Airship Guide

[Malus_Odius]

Max rank is 50, max airframe capacity is 61, Odyssey parts take 26 airframe capacity each. Have not unlocked the final airship type yet, but if it follows the pattern, it will take 31. That means, only one part of the final airship type can be used, and that at most only two Odyssey parts can be used.

That is correct you have to mix and match your parts to build an airship that suits your needs, whether you want shorter-fast travel with high yields, or slower-longer distance voyages. My main airship I currently run Inv. II hull, odyssey bladders, enterprise fore/aft castles which allows me to hit a few of the level 50 voyages at a time in the fastest amount of time. Or you can run a Bronco hull and just hit 1 with higher end aft/fore castle to gain a higher yield of specific items.

Update for Sector 22 - didn't screenshot it but they drop Deep-Blue Clusters.


Still no sign of sector 23 - i've been sending it to sector 16 then sector 22 so will update again in about 45 hours if there's anything new to report.

[panderin]

We have been to area 15 and 16 so many times I cannot count and now I am annoyed. We have used a variety of pieces and have the odessy piece for surveillience and no dice. Is there anything else or just range? I WANT DUSK LEATHER for a hat and i cannot get it b/c of the damn sectors not opening. HALP if you can!

Much Appreciated!

[BonzaiFerroni]

Personally I've been testing this with our airship and I am starting to suspect something along the lines of every X% of airship part condition missing (on average or maybe even per part) increases the chances of this state occurring. I've only begun to test this theory. Up until recently I was repairing all airships near 50% condition and this seemed to net more SS, S and A rank runs. And less occurrences of "Additional anomalies detected. However, airship condition found insufficient for further exploration."

I think in-depth analysis of this question would be a great thing! I think the progression that most of us take is that we start out repairing our airship fully even when it has about 60% durability left. Then as you get to the higher level parts you start to run out of materials, and since it takes the same amount of materials at 0% as it does at 80%, you start to be more conservative. You also notice that you are still getting high ratings sometimes and discovering sectors, which feels convincing enough to rule out repair condition for yourself.

Still, I will always prefer a systematic analysis to anecdotal first-hand experience. If you explore this question, let us know what you find.

Heck, I don't even see a correlation between retrieval level and retrieval rating despite it having retrieval in the name... That one needs more data, but it's almost like the higher your retrieval, the more items you get, independent of the rating shown.

Let me run an idea by you and see if it might hold some water. I wonder if the game determines the quantity of items first (using a base number, RNG, and retrieval as factors) and then assigns a rating based on that quantity (using cutoffs). Sometimes the difference between Invincible and Enterprise parts would be enough to push it past the cutoff and then sometimes it would merely just be higher but within the same cutoff. If that were the case, we would need to see a higher magnitude of difference between parts to really notice consistent differences in ratings. Hopefully as people get more creative with their endgame parts we might see this!

We already confirmed some time ago that rating depends on your retrieval. Indirectly however.

It is far from confirmed, at least as far as I am aware. It was originally asserted in the guide, but I also gave my rationale, which boils down to this: The three voyages after I upgraded aftcastle got A ratings, where I was mostly getting C before. The language in the voyage log seemed to support the idea that the retrieval stat boosts retrieval ratings, and retrieval ratings directly influence sector and voyage ratings. I wrote the guide just a couple weeks after the expansion, so we hadn't had time to gather much data. Thanks to Nyalia's spreadsheet, we have tons of data now \o/ We can really put these claims to the test.

Another issue, it now seems really likely that higher level sectors have more "difficulty" when it comes to retrieval, so even if you stay current with the latest parts, you will still see lower ratings as you visit more difficult sectors. So a correlation may not be obvious until that factor becomes more constant.

I've done it mister, but there is no indications about the airframe capacity after the lvl 50, no mentions of the last parts of the airship at all.

It is a really good point, I should definitely add something about this! (Edit: done!)

