Excavation Arbitrations Frequency?

[Kontrollo]

These past few days I've been checking on the current Arbitration node quite a few times, mostly between Wolf runs, sometimes while doing other stuff, and sometimes on Semlar's website.

I wanted to test something, but haven't seen a single Excavation.

I've seen Defence missions most of the time, then some Survivals, the occasional Interception. Does anyone know about the chances with which these occur? It does not look like they have equal frequency -- or am I just that unlucky?

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

I believe it's pretty much the same chance. I can say I haven't been really paying attention, despite enjoying Arbitrations, but a friend does pay attention and there's been at least 2 infested excavations over the past 3 days that I played. But it's very likely that there have been more, for other factions and all.

However I will say that I don't participate in any arbitration that isn't Excavation, Interception or Infested Salvage. I seriously don't know why there would be such dragged arbitration modes like the 10 wave defense... Seriously, we can already get the rewards faster in the 3 modes I mentioned, why in tarnation wouldn't defenses go faster. Survivals are the same, but at least it's bearable since it's not "stay in a single room and kill waves". As for defection... well... not even worth mentioning, honestly...

Edited May 13, 2019 by (PS4)Hikuro-93

[Kontrollo]

8 minutes ago, (PS4)Hikuro-93 said:

I believe it's pretty much the same chance. I can say I haven't been really paying attention, despite enjoying Arbitrations, but a friend does pay attention and there's been at least 2 infested excavations over the past 3 days that I played. But it's very likely that there have been more, for other factions and all.

However I will say that I don't participate in any arbitration that isn't Excavation, Interception or Infested Salvage. I seriously don't know why there would be such dragged arbitration modes like the 10 wave defense... Seriously, we can already get the rewards faster in the 3 modes I mentioned, why in tarnation wouldn't defenses go faster. Survivals are the same, but at least it's bearable since it's not "stay in a single room and kill waves". As for defection... well... not even worth mentioning, honestly...

Thanks, that's already one data point. Of course, I'm not saying they don't exist, just that I now have the impression that they might not be as frequent as others. But RNG being RNG...

 

Anyway, if it's true, I think they should weight it in favour of the more popular missions, not against it. I agree with the second part there, although I do like to run Survivals a lot despite the time they take.

[Kontrollo]

Alright, still haven't seen one. So I'm just going to list them from now on to maybe the next update. I'm using the format of Semlar's site: https://semlar.com/arbys

These are the past Arbitrations on PC since Monday evening, last one is current:

