Is zombie loot bags affected by modified loot stage?

[Brian9824]

For instance if you had a zombie loot bag in the forest biome and you could move it to the wasteland biome or into a T5 POI would the loot from the bag be boosted by your modified loot stage?

 

Posting because of this thread on the steam forums - https://steamcommunity.com/app/251570/discussions/0/3196991938898249732/?tscn=1641134542

 

Although personally i don't care about min/maxing,  I am curious how the loot bags are effected if at all

[theFlu]

Mostly guessing here, but I'd assume the loot stage is a property of the player, modified by some type of area effects within biomes and POIs.

 

If so, as long as the player looting stands in the proper area, the loot will be spawned per the area.

 

I'd would guess as far as: a trash bag on the road next to a POI, if you stand on the POI grounds, the increased loot stage will apply. Looting it standing on the road, you won't get the benefit. Zed bags should be no different.

[Ray Garraty]

I really hope they do because I deliberately built my horde base in Wasteland inside the tier IV POI territory in order to get better loot from them zombie bags…

[BFT2020]

Not sure why theFlu said he was guessing, they are affected by lootstage so dropped bags in the Wastelands will be rolled against different probability tables compared to ones opened in the pine forest.

 

For example, there is a possibility of finding a weapon in the bag which is tied to the Tier probability tables (T0 to T3) depending on your loot stage.  So you will have a higher change of finding a higher tier weapon if you open a bag in the wasteland compared to my survivor opening one in the pine forest.

[theFlu]

1 hour ago, BFT2020 said:

Not sure why theFlu said he was guessing

Mostly because I haven't tested looting in any way; I try not to make definitive claims without some actual evidence, and that's usually hard to come by.

 

And the OP was basically asking what happens to a loot bag when it is rolled from forest to wasteland, will its probabilities shift. I honestly do not know, so, "guessing".

Edited January 3, 2022 by theFlu (see edit history)

[Lenny Lettuce Lips]

I think so, we've made a horde base in the snow biome because of the modifier (we haven't found wastelands yet) and we noted a definite increase in loot in the loot bags. Also, more blue bags than in the standard green biome. 

 

I think that loot stage modifier affects everything you open. 

[Boidster]

46 minutes ago, Lenny Lettuce Lips said:

I think that loot stage modifier affects everything you open.

 

I was about to type, "not really", but looking into loot.xml now I'm not so sure. For certain, your loot stage is always 'active' for any container you open, but not every loot container or loot group has obvious* loot stage scaling. So for example, coffee makers:

 

<!-- *** CoffeeMaker_Loot -->
<lootgroup name="groupCoffeeMaker01">
    <item name="drinkJarCoffee" count="1,2" loot_prob_template="med"/>
    <item name="resourceCropCoffeeBeans" count="1,3" loot_prob_template="high"/>
    <!-- <item name="toolBeaker" loot_prob_template="veryLow"/> --> (want more beakers? uncomment this line!)
</lootgroup>

 

The "med" and "high" probability "templates" there are really just fixed probabilities (0.5 and 0.75 respectively). Loot stage doesn't enter into it at all. (Technically, the probability applies for loot stage 0 through 999999)

 

Looking through loot.xml it seems that pretty much only loot groups/containers which might return armor, tools, weapons, schematics, or mods are directly tied to loot stage (this includes quest rewards). All of the mundane containers (including things like medical piles) are tied to fixed probabilities like the above.

 

*I said 'obvious' because there is this new line for A20 at the very top of loot.xml:

 

poi_tier_mod="0.05,0.1,0.15,0.2,0.25"

 

What I'm not sure about is whether these POI-based modifiers are applied to every probability in every group? So for example if I'm in a Tier I POI, that line implies there is a 0.05 modifier. Does that mean that for the coffee maker example above, the actual probability for "drinkJarCoffee" is actually "med" + 0.05 = 0.55? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

I'm not even certain how to test that effectively - maybe reconfigure coffee machines so that 9mm ammo has a 0.0 probability by default and see if I can get some 9mm from coffee makers in Tier 5 POIs.

 

On 1/2/2022 at 8:46 AM, Brian9824 said:

For instance if you had a zombie loot bag in the forest biome and you could move it to the wasteland biome or into a T5 POI would the loot from the bag be boosted by your modified loot stage?

 

Specific to the question of "what if we could move the bags": what needs to be tested is whether biome and POI modifiers are tied to the container when it is dropped, or to the coordinates it's on when it's opened, or to where the player is standing when the container is opened. I might try testing this out later. We can't move the bags of course, but it might have some small effect on bags dropped at POI or biome boundaries for example.

