Question terraforming fund start-up

[bogate]

I have never had luck with the "Fund start-up" terraforming project before so i decided to test it out with seta and save scumming while watching netflix yesterday.
I quicksaved before launching the project, used seta to completion and then loaded the quicksave to start it again. It failed 20 times consecutively and i gave up on testing it further. The cost and payout changes after the cooldown is complete to a new fund start-up project
To my question, does it always fail no matter what or is the outcome predetermined when the terraforming project is generated, i.e. when the cooldown resets the project instead of when the player starts or finishes it?

[Tempest]

I have never had luck with the "Fund start-up" terraforming project before so i decided to test it out with seta and save scumming while watching netflix yesterday.
I quicksaved before launching the project, used seta to completion and then loaded the quicksave to start it again. It failed 20 times consecutively and i gave up on testing it further. The cost and payout changes after the cooldown is complete to a new fund start-up project
To my question, does it always fail no matter what or is the outcome predetermined when the terraforming project is generated, i.e. when the cooldown resets the project instead of when the player starts or finishes it?

save scumming is a pita, even with 6.0's loading times. i am not sure when the outcome is determined, but after clicking the "start project" would make the most sense i would guess.

as the flavor text mentions: "more fun than a lottery" , 15x times the payout for 10% .

RNG. your 20 attempts should have netted 2 wins. (20x0,10) if you got none, then that's random variability.

my stats:

TF completed : 130 (not sure how to count the "payout" successes, it lumps all projects in here, 8 or 9 payouts in here if i'd had to guess)
TF failed : 42 (these should be all Fund start-up)

TF expenses : 1,677,238,465,002
TF payout : 4,987,623,270,900

my fund start-up adventure had me dipping as low as 600 M in credits.

my advice: keep playing, with these odds it is actually hard to lose. all you need is a few random wins in your streak. save scum ONLY if you dip below a certain credit balance you are comfortable with.

[Raptor34]

So you can actually win then... That's good to know.

[bogate]

Thanks for the reply!. Then maybe i just had bad luck in my experiment or the succes/fail status is decided when the terraforming project spawns after every cooldown. I will just keep doing them without thinking too much about it

[v_make]

Thanks for the reply!. Then maybe i just had bad luck in my experiment or the succes/fail status is decided when the terraforming project spawns after every cooldown. I will just keep doing them without thinking too much about it

The expected output (of unit investment) is

E(X)=0.1×15=1.5>1

Seems fine, but there is a trick. The investment amount is not entirely controllable by the player. It is in fact, fixed to 10% of the player's cash amount when the mission is provided. This mechanic actually lowers one's ability to profit and adds some problems, because you will now have to own 10 times more to be able to invest the same amount.

Under such terms, there is a 35% chance that a player fails 10 times in a streak (I'm currently on 20 and decided to look into the problem) and the final pay does not cover their loss.

However, given a proper strategy, if one always invests a calculated amount so as to always win back the sum of former losses, then one can always make money in the end.

To achieve the above strategy, between two investment cycles, the player needs to make their total cash 1+all_previous_loss/15 the next time.

If the 1st investment is 1, then the nth investment a_n should be

a_n =151×((151/150)^(n-1)-(151/150)^(n-2)), n>=2

To give a sense, here is a_1 a_{40}

Code: Select all

| no | total    | no | total    | no | total    | no | total    |
|----|----------|----|----------|----|----------|----|----------|
| 1  | 1        | 11 | 1.068703 | 21 | 1.142125 | 31 | 1.220592 |
| 2  | 1.006667 | 12 | 1.075827 | 22 | 1.14974  | 32 | 1.22873  |
| 3  | 1.013378 | 13 | 1.083    | 23 | 1.157404 | 33 | 1.236921 |
| 4  | 1.020134 | 14 | 1.09022  | 24 | 1.16512  | 34 | 1.245167 |
| 5  | 1.026935 | 15 | 1.097488 | 25 | 1.172888 | 35 | 1.253468 |
| 6  | 1.033781 | 16 | 1.104804 | 26 | 1.180707 | 36 | 1.261825 |
| 7  | 1.040673 | 17 | 1.11217  | 27 | 1.188579 | 37 | 1.270237 |
| 8  | 1.04761  | 18 | 1.119584 | 28 | 1.196502 | 38 | 1.278705 |
| 9  | 1.054595 | 19 | 1.127048 | 29 | 1.204479 | 39 | 1.28723  |
| 10 | 1.061625 | 20 | 1.134562 | 30 | 1.212509 | 40 | 1.295812 |

So, a proper investment plan would be to put only a fraction of your total cash as your initial flown cash, then act according to the strategy. How much? Depends on how much risk you want to take. To prepare a streak of 10, 20, 30, 40 failed investments, with the probability of 0.3487, 0.1216 (me right here), 0.0424, 0.0148 accordingly, the additional 1.031, 2.132, 3.309, 4.567 unit of cash should be frozen somewhere. Note this does not take your passive income into consideration.

Say you want an 87.85% secure investment (20 fail chances), you need to put 1/(1+2.132) total cash in the account, then before getting the next investment offer, refill the account to the next status.

Once you make a successful investment, the entire strategy is reset and you'll snowball exponentially.

This is meant to be an interesting mechanism, as credits have almost no usage in late game, for example when you are terraforming (unless you actually rushed here for this start-up funding like me... good luck).

On the other hand, saving spam should work, but in a special way. According to some speculation and my own observation, the consecutive results may be only updated after a successful mission. This seems to be some deliberate anti-save-spam mechanic, at least it makes sure you cannot have a success every time. So save spam (before getting the offer) but use very little account money, and revert to the latest save when the result is a success and put all you have in your own account.

I succeeded on the 22nd trial.

see details on https://github.com/mkmark/x4-notes#fund-start-up