My "Twist" on Mining

Hello soc! It's me again, here to share some thoughts on the optimum way to mine. While this may be more into Beni's territory, I felt the urge to put forth my 2 pecs of research and experience in an effort to start an enjoyable and educational debate. And on that note...

I do my best thinking in the shower, and that's where I was when the idea of better mining strategy came to me. I very quickly washed up, dried off, thanked Acro for showering with me, and went to the drawing board to write up some general details. Here's what I am putting together.

First, the standard way of mining is to try a spot out, and if it fails, march 100 meters in some cardinal direction -- N, S, E or W -- and try again. This practice creates a grid of sites that are examined with very little overlap. With the range of basic mining equipment stertching out to just over 50 meters, this seems to work out effectively -- but it neglects a key area of potential goods -- and globals!

Now, using the basic assumption of a 50 meter detection radius for mining (to keep the math easy), the 100 meter grid method does cover the north-south and east-west axes very well. However, as the pics below suggest, there is a grey area in the middle that get neglected! Now, some of that space is accounted for when using the actual detection radius of 55 meters or so, but to cover the full grid space, the detection radius would need to be 70.7 meters! And using the grid method with a 71 meter range would create a lot of overlap -- wasteful overlap at that!

Please pardon all the upcoming math -- I do statistics, optimization and research in the boring real world -- and try to appreciate (or dispute) the results. To check out the most area with the least overlap and no neglected spots, the grid method is not the most efficient, and could end up costing extra probes/bombs when mapping out a grid. So, unless you are like Beni and made of PEDs, a little extra efficiency might help. This would be accomplished through a triangular grid system, with some awkward numbers used to determine starting points, how many meters should be marked off, and so forth. In a world of perfect mapping, it would look kind of like the following:
Now, the more precision measurements will be displayed using an assumption of a 50 meter detection range -- with a final conversion equation to allow real ranges to be plugged in and used for real virtual world situations. The key to this is provided courtesy of Pythagoreas -- one of many fine European folks -- who did a lot of geometry, created a bunch of theorems, and founded the classes that I took at University. But in short, the sum of his work created the basic triangular formation below, and established the necessary stuff to figure out the distances given our 50 meter radius assumption (let's see a snablesnot do that!). The result should be the distance required that one has to go N or S, and the distance E or W, to create the perfect (or optimal) grid.


This is a fun, if tricky bit of math and geometry. My next blog this weekend with reveal the wonderful answer, and how it can be applied to the virtual universe. If anyone has any comments, complaints or criticisms, please let me know. And if you can't find me, I'll be back in the shower...and has anyone seen Acro?

Curly "Twist" Bender