 

4 hours ago, Ray Garraty said:

I really hope they do because I deliberately built my horde base in Wasteland inside the tier IV POI territory in order to get better loot from them zombie bags…

 

You'll be fine. Bags dropped and opened in/around your T4 POI in the Wasteland will have good loot stage modifiers applied when you open them. I guess make sure you're standing on the POI when you open them, in case the answer to my test above is "where the player is standing determines modifiers".

Edited January 3, 2022 by Boidster (see edit history)

[theFlu]

11 minutes ago, Boidster said:

We can't move the bags of course, but it might have some small effect on bags dropped at POI or biome boundaries for example.

I'd say the easiest way to test would be to make a ramp from forest to wasteland (high enough to get well into the forest) and spawn a bunch of bags on top the ramp.

 

Whether you need to have zombies drop them naturally or not for proper results, I can't say. Likely not, a bag is a bag, but they're also entities, they might hold a loot stage that is rolled upon "natural generation."

 

If in doubt, making a quick cheese base with said ramp and running a horde there might help, but would be a decent chunk of work..

[BFT2020]

One thing to consider is how they determine loot probability in parties....

 

The system is setup where the loot inside (and probability) is determine by the person who opened the bag, which is determined by that person's loot stage.  The loot stage is already modified based on POI and biome before you even open any containers.  The containers themselves are not checked for location to determine the loot stage, they just have loot groups to reference back to.  So in game, if you were able to pick up the zombie goody bags without opening them up, the loot stage would be based on your loot stage when you opened it up.

 

However, I can't think of any loot container that you can pick up and move in this game; and what should happen doesn't always happen, so I am more than willing to volunteer theFlu to test this out  😉

[Boidster]

2 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

The containers themselves are not checked for location to determine the loot stage, they just have loot groups to reference back to.  So in game, if you were able to pick up the zombie goody bags without opening them up, the loot stage would be based on your loot stage when you opened it up.

 

I think you're probably correct, which would map to "it's where the player's feet are" for any biome or POI adjustments. The question about moving bags around is academic only since we can't do that. But if you're correct - as I think you are - a bag which dropped on the street just outside POI boundaries would have a different modifier for a player standing on the street (outside the POI) vs. one standing within the POI and reaching into the street to search.

 

So far, I've only been testing whether POI tier modifiers affect all probabilities in the game. So far I'm pretty confident that it is not additive. That is, 

 

poi_tier_mod="0.05, 0.1, 0.15, 0.2, 0.25"

 

does not mean "add 0.25" to base probability in a Tier 5 POI, based on my testing. Which makes sense since other modifiers throughout the XML tend to be multiplicative. So I think it means "multiply base probability by 1.25". I need to do more tests to prove this out.

 

Then I will need to do as theFlu describes, but I think I'm just going to spawn bags on the road outside a major POI and then stand in the road and on the POI to see if the differences are obvious. I wish the console showed (or that I knew how to enable it) the RNG results as they are calculated. Would make this a lot easier.

[theFlu]

Since I had the loot.xml open for the other thread, I ended up checking what to look for. Basically the only expected difference will be the tiers and quality of the gear obtained. Other things don't really seem they're affected, although for ammo count there's a tag that implies stage-modification, but there's no explanation to it. Might be loot_stage * 0.01 added into the count, or something completely different.

 

I would probably try to see if I can get higher tier loot from a bag standing in the lower stage area. Loot standing in wasteland, with the bag in forest. (Or similarly with a POI) For that, I would set my "character gamestage" to 38 or 39 (39 is the last one with no chance of T1 armor and you might level up looting...) and then loot a bunch of forest-bags standing in the wasteland. The first T1 armor would be enough for that side, then one would have to loot a whole lot on the other side to be pretty sure that the same item doesn't drop there.

 

I wouldn't feel particularly safe about using loot goggles or eye candy in the test, but they could of course be used, just assuming they work as we think...

 

For the bags, if spawning them in manually, try at least standing in the forest while doing so. Or for zed bags, spawn-25 to forest, killall, repeat. Hmm.. is killall damage from player ... ? Soo many threads for such a little test ..

 

EDIT: If levelling up threatens to become an issue, I guess a diet of glass might help. The reaper shouldn't effect loot stage... yet another variable though. Don't forget the bedroll!

Edited January 3, 2022 by theFlu (see edit history)

[Boidster]

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

Basically the only expected difference will be the tiers and quality of the gear obtained.

