Ever since I started playing my captain, I've had an unhealthy obsession with farming. No idea why, but I enjoy it. Maybe just because it allows me to zone out whilst giving my eyes something to look at, or admire the scenery.
Regardless, I like farming a lot, and I do it a lot, so I said to myself "Self, you know what would be useful? Running a huge number of trials to determine all sorts of farming outupts." This seemed like a good idea at the time(although even I am a bit tired of farming by now), especially since I love doing profit analysis and something like this would help me out a lot.
Anyway, I ended up levelling my captain to Supreme Master a while before having this idea, so I have almost everything I need. I decided to do my first trials with mint, as one can make a tidy profit relatively quickly with water-bowls. I have done as much numerical analysis as I could on the non-critted fields, and will soon do the same for critted fields, following which I will check whether these numbers match to apprentice-level fields, and, if they do, head straight on into Westfold farming.
Now, I know that people have done analysis such as this before. There is something that, after a bit of searching, I can say with quite a lot of confidence sets this apart: Sample sizes of 500.
That's right, I'll be doing my number-crunching based on the results of 500 fields, to see if we can't correct for some of the randomness.
Let's jump right in, shall we? Unfortunately, my results are going to be a bit brief at the moment, as I have only completed the trials on non-critted fields. I'll leave the in-depth analysis of the numbers to the very end of the research, as I'd like to get a complete picture before making any claims. I just couldn't wait to post this, though
Anywhom, what will be found in each section? Firstly, there will be the total number of crops harvested from the 500 fields. Secondly, I will put the range I found, i.e. least crops, most crops. Third, I will give median and mode(the center-most value and the most common value, respectively). Next, I will give average crops per field, probably the most important number for anyone looking to make a profit off of farming. I will then give the average absolute deviation within the sample(for the uninitiated, think of this as the average distance from the average, i.e. with an average absolute deviation of 1 on an average of 50, the average datapoint is 1 unit away from 50, so 49 or 51. This gives an idea of how chaotic the datapoints are). Also, I will give breakdowns of yields for each field type. Finally, I will do all of the above for crit-materials(in the case of supreme, wooly mint).
Further, where appropriate, I give crit-rate, as there has been much complaining of how displayed crit-rate seems inaccurate.
As a note, fields were planted four at a time. As there's no such thing as a true random number generator, and I do not know the algorithm used in this program, this means that nearby datapoints may be related. Once all of my data is in, I will post more thoughts on this. Also once all the data is in, I'll be posting all the graphs for all the graphically-oriented.
So, numbers!
Mint Fields:
Fields: 500 (523 including crits)
Total Crops: 1699
Range: 1-10
Median Harvest: 3
Mode Harvest: 2
Average Harvest: 3.398
Average Absolute Deviation: 1.7080
Breakdown:
1 crop: 101
2 crops: 106
3 crops: 92
4 crops: 68
5 crops: 55
6 crops: 27
7 crops: 24
8 crops: 13
9 crops: 11
10 crops: 10
Of 2's:
3 came from fields yielding 1 crop
1 came from a field yielding 3 crops
1 came from a field yielding 4 crops
Of 1's:
17 came from fields yielding 1 crop
19 came from fields yielding 2 crops
20 came from fields yielding 3 crops
12 came from fields yielding 4 crops
13 came from fields yielding 5 crops
6 came from fields yielding 6 crops
8 came from fields yielding 7 crops
3 came from fields yielding 8 crops
Crit Rate of Mint Fields*: 21/500 or 23/523, i.e. 4.2%-4.4%
*Data for critted fields not included in above data, as there will be a separate entry for critted fields
Data for critted fields should be up within one week.
Questions that should be answered:
Is it worth it to buy Rivendell soil?
What should be average profit per crop?
Are hearty westfold fields worth the increased price?
What is the earliest point at which one would average a profit from farming and cooking?
What about pure farming without cooking?
Is a 5% crit-rate accurate?
Also, if you have other important questions that could be answered by this analysis, be sure to post them!
If the elves had had a guy who could wipe out Sauron and his army single handedly with alphabet blocks, they would not have sent along a hunter. -Forusrname
He Who Scalips
Il sérarwa nar il tulca.
My apologies concerning the ongoing silence. I've been busy with college, in addition to not really having the will to play. Either way, I'm planning on at least doing Westfold farming over the summer, see if anything interesting comes of it. That said, I have a ridiculous amount of mint to get rid of before that to a) clear inventory/bank space and b) get enough ca$h to do westfold.
tl;dr version: Sorry for the wait. I'll be doing westfold at some point in the next couple months.
E: As an aside, the "Rivendell Soil" was for "generic crit-increasing dirt." I'll be tackling Westfold as separate, of course.
Last edited by scaliper; May 09 2012 at 02:50 PM.
If the elves had had a guy who could wipe out Sauron and his army single handedly with alphabet blocks, they would not have sent along a hunter. -Forusrname
He Who Scalips
Il sérarwa nar il tulca.
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Originally Posted by scaliper
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