Non-prototype Item Distribution (Patreon)

Parts in Cogmind have different rarities. There are a number of variables that factor into this aspect, defining how likely it is for a given part to appear at each depth (if ever, since some parts can only be placed manually via prefabs or other methods). These include the base rarity (common, uncommon, rare), the types of maps in which they can appear (essentially derelict-controlled, 0b10-controlled, or any), and the spread of depths where they can appear beyond the base depth for their rating (narrow, wide, or any).

For example the basic Ion Engine can appear in any map, but only has a narrow spread, so it's most likely to be found at -10 (because its rating is 1, the first rating), less likely to be found at -9, and becomes rather rare at -8. It never appears beyond Materials depths.

For development purposes, I have a number of output files that I sometimes use to analyze the data, and while I haven't used this particular one much over the years, one of them shows the chance for each non-prototype item to appear at each depth when the game is choosing items to place. I thought I'd share that file with you today.

Perhaps more importantly, in the same file it also shows the likelihood of placing items of each slot type, and also of each item type. You can see the beginning of said file here:

There you can see the chance of each named category dropping at "rating 1 through 10" (equivalent to depths -10 through -1), where the chance is represented as the number of times it is chosen out of 1000 (just to make the chart easier to read). So at the 4th depth (-7/Factory), 29 out of 1000 parts chosen will be a Leg.

I've attached the full file if you want to see values for individual items, but note there are SPOILERS in the full item list, since it literally includes every single item in the game. (That said, values are shown only for non-prototype items, whereas prototypes are commented out and simply kept in the list as placeholders.)

This is actually the file for the current dev version, Beta 9 X4, so it even includes some parts that no one's actually used yet (probably just hover units are the only ones not found in X3).