Day 1	Day 2	Day 3
Outer Terminus Pluto Level 60-80 DEFENSE - CORPUS (Arbitration)	Ur Uranus Level 60-80 DEFENSE - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Valefor Europa Level 60-80 EXCAVATION - CORPUS (Arbitration)
Piscinas Saturn Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Palus Pluto Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - CORPUS (Arbitration)	Akkad Eris Level 60-80 DEFENSE - INFESTED (Arbitration)
Oestrus Eris Level 60-80 INFESTED SALVAGE - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Tikal Earth Level 60-80 EXCAVATION - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Proteus Neptune Level 60-80 DEFENSE - CORPUS (Arbitration)
Memphis Phobos Level 60-80 DEFECTION - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Cholistan Europa Level 60-80 EXCAVATION - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Kiliken Venus Level 60-80 EXCAVATION - CORPUS (Arbitration)
Stöfler Lua Level 60-80 DEFENSE - GRINEER (Arbitration)	Valefor Europa Level 60-80 EXCAVATION - CORPUS (Arbitration)	Ose Europa Level 60-80 INTERCEPTION - CORPUS (Arbitration)
Apollodorus Mercury Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Sinai Jupiter Level 60-80 DEFENSE - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Tycho Lua Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - CORPUS (Arbitration)
Tycho Lua Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - CORPUS (Arbitration)	Mot Void Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - OROKIN (Arbitration)	Tycho Lua Level 60-80 (ran twice, too) SURVIVAL - CORPUS (Arbitration)
Umbriel Uranus Level 60-80 INTERCEPTION - GRINEER (Arbitration)	Sinai Jupiter Level 60-80 DEFENSE - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Zeugma Phobos Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - INFESTED (Arbitration)
Kelashin Neptune Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Nimus Eris Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Cameria Jupiter Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - INFESTED (Arbitration)
Hieracon Pluto Level 60-80 EXCAVATION - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Outer Terminus Pluto Level 60-80 DEFENSE - CORPUS (Arbitration)	Ur Uranus Level 60-80 DEFENSE - INFESTED (Arbitration)
Assur Uranus Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Cholistan Europa Level 60-80 EXCAVATION - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Selkie Sedna Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - GRINEER (Arbitration)
Hydron Sedna Level 60-80 DEFENSE - GRINEER (Arbitration)	Hydron Sedna Level 60-80 DEFENSE - GRINEER (Arbitration)	Outer Terminus Pluto Level 60-80 DEFENSE - CORPUS (Arbitration)
Gaia Earth Level 60-80 INTERCEPTION - GRINEER (Arbitration)	Nimus Eris Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Stöfler Lua Level 60-80 DEFENSE - GRINEER (Arbitration)
Larzac Europa Level 60-80 DEFENSE - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Hieracon Pluto Level 60-80 EXCAVATION - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Romula Venus Level 60-80 DEFENSE - INFESTED (Arbitration)
Yursa Neptune Level 60-80 DEFECTION - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Despina Neptune Level 60-80 EXCAVATION - CORPUS (Arbitration)	Outer Terminus Pluto Level 60-80 DEFENSE - CORPUS (Arbitration)
Yursa Neptune Level 60-80 (note: not a mistake, ran twice) DEFECTION - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Io Jupiter Level 60-80 DEFENSE - CORPUS (Arbitration)	Sinai Jupiter Level 60-80 DEFENSE - INFESTED (Arbitration)
Assur Uranus Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Sechura Pluto Level 60-80 DEFENSE - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Gabii Ceres Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - INFESTED (Arbitration)
Kelashin Neptune Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Selkie Sedna Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - GRINEER (Arbitration)	Hydron Sedna Level 60-80 DEFENSE - GRINEER (Arbitration)
Odin Mercury Level 60-80 INTERCEPTION - GRINEER (Arbitration)	Tikal Earth Level 60-80 EXCAVATION - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Sangeru Sedna Level 60-80 DEFENSE - INFESTED (Arbitration)
Spear Mars Level 60-80 DEFENSE - GRINEER (Arbitration)	Coba Earth Level 60-80 DEFENSE - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Seimeni Ceres Level 60-80 DEFENSE - INFESTED (Arbitration)
Hieracon Pluto Level 60-80 EXCAVATION - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Hydron Sedna Level 60-80 DEFENSE - GRINEER (Arbitration)	Larzac Europa Level 60-80 DEFENSE - INFESTED (Arbitration)
Kadesh Mars Level 60-80 DEFENSE - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Helene Saturn Level 60-80 DEFENSE - GRINEER (Arbitration)	Kadesh Mars Level 60-80 DEFENSE - INFESTED (Arbitration)
Taranis Void Level 60-80 DEFENSE - OROKIN (Arbitration)	V Prime Venus Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - CORPUS (Arbitration)	Zabala Eris Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - INFESTED (Arbitration)
Wahiba Mars Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Wahiba Mars Level 60-80 SURVIVAL - INFESTED (Arbitration)	Hydron Sedna Level 60-80 DEFENSE - GRINEER (Arbitration)

there was 2 in the first 24 hours, then it suddenly picked up. Hieracon is now already 3x in that list, I wonder what their RNG algorithm for these looks like. Day 3 is weird.

Edited May 16, 2019 by Kontrollo
day 3

[(PSN)Lollybomb]

I'll be honest, I've never seen salvage come up.  Admittedly, I don't pay that close attention to it, but I'm pretty sure I've seen everything else.

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

6 hours ago, Kontrollo said:

Anyway, if it's true, I think they should weight it in favour of the more popular missions, not against it.

I do agree with this a lot. Specially since Sorties, Fissures and Arbitrations are the main reasons I still login everyday despite having pretty much all content done. Most of the time I just do some fissures in hopes a good arbitrations (Salvage/Excavation/Interception + Good Boon) comes up. Which I also find to be pretty rare for someone who is willing to play 3 modes out of all of them.

