Creeper killed graph

[Karsten75]

Look at this graph. Many other graphs I have are similar.



The red line indicates creeper killed. But I don't understand this. Surely as I get closer to (and even cap 4 or 4 of the emitters), the red line should show a dramatic decline? Right at the end, if I've capped all the emitters and just sit there, waiting for time to pass, then the red line should be near the bottom of the graph?  The blue line indicates that the creeper is not covering much area, so how can I kill so much creeper if it is simply not there?

[NoobSauce]

You're killing it before it covers ground.  If you notice, when an emitter 'fires', the creeper jumps up to level +2 or +4 or a number like that...  You're killing that creeper before it has a chance to cover a lot of ground.

[knucracker]

Some other notes you may find interesting:

There are actually 3 different y-axes on this page.
The green and and white lines are for energy and the y axis is set based on the highest value of either.  The blue line is the creeper coverage and the y axis is set to the max value for the coverage.  The red line is creeper killed and its y axis is set to the maximum killed.  So the blue and red lines don't share a y axis scale since the red line would be stuck to the x-axis most of the time (Except when a thor is first built).

In other words, don't compare the absolute values of the red line and the blue line.  Most of the time you are destroying a fairly small volume of creeper compared to the total volume of creeper on the map.  To get a really big spike in the red line you have to assemble a large force and then hit the creeper all at once (or build a thor).  This will cause a big spike in the red line compared to what say 5 blasters and a mortar constantly firing would do.

The part about the line not going down when the emitters are capped.  The reason emitters gets capped is because once shot gets to destroy a volume of say "4" in one shot.  This is as much creeper as you might destroy over 20 blaster shots if it had been given a chance to spread out.

On another note, you can click the legend items above the graph to turn lines on and off.  This can be interesting sometimes (marginally interesting, but still interesting).

[Aurzel]

yes virgil, very marginally lol
but the whole y-axises business is interesting

[UpperKEES]

1. Is the scale of the Y-axis used to display energy consumption and depletion logarithmic? I often see an almost straight line, while you would expect an exponential one in this case.

2. Why does the graph sometimes not start at the complete left (see here)? The graph of Karsten above does. I noticed this only recently, so could it have something to do with a later version?

3. Do the vertical lines represent a unit of time, like a minute or so? I see more lines when more time has elapsed, but as you can see at the graph in the link above, it does not match the number of minutes....

[knucracker]

1. Is the scale of the Y-axis used to display energy consumption and depletion logarithmic? I often see an almost straight line, while you would expect an exponential one in this case.

2. Why does the graph sometimes not start at the complete left (see here)? The graph of Karsten above does. I noticed this only recently, so could it have something to do with a later version?

3. Do the vertical lines represent a unit of time, like a minute or so? I see more lines when more time has elapsed, but as you can see at the graph in the link above, it does not match the number of minutes....

1: It is linear.  Note that these two values are not cumulative totals.  They are amounts collected and used per update interval (so they go up and down).

2: It does start on the left, it is just that for some items (like Creeper Coverage) the value is always 0 for the first data point.  The first data point happens at time 0 (the first frame of the game start).  At this moment, Creeper coverage is 0.  Data points are collected every 640/36 seconds (don't ask).  So the next data point comes at around 17-18 seconds later (which most of the time will report lots of creeper coverage).

3: Yes, they are time units.  But they are not on even minutes.  They come close to, but less than a minute.  They come ever 3*640/36 seconds.

[UpperKEES]

Thanks!

ad 1. Sorry, I should have been more specific. Especially at the start of game you'll invest most of your energy in units that will generate even more energy. When done correctly (no starvation), this should result in an exponential growth of your energy collection. Let's say that you expand your energy collection between interval 1 and 2 from 0.8 to 2.0, then you would expect it to grow more than the difference of 1.2 between interval 2 and 3.

Edit:
I created a test map to check this and it indeed displayed an exponential increase of energy collection. I guess you can never play this 'perfectly' during a normal game and the rather long interval time of 17-18 seconds between data points will often cause an average to be displayed. The last factor that contributes is the fact that new collectors will be farther away from Odin City, which causes a delay before they become active. This effect is larger than you would think and actually is in favor of reactors being build right next to Odin City!