Artifacts (for both GC & UC)
Chances of finding for artifacts
(Base difficulty) - (Time of day) - (Planet type) - (What were you doing before digging) - (Your resources) - (Race) - (Paid-Account Status)
Planet type = range from +25% to -20%
Time of day = range from +40% -100%
Race = range from +20% to -25%
Paid Account = +20%
Your Resources = +20%
The calculation is accumulative in this way, for an example say the base difficulty is 100 points:-
100 - 20% - 20%
= (100 - 20) - 20%
= 80 - 20%
= 80 - 16
= 64
The system calculates based on Difficulty points not percentage, the lower the difficulty points is the higher the chances of finding artifacts.
Due to the algorithm used, the more turns you use in a search the less chances of finding artifacts if you were to find artifacts. When you use 9 turns to find for artifacts, you get a - 2% chance of finding artifact for each artifact found. For example:-
Turn 1 - found nothing
Turn 2 - found nothing
Turn 3 - found 1 artifact
Turn 4 (-2% to finding artifact) - found nothing
Turn 5 (-2% to finding artifact) - found 2nd artifact
Turn 6 (-4% to finding artifact) - found 3rd artifact
Turn 7 (-6% to finding artifact) - found 4th artifact
Turn 8 (-8% to finding artifact) - found nothing
Turn 9 (-8% to finding artifact) - found nothing
Hint:-
Having a -5% to -10% to finding artifacts will not have such a big impact on the RT server but will surely have more of an impact on the lower servers.
(formulas supplied by Stephen Yong)