are just selling it then it won't be a sunk cost.

 

So I can see a huge economic reason for the inclusion of being able to augment a piece of armor you already own. The current process of create>destroy>create>destroy>augment destroys a lot of 'time-wealth' on the market.

 

My guess is that there is a pretty rational window for the price to augment a good for this 'table' in 1.3. Also seeing the new post on the dev tracker about needing a kit and credits will mean that armor crafters will still probably hold most of the capital involved in adding augments. My guess is that the augment kits will cost material that comes from 4-5 RE'ed pieces at that same level plus the amount of what you would markup, like 25% or so. So whatever credits that they would charge at the table will be THE coefficient that determines how much critted goods are sold for.

[SpatterJack]

<snip>

 

My guess is that the augment kits will cost material that comes from 4-5 RE'ed pieces at that same level plus the amount of what you would markup, like 25% or so. So whatever credits that they would charge at the table will be THE coefficient that determines how much critted goods are sold for.

 

Now of course, it may well be that the amount of "augment kit materials" that you get from RE'ing an item is affected by somehow "crit RE'ing" that item...

 

It could also be that RE'ing L50 chest pieces returns more "augment kit materials" than RE'ing L9 bracers...

 

So it's highly likely that your proposed formula of "4-5 RE'ed pieces at that same level" may be too simplistic.

[Owsley]

So whatever credits that they would charge at the table will be THE coefficient that determines how much critted goods are sold for.

 

IMO I think adding the augment slot will bind the item, therefore you won't see augment slot items on the GTN. Hopefully this will benefit crafters and help suppress the min/max madness. Crafters can concentrate on the augments and kits instead of wasting time and materials trying for slotted gear which gluts the market with unwanted stuff. (Any UO tailors out there still making shirts?) But it does beg the question "What will happen when you crit while making gear?"

Edited May 10, 2012 by Owsley

[Ancaglon]

With high end missions that take an hour or more, unless you're actually going to be online for many hours constantly monitoring the return of your companions, the efficiency really isn't that big a deal -- if you play for 4 hours an evening, you're probably still only going to get 4 1-hour missions done either way, and queue a 5th to happen while you're offline.

 

Personally, I'd certainly send out the companion with the +crit% over an efficiency companion if I was about to log off for the evening.

[Drewhat]

From a quick look at the numbers, crit rate is better for materials missions.

 

If I use Gault, my Bounty Hunter's companion, who has +10 underworld trading efficiency, and run the rank 6 UT metal mission that costs 1700 credits he will complete it in 47 minutes. Say it's a 20% chance to crit. On average it will take me 5 tries to get the crit, spending 8500 credits.

 

At max affection Gault's total efficiency would be +25% (15% from affection and 10% from bonus). His crit% would be 10% base crit for a yellow mission +5% chance from max affection (15%). This means it would take 6.7 missions to crit. The base time for "Well Earned Rest (UT lvl 6 moderate 'yellow') is 72 minutes. Gault's time would then be 54 minutes per mission. So over time you should crit about every 6 hours or 362 minutes (54 mins*6.7 missions). A person with +15% efficiency would crit every 5 hrs and 38 mins.

 

The result in materials for 7 missions or 378 minutes would be 34 ciridium and 3 iron. With missions costing 1780 credits this would mean: iron=$4,153 and ciridium=$366. Total credits spent: $12,460 @ $1978/hr.

 

Now if I used Andronikos Revel, my Assassin's companion, who has 5% crit bonus on UT missions at a 25% chance to crit, it would take me 4 missions on average, taking 1h 2m each time, averaging 6800 credits per crit on average.

Not quite again: Base chance to crit on yellow missions is 10%, +5% bonus +5% affection (+20% crit). Affection would give him a 15% efficiency bonus. So, it would take him 5 times to crit on average. The missions would take 72 mins*.85rate= 61.2 mins. It would take Revel 5 hrs and 6 mins to crit.

 

The result of 5 missions here would be 26 ciridium and 3 mandalorian iron for $8,900. That's $342/ciridium and $2,966/iron and $1,745 per hour.

 

However if you wanted the same TOTAL MATERIAL RETURN with Revel as you got from Gault you would have to run 2 more missions. So 7 missions for him would be the same yield but more time (7.14 hrs vs. 6 hrs (+10% eff bonus) or 5.63 hrs (+15% eff bonus) .