[Kontrollo]

44 minutes ago, (PS4)Lollybomb said:

I'll be honest, I've never seen salvage come up.  Admittedly, I don't pay that close attention to it, but I'm pretty sure I've seen everything else.

I've played it once and maybe seen it more, not sure. But seems to be very rare, yes.

 

33 minutes ago, (PS4)Hikuro-93 said:

I do agree with this a lot. Specially since Sorties, Fissures and Arbitrations are the main reasons I still login everyday despite having pretty much all content done. Most of the time I just do some fissures in hopes a good arbitrations (Salvage/Excavation/Interception + Good Boon) comes up. Which I also find to be pretty rare for someone who is willing to play 3 modes out of all of them.

Myself, I do play other things. But if that's basically your only reason to log in, then that's just alienating if it's weighted against those. In that case even equal weights would be better.

[Psykhe27]

17 minutes ago, Kontrollo said:

 

Myself, I do play other things. But if that's basically your only reason to log in, then that's just alienating if it's weighted against thosej. In that case even equal weights would be better.

 

Aside from kuva farming for plat, there is nothing else to do. Events you finish within hours. Unless you are insane enough to try to repeatedly farm for ephemeras.

The game has 0 end game content. A player can have mods and gear enough to farm the hardest content in less than a week of starting.  Raids or some sort of competition like endless defense or a scaling boss mode or raids or some sort of challenge. 1 shotting S#&$ without rivens is. Not. Fun.

[Kyronz]

once they add rewards to arbitration, it bound to take off.....atm it only has endo crap and we all have 600k of that crapola already waiting for DE to add some kinda use for it.

[Veridian]

15 hours ago, Kontrollo said:

Anyway, if it's true, I think they should weight it in favour of the more popular missions, not against it. I agree with the second part there, although I do like to run Survivals a lot despite the time they take.

Rather than omit some game modes entirely, they should fix Defense and Survival to match the high risk/high reward mechanics that Excavation has, E.G. call a 2nd target in def so 2 waves spawn at once, every LS pillar not used reduces duration by 1m...

Edited May 14, 2019 by Ver1dian

[Kontrollo]

11 hours ago, Psykhe27 said:

Aside from kuva farming for plat, there is nothing else to do. Events you finish within hours. Unless you are insane enough to try to repeatedly farm for ephemeras.

The game has 0 end game content. A player can have mods and gear enough to farm the hardest content in less than a week of starting.  Raids or some sort of competition like endless defense or a scaling boss mode or raids or some sort of challenge. 1 shotting S#&$ without rivens is. Not. Fun.

I do a lot of Kuva Floods, but I still have stuff to level and Forma, so I can do whatever.

 

3 hours ago, Ver1dian said:

Rather than omit some game modes entirely, they should fix Defense and Survival to match the high risk/high reward mechanics that Excavation has, E.G. call a 2nd target in def so 2 waves spawn at once, every LS pillar not used reduces duration by 1m... 

Well, I hope they have some tuning in the next big patch.

 

By the way, I've updated the 4th post with all the Arbitrations since yesterday evening. So far there was one while I was asleep. Thanks DE.

Edited May 14, 2019 by Kontrollo
missing word

[Lutesque]

13 hours ago, (PS4)Lollybomb said:

I'll be honest, I've never seen salvage come up.  Admittedly, I don't pay that close attention to it, but I'm pretty sure I've seen everything else.

Me too.... never seen it once.

[BL4CKN0ISE]

I've noticed this too. Interception and Excavation are the best modes IMO. Now I rarely see them. I've seen a lot of other players talk about Interception and Excavation being the best as well. I hope DE isn't trying to make it seem like the other modes are fine because they're artificially increasing the amount of play they get. 

[SordidDreams]

51 minutes ago, BL4CKN0ISE said:

I've noticed this too. Interception and Excavation are the best modes IMO. Now I rarely see them. I've seen a lot of other players talk about Interception and Excavation being the best as well. I hope DE isn't trying to make it seem like the other modes are fine because they're artificially increasing the amount of play they get. 

Interception is nowhere near as quick as excavation in my experience. Infested salvage and defection can be decently fast too, especially if you're willing to use stims to speed up the defectors.