[Nyalia]

To really answer the retrieval question, there are some tests we could do. The problem is isolating variables. For instance, we could isolate a large number of Normal retrievals for an item and compare different retrieval stats to different amounts of actual item obtained. But, that makes the assumptions that no other stat affects the number of items, the wind doesn't affect the number, and the sector doesn't affect the number. We can correct for some of these, but fixing all of them will result in our sample size dwindling to nothing. And then there's the question of what item to use - if we use a common item that's specific to a single sector or pair of sectors, like Bamboo Weave, we limit the range of Retrieval values in our analysis. The vast majority will be 70, and the rest will be near 70. Few, if any, people will send an airship with 100+ retrieval into SC01 or SC02 - there's simply no reason to do it. If we choose an item that's distributed among many sectors, like Birch Branches or Water Crystals, we run the risk of making invalid assumptions if the sector rating affects the retrieval amounts (like, if higher rated sectors require more retrieval for the same effect).

Regarding sector ratings and retrieval ratings, have you actually done that analysis? When I did, I found it rather inconclusive. But, it's a hard test to do, because higher retrieval ratings often also mean higher favor ratings, and that's what I believe actually affect the sector ratings.

[BonzaiFerroni]

Regarding sector ratings and retrieval ratings, have you actually done that analysis? When I did, I found it rather inconclusive. But, it's a hard test to do, because higher retrieval ratings often also mean higher favor ratings, and that's what I believe actually affect the sector ratings.

Not sure if you are asking me or Aeyis, but I haven't. Along with the favor confounding factor, I don't think it is possible with the sector difficulty confounding factor. I was planning to do more tests on a single sector once we had progressed through the map and our airships were free for more experimentation. We could do a more controlled series of tests, and anyone who is also interested and has a free airship can contribute their data as well.

[Arcticharm]

Regarding sector ratings and retrieval ratings, have you actually done that analysis? When I did, I found it rather inconclusive. But, it's a hard test to do, because higher retrieval ratings often also mean higher favor ratings, and that's what I believe actually affect the sector ratings.

To Nyalia's point I think that the proper way to do the experiment is to send ships with different components to a single sector to see how the retrieval stat works on items gained/quality of items. I also believe that it'll clearly take more than a few flights to really start to get how it works. I would suggest a sector like Sectors 5, 6, or 7 in which an FC could benefit from the deep crystals for FC buffs (you'll find you can never have enough of these) while also determining the question about stats.

Not sure if you are asking me or Aeyis, but I haven't. Along with the favor confounding factor, I don't think it is possible with the sector difficulty confounding factor. I was planning to do more tests on a single sector once we had progressed through the map and our airships were free for more experimentation. We could do a more controlled series of tests, and anyone who is also interested and has a free airship can contribute their data as well.

It seems that Bonzai and I are on the same page as far as how the experiment needs to be run We're getting close to having our 3rd airship at a point where we can start farming more of the deep color crystals so I might be able to start collecting data on that. There's still however the confounding factor of rank (if it's even a factor) until all ships are at 50 to be mindful of. I think a clean spreadsheet of results would be helpful in regards to this experiment.

[Nyalia]

To Nyalia's point I think that the proper way to do the experiment is to send ships with different components to a single sector to see how the retrieval stat works on items gained/quality of items. I also believe that it'll clearly take more than a few flights to really start to get how it works. I would suggest a sector like Sectors 5, 6, or 7 in which an FC could benefit from the deep crystals for FC buffs (you'll find you can never have enough of these) while also determining the question about stats.

I think that's a really good idea! I'd say sector SC05 would be the best candidate, as both "Heat of Battle II" and "Reduced Rates II" require Deep Red Crystals, and I feel like those are among the most common buffs to use. Though, SC06 has Shrub Seedlings and SC07 has grade 3 crafter materia, but I still think SC05 is the best choice of those.

[BonzaiFerroni]

I think that's a really good idea! I'd say sector SC05 would be the best candidate, as both "Heat of Battle II" and "Reduced Rates II" require Deep Red Crystals, and I feel like those are among the most common buffs to use. Though, SC06 has Shrub Seedlings and SC07 has grade 3 crafter materia, but I still think SC05 is the best choice of those.

I'm on board! We also have plenty of data on this sector with lower ranks, so we could include that as a separate analysis (to rule out whether rank has any contribution to results) \o/ It will also cost less fuel, with 4 airships, we are all probably starting to feel the cost of fuel =D

I don't think we need a new spreadsheet, we will use all of the same info. Maybe just a "notes" column to indicate which lines are intended to be part of the analysis. Of course this decision is best left with our Master of Spreadsheets.

