Well, Zoom, consider this:
Artifacts only 'spawn' when scanned for - no need to have every artifact recorded for me on every island until I go to that island and initiate a scan. That would then populate that particular island for me.
If I haven't 'scanned' an island in 48 hours [using that duration as an example] the scans on that island should depopulate until I initiate another scan.
This would reduce the DB population on artifacts considerably for each player? [Mind you, I have no idea how it's handled internally, but still, it does seem logical].
If I am actively scanning an island the results should have timers - no need to keep an immediate running tab. Just a DB cell that gives 'time of artifact placement'. After 48 hours the DB deletes it and populates another (providing I scan on that island again, otherwise nothing happens, the artifact is not even 'despawned', until I do. That initiates a DB call and wipes all 'older than 48 hour' results and repopulates new ones).
Also, perhaps a 'stability' score could be implemented. Stable contacts are relatively fresh - 36 hours or less. Unstable contacts are 36-46 hours old. Weak contacts are older than 46 hours and could collapse at any time.
Doek wrote:I would approach this as such:
And well, considering the gamma terrain (this happens on alpha too though), would a couple of imagefill functions considering coastlines and unpassable terrain, originating from incoming teleports (so fill from all incoming teleports) not reasonable result in the areas you can drop artifacts and new ore fields?
Using the terrain map for the current bot? IMO it would need to use the light bot terrain map - otherwise I could just do an initial scan in something with the lowest slope tolerance, then switch to a smaller bot, reducing the geographic limitations considerably.
But what you say is certainly valid.