Thourough Test: Everything you need to know about dupe movement speed on running/flying/tubing

[Z0366]

The running speed is not what I thought it was, so I throw a small 100 meter running for my dupes and found out the following that I thought you guys would like to know. If you dont like reading, jump to the end for base construction conclusion.

Lets define a dupe with 0 athletics on normal tile to have speed of 1unit/sec (it is not 1 tile per sec)

1. The speed bonus of the tile is not "added" to dupe speed, but "multiplied to".

As shown below, a dupe with -5 athletics on metal tile, is 25% slowe than a dupe with 0 athletics on normal tile

This is because -5 dupe base speed is 0.5, with metal tile it become 0.5*(1+0.5 from metal tile)=0.5*1.5=0.75

2. Athletic skill is a direct addition to speed, so a dupe with athletics 3 is at speed 1.3 and so on. By combining the knowledge of 1, we can conclude that athletic skill is important as it can be amplified by the tile bonus, a dupe with 20 athletics can run at speed of 3*1.5=4.5 on metal tile, 4.5 times faster than a new dupe on normal tile. If your average travelling time is 45% (which is already OK for a large base) for new dupe, it will be 21% travel and 78% work for dupe with 20 athletics (considering doing the same type of errands)

3. Jumping is 13% slower, a regular jumping dupe is equivalently running at 0.87 unit of speed. While he is jumping, his athletics skill does NOT work. This is to say, it is a fixed animation for all dupes. Those who go faster cannot jump faster, they only run faster when they are on a tile or ladder.

4. Climbing is the worst,  climbing up and down equivalently force the dupe to run at 50% of the speed, regardless of its athletics. Avoid stairs whenever possible.

5. Ladders follow the same rule as tiles, their speed bonus is multiplied on the atheltic speed.

6. However, Surprisingly firepole ignore dupe athletics and provide a speed of 4 unit per sec travelling down, when climbing up, athletics works. (Doubt anybody really uses firepole for climbing up)

6. Flying ignore the dupe athletic skill as well, flying is at a speed of 1 unit. unless they are walking on tile even if dressed, in which case the suit debuff works.  Flying in any speed is at speed of 1. So, when flying diagonally (tested below, dupe is flying a 70*70 square diagonally and is faster than ladder + nobuff tile), it can be considered to be 1.414 times faster. (dupes will need to walk horizontally then climb). Still, it maybe much faster to construct a scaffolding of ladders and firepoles around your rocket, because by then your dupes are likely with at least 9 athletics.

7. Transit tube vs firepole. Transit tube is faster than firepole in side the tube. In a long journey, even considering the time it takes the station to suck the dupe into the tube, the transit tube evens firepole at 70 tiles depth and wins afterward.

Conclusion:

standard speed: 0 athletic dupe running on natural/nobuff tile.

1. Training athletics is important to improve efficiency in later large base, faster dupes goes even faster on speed-boosting tiles as the bonus multiply.

2. avoid jumping gaps and stairs design, they are slower than walking and neither athletics nor tiles help these animation speed.

3.  firepoles goes 4 times faster than standard speed and ignores athletic skill when going down.

4. Flying ignores dupe athletics skill and is the same as standard speed in all direction (when travelling diagonally, it takes shorter duration as the path is 1/1.414 shorter than walking and climbing). Building ladders/transit tubes and firepoles are faster.

5. Transit tube is faster than fire pole, considering the animation it takes to suck in a dupe, transit tube wins if the journey down is longer than 70 tiles.

[Aelfled]

Nice research!

[malloc]

Do corners in a tube make a difference (i.e. up 50 then sideways 50 vs [up 1, sideways 1, repeat 50 times]) ?

[BLACKBERREST3]

It seems like these guys didn't do proper testing.

Very nice research! I always used the ladder-pole combo early game because it helped with airflow and speed. Now after reading this, it appears I don't have to make any changes nearing the late game. What puzzles me is that some people were saying that ladders can be faster than poles, but that is simply not possible from what your saying. Is there more to this or is this not possible?

Spoiler

skill cap 20 = 3 units of speed

3*1.2=3.6 (plastic ladder)

3.6>4 (fire pole)

 

[SharraShimada]

Ladders are faster than poles, but only upwards. Donwwards there is nothing matching a pole.

[Grimgaw]

1 hour ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

Donwwards there is nothing matching a pole.

In case you didn't read the OP, tubes are faster.

[Z0366]

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

It seems like these guys didn't do proper testing.

Very nice research! I always used the ladder-pole combo early game because it helped with airflow and speed. Now after reading this, it appears I don't have to make any changes nearing the late game. What puzzles me is that some people were saying that ladders can be faster than poles, but that is simply not possible from what your saying. Is there more to this or is this not possible?

Let me introduce DIgger 10, my athletic 22 dude, he cannot beat researcher 1 who is on a firepole down. So, firepole is faster whatsoever. In fact you can confirm it by their default behaviour, when they travel down, they themselves will choose firepole by default calculation.

 

3 hours ago, BLACKBERREST3 said:

 

 

 

 

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skill cap 20 = 3 units of speed

3*1.2=3.6 (plastic ladder)

3.6>4 (fire pole)

 

 

6 hours ago, malloc said:

Do corners in a tube make a difference (i.e. up 50 then sideways 50 vs [up 1, sideways 1, repeat 50 times]) ?

A very good question! It made a huge difference. Tubes going diagonally is much slower than that going straight sideway and down. Apparently there is an aceleration process in the tube, every time a turn is taken, the speed is reduced. So, the less turning, the better.