Some of you could have read my post on reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/Gemcraft/comments/2385eg/sc_about_gem_combining_mechanics_and_why_we/) in which I explain how does gem combining works. But one of conclusions I've made â" "Try to avoid combining one color gems of different grades" â" is correct only in theory, since if you combine one color gems of different grades your gem's attack speed will suffer a lot. But in practice attack speed is capped by 30 shots per second.
So, in practice you can get some gain in specials (if your gem's attack speed is greater than 30 sps) by using special combining schemes, e.g. (((G20 + G20) + G20) + G20) instead of ((G20 + G20) + (G20 + G20)). By this post I want to start new funny competition â" for best combining scheme for Black and Orange! To set the new record you can post your G60 gem analogue (i.e. gem with the same cost as G60 gem), but since your scheme may not allow you to make G60 gem analogue, it will be better to post your ~G60 gem and a special value (let call it "growth speed", which is:
log(result_gem_special / base_gem_special) / log(n) (n is number of identical base gems combined into resulted gem)
Let say you have base pure gem x and combining scheme g(x1, x2, ..., xn) (g(x1, x2, ..., xn) combines n input gems into one resulting gem). Then "growth value" will be (log(special(y) / special(x)) / log(n)), where y = f(x) = g(x, x, ..., x). You need to find such a scheme g(x1, ..., xn), which has maximum "growth value". Since G7+ gems have extra bonuses and gems lower than G7 have not, please, use only G7+ gems as your base gems to calculate "growth value".
Why I'm starting such a competition?
Because optimal combining schemes for Orange and Black is Holy Grail for all Gemcraft SC players. Growth values for standard combining are ~0.4647 for orange and ~0.1243 for black for total ~0.589 for Black/Orange. That means, that if you grade your B/O gem up, it's manaleech power will be 2 ^ 0.589 = 1.5042x, and after 80 grading ups it will be ~152'913'823'388'742x. But if we could find schemes, which will show even e.g. 0.51 and 0.14 growth values, if you grade your B/O gem up according to those schemes, it's manaleech power will be 2 ^ 0.65 = ~1.57x per grade, and after 80 grading ups it will be ~4'503'599'627'370'509x. So, G81 gem will leech 30x more mana and it will be 30x less time to get G100 gem and beat the endurance even without WoE and shrines
I just checked my managem results against yours. Your 256 combine has very slightly better power. My 1024 has more than yours. My 4096 is more better, though still not a lot.
Mine:
256: 34.185186
1024: 84.533029
4096: 208.861174
Sorry for doubleposting. @Suuper : you may find my summary table useful, you can grab it from here, the recipes you find there should be the most updated ones:
Got my algorithm for reducing slots required working, and it actually can do 262144-combine with only 36 slots. But with 4684 steps in the combine method, it would take several minutes even for my bot, and over half an hour if I set it to go slow for lag.
I still haven't figured out how much waiting I actually need between cursor movements and key presses, etc. What do you guys usually do?
There isn't a well working combining bot now as far as I know, my program just build recipes.
People have made scripts to build a specific recipe, but a generic bot is still needed.
I don't think anyone sane would want to use 262144-combines, a program that does 1024 ones is enough for 99.99999% of the userbase (the more, the better, though).
Would be possible to see it (and maybe offer some help)?
If you can now, you can get me on #gemcraft, on the IRC network.
Yeah, that combine is past practical use, even with what I have. I'm trying to get it to successfully complete it once, though, as a way of testing my program. Haven't gotten it to go through all steps without messing up, though.
I did shrink the number of steps to about 3.9k with a change, though.
Do you have Skype? A chat there would work better for me. (I'm Suuper_W there)
I've been trying out the newest version of this program using a 128 managem, 128 killgem, and 64 combine spec.
For the most part it works great!
Though the delay should be fairly high to ensure fidelity. Once you have a few thousand mobs on the field, with no beacons spawning, and paused, a 100ms delay on even the x64 combine messes up near the end. At 200ms there are no problems.
By messes up, I mean that some keypress is not registered at the right time, so instead of combining 2 gems, it ends up duplicating the gem it was "dragging". Of course this is not noticeable or does not happen at the beginning where almost all adjacent slots are filled.
But towards the end, where we are combining the last 5 or so gems, which happen to be a few slots apart from eachother, it may lag a bit and duplicate a gem instead of combining it.
Again, this seems to be fixed at a delay of 200ms. But honestly even doing a 128x spec at the very start of a level with nothing on the field, I had it give me an incorrect result a few times at 50ms.
Other than that, this is great.
PS. Running Windows 7, but running the pre-compiled application in compatibility mode for Windows XP SP2.
PPS. Part of my infidelity issue may be in that Windows needs to change its focus from the Gem Combiner to the Flash Player / Firefox / Chrome. If I hit 9 too soon after clicking on the game, it seems to cause some sluggish responses from the game itself. So it may be worth either having the user click around a bit before pressing 9. Or perhaps have the combiner do a "pretest", basically just take a gem and move it up 2 slots, left 2 slots, then back to the A1 corner. To make sure that the game is ready to take inputs.
Since my computer/flash player can handle 2k mobs and still work with 50ms delay consistently, and I've never had the problem of messing up from pressing 9 too soon after selecting the game, I can't really test your problems.
I could make it click once before combining to make sure you don't have problems from pressing 9 before selecting the window. Other than that, though, I think you'll just have to use higher delays. :/
If you find any combine/situation where it consistently messes up the exact same way (same gems left at the end), definitely tell me about that.
Perhaps I should make a manual delay control, where it waits until you press 9 again before doing the next step. Would that help?
(Since you mentioned messing up on spec combines, be sure you are placing the different color base gems in the proper order, if the incorrect result is just the components being used in incorrect proportions. See the 'Help' button for the order.)
The recipes found in gemforce have no red! You need to manually edit the parentheis and add it in place of the most nested non black gem (as written in README in gemforce result folder).
I could generate results with red included, the programs can do that, but it's a boring clerical work I really don't want to do right now.
That recipe will build a red-less gem, but it messes up badly because you also put a red g1 that wasn't needed.
Also, last version of the combiner has built in all the most common recipes (including all omnia recipes), no idea if @Suuper wants to share it.