 

Now let's look at the time this takes. Five 47 min missions is around 4h, 10 min. Six think you mean 4? 1h 2m missions is...4h, 10 min. The same time, but the higher crit saves money.

 

Anyway, this math here is bad... 5*47min= 235 mins (3 hrs 55 mins); 4*62 mins=248 mins (4 hrs 8 mins)...

 

Either my lack of sleep has caused me to miss something, but it looks like crit wins out.

 

So to summarize with bigger numbers for the Well Earned Rest mission:

If you could have both companions running missions simultaneously for 24 hrs your yield would be.

Gault output: 26 missions (1440 minutes/54 mins per mission), and probably 3 crits. (26 missions/6.7 missions to crit)

Gault cost and yield: $46,280. 104 Ciridium from 26 missions and +6 Ciridium and 9 Iron for 3 crits.

Gault itemized: $421/ciridium, $5142/iron

 

Revel output: 23 missions and probably 4 crits.

Revel cost and yield: $40,940. 92 Ciridium from 23 missions and +8 Ciridium and 12 Iron for 4 crits.

Revel itemized: $409/ ciridium, $3411/iron

 

(+15% efficiency companion) output: 28 missions and at least 4 crits.

(+15% cost and yield): $49,840. 112 Ciridium from 28 missions and +8 Ciridium and 12 Iron for 4 crits.

(+15% eff) itemized: $415/ciridium. $4153/iron.

 

So comparing +15% efficiency vs. +5% crit (for this mission) you trade a 20% yield in ciridium for 20% cheaper iron.

 

So this will totally depend what you want for which market you want to get into. The more ciridium dependent your inventory the more you would want efficiency, the more iron dependent, then crit.

 

I do think the base rates and efficiencies are pretty widely misunderstood.

[Drewhat]

IMO I think adding the augment slot will bind the item, therefore you won't see augment slot items on the GTN. Hopefully this will benefit crafters and help suppress the min/max madness. Crafters can concentrate on the augments and kits instead of wasting time and materials trying for slotted gear which gluts the market with unwanted stuff. (Any UO tailors out there still making shirts?) But it does beg the question "What will happen when you crit while making gear?"

 

My guess will be 'critting while making gear' will just be a bonus that you can sell a BoE item for, you just wouldn't be able to mark it up as much knowing within a degree of certainty what it would cost to augment it.

[Drewhat]

With high end missions that take an hour or more, unless you're actually going to be online for many hours constantly monitoring the return of your companions, the efficiency really isn't that big a deal -- if you play for 4 hours an evening, you're probably still only going to get 4 1-hour missions done either way, and queue a 5th to happen while you're offline.

 

Personally, I'd certainly send out the companion with the +crit% over an efficiency companion if I was about to log off for the evening.

 

I'd probably agree here. So this would really mean that efficiency is more of a deal if you want to try to make money where the market may not be saturated with grade 1-4 items/mats.

[Drewhat]

Now of course, it may well be that the amount of "augment kit materials" that you get from RE'ing an item is affected by somehow "crit RE'ing" that item...

 

It could also be that RE'ing L50 chest pieces returns more "augment kit materials" than RE'ing L9 bracers...

 

So it's highly likely that your proposed formula of "4-5 RE'ed pieces at that same level" may be too simplistic.

 

This is where I think it could get really interesting. I agree though, this is total speculation, but if there were just one grade of this recycled crafting mat that could really change the economy in fundamental ways. Who knows how it is going to work. If there would be more than one kind of augment kit, then there is probably more than one kind of material for it. As an economically oriented type, I am EXTREMELY excited about this.

[GnatB]

Was going to post this in the other thread on this topic, but probably better here:

 

For any serious real crafter, efficiencies are relatively (if not totally) worthless.

 

Odds are you're going to have multiple companions running missions for multiple characters.

You can't queue up missions.

modifying crafting queues "in progress" is buggy, so you have to pretty much wait for the queue to be finished before queuing up more items.

 

So odds are you aren't going to be sending companions off on new missions exactly when previous ones end, and thus a substantial portion of the benefit (if not all the benefit) from + efficiency is probably getting wasted.

 

(and, of course, for crafting items to sell, primary item of importance is Crit for augment slot, crit for double quantity, and crit for purple mats all lead to increased profit margins on the items you sell. So, assuming you're able to keep in stock, efficiency probably isn't going to do all that much for your bottom line.)