 

So, this is true as regards to what loot level directly affects. I'm just unsure how to read this line:

 

<loot_settings poi_tier_mod="0.05,0.1,0.15,0.2,0.25" poi_tier_bonus="3,6,9,12,15" />

 

I wasn't able to figure out a useful test for those modifiers/bonuses so I left it alone. I played in the editor with the all_loot special POI as well as one I built myself specifically for coffee makers and even with changing the POI tier back and forth it wasn't clear to me what was happening. So...dunno.

 

For biome modifiers, though, I was able to test that and I'm pretty confident that "where the player is standing" determines the modifier. How I tested:

 

1) Modify Feral Biker to have a 90% chance to drop a bag

2) Spawn a crapload of Feral Bikers (AI turned off; I'm not looking for a fight) on the desert side of a desert/wasteland border area (confirmed via F3)

3) Loot bags while standing on the desert side, until 10 Tier/Quality items are found

4) Loot bags while standing on the wasteland side also until 10 Tiered items are found

 

Results (note: this is loot.xml tiers, i.e. cloth & scrap are both Tier 0):

 

Tier/Quality	Desert	Wasteland
0/4	1
0/5	3
0/6	1
1/1	3	1
1/2	2	2
1/3		3
1/4		1
1/5		1
1/6		2

 

So, if you're near a border area, try to stand on the higher-difficulty biome side! I have no reason to believe it would be any different for POIs - always stand within a POI boundary if you can when looting. I think it might even be worthwhile (based on that little bit of XML above) to stand on the house POIs when looting their mailboxes - don't do it from the road.

 

 

[theFlu]

Nice data, looks pretty clear for that question

For:

1 hour ago, Boidster said:

I'm just unsure how to read this line:

 

<loot_settings poi_tier_mod="0.05,0.1,0.15,0.2,0.25" poi_tier_bonus="3,6,9,12,15" />

 

I wasn't able to figure out a useful test for those modifiers/bonuses so I left it alone.

 

I would have to assume it's (A - 1.0) and B for: actual_loot_stage = A*player_stage + B

Just an assumption of course.. might also be ((player_stage + B) * A) and no idea with the relationship to all other modifiers.

 

To verify that that's how it is used, you could just run a similar set at the border of a POI. Preferentially at some known hard limits .. to separate the difference between mod and bonus, it would have to be pretty well calculated. Unless one wants to trust that editing them produces predictable results..

 

EDIT: I forgot the obvious; that "actual_loot_stage" is also shown on the UI in the character sheet. If one were to trust that, the testing would be as simple as changing the xml (maybe to something silly enough like 0.0 and +500 ) and seeing that the effect shows up as expected on the UI. Maybe verify with a couple bags of loot with the silly-mode.

Edited January 3, 2022 by theFlu (see edit history)

[Boidster]

Yeah, that would be a good test. I guess what I'm not being clear about regarding me not being clear on the XML is, do those modifiers affect all loot probabilities? That is, if this is in a loot group:

 

<item name="foobar" prob="0.5">

 

Does that 0.5 get modified by this somehow if one is searching a container in a POI?

 

<loot_settings poi_tier_mod="0.05,0.1,0.15,0.2,0.25" poi_tier_bonus="3,6,9,12,15" />

 

I think you're surmising that no, plain probabilities are not affected, and that poi_ter_mod and poi_tier_bonus only affect the player's loot stage and therefore only helps with probabilities which are loot stage-dependent. I think you're probably right, but it's not something I figured out how to test. Your test absolutely would work to see about loot stage changes. I just can't figure out how to test for any effects on plain probabilities. Like with the coffee makers.

 

[theFlu]

Ok, I went and did just what I described above. Made a modlet to replace poi_tier_bonus="3,6,9,12,15" with 100,200,300,400,500. (am I a mod author now? )

Zipped around Nav. Wilderness was at loot stage 1. A spawn site car on the road gave a UI loot stage at 101, nearby derelict house equally 101. A military camp gave 211 (in burnt biome).

Spawned in a few demos, looted a chainsaw .. based on my reading of loot xml, that requires quite high loot stages, so it seems to work as I expected.

 

Does it do something else... I dunno. Yet at least ..

37 minutes ago, Boidster said:

do those modifiers affect all loot probabilities? That is, if this is in a loot group:

 

<item name="foobar" prob="0.5">

I have a problem trying to think about that as a possibility, and that's my understanding of those prob=X statements. It may well be wrong / outdated, but:

That prob effects the chance between members of a Group of loot. Ie (pseudo xml..):

group tools:

  stone_axe prob=0.5

  stone_shovel prob=0.5

 

would give one of those, with 50/50 chances. Changing it to

 

group tools:

  stone_axe prob=0.5

  stone_shovel prob=1

 

would give one of those, stone_axe having 33% chance against the 67% of the shovel.

