Clash of the pirates!

So, I’m trying to solve this new problem, but I shall use an analogy to simplify the otherwise complex rules…

Suppose we’re a marine coast detective; our task is to investigate the recent pirate hijacking events in our coastal area.

  • There are 19 pirate clan ships altogether in the local area. On each ship, there was at least 1 treasure chest asset, where each chest contains 1B (one billion) gold coins. In addition, each clan may or may nor have additional assets of gold coins that are not safely kept in chests.

  • In a hijack event, the offensive clan’s goal is to increase their total amount of treasure chests by just one. Since each chest’s capacity is 1B gold coins, that means they have an exact target of gold coins to rob, depending on how many exposed gold coins they already have. For example, if they already have 500 million exposed gold coins, they’ll rob exactly another 500 million, thereby achieving their goal to increase their chest quantity by 1. Suppose they started with 1 chest and 500 million exposed coins, they would have 2 full capacity chests plus zero exposed coins after a successful hijack, in total.

  • When an offensive clan hijacks another, if the target victim clan did not have enough exposed gold coins on the ship to fulfil their offensive party’s goal, the offensive party shall open one chest from their opponent and only take the remaining gold coins that they needed. For example, the target victim’s initial chests were 5 and initial exposed coins were 100 million. If their hijacker was seeking only 500 million coins, they would take the 100 million exposed coins plus 400 million more from one of the chests, leaving the victim with a net asset of 4 chests and 600 million exposed coins.

  • The table below lists all pirate clans in the area with their assets prior to recent hijacking events. The event was a chain sequence reaction, where the order of event started from the first row. By default, the previous row is the hijacker and the subsequent row is the target victim, meaning that each victim is potentially a hijacker after they themselves were hijacked.

  • However, not all clans were offensive. Some were neutral parties. Neutral parties did not hijack others - they are characterized by one of these two criteria: those left with zero remaining exposed gold coins after being hijacked, hence they tend to reserve their resources (whatever treasure chests they have left), or those who were not attacked by the previous row whilst at the same time have no exposed gold coins, except for the treasure chests which they hold dear to. Both categories of neutral parties share this resource-saving nature. Meanwhile, the last row will always be a neutral party regardless of how many exposed gold coins they are left with after being attacked, or not being attacked at all.

  • By default, a party who’s left with at least 1 exposed coin after being attacked, or after their previous row decided not to attack them, will always be offensive in nature. Having some exposed coins is an incentive for them to seek for more.

Pirate clans Treasure chests amount Exposed gold coins
Adam 3 500000
Brody 100 999500000
Izzy Backyet 40 0
Jack Sparrow 2 300
Jim Nasium 1 999999700
Beverly Heele 2 10
Eve Ning 1 999999999
Hart Breaker 5 999999999
Heinrich Maneuver 1 0
Juana Beer 77 454773230
Kay Nein 60 628114274
Lessis Moore 80 8725473
Manny Kin 80 268267402
Minnie Sota 1000 44752005
Phil O’ Sophy 500500 390920431
Rob Banks 50500 308463009
Sue Purb 4000 77435719
Walter Melon 21 510797692
Wendy Day 1 17533187

Our task as an investigator is twofold:

  1. To study the net asset distribution after all events have taken place from the first row to the last.
  2. To distinguish the neutral parties from the offensive, by studying who’s targeting who.

A successful investigation shall end with this outcome:

Clan names Remaining treasure chests Remaining gold coins (exposed only) Target victims (as an offensor)
Adam 4 0 Brody
Brody 100 0 -
Izzy Backyet 40 0 -
Jack Sparrow 3 0 Jim Nasium
Jim Nasium 1 0 -
Beverly Heele 3 0 Eve Ning
Eve Ning 2 0 Hart Breaker
Hart Breaker 6 0 Heinrich Maneuver
Heinrich Maneuver 1 0 Juana Beer
Juana Beer 77 0 Kay Nein
Kay Nein 61 0 Lessis Moore
Lessis Moore 80 0 Manny Kin
Manny Kin 80 0 Minnie Sota
Minnie Sota 1000 0 Phil O’ Sophy
Phil O’ Sophy 500500 0 Rob Banks
Rob Banks 50501 0 Sue Purb
Sue Purb 4000 0 Walter Melon
Walter Melon 21 0 Wendy Day
Wendy Day 0 709782510 -

Let me know if additional info is needed :slightly_smiling_face:

Regards,
Captain Jack :pirate_flag: :parrot:

2 Likes

Will you share the spoils of this adventure with whoever manages to crack this? :smiley:

On a more serious note: Really like how you turned this into quite an analogy.

Obviously nothing that can be solved in a lunch break but may have a crack at this later :slight_smile:

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@MartinDDDD

It’s up!!! :laughing:

This is the closest I could get to it. I think there’s a minor mistake in my manual calculation when I posted this. So there are two rows that differ with the “expected outcome”.

Unlike the other related post of mine which was based on real-world case, this one was a conceptual exercise, so there’s no real world dataset to test the results on. Proceed with caution.

Here’s the workflow “solution” : Clash of the pirates.knwf (262.7 KB)

Moving on to new things.

2 Likes

Still on my list will post when I get to it :slight_smile:

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