[Aeyis]

To really answer the retrieval question, there are some tests we could do. The problem is isolating variables.

I think the problem is we have too many variables now, too much data.

Few, if any, people will send an airship with 100+ retrieval into SC01 or SC02 - there's simply no reason to do it. If we choose an item that's distributed among many sectors, like Birch Branches or Water Crystals, we run the risk of making invalid assumptions if the sector rating affects the retrieval amounts (like, if higher rated sectors require more retrieval for the same effect).

Likewise few send an airship into a higher sector with low retrieval. However, that's part of what all of this is about. Figuring out how it does work. As far as items across sectors, if you measure both sectors you can actually test those at the same time (whether sector effects things as well).

Regarding sector ratings and retrieval ratings, have you actually done that analysis? When I did, I found it rather inconclusive. But, it's a hard test to do, because higher retrieval ratings often also mean higher favor ratings, and that's what I believe actually affect the sector ratings.

Early on in the theorycrafting, yes.
Recently the only test I did was send an airship with super low retrieval and the rest of the stats high, to higher sectors (14,15,16 iirc) and it did come back with lowest retrieval, or normal for all items obtained. Abyssal or sub for all ratings. More tests would have to be done with that, but since my ship is still a month behind on discovering due to RNG I'm not in the position to do the testing myself unfortunately.
As for disapproving favor effecting it: I've always focused on range/surv/favor builds, and those rarely gave me high ratings. (A or S)

I think the most important thing to keep in mind in testing tho, is that everything seems to be effected by some RNG. It could be possible that even with super low retrieval you get optimal on a high level item...just at a super low/RNG chance.
So we have to keep in mind that we might have to ''ignore'' points of data that are too far out of the expected area.

However if we keep in mind they do not have to be the only contributors to an effect, it isnt actually that hard to test the various stats at this point. All thats pretty much needed is test both extremes of the stats, in various (high and low) sectors. IE: min surv and max surv in sector 1, sector 10, sector 20, etc. It would take some time, but thats all there is to it.


That said, once people get their airships all maxed out we will have more room for making such tests, so a better understanding will come with time, I think.

[Nyalia]

Oh. That's interesting. I've figured out what determines what crystals are in a sector, if anyone cares. Divide the map with vertical lines into three sections. One line is between SC07 and SC08. The other is between SC06 and SC09/SC01. The left section drops Earth and Ice, the middle section drops Wind and Lightning, and the right section drops Fire and Water.

This theory makes the groupings as follows:
Earth and Ice: SC03, SC06, SC11, SC13, SC14, SC15, SC19
Wind and Lightning: SC01, SC05, SC08, SC09, SC20
Water and Fire: SC02, SC04, SC07, SC10, SC12, SC16, SC17, SC22
On the border between Wind/Lightning and Water/Fire: SC18, SC21 (logic would put them with the Wind and Lightning group for balance, but it's unclear)

Recorded results in the spreadsheet:

Earth: SC02[01] SC03[16] SC06[20] SC11[15] SC13[11] SC14[06] SC15[02]
Ice: SC03[13] SC06[15] SC11[20] SC13[06] SC14[05] SC15[02]

Wind: SC01[37] SC05[41] SC08[29] SC09[14] SC10[01] SC11[01]
Lightning: SC01[24] SC05[28] SC08[25] SC09[09]

Fire: SC02[35] SC04[24] SC07[34] SC10[20] SC12[04] SC16[01]
Water: SC02[29] SC04[21] SC06[01] SC07[29] SC10[22] SC12[08] SC16[02]

Dropping the one-off outliers (marked in red) as typos, this results in:

Earth/Ice: SC03, SC06, SC11, SC13, SC14, SC15
Wind/Lightning: SC01, SC05, SC08, SC09
Fire/Water: SC02, SC04, SC07, SC10, SC12, SC16

Perfect match from SC01 to SC16. That implies what SC17-SC22 will drop, excluding SC18 and SC21 which lie on the border.


Now, if only that discovery actually mattered for something...