 

Now, multiplying all of those numbers would only yield the exact same result. Adding constants to all would just take the odds into a more even distribution.

 

However, I repeat, this is only my very limited understanding of that... may well be wrong

 

EDIT: verbiage to Not confuse the difference ..

Edited January 3, 2022 by theFlu (see edit history)

[Boidster]

59 minutes ago, theFlu said:

However, I repeat, this is only my very limited understanding of that... may well be wrong

 

Nope, I think you've got the math exactly correct. Which is why I think you're also correct about the little mod/bonus listed at the top of loot.xml only affecting the player's loot level. I was trying to think of a way to test the proposition and couldn't come up with one.

 

That said, there are not that many lootgroups which still contain items with a fixed prob value. They almost all refer back to the "low" "med" "high" probability "templates" which really are just a single probability for loot stage 1-999999. So in the great majority of cases, loot stage modifiers just don't matter at all.

 

I watched loot stage change as I moved around a POI and saw the same thing you did. Now I'm keen to understand the first part, this bit here:

 

poi_tier_mod="0.05,0.1,0.15,0.2,0.25"

[theFlu]

35 minutes ago, Boidster said:

still contain items with a fixed prob value. They almost all refer back to the "low" "med" "high" probability "templates" which really are just a single probability for loot stage 1-999999.

Isn't that just another form of fixed prob value? Prolly meant to be changeable "later". But mainly..:

 

35 minutes ago, Boidster said:

Now I'm keen to understand the first part, this bit here:

 

poi_tier_mod="0.05,0.1,0.15,0.2,0.25"

I guess I'll have to test that next, won't I?

 

EDIT: went and did that:

 

Removed the mod effect on _bonus, so those are back to 3,6,9,12,15
Made the _mod 1,2,3,4,5

 

At those settings, the same POIs
Forest (previous Wildeness) 2
T1 POIs 7 (2x2 + 3 would match) (As in (player_loot x (1 + _mod) + _bonus)
Burnt biome 13 (2 + 11?) constant +11 from burnt?
T2 in burnt 23 (2x3 + 6 + 11) would line up

 

One more data point for curiosity.

Desert 13 (2 + 11?) matches the burnt, why not?
Dishong 38 (2x6 + 15 + 11) would match.

 

EDIT 2: misspelled Dishong pretty horribly... and poking @Boidster

Edited January 4, 2022 by theFlu (see edit history)

[Boidster]

16 hours ago, theFlu said:

Isn't that just another form of fixed prob value? Prolly meant to be changeable "later". But mainly...

 

Probably, yes. One question is whether the code treats "prob" differently from "loot_prob_template". This also a thing that is hard to test since we can't just look at loot level to see what's happening. We have to loot 100 coffee makers. Maybe 1000.

 

For your tests, we probably should note the comments in biomes.xml. I missed this before and it very likely explains the poi modifier & bonus as well.

 

Quote

 

A20 Biome Loot Modifier and Bonus
Biome Modifier A.K.A lootstage_modifier percentage added to the loot stage calculations
Pine Forest 0
Burnt Forest 0.5
Desert 0.5
Snow 1
Wasteland 1.5

 

Biome Bonus A.K.A. lootstage_bonus whole number added to the loot stage calculations
Pine Forest 0
Burnt Forest 10
Desert 10
Snow 20
Wasteland 30

 

 

Okay, so on to your tests

 

16 hours ago, theFlu said:

Removed the mod effect on _bonus, so those are back to 3,6,9,12,15
Made the _mod 1,2,3,4,5

 

Forest (previous Wildeness) 2
T1 POIs 7 (2x2 + 3 would match) (As in (player_loot x (1 + _mod) + _bonus)
Burnt biome 13 (2 + 11?) constant +11 from burnt?
T2 in burnt 23 (2x3 + 6 + 11) would line up

 

So the formula appears to be:

 

([Base Lootstage] * (1 + [Biome Mod] + [POI Mod])) + [Biome Bonus] + [POI Bonus]

 

Base Lootstage (BLS)	2
Biome	POI Tier	Biome Mod (BM)	Biome Bonus (BB)	POI Mod (PM)	POI Bonus (PB)	Net Lootstage (BLS * (1 + BM + PM)) + BB + PB
Pine Forest	1	0	0	1	3	(2 * (1 + 0 + 1)) + 0 + 3 = 7
Burnt Forest (no POI)	NA	0.5	10	NA	NA	(2 * (1 + 0.5)) + 10 = 13
Burnt Forest	2	0.5	10	2	6	(2 * (1 + 0.5 + 2) + 10 + 6 = 23
Desert	5	0.5	10	5	15	(2 * (1 + 0.5 * 5) + 10 + 15 = 38

[theFlu]

21 minutes ago, Boidster said:

So the formula appears to be:

 

([Base Lootstage] * (1 + [Biome Mod] + [POI Mod])) + [Biome Bonus] + [POI Bonus]

Looks reasonable, and it works for my data; I think the data is just barely sufficient* to be sure assuming we stay at the "basic multiplications" -level, but of course it can't rule out anything a bit more elaborate.

