Instead of letting drops time out in order to keep the system clutter to a minimum, if a player is actively working in a sector, add the expiring drops to an existing stack if the stack has recently been added to.

Could you be more specific? Is the stack user-created only? Or user-added?

Obviously we only stack like items, as well, and there's a prox distance issue too, I assume we aren't intended to stack stuff from a kilometer away or something?

I think it's pretty clear. Shit times out and it's annoying -- both mined ore and bot drops.

Aren't there enough limitations in place to prevent abuse? Things like bots only dropping if player causes damage and asteroid heat seem sufficient.

If we are to plan epic farming activities, we should also be able to reap all the rewards of our harvest.

Simply initiate the timeout sequence when no players have been present in the sector for 10 minutes (and cancel it if someone appears before timer ends).

Pretty much what greenwall said. I'm not sure what the difference is between user created and user added, since both require user activity to general the drops. Unless you are meaning multiple players? Regardless, like greenwall pointed out, it should facilitate group farming, whether mining or botting.

Actually, I prefer greenwall's solution to not having them time out at all unless the sector has been vacated by players for 10 minutes.

As far as distance, I'm not clear on what range drops begin to separate. I know from farming dynamic queen sectors that the drops start accumulating normally some distance away from the main activity, however, for the range of a certain radius around a trident they will stack everything in that area. I haven't tried to figure out exactly what that radius is though. I would not expect the current range limitations to change per this suggestion. Someone else might have a good reason to encourage it, but I can't think of any justification.

+1

I wouldn't cancel the timer, there could be a lot of activity in the sector and no interest in that scrap metal or carbonic or whatever. Maybe just increase the timeout and leave the rest the same.

Just do something like add 20 sec to the timeout for each full minute any player spends in the sector. That way, drops still time out, but more slowly if player's are present. The server's already running a timer against the drop. This is just a simple if statement at the end of a while loop.

Yeah, so, you guys clearly have an idea of what you want to have happen, which is great, but you are not expressing this in explicit terms; and/or you're starting with an "optimized" solution first, where we really need to establish the underlying problem first (as Donald Knuth once said "premature optimization is the root of all evil"). Like you say:

Regardless, like greenwall pointed out, it should facilitate group farming, whether mining or botting.

..But you want these items to stack, onto currently pre-existing stacks? Right? That was the initial suggestion. So you're botting, and the bot explodes and drops some items, but those items are stacked with the similar drops of some other recently-killed bot on the other side of the asteroid, which some other guy then picks them up and had no idea he also got your items. Because bot-kill drops are not stacked by radius of your ship, but rather radius of the ship that was destroyed.. and if there's a desire to have them be stacked with some other pre-existing stuff.. then..

How about instead we just say "We don't like that items are timing out before we can get them, we earned the items through mining or combat, and we want to be able to farm lots of them." Then we'll figure out what we can do about that.

But the suggestion was "Add expiring drops to stacks", and not "Drops time out too fast". So, I've been addressing your actual suggestion, which has a lot of different problems.

Anyway, moving right along..

You are correct, I did not clearly define the problem. Here are a few scenarios that I have encountered where desirable drops have timed out.

1) After completing a hive skirmish, not having enough time to fly from drop point to drop point to pick up the more valuable items dropped before they time out.

2) Mining large asteroids using the jettison and collect method. Ores that are mined early time out.

3) SSS farming with a guildmate. After the initial drops begin to time out, drops cease to stack until there are again 16 individual drops or stacks of drops in the area. Once the number of drops has been replinished, the drops begin to form new stacks rather than stacking to previously stacked piles. Those prior piles then time out after 15 minutes from what I can only assume would be the time the last unit was added. Collecting from an old stack does not reset the timer, so it is possible to lose large quantities of an item due to it timing out even though one is working with it.

What I would consider to be an optimal solution would be for the drops to remain persistant as long as there is a player active in the sector / area of the sector where the drops are (if possible) unless there has been no activity for a period of time in which drops have been added. The reason for this condition is that there could be very long peroids of time in which sectors with drops have players persistently entering and leaving such as capital stations. This should have been my original suggestion. The suggestion I made was based on the assumption that it isn't a good idea to allow drops to persist indeffinately.

I think the issue of multiple players in a sector accidentally taking another players drops while inevitable, is not significant. Most of the time botting when someone else is in the sector, you are either working with the other person or you are sharing the sector and working in other areas. For something like a hive skirmish, the player is typically flying all over the place so knowing which drop belongs to whom is not really possible anyway.

The matter of the radius of what stacks together was not intended to be associated with ship size, but was an observation that I have made using the size of my trident as a reference point. If I drop 16 units of something on one end of the ship and then begin to kill bots as the approach the trident, the new drops immediately begin to stack regardless of where around the trident the bot is killed- even as far as the opposite end of the trident. How much further out from the trident they would still continue to collect is something I have not explored.

So, yeah, "We don't like that items are timing out before we can get them, we earned the items through mining or combat, and we want to be able to farm lots of them."

As far as "Then we'll figure out what we can do about that." That is my assumption regarding the vast majority of suggestions that I make. I don't know what is involved on the development end of making the suggestion work. I try to offer my vision of what would be an improvement from my perspective. The rational behind my op was that yes, we do want drops to time out so that they do not needlessly clutter up a sector, however if I'm working in the immediate area and drops are being added to, I'd like to be able to continue working without worrying about losing some of the reward of my efforts.