Airship Guide

[BonzaiFerroni]

Nyalia, as always an amazing write-up and reference! It is just too good to be 50 pages back, I'd really like to see it get more visibility. I noticed the 2nd post in this thread (after my "reserved" post) happens to be from you, and that gave me an idea.....

Would you consider being a co-author on the guide? You could commandeer your 2nd post to become the continuation of the guide. I could change the table of contents to include sections that you would like to add and also add a continuation notification at the end of my post so people know there is more. I'll also mention up at the top in attention-getting font that there is a new co-author with extra information. I can use the quick link to your post as a way to "jump" directly there.

I will also delete that "reserved" post, i didn't realize that post length was unlimited so it doesn't really serve a purpose, and the information there is outdated anyway.

I realize this may not be desirable for various reasons, so no pressure! I just wanted to float the idea by you. I'm also open to other ideas if you have any.

[Nyalia]

Would you consider being a co-author on the guide? You could commandeer your 2nd post to become the continuation of the guide.

Sure, if you'd like! What would you like me to include there? Should I list the three spreadsheets? Various theories with supporting evidence, like favor correlating with rating? The way the grade rating (which does nothing) correlates strongest with the final sector rating? The travel/survey time formulae developed by the captain of the Gaelicat along with his derived coordinates for the sectors? Stuff like that?

[BonzaiFerroni]

Sure, if you'd like! What would you like me to include there? Should I list the three spreadsheets? Various theories with supporting evidence, like favor correlating with rating? The way the grade rating (which does nothing) correlates strongest with the final sector rating? The travel/survey time formulae developed by the captain of the Gaelicat along with his derived coordinates for the sectors? Stuff like that?

I'm so glad XD \o/ I think it will be a great addition to the guide!

As for content, anything you wish! All of those things you listed sound great to include. You've discovered a lot of details that people will be interested to know about. If you wanted to start with the write-up/reference on airship configurations, I know a lot of people are really starting to ask for that information. Any other sections that you would have fun putting together, or that you feel the OP is lacking. If you have different theories about what a certain stat does, don't worry about being consistent with my post. I think people will enjoy reading multiple perspectives on the questions that we aren't certain about.

And if you have an idea that would involve adjusting my post in any way, let me know!

[Nyalia]

I'm so glad XD \o/ I think it will be a great addition to the guide!

As for content, anything you wish! All of those things you listed sound great to include. You've discovered a lot of details that people will be interested to know about. If you wanted to start with the write-up/reference on airship configurations, I know a lot of people are really starting to ask for that information. Any other sections that you would have fun putting together, or that you feel the OP is lacking. If you have different theories about what a certain stat does, don't worry about being consistent with my post. I think people will enjoy reading multiple perspectives on the questions that we aren't certain about.

And if you have an idea that would involve adjusting my post in any way, let me know!

Alright! I'll get to this at some point in the near future.

[BonzaiFerroni]

Here is an update on the question about whether stats influence sector unlocks! \o/

If you've been following this thread for a while, you may remember my plan to use a brand new workshop/airship to help us learn more about whether surveillance (or any stat) contributes to the chances of unlocking sectors. The plan was to see how far this new airship could get with just the lowest-tier bronco parts. Here are three hypotheses:

1. If the airship hit a "wall" and couldn't discover any more sectors with just those bronco parts, we would know that a higher tier is necessary for discovering sectors.
2. If it eventually discovered higher level sectors but only after very many visits, it would support the idea that a higher tier increases the probability of discovering sectors.
3. If it seemed to discover sectors at a rate comparable to the airships in our database who have upgraded their parts, it would support the idea that stats/parts are not as important as we first believed for unlocking sectors.

Results:

Sector  Rank Discovered  Parts equipped  Forecastle previously recommended 
------  ---------------  --------------  ---------------------------------
SC03    Rank 1           Bronco          Bronco
SC04    Rank 3           Bronco          Bronco
SC05    Rank 5           Bronco          Invincible 
SC06    Rank 13          Bronco          Invincible
SC07    Rank 14          Bronco          Invincible
SC08    Rank 24          Bronco          Invincible
SC10    Rank 26          Bronco          Enterprise
SC11    Rank 14          Bronco          Invincible

Conclusion:
The Champagne Supernova! seemed to discover sectors at a rate that was on-par or even better than the typical airship from our database, which used upgraded parts. The third hypothesis seems the most valid in light of this data.

