Clan Phoenix Chat

A place to talk about the Geocaching Australia dragonZone and other games
LouiseAnn
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Re: Clan Phoenix Chat

Post by LouiseAnn » 09 February 16 2:59 pm

LouiseAnn wrote:I'm a beginner at the dragon zone stuff.

Is there anyway to extract data on zone controls so I can plan an attack on zones in my area? or so I have to to this manually?
so, in your format:

I want a page where zone control is displayed (xxx), along with number of caches in the zone (yyy) (by type would be extra nice), so I can plan/investigate zones that could be targeted for take over (zzz), preferable in a format I can copy paste and muck with off line (δδδ).

Even just a page of (xxx) that can be copied off line (δδδ) would be useful, as the rest could be extracted from GSAK and analysed in excel

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caughtatwork
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Re: Clan Phoenix Chat

Post by caughtatwork » 09 February 16 3:17 pm

This would need to be by zone. i.e. Zone 1234 or Zone 4567. It can't easily be done for all zones at once due to the massive time it would take to calculate the zone for each cache.

e.g.
Zone 1234
Is controlled by Griffin (do you want by how many the zone is controlled vs. the other clans numbers as well.
Has 24 dZ caches in the zone (this will only show active or disabled caches, not archived ones).
-- Do you also want the points for each cache so you can target the easy ones to convert?
Lists the caches by type (maybe the standard format of a list of caches).
And you want to cut and paste into excel.
If that's it, then I'll look into it when I have a few moments in the evening.

LouiseAnn
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Re: Clan Phoenix Chat

Post by LouiseAnn » 09 February 16 5:08 pm

If it can only be done zone by zone, there wouldn't be a lot of point doing it, are there already are zone my zone pages (like this one: http://geocaching.com.au/zone/view/2089)
and there is no practical way I am prepared to use to copy paste all 75 zones for Victoria for planning purposes.

This page (http://geocaching.com.au/dragonzone/zonecontrol/) isn't bad for the purposes I'm after, but it doesn't copy paste. It looks like tables, which usually copy paste ok, but this page doesn't. Also, the zones are broken up over the clans, so the whole state can't be seen in one overview

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caughtatwork
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Re: Clan Phoenix Chat

Post by caughtatwork » 09 February 16 6:29 pm

75 zones is just under 1,000 caches. To match a cache to a zone takes time depending on the complexity of the geometry of the zone. It can vary from a few seconds to a minute. 75 times that volume is not something you're going to wait for.
Then there will be the folks who don't want a state because they're near a border, so only want the closest 10 zones so we would need to be able to filter them.
Then folks will want to filter our certain cache types like mystery or trigpoints.
Then folks will want to filter out anything that's too hard like a difficulty of 4 or a terrain or 4.5 or 5.
Then folks will want to exclude micros.
So we're looking at a fully blown query engine like we have for caches, but also inclusive of zones.
The My Query generator only handle one zone at a time because anything to much larger is a huge drag on the server.

Try pasting as text instead of HTML. That might be a little better.

So while it is not immediately practical to make what you want, we could create a page like http://geocaching.com.au/dragonzone/zonecontrol/ but in state columns rather than by clan. i.e. All zones under Victoria with the counts of caches controlled. That would not let you see what caches are easy targets, but would show you what zones may be controllable. Unfortunately we don't provide data warehouse capability to extract and query what you want. In part because the cost of providing the data in CPU time and real time is outside our bounds. As you know we also suffer a hardware issue which is trying to be resolved but progress is glacial.

Maybe when we have the new hardware we can look more into a feed where you can shape and play with your own data in your own environments.

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Now_To_Morrow
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Re: Clan Phoenix Chat

Post by Now_To_Morrow » 09 February 16 8:03 pm

Can I put my two cents in?
I've just spent a few days and 8 pages in my note book doing this:
- look at map to see what zones on my upcoming trip need the colour changed;
- drop down the state I'm looking at in each clan on the zone control page and record how many points are needed to turn the area gold;
- open each zone and then open the GCA cache map and list foot each one in separate tabs to compare my traveling route and possible caches.
- then open each considered cache to see how many points are needed for each one.
- then i do the maths to see how many caches are possible take control of.

Now if all that could be made easier, that would be amazing. Is that what LouiseAnn is asking for?

Also, while I'm on this,
If zone x has 3 cerberus and 1 griffin, if i take control of 2 of the 3 (non-moveable) that Cerberus control, does that zone then become c1-g3 or does it add to c3-g3?

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caughtatwork
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Re: Clan Phoenix Chat

Post by caughtatwork » 09 February 16 8:29 pm

Control is basec on highest points. So if you take from a clan their count goes down and yours goes up.