[BL4CKN0ISE]

6 hours ago, SordidDreams said:

Interception is nowhere near as quick as excavation in my experience. Infested salvage and defection can be decently fast too, especially if you're willing to use stims to speed up the defectors.

Still pretty fast tho and less annoying than salvage and defection IMO. Nothing is as quick as excavation, but that's nothing new. The only thing I don't like about excavation is you need to play a specific way for it to be the quickest and that can be a problem for some squads. Power cells can sometimes be an issue too. Interception is only a few minutes per round, so it just feels like a normal Interception. 

[sleepychewbacca]

2 hours ago, BL4CKN0ISE said:

The only thing I don't like about excavation is you need to play a specific way for it to be the quickest and that can be a problem for some squads. 

Can't this be said about mostly everything in Warframe? Nothing will ever be as good as a premade squad. 

[SirTobe]

9 hours ago, sleepychewbacca said:

Can't this be said about mostly everything in Warframe? Nothing will ever be as good as a premade squad. 

Not on the same level. Excavations in Arbitration pugs are most often useless past 10-20 minutes imo. Most people bring survival frames rather than defense, which makes it hard to keep 2 excavators up at the same time if you're the only one that can shield them. At least I have had very bad luck with this and mainly just keep to survivals instead where squad doesn't matter and the rewards are therefore more consistent for the time spent. Even if noobs die I can revive them without sacrificing mission efficiency. 

Edited May 15, 2019 by SirTobe

[Kontrollo]

5 hours ago, SirTobe said:

Not on the same level. Excavations in Arbitration pugs are most often useless past 10-20 minutes imo. Most people bring survival frames rather than defense, which makes it hard to keep 2 excavators up at the same time if you're the only one that can shield them. At least I have had very bad luck with this and mainly just keep to survivals instead where squad doesn't matter and the rewards are therefore more consistent for the time spent. Even if noobs die I can revive them without sacrificing mission efficiency. 

Depends on the faction, I guess. Infested are pretty easy.

 

On 2019-05-14 at 4:27 PM, (XB1)Cubic Clem said:

There should be multiple missions available at all times. Period.

#*!% this RNG decides what you play nonsense.

Or they seriously need to look into a better algorithm. Here's the tally from almost two days so far (I'll update these later):

Mission Type Totals After 44 Arbitrations:

 

Although I think it's rather strange that the first 24 hours about matched my experience from the past few days (what prompted me to make this thread), and now suddenly Excavations happen as often as Defences, and the other 3 low frequency types are gone completely. 🤔

Edited May 15, 2019 by Kontrollo
typo

[(PSN)Onder6099]

23 minutes ago, Kontrollo said:

Depends on the faction, I guess. Infested are pretty easy.

 

Or they seriously need to look into a better algorithm. Here's the tally from almost two days so far (I'll update these later):

Mission Type Totals After 44 Arbitrations:

 

Although I think it's rather strange that the first 24 hours about matched my experience from the past few days (what prompted me to make this thread), and now suddenly Excavations happen as often as Defences, and the other 3 low frequency types are gone completely. 🤔

I don’t think it’s exactly RNG, it looks like from Easiest/Fastest Salvage to Hardest/Slowest Defense. 

[Kontrollo]

46 minutes ago, (PS4)Onder6099 said:

I don’t think it’s exactly RNG, it looks like from Easiest/Fastest Salvage to Hardest/Slowest Defense. 

At least day 1 looks a lot like that, yes. Excavation can be pretty fast.

 

26 minutes ago, (XB1)Cubic Clem said:

I'd still welcome if we had options, multiple missions to pick from, rather than waiting in the orbiter for a good one to pop up. >_>

Oh I didn't want be in opposition there. Having a choice beats RNG by a mile, even if it were better than what those charts tell us.

Last two were Defence yet again. I'll post the new ones when the 48 hours are complete (-> in two).

[Neuerwinter]

@Kontrollo holy s--t actual data and useful information being posted, props to you lad and thanks for sharing. Happens the same here btw, over the course of these months the rare times I logged in I never seem to find an excavation to play

[(PSN)Onder6099]

42 minutes ago, Kontrollo said:

Excavation can be pretty fast.