 

*yes, you can call me lazy. I call it optimizing time spent..

[Boidster]

I actually got the formula wrong a few times and went through a few iterations before everything matched up for all of your tests. I'm convinced we've got it right. And I'm pretty well convinced that none of those modifiers or bonuses will affect any hard-coded constant probabilities nor, as a practical matter, any of the "veryLow", "low", "med", "high" placeholders either. At least not until they stratify those templates by lootstage.

[theFlu]

1 hour ago, Boidster said:

I'm convinced we've got it right.

Yup, pretty safe bet, knowing the environment.

 

Btw, I think we may have lost the OP at some point; I might have to test out something for the original question as well...

 

EDIT: Ok, did a quick test for an near approximate of the OP-question:

I modified the Burnt Forest to have a +200 loot stage. Checked in game that the loot stage changed as expected (2 in forest, 203 in burnt)

I spawned a group of demos on the forest side of the forest/burnt border, killed them, looted their bags.

Standing on the Burnt side, bag on the forest side, the first drop gave me an M60 Q4.

=> reading the loot.xml , the first chance for an M60 seems to be loot stage 118. (I might've missed something, but I don't think so)

 

So, the bag never touched the burnt side, looting from there spawned an item exclusive to high loot stage.

 

I did spawn in a few dozen more demos on the forest side and looted them from the forest side, there were no high level loots in a dozen bags I looted, plenty of day 1 stuff though. Not exactly indisputable, but close enough for this purpose.

 

TL;DR: yeh, doesn't matter where a bag lies or where you can or can't move it, the only thing that matters is the highest LS you can reach it with ..

 

(poke @Brian9824)

Edited January 4, 2022 by theFlu (see edit history)

[BFT2020]

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

Yup, pretty safe bet, knowing the environment.

 

Btw, I think we may have lost the OP at some point; I might have to test out something for the original question as well...

 

I think you proven out the OP's question very well, and your discussion on probability overall will help me when I go back into my loot changes to figure out how to make things drop less frequently.

[Boidster]

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

I spawned a group of demos on the forest side of the forest/burnt border, killed them, looted their bags.

Standing on the Burnt side, bag on the forest side, the first drop gave me an M60 Q4.

=> reading the loot.xml , the first chance for an M60 seems to be loot stage 118. (I might've missed something, but I don't think so)

 

So, the bag never touched the burnt side, looting from there spawned an item exclusive to high loot stage.

 

Yes, that's a very good test!

 

22 hours ago, Boidster said:

For biome modifiers, though, I was able to test that and I'm pretty confident that "where the player is standing" determines the modifier. How I tested:

 

1) Modify Feral Biker to have a 90% chance to drop a bag

2) Spawn a crapload of Feral Bikers (AI turned off; I'm not looking for a fight) on the desert side of a desert/wasteland border area (confirmed via F3)

3) Loot bags while standing on the desert side, until 10 Tier/Quality items are found

4) Loot bags while standing on the wasteland side also until 10 Tiered items are found

 

Results (note: this is loot.xml tiers, i.e. cloth & scrap are both Tier 0):

 

To be faaaaair, your test with the drastically increased biome modifier was simpler and didn't require like 50 spawns I bet. I had to do many iterations with the vanilla settings before I noticed the change.

 

7 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

when I go back into my loot changes to figure out how to make things drop less frequently.

 

You're not from around here, are ya?  

Edited January 4, 2022 by Boidster (see edit history)

[theFlu]

4 minutes ago, Boidster said:

To be faaaaair, your test with the drastically increased biome modifier was simpler and didn't require like 50 spawns I bet. I had to do many iterations with the vanilla settings before I noticed the change.

Yeh, your original was pretty much good enough already. But I figured a "one-sided but binary" -test might give some more strength to the claim .. and indeed, it wasn't exactly difficult. Call me lazy, again

[Boidster]

Not lazy. "Focused on efficient outcomes"