Long Dark Paperboy - Weekly Delivery

[Ice Hole]

Long Dark Paperboy

Join the team and deliver paper products to local customers.

Collect points and earn prizes. 

Become a Long Dark Paperboy today!

 

Rules:

Employment Details

• Gather paper products
• Any material to be delivered must first be brought to Mystery Lake Camp Office for inspection
• Distribute 0.50 kg (1.10 lb) of any paper product to 23 customers
• Place in a neat pile next to the mailbox
• Weekly delivery within six hour time window guaranteed - Customer cancel when time window missed
• Time Window Calculation subtract three hours and add three hours to the initial delivery time
• Paper products once exhausted you then distribute 1.00 kg (2.20 lb) of cloth 
• Any Voyageur, Stalker or Interloper can apply at any time

 

Levels Of Play

Easy Street - Voyageur

Middle Road - Stalker

Hard Way - Interloper

 

Customer Mailbox Locations

 

 

The idea was to deliver newspaper rolls to customers.  The customers have stated they are not interested in reading the material so any type of paper product will suffice.  You can apply for the Paperboy position anytime so no need to start a new character.  Once started you need to return to the mailbox every week within a six hour window. 

The time window is six hours.  This means you cannot be early or late for you delivery and be within six hours of the initial delivery time.  Maintain you Daily Notes to keep track of when you made your delivery.  Time window is one quarter of the Time Keeper in the top right corner in game. 

So if you deliver to the Barker mailbox at Nine in the morning on the fourth day then by the eleventh day and from so on the time window is set from sunrise to noon.  The next delivery must be completed within the time window otherwise you lose that customer.

 

How long can you deliver?

 

Brought to you by the El-Asso-Wipo Corporation

[cullam]

Wow, that's.... I'd say a difficult challenge. An excellent idea!

[Ice Hole]

@cullam Thanks.  I missed a spot that needs polishing.

The penalty of losing a customer is not that much of a penalty.  Actually it will make the challenge easier.

So I was considering if a delivery is missed then we must win back the customer instead of losing them.  Cause out here in the Long Dark the number of clients is at an all time low.  

Continually delivering to the lost customer a double quantity. 

This double quantity is a bribe to the customer and a penalty for the player for missing the time window. 

[cullam]

Might I suggest a points system instead? Your first customer is one point, but your second is two. So if you can deliver to that 22nd customer, it's worth a lot more than just 21. 

[Ice Hole]

 

22 hours ago, cullam said:

Might I suggest a points system instead? Your first customer is one point, but your second is two. So if you can deliver to that 22nd customer, it's worth a lot more than just 21. 

Thanks for the suggestion. 

The method for scoring I can figure is calculated by summing an increasing step for each delivery to the customer so that the twenty third delivery is worth twenty three points.  The result score would be the following sum:

1+2+3+4+5 ... +22+23  = 263

Or do you mean a factorial number of customers!

This method for a final score needs to be considered.  The final score is calculated by the factorial number of total number customers delivered.  So after a perfect week the math is:

twenty three and find the exclamation mark button on the calculator

23!=25 x 10²¹

That would certainly be a high score never before witnessed.

Either way these scoring systems might fall victim of optimization where delivering to one area and ignoring other customers results in a unfair score.

 

The reason for switching the rule from losing a customer to penalizing the player was from developing a fair scoring system.

The first method was take number of weeks and multiply by customer.   But that leads to a situation where a score for doing all customers for 2 weeks can be overcome with 4 customers over a dozen weeks.  The four customers should be easier since no need to travel.  Not a fair scoring system.

The next method was to raise number of weeks to number of customers. 

For comparison the three perfect weeks score math is:

three weeks raised to the power of twenty three customers

3²³=94 x 10⁹

This seems to work but someone could make a spreadsheet and adjust the customers and weeks ratio to optimize the best score.  The loss of customer should penalize the player and the final score needs to reflect this. 

Still thinking that adding weight is the solution that provides a final score that is equal to total number of complete delivery weeks.  The delivery route remains equal and the only difference is the strain on resources.  So to improve the final score is not by adjusting a customer to delivery weeks ratio but to optimize the delivery route and maintain that time window.  Keeping the customers constant creates a level playing field and the final score easy to calculate and display.

 

I encourage a scoring system that has a reducing customer count as that follows the inspiration for this challenge; Paperboy arcade game.  Any suggestions for a scoring system that is immune to optimization exploits and can be easy to calculate or display are welcome.

[cullam]

Factorial gets nuts, so I was just thinking additive score. But remember, you can't really make up the difference by delivering to just a few customers for longer. That would be true if it was, say, 1 point per paper delivered. But if it's 1 for the 1st of the week, 2 for the 2nd, ... 23 for the 23rd, then to get the highest score, you really want to find a way to hit all 23 of them weekly. Because there are a limited number of paper products in the game, the way to maximize points is to hit all 23 deliveries. 

[TheEldritchGod]

You know, just delivering 23 rolled up newspapers would be a challenge. They should make that an achievement.

[Ice Hole]

On 2019-03-16 at 3:27 PM, TheEldritchGod said:

You know, just delivering 23 rolled up newspapers would be a challenge. They should make that an achievement.

Thanks.  But the team is probably over taxed.  Maybe once modding comes out challenges can be community created.  The way the Archivist challenge works with the mapping out of locations to visit would be an easy adaptation. 

I have to confess that the initial idea (interloper Paperboy) of delivering twenty three newspaper rolls is more satisfying than this ongoing weekly challenge.  The feeling after completion is very similar to the other challenges, however the scenario just does not jive with a survivor in the wilderness.  Maybe the story could have the character sustain a serious blow to the head knocking them back to childhood or a bad case of cabin fever or something ingested that is intoxicating with hallucinations.  Another angle could be a Forest Talker that delivers codes to the other members.  The need to connect this challenge into the current scenario is still open.  Rewriting The Long Dark Paperboy challenge will need to be done after I complete my Voyageur Easy Street challenge. 

The rule I am interested in adding requires that the twenty three newspaper rolls once delivered to Mystery Lake Camp Office must then be on person until the challenge completion.  This gives the full paperboy delivery experience.  Ah the memories of winter with deep snow and lugging a heavy sack of paper nearly the same weight as myself brings on the nostalgia.  So this is just a must have condition.

So far my trials have shown that newspaper rolls are in limited supply on interloper.  My current play through on Voyageur is looking reasonable with already more than a dozen newspaper rolls found just within Milton.  I have not tested Stalker until today. Found six newspaper rolls and two readable books within Milton town.  So just as in interloper a substitution is needed for the newspaper rolls.  Cash was introduced as a substitute because of its rarity but seems a loose end to tie to a story making it a less desirable character.  The points for newspaper rolls are premium.  This allows the challenge to be completed on the more difficult levels but with RNG and the level of scouring for newspaper rolls dictates the final score.

My last interloper test was showing more readable books available compared to newspaper rolls.  It was not extensive but included Milton, Mystery Lake,  Coastal Highway through to Desolation Point.  A three point system could be used.

Three points for the Newspaper Roll

Two points for the Readable Book

One point for the Regular Book

Delivery of something to all twenty three mailboxes is needed for challenge completion