This analysis has limitations. It doesn't completely rule out hypothesis #2, it could be that the Champagne Supernova! was just particularly lucky. It also only looks at the sectors up through 11. It could be that hypothesis #1 or #2 becomes more relevant for higher level sectors. I'll continue to explore to rule this out! (Hypothesis #1 actually is certain for sectors 17 and beyond, there is a minimum surveillance requirement of 90)

Further note:
This actually supports the idea of a "minimalist" approach to the workshop. The Champagne Supernova! is not getting quite as much EXP or items, and is obviously taking longer because of the unimproved rigging and hull. However, it is still making steady progress. For those who don't have the luxury of being able to come up with materials for parts easily, and especially for those who are running very small or solo FCs, this means they won't have to invest in every set of parts along the way. If they plan to use all four airships and have the most flexibility in airship configurations at higher levels, it will still be advisable. But it is also possible to target specific parts with minimal sacrifice and still make progress!

[Cessna]

I think favour is a airship's defensive stat in how it deals with adverse weather and is best used on exploratory airships.On retreival airships it should be minimized to the lowest amount required. Don't know yet and will do more testing, I'll post some logs in the coming weeks.

Anyway I dunno how useful my information will be but inorder to max out survallience on a airship you can use my fc's airship build.

Tatanora forecastle
Enterprise Hull
Odyssey Bladders
Bronco Aftcastle

All told your stats will end up this.

140 Surveillance
56 Retrieval
126 Speed
82 range
132 Favour

Primary purpose is for short quick double sector exploration. Obviously this ship isn't going to bring back things in great numbers but there should be no sector it cannot discover in theory.

[Magistrella]

Once we got the mats for VI Airship shematics and the Voyger hits 50 our first ship will be the 5 Sector Maxxer:

Hull: Tatanora / Rigging: Bronco / Forecastle: Odyssey / Aftcastle: Enterprise

Stats: 118 Survey / 98 Retrieval / 62 Speed / 140 Range / 106 Favor

Time is all we really have. If its 24 hours more per trip or not doesnt matter if i can hit 5 instead of 3 Sectors per trip ;3

My theory is still that Surveillance is a direct Factor in getting a second item per sector and that Favor is influencing what winds you get and what you actually find those are my second priorities.

Will see how it will work out, but having 4 ships that each can visit 5 sectors each trip seem sufficient for me ^^

[Aeyis]

So having high retrieval again seems to pay off:

[Nyalia]

Nice sheet! The route planner currently in my airship log spreadsheets determines shortest route as well as time and distance, so it only works for 1-3. So, this is nice for 4-5 stop trips. (I'm still trying to figure out how to expand it to 4 or 5, but without variables, I'm having a ton of trouble with shortest path algorithms.)

A few quick things - you have "Home" as an option in the trip planner, but that's not a valid choice. How are you determining distances between two sectors? Are you using a table where you calculated every single pair's true distance, or are you using the coords that Lauphin Faux of Sargatanas derived (they're listed in the airship log spreadsheets) along with the distance formula? (That's one big flaw with my trip planner - I'm not yet using his coords since without a lookup table, it'll increase the complexity of my shortest path algorithms by at least 2x.) Are you using Lauphin's time formula?

[Dancetwist]

How are you determining distances between two sectors? Are you using a table where you calculated every single pair's true distance, or are you using the coords that Lauphin Faux of Sargatanas derived (they're listed in the airship log spreadsheets) along with the distance formula? Are you using Lauphin's time formula?

We just scribbled down a bunch of details from the Flight Control Panel! Once you select a first Sector, highlighting any others will show the time and distance to go between the two based on your current Airship stats

After we piled all those notes together in one place, we named it our 'Captain's Log' since it has all the directions and tells us when we can't do silly trips!