135 réponses à ce sujet

[rca626]

 I wasn't sure exactly where to post this, so if this is the wrong forum then feel free to move it to the correct one.

Just wanted to let everybody know about a program I wrote called (for lack of a better name) the Mass Effect 2 Suicide Mission Survival Calculator, or ME2 SMSC. Basically it'll allow you to select which team members you've recruited (and their loyalty) and which ship upgrades you've researched, then you go through the process of selecting team members for the various SM assignments. When that's done, it'll show you who was left holding the line and the final outcome (life or death) for Shephard, the team members, and the crew. Using the program is pretty straightforward, but it does include a help file that explains the various controls and the selection process, etc. You can even save a screenshot of your completed form as a PNG.

The calculator follows the rules in Ecael's "Ultimate Guide...", so you can use that as an aid in selecting team members for the various assignments. A link to a slightly-modified PDF version of the guide is available in the help file.

You can use the calculator to either verify that everybody survives the SM or maybe to fine-tune an ending of your choice to import in to ME3. Links to a few example screenshots are included in the help file (under Notes & Hints) for some potentially interesting outcomes (e.g., only humans survive, only aliens survive, only ME1 characters survive, etc.).

The program is designed for .NET framework 2.0 (and above) and has been verified to work in Windows XP (32-bit) and Windows 7 (64-bit), so it should hopefully work on the majority of systems around today.

You can download it here. Feel free to try it out and let me know what you think.

Modifié par rca626, 17 septembre 2010 - 11:08 .

[syllogi]

This is brilliant, I'm having a lot of fun trying different permutations. Running it on Vista 64 bit and it's fine. Thanks!

[Pacifien]

Quite easy. Only two things. 1) It would be nice to simply put who you want to survive and have the program figure it out for you. This tends to be how people approach the Ultimate Guide/Worst-Case Scenario threads. 2) Hold the Line scores get very tricky getting down to 2-4 squadmates. Ecael was never able to completely figure it out.

[xlavaina]

This is awesome. Very nice job.

[rca626]

Pacifien wrote...

Quite easy. Only two things. 1) It would be nice to simply put who you want to survive and have the program figure it out for you. This tends to be how people approach the Ultimate Guide/Worst-Case Scenario threads. 2) Hold the Line scores get very tricky getting down to 2-4 squadmates. Ecael was never able to completely figure it out.

1) Yeah, I thought of that, too, but it seemed like quite a daunting task, given all of the various possibilities. I may think some more about it and see if I can write that into it. At least now it's a little quicker going through it using the calculator vs. on paper.

2) That is correct. There was a case (I think it was the "Worst Case for ME3") where Tali was theoretically supposed to die holding the line but she ended up surviving, so I had to tweak the code slightly to get it to work correctly. So far it predicts exactly all of the endgame scenarios that I've actually played, some of which are shown in the example links in the help file.

TeenZombie wrote...

This is brilliant, I'm having a lot of fun trying different permutations. Running it on Vista 64 bit and it's fine. Thanks!

I'm glad you like it. If you haven't done so already, please go through some actual scenarios that you've played and make sure the outcome is correct. As Pacifien discussed, the hardest part is making sure the HTL scores work out correctly.

Modifié par rca626, 18 septembre 2010 - 03:48 .

[rca626]

xlavaina wrote...

This is awesome. Very nice job.

Thanks a lot! Glad you're finding it useful.

[Pacifien]

rca626 wrote...
2) That is correct. There was a case (I think it was the "Worst Case for ME3") where Tali was theoretically supposed to die holding the line but she ended up surviving, so I had to tweak the code slightly to get it to work correctly. So far it predicts exactly all of the endgame scenarios that I've actually played, some of which are shown in the example links in the help file.

Take a look at this bit of science where I specifically tested how the escort/final boss squadmates might affect the results.

This is where my brain officially broke trying to figure out the Hold the Line score.

[Liec]

This is pretty cool =D.

