Looking for cogs in all the right places

[Al E. Cat]

Here's my holiday present for everyone at ToonTown Central.

I've been getting frustrated trying to find cogs or buildings of a particular type on the streets. Recently, someone put together a street guide that shows what type and what range of cogs are available on each street. What I felt was missing was something that showed the distribution of cogs. I've definitely noticed that certain streets seem to have an abundance of cogs of a certain type, even though it was possible to find other cogs on the street.

I decided to take matters into my own toon hands and did a statistical sampling of all the streets for several districts. For each street, I recorded the number of cogs of each type along with the number of buildings present on that street. I did this for five districts: Sillyham, Kookyboro, Toon Valley, Loonyville, and Loony Summit. I had intended to do this for all the districts/servers, but running around and capturing the data took a great deal of work. Besides, all my toon friends probably thought I was rude as I was ignoring nearly all their messages. Five districts isn't a very broad sampling, but I think it provides enough data to get a rough idea where the cogs are.

I plugged all the data into a spreadsheet, and calculated the average number of cogs of each type and buildings per street. You can see the results here as a html page. If you are interested in all the data I captured, here's the original spreadsheet. For each street, the chart shows the average number of cogs by type, and in the last column, the average number of buildings. You can use the chart to assess the likelihood of finding a cog of a particular type. For example, the 0.2 in the Headhunter cell for Sleet Street means you only have about a 20% probability of finding one on Sleet Street in any district. You're betting off going to Walrus Way, where there's an average of 1.2 in each district.

There are some interesting observations to be made from the summary data.

Toontown Central
Buildings are rare in Toontown Central, appearing with a likelihood of around 25%. Silly Street has a fairly uniform distribution of cog types, and is your best bet for finding Bossbot cogs. Loopy Lane is dominated by Lawbot cogs. Punchline Place has mostly Cashbot and Sellbot cogs.

Donald's Dock
Barnacle Boulevard contains mostly Bossbot cogs and a few Lawbot cogs; Cashbot and Sellbot are completely absent. Seaweed Street is the opposite, containing exclusively Cashbot and Sellbot bogs, with Cashbots outnumbering Sellbots 3 to 1. Lighthouse Lane contains all types of cogs, with Bossbots and Sellbots being in the majority. The cogs on Lighthouse Lane tend to be higher level than those on the other two streets.

Daisy Gardens
Elm Street contains mostly Sellbot cogs and a few Lawbots and Cashbots. Maple Street is dominated by Lawbots. Cashbot cogs are quite rate; tasks related to Cashbots in Daisy Gardens should be avoided.

Minnie's Melody Land
Alto Avenue is limited to a small distribution of lower level Cashbot and Sellbot cogs. Baritone Boulevard also is limited to Cashbots and Sellbots, but they tend to be higher level, and Cashbots are in the definite majority. Tenor Terrace contains only higher level Bossbots and Lawbots in equal distributions.

The Brrrgh
Sleet Street contains a fairly even mix of all types of cogs. Walrus way is nearly exclusively Bossbots with a small sampling of Lawbots. Avoid Cashbot tasks in The Brrrgh.

Dreamland
Lullaby Lane contains the highest level cogs of all types, although it is mostly dominated by Sellbots. Cashbots are quite rare, and tasks related to them should be avoided.

One of my assumptions in analyzing the data this way is that each district or server operates from the same rule set. There do appear to be significant difference in the number and types of cogs from one server to the next, but I attribute this to a combination of random variation and the effect of players on the cog population.

[silentseas]

No offense but this is pretty common knowledge to anyone who has played these areas, or spent more than 10 minutes in a zone.

Cashbot in the brrrgh are not as hard as people think as long as you can see buildings in your book.

Jump from server to server and check sleet for cashbot buildings.
I was frustrated at first but after using this method it has never taken me more than 30 min to complete a cashbot task in the brrrgh. Seems like by the time you go through the list, there are more on the first ones.

Basically every zone has a cashbot/sellbot street and a bossbot/lawbot street. Some have mixtures of both.

Why dont you do a survey on how dismal the clothes in Toontown are and send that to Disney :P

[Katsandra_Picklebee]

Hey, Al E. Cat!

Thank you so much for putting out the effort here.

