I should have asked this question ages ago.
Do you read in the direction of the arrow? Is the current stage the one on the far left or far right? What if it's in the middle?
Am I totally wrong? Do the little icons even move around?
Because It seems like what I think it supposed to be next is never what I want when I go down to the mid towns.
I feel like you're probably right Fehz, but at the same time I feel like that doesn't answer any of my questions at all and the system really is too confusing.
You mean to tell me that it's impossible to tell what level is currently "on" and that it really only depends on what floor I'm on before it?
I believe that it should be the level directly under it or the one to the left/right of that that if the elevator is still being coupled, but I haven't tested this and it's foreseeable that the game doesn't update the gate map of the arcade for you in such a fashion... it usually orients it in such a way that you can read it once you're down.
Here's what I want you to do, since I'm away from my PC and somewhat curious as well- go in game, and find a gate. See what level is directly under the mid town, and to the right/left of it.. and go down. Then, once down see if anything changed, and tell me what happened in this thread. GO GO GO GO GO GO FOR SCIENCE! Or you can just wait and I'll try it out later but that's super lame.
Ffff... I just logged out...
Now I have to horf my way up all these Vog-gamn buttons and click steam and wait for it too load, and muh diabeetus...
"grouches"
In this order starting from Ready Room:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=392761692 - Ready Room
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=392761619 - Moocroft
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=392761567 - CW Tunnels Beginning
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=392761513 - CW Tunnels Ending
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=392761459 - Sky Islands
Well if there are only two levels possible then it should just be impossible to tell, and as I said above the next level is dependent on the current level. Like, what we really need is a subtown with a set of 5 or 3 levels below it as that should be the most straightforward. With just two, we can still test the hypothesis that the next level is impossible to determine however.
The wiki does a good description of gate rotation.
@Fehzor
"Random level rotations however are in fact random, and do not appear to rely on the rotation mechanic, at least when going down to them."
I have information that suggests otherwise, such as parties going solo and ending up on the same depth or different depth depending upon when you take the elevator. In fact, they do follow the exact same mechanic... we are just not explicitly told which direction they rotate or when they rotate. I did a tedious analysis at one point while I was doing research on gate depth type payouts to ensure I had data for depths I was interested in analyzing [treasure vaults].
Ok the floor you currently are on is the one in the big red circle
The next room is the one in the lighter red circle. That one selected can change as the disk rotatates
Hope what i said was helpful
I recall at some time in the past sending several parties of knights down in quick succession and observing them reach random depths; i.e. the party gets to an elevator with a random rotation on it, and each of the knights goes down after going solo. In particular, there was a gate with a decon zone followed by a treasure vault in T2, and I wanted to see if I could trigger the treasure vault reliably- if I knew that it was open for use every 5 minutes, then I could just time my descents and farm the free orbs, but this was unfortunately not the case. If it does use any sort of disk mechanic, then it isn't predictable as far as I can tell.
If you have evidence to the contrary I'd love to see it though, as this might be worth going back and looking at-- especially since the wiki backs up my observation. "Question marks mean that depth's next level is constantly changing, so the next level cannot be determined, and the line which usually indicates what the next level will be becomes a branch pointing to all possible levels."
@Fehzor
I've only taken data on S1 areas enough to identify and model one ??? depth rotation. This occurred on 8/5/2014, as noted with datapoints 484-491 of my treasure box analysis. What was not noted in that data is the time recorded between arenas completed and when my main account and alt account entered the depth. I deleted the timed data after the gate disappeared, mostly since it took too much data to actually reduce the rotation times even for an easy gate that started with 1 arena and then the "random" rotating depth. That last treasure vault was a 100% [in a 1 minute window, given my data] certainty test after 15 "trial" runs using alts to model that specific rotation. I've since deemed it possible, but unreasonable to model the rotation of ??? depths.
Just keep in mind, that the current quote for "Level Rotation" that you used is from October 2011. There may have been changes since then as stealth patches or simply not enough data [since it wasn't "free" to take data] to prove otherwise. The user that made this post also proved that damage bonus is +7% per level. At the time, it was not incorrect. We now know more about how damage works and that it is actually a +4% boost.
@Meep-The-Bank
Glad you reused the link I had here.
The depths go in the direction of the little arrow, so the one on the open end of the arrow will be the next depth in the rotation. The one highlighted in red on the gate map is the current one, big, open side of arrow is the next one.
Sometimes the spots the box ones take up move a bit, but that doesn't change the pattern up.
As others have said, icon with the red circle is the depth you're on currently.
If the icon on the elevator is not a question mark and if, on the gate map, there are more than 1 possible next levels, the rule of thumb is that what level you end up on rotates* in the direction of the arrows, with a few caveats:
- rotations seem to sometimes skip a level: e.g. if there are three possible next levels, and the path currently leads to the left-most of the icons, after rotation it might lead not to the middle level but to the right-most one. (and also: if there are two possible next levels, it could happen that the next rotation skips the second level, and thus makes the path go to the first one again (i.e. you have to wait twice as long to get it to give you the other level)
- rotations can also sometimes go in the opposite direction of the arrow (and possibly combined with a skip)
* levels seem to rotate about every 5-7 minutes, but sometimes faster, sometimes slower.
After a D28 arena skipping always happened, Three Rings patched the arcade so that it should never skip a gate anymore. They used to, but they don't anymore.
Remember when the developers actually cared about making the arcade AWESOME? Have a seat...
The clockworks are made of giant rotating disks. Each disk contains a set of levels, and the direction the disk is rotating in is displayed by those arrows you're asking about. Your next level is the one that is directly underneath of your disk, provided the elevator is done coupling itself properly-- which is why the line going down occasionally has a sort of zigzag in the middle of it.
Because of this rotation mechanic, the waiting time between disks is dependent on the speed each disk is rotating at.. and each disk is indeed assigned a different rotation speed; for instance, some missions cycle very. very. very. slowly. This also means that the next level you see is dependent on which level you're already on. Imagine two identical disks, with a clockwork tunnels and a compounds, each at the same position. If I go down on one side of the disk to a clockwork tunnels from a clockwork tunnels, then a player on the other side of the disk in a compounds level would still be on the other side of the disk when they went down-- their next level would be compounds. COOLEST THING EVER if you ask me.
Random level rotations however are in fact random, and do not appear to rely on the rotation mechanic, at least when going down to them.