Mystery Solved: Silent Drops
Thanks to some keen insights from a clever veteran player and some detective code work, we have finally solved the mystery of 'Silent Drops'. First lemme explain what this is for those who don't know:
Silent Drops occur when a player reindexes a blog, expecting a rare industry listed in the top 5 industries of the blog's page to have Ideas produced, but finds that no rare Ideas are produced. Even when the rare is listed as the top industry, it still does not get produced. In fact, once the blog is voted into 5 or more /other/ industries, the rare will never produce on that blog again.
Ever.
This has been both a frustration for some and a nifty bit of knowledge for some keen strategy by a select few. It's not a bug in a traditional sense in that the code did exactly as it was expected to.
However, this effect was never the intended result, and as such, a change is being made immediately. The problem centered around the query used to select which industries to produce ideas during the drop. It did not consider total votes. So, for example, if Gaelic Football had +12 votes, and English, USA, Male, Sports, and Life all had +6, Gaelic Football would /never/ be produced because the query only looked for the first 5 Industries meeting requirements for production. That order was decided solely by industry id #, so older (and almost always /not/ rare) industries produced every time on that blog. Gaelic Football would never again have a chance to produce.
So, the change being made is to add an ORDER BY which considers vote total in order to select the 5 industries for production.
Be Forewarned This may well be a major change in Idea play. It means rare industries have significantly /underproduced/ over the past couple of years. We could see significant drops of previously rare or dead industries, we may see cash crunches hit the market, and many former great investments may slump as a result. All in all, this change /should/ be a very good thing for the economy since it will force the investment decision making to be proactive rather than inactive as it is now. As cash is consumed, purchase decisions will become more complicated.
This change will be made immediately, but you will only gradually begin to 'feel' the effects as blogs which haven't produced rares in a long time are being reindexed. The effects will become significant over time, and the medium to long term market is not easily predictable.
Good luck!