I know from doing the "clothing" pictures that it's a lot of running around to do this kind of thing. So thank you so much!

It will be great for newer players, and I know they'll appreciate this as a "Quick" guide to cog locations!

[Princess Beany]

Thank you so much for posting this. I was doing a task the other day with my low toon and was having the darndest time trying to remember where to find all the diff types in TT. I had not been there for so long I had forgotten. I was wishing there was something like this to tell me. Are you a mind reader?

[pudgey]

Good stuff Al E. Cat! I think this sort of effort is what these forums are supposed to be about. Helping each other to get the most from the game.

KidBugs did something similar in the Beta 1 guide, but to my knowledge noone had taken the effort to update it since then. And the spread of cogs has changed considerably with the various releases so it is good to have it documented.

I think Katsandra got it right as far as helping newer players. And it will also help those with 2nd toons who have forgotten which streets have which cogs (like I did).

Thanks.

[TTFKASS]

Originally posted by silentseas
No offense but this is pretty common knowledge to anyone who has played these areas, or spent more than 10 minutes in a zone.

Bah Humbug! Mr. Scrooge!

Spiffy is ducking at the post he just edited, hahaaa. OOO!

[Felix_M_Cattus]

Originally posted by silentseas
No offense but this is pretty common knowledge to anyone who has played these areas, or spent more than 10 minutes in a zone.

No offense, but that's ludicrous. It certainly isn't common knowledge that one street has an average of 1.2 level x ybots whereas another has 2.9. I've spent *way* too much time running around toontown, and although I have a sense of what cogs live where, to have it quantified like this just rocks. Keep up the good work, Al E. Cat! I hold in high regard anyone who applies the scientific method to a game about cartoon characters trying to throw pastry products at menacing robots. Or to anything at all, really.

[silentseas]

Sorry I was such a scrooge

Must be post holiday blues

[Loosy Goosy]

Not bad Al. Are you going to make a legend for the chart, or add headers describing each column? That would be the cherry on top

Just brace yourself when with each patch the cog distribution changes

One of my assumptions in analyzing the data this way is that each district or server operates from the same rule set. There do appear to be significant difference in the number and types of cogs from one server to the next, but I attribute this to a combination of random variation and the effect of players on the cog population.

Yea in your schticker book it says something like "Each district is a copy of Toontown" so to try and find any specific attribute about a certain district would be futile. However as you mention, over-all population per district seems to have an effect on cog-spawning.

Right now I see no evidence that the game's districts communicate with each other server-side, but it would be cool to see tasks offered based on the amount of cogs in that area or district. One possibility for the next update could be adding "Defeat X Cogs in the Brrrgh, X district only" types of tasks. It would be a great way to balance the district population, and the over-all cog/building spawn.

Your options could be something like this for the DL 4 PT Laff Reward:
1000 Cogs Anywhere
320 11+ Cogs Anywhere
400 9+ Cogs Anywhere
200 Cashbot Cogs in Dreamland, X District only

[Radix2]

Good Stuff! Here is the complimentary chart: http://squid.tcg.com.au/tt_cog_index.htm

Just need to encode the distribution into it somehow... Any ideas?

PS - and change the colours

[Al E. Cat]

Thanks, Radix2; it was your chart that gave me the inspiration.

While working with the data, an idea that game to mind was to create a chart with all the names of the cog types by street, and color code the chart such that the color indicated the relative cog density. I could use something like a blackbody radiation spectrum, so low density cogs would appear as dark red, medium density orange, and high density yellow, for example. I tried to figure out a way to do this with Excel, but sadly, it's lacking in that area of customization. This wouldn't be too difficult to do by hand with a nice Photoshop graphic, but I wanted to drive the chart with data, so when I go back and sample the streets again (either to get a bigger sample set or because I suspect Disney has tweaked the server settings), the new chart would be created automatically.

Heres an example of what the color coded version might look like. I'm sure there's probably a better way to present this data. Any ideas?

[Cool Curly]

I think its very nice of you to share this info with all your fellow toontowners, I'm sure we all have struggled to find certain cogs at one time or another. Your time and effort are greatly appreciated, Thx

Cool Curly.....The Cool Dog

P.S. I dedicate my next cog kill to Al E Cat