Editing Talk:Dirt-mound

I conducted an experiment on the speed at which Pikmin dig objects out of a dirt mound (using the [[Twilight River]] [[pellet]] dirt mound outside the landing site). Basically, what I discovered was that maturity has no impact: all scores were somewhere between 34 and 36 seconds for one Pikmin of any maturity or type (excluding Blue, and including Spicy) digging out the pellets. However, number does have an impact. Listen up, because here's where it gets interesting. It took about 16 seconds for 100 Pikmin to dig up the pellets... but it took about 18 seconds for 20 Pikmin. Also, it took around 10 seconds or so (probably a little more) for the first object to appear. [[User:Phineas81707|Phineas81707]] ([[User talk:Phineas81707|talk]]) 00:41, 5 December 2015 (EST)
:Yeah, to me, it felt like numbers had an impact, but not a very great one. It might be logarithmic. That is, while the difference between one Pikmin and two is huge, the difference between 80 and 100 is almost non-existent. Can you get more accurate numbers? Try also with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, and 15 Pikmin. &mdash; '''{''[[User:Espyo|Espyo]]''<sup>[[User talk:Espyo|T]]</sup>}''' 09:12, 7 December 2015 (EST)
::The full results from my tests should now be on my userpage, taken straight from my note sheet. If a time looks longer than the one preceding it, chalk it up to human error: the basic point of the numbers should remain the same regardless of said deviance. It'll only be off by a second, at max. Also to note: the Spicy spray wore off during the digging.[[User:Phineas81707|Phineas81707]] ([[User talk:Phineas81707|talk]]) 19:05, 7 December 2015 (EST)
:::Nice! I made a graph out of the times, and it sure looks like a logarithmic function. I'll come up with some function that can be used to get the approximate time, given a number of Pikmin, and I'll put it in the article. Great work! &mdash; '''{''[[User:Espyo|Espyo]]''<sup>[[User talk:Espyo|T]]</sup>}''' 11:06, 8 December 2015 (EST)

Ok, this is actually a bit more complicated that what I initially thought. I noticed that regardless of the number of Pikmin, and regardless of dirt mound, it takes 10 seconds before the first item pops out. The only thing that the number of Pikmin changes is the interval between how often things come out. Here are my notes:

:(This is the dirt mound on the Twilight River; timer starts when the dirt mound begins shaking, ends when the last pellet of the 3 comes out):
:*1 Pikmin
:**30.154
:**30.032
:**30.187
:**avg = 30.124
:**avg - delay = 19.935
:*2 Pikmin
:**22.804
:**22.781
:**22.989
:**avg = 22.858
:**avg - delay = 12.669
:*20 Pikmin
:**14.848
:**14.748
:**13.704
:**avg = 14.433
:**avg - delay = 4.244
:*100 Pikmin
:**13.089
:**13.146
:**13.168
:**avg = 13.134
:**avg - delay = 2.945

:(Time between the moment the dirt mound start shaking till the moment the first item pops out):
:*1 Pikmin
:**10.234
:**10.151
:**10.218
:**avg = 10.201
:*100 Pikmin
:**10.143
:**10.120
:**10.271
:**avg = 10.178
:*avg = 10.189

&mdash; '''{''[[User:Espyo|Espyo]]''<sup>[[User talk:Espyo|T]]</sup>}''' 12:00, 13 December 2015 (EST)

::Pretty much what I discovered, yeah. I was just timing from moments that had a little bit better of visual cues, which is what padded the time out. [[User:Phineas81707|Phineas81707]] ([[User talk:Phineas81707|talk]]) 19:06, 13 December 2015 (EST)

Ok, to the best of my ability, I reached the following conclusion using both of our findings: without knowing exactly what the developers know, it seems that:

The game waits 10 seconds once the dirt mound starts being dug into before items start coming out. Then, the first item pops out. Afterwards, the game checks how many Pikmin are inside the mound so that it can calculate the interval between each item. This interval is really hard to figure out, and it might depend on each dirt mound, but it seems that 2 Pikmin are 1.574 times faster than 1 Pikmin, 50 are 4.697 times faster than 1 Pikmin, and 100 are 6.769 faster than 1 Pikmin. The function "f(x) = x ^ 0.4" returns how much faster X Pikmin are compared to 1, with only a slight error compared to the numbers we got.

Could you test if this conclusion makes sense on something like a dirt mound with dozens of fragments in it? I'm afraid we'll never be able to find the exact numbers, but we can add these and say that they are close enough. &mdash; '''{''[[User:Espyo|Espyo]]''<sup>[[User talk:Espyo|T]]</sup>}''' 05:57, 14 December 2015 (EST)