Thistle Design Spreadsheet
First step is to download the tool itself. Updated Jul 12 2008, latest version 3.5
Mirror 1 (FileFront)
Mirror 2 (DDL)
What you CAN do with it
- Finding out the daily voids - you can compare the results of the tool and the garden in order to find out which conversions are inactive on the given day. This is mostly needed for correctly simulating the garden.
- Simulating the thistle garden - you can input things and see what happens without actually using up any of the precious resources. Helpful in developing recipes.
What you CANNOT do with it
- Develop recipes for the time when the sun is constantly changing
- Tell it your thistle requirements and let it calculate the optimal recipe
How to Predict a Recipe
First step in predicting a thistle recipe is finding out which conversions are inactive at the time you plan on making your thistles. Alternatively, you may want to see if anybody else has already done the work for the current Egyptian day and shared their knowledge here
Finding out the voids
In order to find out the daily voided conversions, you'll need to do the following.
- a) Make a test run in your garden and make sure to screenshot (ALT-C works fine) EVERYTHING. You'll get the best results by experimenting with different H and O values and producing enough vitamins for everything to happen as soon as possible. Keep in mind that the info you get will be only about voids that had a chance of happening during your test run (ie, you won't get any data on things that never occur during 0 sun during your test run at 0 sun; also when you never get any Thi you'll miss all the conversions requiring Thi). This being said, it's probably easiest to first max everything and get some things going; then later once you have some vitamins already play around with different H and O values. One possible way of doing the test run efficiently at 0 Sun can be found here.
- b) Open the thistle simulator. You'll need to tell it when you added, and how much. For this there are 2 options.
- If you can tell from your screenshot how many times you clicked on the add button (each time 20 gets added to the amount in the garden), then use the grey-colored table on the Master sheet for doing so.
- If you are unable to tell how much of something you added from the numbers on your screenshots, you could alternatively input the number from your screenshot to the correct cell on AltIn sheet. If you do so it will override the data (or lack of it) on Master sheet and you can proceed with inputting.
- c) Compare the yellow area of the Master sheet to your screenshots. Start from the first row and move on from there. When you see a row being different in the tool from what it was in the garden, you know there was something voided at this point.
- d) Check the tick number of the row you found interesting and find the corresponding column in the sheet Active.
- e) Play around with the conversions shown there as active by switching them on and off on the Master sheet ('0' = OFF, '1' = ON) until the row of interest starts matching your screenshot. Note that the tool has occasionally (maybe once per 2 runs) small rounding issues which cause a number to differ by from the screenshot by 1. Don't pay any attention to these.
- f) Continue doing this until you reach the last row and it matches the one on your screenshot. You're done! Everything in the "Daily voids" column that was changed to 0 during the process is inactive (voided) this day. Our thistle researchers and thistle growers alike would probably appreciate if you let them know the daily voids. Posting them here would help us gathering enough data to try predicting the daily voids and skip the tedious test run process.
Using the Voids to Design Your Recipe
- 1) Open your thistle tool. There are lots of sheets but the first sheet (master sheet) is all you really need for predicting. There is a column of green cells labeled "Daily Voids" on the right side. This is the first place for your input. The value is "1" for active conversions and "0" for inactive ones. Change the value for all conversions inactive this day to "0". IMPORTANT! Which conversions are inactive changes ALWAYS at 00.00 Egypt time!
- 2) On the left side of the Master sheet you'll see a table of grey cells. This is where you input things. 4 first columns, Nit, Pot, H2O and Oxy are for adding them. Just type how many times you plan to click on the "add" button in your garden in the appropriate cells.
- 3) The Sun column of the grey table works a bit differently. You'll have to input anything only on the first tick, and whenever you change your sun value. For an example, you might want to start at 99 Sun so you type "99" in the first cell. Let's say at the 10th tick you want to close your garden lid so you'll type "33" there.
- 4) The yellow tables are for keeping track of what the garden is showing you. The tool will also tell you what kind of thistle you'll get and how much it will cost you. Try to aim for thistles that use less saltpeter, that's the most expensive of the nutrients. Occasionally it might be even possible to make the thistles you want without adding any dung or saltpeter (Nit and Pot). You can read more about optimizing the cost here.
Simulator Changelog
- July 12, 2008 Change List
- Apparently the AltIn sheet STILL wasn't working properly. Turned out the reason was calling for the function ISEVEN(). After replacing all instances of this with calling for VALUE(RIGHT()) everything seems to work properly once again. Also an alternative for FileFront as a download mirror was added, this time it's a direct download location. This was done due to FileFront not working properly for everyone.
- June 29, 2008 Change List
- The AltIn sheet had apparently stopped working at some point. Hopefully it works fine now.
- June 28, 2008 Change List
- Added a table that tells you which conversions are active and when during your garden run. Hopefully this helps with some things, especially finding out the voids. Also fixed an incorrect "note" from the Master sheet that warned against Sun values being incorrect. In truth, these were already fixed in the previous release.
- February 23, 2008 Change List
- Updated the tool with info about sun ranges for the high sun conversions.
- February 21, 2008 Change List
- Changed the rounding used by the tool to 2 decimals
- Fixed the sun range for Pot -> Fol
- February 20, 2008 Change List
- Added support for 99 Sun conversions
- Improved the way of inputting the Sun value. It can now be changed during the simulated garden run (opening/closing the garden lid)
- December 20, 2007 Change List
- Added final Thistle output display to Master sheet
- Added Worksheet past Tick39 that contains a Wiki formatted version of the values from the Master Worksheet
- Added Worksheet past Tick39 that contains a Wiki formatted version of the values from A single tick Worksheet
- Note: To change the tick you want to format for the wiki change the formula value in cell A1 to reflect the Tick you wish to display, and then copy that cell over the others. I may add this to every tick sheet for the future for ease of use, but this will do for now.
This is an iterative execution of the old single tick spreadsheet. It executes all 40 ticks automatically with each tick detailed on a separate worksheet internally for examination. Use the Master sheet to toggle daily voids on or off for the entire run.
The inputs are all controlled on the master sheet, and you can simply add the amount of button presses each tick on the master sheet. The sheet will calculate loss of nutrients automatically for you, so you only need to add in the amount of button presses each tick as if you were using the game interface. Or, alternatively, if you would rather enter the raw data for a run you can go to the AltIn sheet and enter values from your screenshot that will override the values automatically generated on the master sheet.
Complete growth cost is also calculated whether you use the master sheet or the alternative input sheet (AltIn) to add inputs. This way you can know how much a thistle did or will cost you to grow.
Feedback
Please discuss the tool here; all suggestions are welcome.