Or, as @SirTobestated, pure disaster, Corpus especially. We can also put here another element called Risk. Salvage and Deception are pure Infested and you can run them with any frame with lowest risk to fail. According to @sleepychewbaccafrom Interceptions to Defense is time to recruit for best result. I must also disagree @(XB1)Cubic Clem because Arbitrations are one of those missions which are showing players that the WF isn’t just running Tank with highest DPS, you should have min 1 Frame from each type. 

Are datamines allowed by DE?

[SirTobe]

2 hours ago, Kontrollo said:

Depends on the faction, I guess. Infested are pretty easy.

Infested are easy kills, but their projectile attacks do pretty hefty damage early on if they manage to hit something. They are also close/melee combat, so in case of Frost globes for example someone need to actively protect the area from chargers to swarm their way in, while also drones make them completely ignore some shielding abilities. So even with infested it is very much prefered to have one defense frame per excavator if going for 20+ mins, and the two other players understanding that they have to help bringing in powercells while the defenders do their thing. 

Usually it just turns into a circus though, and it's too hectic to open chat in the middle of it all with non-survival frames. There should be a lobby for these types of missions to decide on some basic tactics before starting. Maybe even a time-out system where you get like 30-60 seconds to chat mid-game. Would be very helpful in pugs. 

[IntheCoconut]

 According to the wiki, Arbitrations will only select nodes with endless missions (Survival, Defense, Intercept, Defection, Excavation, and Infested Salvage). So we know what types of missions, but what then? Is it selecting from all possible nodes of these types? So it could land on any Survival mission, any Defense mission, any Intercept, and so on?

If that is the case, then your numbers make sense. There are a lot more Survival, Defense, and Intercept nodes on the star chart than there are some of the other missions types.

For instance, there are only 3 different Defection nodes and only 1 Salvation mission on the entire star chart. Compare that to the 15 or so (I didn't count for exact numbers) Defense, the 15 Survival, and 15 Intercept, and suddenly those three missions combined make up for more than 80% of the star chart. So it would make sense that Salvation, being a roughly 1 in 50 chance (again, not exact numbers here) would only be selected on rare occasions.

I am not saying I agree with it, just suggesting that the system is purely based on RNG, but not a favorable or balanced one because there are more nodes of certain missions than others, which creates a higher probability of seeing some missions over others. The system will be biased toward picking those three other missions types simply because there are more of them to pick from.

Edited May 15, 2019 by IntheCoconut

[Kontrollo]

1 hour ago, (PS4)Onder6099 said:

Are datamines allowed by DE? 

It's not datamining when the information is publicly available. I just made a script which saves & compiles that data. The game files don't need to be touched for this.

 

54 minutes ago, SirTobe said:

Infested are easy kills, but their projectile attacks do pretty hefty damage early on if they manage to hit something. They are also close/melee combat, so in case of Frost globes for example someone need to actively protect the area from chargers to swarm their way in, while also drones make them completely ignore some shielding abilities. So even with infested it is very much prefered to have one defense frame per excavator if going for 20+ mins, and the two other players understanding that they have to help bringing in powercells while the defenders do their thing.  

Usually it just turns into a circus though, and it's too hectic to open chat in the middle of it all with non-survival frames. There should be a lobby for these types of missions to decide on some basic tactics before starting. Maybe even a time-out system where you get like 30-60 seconds to chat mid-game. Would be very helpful in pugs.  

I usually play Frost in these with a loadout build I think I haven't even touched in years. You only need to kill the drones fast enough, then you can use 3 and 4 and the Excavator is save. Sometimes an energy pizza when they swarm. Even with spawns at 4 people level you can defend an excavator that way. Last two runs against Infested were both 20+ excavators.

Note that's not what I initially set out to test, though. What I did there was trying Nidus with a base set of mods. It worked well enough, although my allies were too high level to get a good picture of that.

 

Now here are the charts again after a full 2 days.

Mission Type Totals After 2 Days or 48 Arbitrations:

 

Bonus for @IntheCoconut (good point, so let's see):

Spoiler

I'd say we need more data for that.

 

Edited May 15, 2019 by Kontrollo