About Faster Idling

[LCNYSL]

I just noticed one thing. If you idle for 2 hours and an wait amount of time (I don't exacly know how many hours) then you can get drops instanteneously if you run and exit a game (with card drops available) irrespective of the playtime. This makes idling much much faster. For now I can do it manually. But such a feature can be implemented to the program.

To be clearer, I will go on for an example:

Lets say you have 30 games to idle with 3 card drops each = Total 90 cards.



Current Method:

You idled all together = 2 hours

Lets say an average of 1.5 hours is required to get all drops for each game = Total 45 hours



My suggestion:

You idled all together = 2 hours

You runned and exited the games one by one = Get 30 (amount of games) cards instanteously. Note that IM can do this procedure very quickly.

Wait or idle a bit further to the next time when you get drops by only running and exiting the game (say it 12 hours, i really don't know exact time, but I think it should not be too difficult to figure out, I use this method once a day and it works), by the time you can idle for games which have more card drops available (with 5 drops available etc.) = 36 hours



Even for 30 games it is possible to save time and more importantly this method is independent of the number of the games to idle. Current method is still more effective if you have few games, but in this method, required time is the same for 50 games and 500 games. The only consideration is the number of cards each game provides.

[MrL0G1C]

Idle master is no longer under development.
Better place for discussion would be on ASF forum because that's still under development.

[MrL0G1C]

Idling together brings no benefit, it's just there for people who have 2hour drop restriction because they got a steam store refund at some point.

Idling 5 games together simply takes 5 times as long for card to drop as when you idle 1 game.

The stop to drop method mostly only works on the 1st card of the set, if the game has been in the library for a long time then you might get lucky and get more quick drops.

[MrL0G1C]

Most games drop a card every 30 minutes, some games drop a card every hour.

If you idle games for 2 hours then you also risk getting less than 4 drops after the 2 hours (1 for each 30min).

[MrL0G1C]

A test needs to be done to determine:
If you start a game that still has all card drops, and then stop it quickly to get the 1st card to drop, does the last drop happen sooner or does it still happen after 30min per card total.

So is it:
card1 at 1min card2 at 31min card 3 at 61min or

card1 at 1min card2 at 60min card3 at 90min or

card1 at 1min, card2 at 31min, card3 at 90min.

I think different games behave don't all drop the same, I don't know the determining factor.

[LCNYSL]

Originally posted by MrL0G1C:

Idling together brings no benefit, it's just there for people who have 2hour drop restriction because they got a steam store refund at some point.

Idling 5 games together simply takes 5 times as long for card to drop as when you idle 1 game.

The stop to drop method mostly only works on the 1st card of the set, if the game has been in the library for a long time then you might get lucky and get more quick drops.

Thanks for quick reply.

I am not sure if this works everytime but for even 1st card, this reduces the amount of time significantly. As far as I experienced, a single run through all games (just run the game and exit) results in card drop. I didn't closely look if it was their first card however. Nevertheless, this should not take much time for IM.

[LCNYSL]

Originally posted by MrL0G1C:

A test needs to be done to determine:
If you start a game that still has all card drops, and then stop it quickly to get the 1st card to drop, does the last drop happen sooner or does it still happen after 30min per card total.

So is it:
card1 at 1min card2 at 31min card 3 at 61min or

card1 at 1min card2 at 60min card3 at 90min or

card1 at 1min, card2 at 31min, card3 at 90min.

I think different games behave don't all drop the same, I don't know the determining factor.

Such a test might be good, and can be useful if the case is

Originally posted by MrL0G1C:

card1 at 1min card2 at 31min card 3 at 61min or

But I am still in doubt that this method is only for first card, If you are sure about it, I won't insist, but why not try again after some amount of time passes (couple of hours to 1 day).
When large amounts of games are in concern, even 1 day is not too much time.

I agree that the time between drops varies with game, but that should have no effect with this kind of procedure as long as run&exit method works for all card drops of a game (not only 1st one).

Or maybe, one just doesn't need to keep the PC open through a night and just get the cards by only running IM once a day

[MrL0G1C]

So I did some tests and:

Testing now (using steam-idle.exe), 1 Moment Of Time: Silentville, Release Date: 21 Jul, 2016, just bought it, not installed.
Start 1:54pm
Stop 1:55pm 1st Card didn't drop!

Testing now (using steam-idle.exe), Turret Terminator, just bought it,Release Date: 1 Mar, 2017., not installed.
Start 1:58pm
Stop 2:02pm 1st Card didn't drop!

Testing now (using Steam client), Turret Terminator, installed.
Start 2:28pm
Stop 2:31pm 1st Card dropped :-)

Testing now (using steam-idle.exe), 1 Moment Of Time: Silentville, installed.
Start 2:32pm
Stop 2:34pm 1st Card didn't drop!

Testing now (using Steam client), 1 Moment Of Time: Silentville.
Start 2:37pm
Stop 2:40pm 1st Card dropped :-)

Testing now (using steam-idle.exe, 1 Moment Of Time: Silentville.
Start 3:00pm
Stop 3:04pm 2nd Card did not drop

Testing now (using Steam client), 1 Moment Of Time: Silentville.
Start 3:06pm
Stop 3:07pm 2nd Card dropped :-)

Testing now (using Steam client), Turret Terminator,.
Start 3:14pm
Stop 3:16pm 2nd Card did not drop

Testing now (using Steam client), 1 Moment Of Time: Silentville.
Start 3:18pm
Stop 3:20pm 3rd Card did not drop

Testing now (using Idle Master), Turret Terminator.
Stop 3:28pm 2nd Card did not drop

Testing now (using Idle Master), 1 Moment Of Time: Silentville.
Start 3:42pm
Stop 3:45pm 3rd Card dropped :-)

Testing now (using Idle Master), 1 Moment Of Time: Silentville.
Start 3:50pm
Stop 3:53pm 4th Card dropped :-)

Testing now (using Idle Master), 1 Moment Of Time: Silentville.
Start 3:54pm
Stop 3:5pm 5th Card did not drop

Testing now (using Steam client), 1 Moment Of Time: Silentville.
Start 4:06pm
Stop 4:09pm 5th/Final card dropped :-) Total playing time only 31 minutes according to steam library page.

Testing now (using Steam client), Turret Terminator.
3 minutes, 2nd Card did not drop

Testing now (using Idle Master), Turret Terminator.
3 minutes, 2nd Card did not drop

Testing now (using Idle Master), Turret Terminator.
Played to 41 minutes, 2nd Card dropped

Testing now (using Steam client), Turret Terminator,.
Played to 49 minutes, 3rd Card did not drop

Testing now (using Idle Master), Turret Terminator.
Played to 60 minutes, 3rd/Final card dropped :-) Total playing time only 60 minutes according to steam library page.

Finish time 5:22pm Total cards = 8, total time = 3½ Hours, in game time 1½hours, saving ½hour.

Noteworthy: Both these games have steam cloud and achievements.

[MrL0G1C]

Conclusions:

Hard to conclude anything other than different games behave differently, installing the game seems to help the 1st card drop faster.

[LCNYSL]

Thanks for your effort. I hope it helped