Btw I'm testing it with a team of samara, tali, mordin, garrus, miranda, jacob, thane and jack, no loyalties, no upgrades, and from the Vents stage and beyond it won't let me select jacob if I didn't choose him for the Occulus fight, yet in the end it shows that he survives. I don't think that's right unless he took a shortcut or something O_o.

eta: my bad, it seems to happen with some combinations of the occulus fight with tali on the team.

Modifié par Liec, 18 septembre 2010 - 04:44 .

[rca626]

Pacifien wrote...

rca626 wrote...
2) That is correct. There was a case (I think it was the "Worst Case for ME3") where Tali was theoretically supposed to die holding the line but she ended up surviving, so I had to tweak the code slightly to get it to work correctly. So far it predicts exactly all of the endgame scenarios that I've actually played, some of which are shown in the example links in the help file.

Take a look at this bit of science where I specifically tested how the escort/final boss squadmates might affect the results.

This is where my brain officially broke trying to figure out the Hold the Line score.

That's very interesting. I also wasn't aware of the 1-point bonus for loyal HTL and Escort team members, so that's not figured into my calculations. As I said above, I made sure the calculator works for all of the scenarios I've run, but that list is obviously far from exhaustive. The more people we can get using it to check their actual SM outcomes to see how closely it predicts, the better. That's one of the reasons I put in the screenshot save, so you can see everything at a glance.

If anybody sees where the calculator "breaks", please post or send me a screenshot along with the actual outcome and maybe we can begin to narrow things down together. For now I won't change the code, but it should be a simple matter to fix in the future.

[rca626]

Liec wrote...

This is pretty cool =D.

Btw I'm testing it with a team of samara, tali, mordin, garrus, miranda, jacob, thane and jack, no loyalties, no upgrades, and from the Vents stage and beyond it won't let me select jacob if I didn't choose him for the Occulus fight, yet in the end it shows that he survives. I don't think that's right unless he took a shortcut or something O_o.

Thanks for letting me know. I'll take a look at it in the morning and get back to you. Actually, when I set up the team and ship the way you describe, I get a program error when I click Continue. You didn't mention that happening. Can you tell me what OS you're using (including 32/64 bit)? The error I get is definitely a program error, but I'm surprised that it wasn't generated on your system. Anybody else getting that error on Win7 x64?

[clennon8]

Very cool. Thanks for this.

[Liec]

rca626 wrote...

Liec wrote...

This is pretty cool =D.

Btw I'm testing it with a team of samara, tali, mordin, garrus, miranda, jacob, thane and jack, no loyalties, no upgrades, and from the Vents stage and beyond it won't let me select jacob if I didn't choose him for the Occulus fight, yet in the end it shows that he survives. I don't think that's right unless he took a shortcut or something O_o.

Thanks for letting me know. I'll take a look at it in the morning and get back to you. Actually, when I set up the team and ship the way you describe, I get a program error when I click Continue. You didn't mention that happening. Can you tell me what OS you're using (including 32/64 bit)? The error I get is definitely a program error, but I'm surprised that it wasn't generated on your system. Anybody else getting that error on Win7 x64?

Actually I did get an error, but only after closing the program and reopening it. It worked fine when I launched it from the installer. I'm using windows xp 32.

eta: I set up this scenario and it's letting me choose Thane for stuff when he's supposed to be dead for not upgrading the cannons.

i950.photobucket.com/albums/ad349/esirge/ss1.png

Also it doesn't seem to list Thane as a possible tech specialist no matter what.

I tried this as well, there are 2 squadmates alive but lists Shepard as dead? 

Modifié par Liec, 18 septembre 2010 - 06:12 .

[revisedr3ality]

Wish it worked for Mac! Would be interesting to see how it's set up. Guess I'll just have to suck it up - Great idea though!

[rca626]

Hi all,

Sorry about the bugs; I'm really glad you brought them to my attention. I'm working on the program now and will let you know when I've got things worked out.

