Mind units recalculaion

vke123vke123 ✭✭✭

Can there be a recalc regarding how much mu you can get by fielding a specific location.

Lots of areas with new houses around here but still way to less mu.


For example sea fields gain a lot of mind units due to distance but no player/portal on the captured sea area

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Comments

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited April 2020

    well its based on density/popularity.. .they need to update info maybe then.

  • vke123vke123 ✭✭✭

    i guess it's created 1 time and not updated since.

    i guess /i hope a formule based on distance/portals within the field determine the mu count.

  • vke123vke123 ✭✭✭

    Up

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    This is my recollection of a casual conversation I had with one of the engineers back in 2014. I obviously can't vouch for the reliability of anything they told me, but they were in a position to know and I believe they were telling the truth.

    The data were somewhat old when they did the first data import. The calculation of MU is at least somewhat dependent on the population density at the anchors, which is why when you're layering fields you can sometimes throw a larger field that scores fewer MU than the smaller one inside it. I've personally had one case where the "Hosette created a control field... +X MUs" value is different from what is on my scanner (yes, that one) and when I asked about it they furrowed their brow for a moment and said that different calculations of MU use different cell sizes.

    I can remember one change in the formula from somewhere around 2014-2015... it's the one that made fish fields less valuable. I doubt the population data have been refreshed since the game was created, and I will be surprised if Niantic updates them anytime soon. At this point they seem to be focusing on how to make the game profitable and attract new players, insofar as they're focusing on anything at all.

  • InvestigateXMInvestigateXM ✭✭✭✭✭

    I doubt the population data have been refreshed since the game was created, and I will be surprised if Niantic updates them anytime soon.

    My hope is that, with the 10th anniversary coming up, they at least look into how they can update the population data. Of course I don't know what data Niantic needs exactly, but there are sites like simplemaps.com/data/world-cities that apparently have the population data for every city globally, linked to coordinates. Assuming Niantic only needs population number and coordinates, I think them shilling out $499 for the most comprehensive database on the site above would be a no brainer.

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    I would imagine they need something more granular than that, something that either uses S2 geometry or can be mapped into it easily. The population of a city does not have a uniform density, and I've certainly spotted granular differences in MU density within a city.

    This question from the Simplemap FAQ jumped out at me immediately:

    What counts as a city/town?


    Any populated place in the world as determined by U.S. government agencies. Neighborhoods within listed cities are not included.

  • SSSputnikSSSputnik ✭✭✭✭✭

    Yeah we have whole new suburbs but if you field there its not far off fish unit values.

  • MoogModularMoogModular ✭✭✭✭✭

    I imagine census data is used for the US but the method of applying it to S2 is beyond me.

  • It hasn't been updated in 10 years, but the Census Bureau has population data down to the suburb, if you're willing to buy the data set. Then there's a spreading effect over that that ensured that the values were more distributed.

    But it hasn't been updated since the game began.

  • gazzas89gazzas89 ✭✭✭✭✭

    They really do need to update the calculations, at no point should a field alo g a spine go lower than the previous field, and a lot of mu will be getting missed, as several suburbs have been built up in 10 years. Niantic is a billion dollar company off of pogo alone, there's really no excuse they couldn't afford to update and upgrade one of the main features of ingress, even if we ignore the pogo money, what are the subscription fees doing anything with it to update the game?

  • It's a massive undertaking, given that they have to do it for the entire world which means a myriad of data sources all of which are likely formatted differently etc.

  • MxxMxx ✭✭✭✭

    Wow. It is 2022 and you are still spreading this urban legend of population density at anchors?!

    It has been proven with 100% certainty that the only thing that matters is MU density under the field. There are tools that allow MU prediction of 1M+ mu fields with accuracy down to 10s of MU! All that nonsense of larger field but less mu is simply cell coalescence.

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    @gazzas89 writes:

    They really do need to update the calculations, at no point should a field alo g a spine go lower than the previous field

    A field along a spine having fewer MU than the previous field is a function of how they do the MU calculation, not the the MU data. If they updated the data this would still happen sometimes.

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2022

    @Mxx I was quoting a Niantic engineer, and my information came with a disclaimer and a timestamp. This was very likely true when they told me this in 2014.

    It would be interesting to plug the coordinates of my trillion MU field into one of those tools and see what they produce, if they could be coerced into doing the calculation inside-out.

    Post edited by Hosette on
  • MoogModularMoogModular ✭✭✭✭✭

    Census data always has been free. They rehauled the website a few years ago to the point where it's very streamlined.

  • a) Not in every country.

    b) Back in 2010 it wasn't free down to the suburb level. I don't know about now though.

  • This was reworked in late 2013, so whatever engineer told you about anchor calculations was not part of the team doing that actual work. It's been done by S2 partial cell calculation since before the official 'release'.

  • gazzas89gazzas89 ✭✭✭✭✭

    The first thing I said wad they needed ti change the calculations .......

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Perringaiden What was the change that caused fish fields to score fewer MU? I remember it being sometime in 2014 I think.

  • SSSputnikSSSputnik ✭✭✭✭✭

    Still plenty of fish units in our waters.

  • Yep. Because S2 cells over water have less MU than the anchors of the field on land.

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Perringaiden I started playing in December of 2013 and I remember a change that caused fish fields to score fewer MU. Perhaps there were multiple changes to the calculation?

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