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Now_To_Morrow
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Re: Clan Phoenix Chat

Post by Now_To_Morrow » 09 February 16 10:48 pm

That's what I wanted to hear \:D/
Sorry Phoenix for crashing your thread. Good luck at taking back control of Victoria. :D Anything but blue :wink:

LouiseAnn
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Re: Clan Phoenix Chat

Post by LouiseAnn » 10 February 16 10:50 am

No_Tomorrow wrote:Can I put my two cents in?
I've just spent a few days and 8 pages in my note book doing this:
- look at map to see what zones on my upcoming trip need the colour changed;
- drop down the state I'm looking at in each clan on the zone control page and record how many points are needed to turn the area gold;
- open each zone and then open the GCA cache map and list foot each one in separate tabs to compare my traveling route and possible caches.
- then open each considered cache to see how many points are needed for each one.
- then i do the maths to see how many caches are possible take control of.

Now if all that could be made easier, that would be amazing. Is that what LouiseAnn is asking for?
sounds pretty similar to my thinking
caughtatwork wrote: Try pasting as text instead of HTML. That might be a little better.

I've tried all types of paste special options I can find, in both word and excel and none of them paste the data in a friendly format.
caughtatwork wrote:To match a cache to a zone takes time depending on the complexity of the geometry of the zone.

I didn't realise it was doing this. I kind of thought there was a field.
caughtatwork wrote:So while it is not immediately practical to make what you want, we could create a page like http://geocaching.com.au/dragonzone/zonecontrol/ but in state columns rather than by clan. i.e. All zones under Victoria with the counts of caches controlled. That would not let you see what caches are easy targets, but would show you what zones may be controllable.
That sounds great, especially if it would copy paste as a table. :)

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caughtatwork
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Re: Clan Phoenix Chat

Post by caughtatwork » 10 February 16 11:32 am

Each cache has a point. A point can occur in one, many or no zones. As we have a zone function where you can create your own zones, the zone it is in is no precalculated. i.e. If you create a new zone called "Louise", it will have a polygon. There will be some caches in the zone and some not in the zone. We do not "update" the cache with all possible zones as zones can be added at anytime which would require a recalculation of all caches to see if they're in the new zone. So we calculate the zone as we go (or in the case of a dragonZone cache, what zone it is currently in when it gets published). As only dragonZone players get credit for caches, not all newly published caches are set into a dragonZone zone id. Right, wrong or indifferent, this is the way it currently works. So grabbing caches for a zone which have points, easy because they are known to be in a dZone and what the dZone is. For caches which do not have point we go find the zone. As the game is an add on, data is still being created and collected. When it gets more popular the data will be almost complete and the heavy lifting will have been done. Until such time as that occurs or we get to the new server, we can really only create data for a supplied zone and not for everything "just in case you might need it".

LouiseAnn
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Re: Clan Phoenix Chat

Post by LouiseAnn » 10 February 16 11:41 am

I didn't realise there were other zones. When I was using that term, I just meant DragonZones/lga's, which I thought was an attribute.

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caughtatwork
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Re: Clan Phoenix Chat

Post by caughtatwork » 10 February 16 1:25 pm

We can look at allocating a zone when a cache is created / moved. This might be able to be used as the key to what's where in terms of what is under control or not. Another thing to add my growing backlog of tasks to cover off.

LouiseAnn
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Re: Clan Phoenix Chat

Post by LouiseAnn » 06 March 16 4:51 pm

I just have to say:
I took over Nillumbik!!!
I'm pretty excited :D

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gmj3191
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Re: Clan Phoenix Chat

Post by gmj3191 » 06 March 16 7:24 pm

Happy for you Louise, rule wisely.

lucky1955
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Re: Clan Phoenix Chat

Post by lucky1955 » 07 March 16 8:28 pm

G'day LouiseAnne, well done with Nillumbik I was in the Eltham area weekend before last and picked up a few GA caches and hope the points helped you along.

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caughtatwork
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Re: Clan Phoenix Chat

Post by caughtatwork » 16 July 16 1:41 pm

Not exactly what was asked but.
http://geocaching.com.au/dragonzone/statezonecontrol/
For each state it will show you all the zones and who controls (or which ones are uncontrolled).
Still do not have a good way to calculate which caches are in that zone as a summary. Sorry you're going to need to put in some effort :-)

For example if you were to travel through Melton you would see that 4 caches are controlled by Griffin, none by Phoenix, 13 by Cerberus and none by Minotaur. So if you were a Phoenix clan member you would need to get 13 or more to control the zone. You might bypass and try another zone on your way to your destination.
Melton (S)
4.00 0.00 13.00 0.00

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