Modifié par rca626, 18 septembre 2010 - 01:39 .

[rca626]

revisedr3ality wrote...

Wish it worked for Mac! Would be interesting to see how it's set up. Guess I'll just have to suck it up - Great idea though!

Yeah, sorry about that. It's written for .NET framework, so I think the only way you can get it to run on the Mac is using Virtual PC.

[revisedr3ality]

rca626 wrote...

revisedr3ality wrote...

Wish it worked for Mac! Would be interesting to see how it's set up. Guess I'll just have to suck it up - Great idea though!

Yeah, sorry about that. It's written for .NET framework, so I think the only way you can get it to run on the Mac is using Virtual PC.

No big deal! I knew I'd be making tiny sacrifices jumping to a Mac, but so far it's been worth it. I'll definitely be taking a peek at this at work though ... Just don't tell my boss. 

[rca626]

Hi all,

ME2 SMSC version 1.1 is now available for download. No need to uninstall the previous version, it should just overwrite it. I'm pretty sure I've addressed the bugs that were brought to my attention by Liec. As usual, when I fixed one then more popped up, but I eventually got them all (I hope!). Sorry it took awhile to fix.

I also updated the help file to include version history under "Get More Help".

Let me know if you find any more bugs.

Modifié par rca626, 18 septembre 2010 - 06:11 .

[Liec]

 Still playing around with it =)
*I still sometimes get a dead Shepard when there are 2 or more survivors :-/
*I'm getting an error after choosing the Occulus team if the Thanix Cannon is the only ship upgrade left unchecked.
*This is nitpicking but you can't actually have an unloyal Morinth =P

[rca626]

Liec wrote...

 Still playing around with it =)
*I still sometimes get a dead Shepard when there are 2 or more survivors :-/
*I'm getting an error after choosing the Occulus team if the Thanix Cannon is the only ship upgrade left unchecked.
*This is nitpicking but you can't actually have an unloyal Morinth =P

Thanks, Liec. I need a bigger fly swatter! I also just found a bug where Garrus actually survived the LW in the game (even though he was unloyal, or non-loyal, or what-have-you) because he was FT2 leader and the only member of his squad, but the calculator snuffed him. Poor guy.

You're not pickin' no nits at all about Morinth, because her extra point for being loyal will definitely affect the HTL score. I didn't think about that.

I'll take a look at your other points as well. Okay, stay tuned for version 1.2! 

[rca626]

Still playing around with the code, but here's a quick question (for any/everyone): If you send NO escort, does that count as the escort surviving?

[Pacifien]

Bit of confusion in my earlier post. There is no +1 for escort duties. We were speculating whether the escort or the final boss squadmates somehow had an effect on the HtL score. It's my opinion that it doesn't, but there's simply no data on this. The only +1 that's been confirmed is that for loyalty. No escort means no escort, you treat the squadmate as you would any other for HtL.

[rca626]

Thanks for your reply, Pacifien. I was hoping you'd chime in. My question wasn't directly aimed at the HTL score as much as Ecael's "alive/dead status" of Escort and FB squadmates. In other words, if you have 2 loyal squadmates, but don't send an Escort, would the "alive/dead status" be 2 or 3?

[rca626]

For those of you old enough to remember Bob & Doug McKenzie, "So like, good day, and welcome to version 1.2." 

Check the version history for changes made. Liec, the problem with Shepard dying even with more than two team members left was due to the fact that I was only counting the people left holding the line; I forgot to add surviving squadmates and the Escort (duh). So that should be fixed now (but we'll see).

I also added a HTL Score indicator to help us narrow down the thresholds where HTL members live or die. Thought it might help.

Modifié par rca626, 18 septembre 2010 - 10:20 .

[Pacifien]

Alive/dead status would be 2, the Normandy crew doesn't count in the grand total of things. As far as I know.

[rca626]

Yarrr...That's what I be a-thinkin' too, me hearty. Many thanks...arrr...



Just getting warmed up.