moosehead Posted March 16, 2001 Author Share Posted March 16, 2001 Originally posted by moosehead: This and other bad luck experiences seem to occur far too frequently in a game when your the one in the lead. At the risk of being flamed and ridiculed some more , I will try to get my point across once more. As I said before, I think these "luck" incidents occur too frequently. Not that they shouldnt occur at all. If a lucky shot, were to happen 1% of the time, I should have only seen this once, maybe. (I have not played 100 games) But I have seen it prob 25% of the time, I have played. And, I agree with Michael, being 10 metres away from a tank and knocking it out isnt luck. Balls, Definitly yes, luck , no. And who let Rommel22 out of his playpen! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanir Posted March 16, 2001 Share Posted March 16, 2001 Oh, come on. Nobody's flaming you (well, except for Rommel22 who was acting more like Rommel15). I would bet my last dollar that "luck" incidents happen in more than 25% of real battles. They probably happen in more than 25% or your CM battles as well, but most of them are of the less significant type that you don't notice. I get the impression that our explanations of why this is normal and good have not been entirely understood, but I don't know how to explain it any better so I'll have to leave it at that. ------------------ What a bunch of horsecrap. -Steve [This message has been edited by Vanir (edited 03-16-2001).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forever Babra Posted March 17, 2001 Share Posted March 17, 2001 Originally posted by moosehead: And, I agree with Michael, being 10 metres away from a tank and knocking it out isnt luck. Balls, Definitly yes, luck , no. If you were playing CM and a PIAT crew popped out into the middle of the road, wasted your panther, mowed down the passengers (I know, not possible in CM, but bear with me...) then drove off your remaining armour and infantry, not only would there be a hue and cry of "the a/i cheats!", but I'd hazard a guess you'd think he was pretty gosh-darn lucky too. I believe it was Descartes, in his essays on probabilities, who summed it up best: Stuff Happens. To use this "1%" rarity figure which has popped up, how many individual times do all units fire in the course of a game as a sum total? Thousands! So even at what we consider to be a rare 1%, there should be DOZENS of freak shots in every game. We know there aren't that many. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L.Tankersley Posted March 17, 2001 Share Posted March 17, 2001 Originally posted by moosehead: As I said before, I think these "luck" incidents occur too frequently. Not that they shouldnt occur at all. If a lucky shot, were to happen 1% of the time, I should have only seen this once, maybe. (I have not played 100 games) But I have seen it prob 25% of the time, I have played. It is well-known that humans are not particularly good (in fact, they're very, very bad) at estimating probabilities unless they've been specially trained to do so. (Two professions that are good at this: meteorologists and bookies.) If you say you've seen a certain unusual event in 25% of the games you have played, I immediately suspect that it's more like 5% or 10%. Not because you're dishonest, but because of the way memory works. It is much easier to recall salient (interesting) events than it is run-of-the-mill events. Also, it should be considered that everything that happens in CM is based to some degree on luck. There is randomness in how long it takes units to start moving (not much, it's mostly determined by experience level and command bonus, but there's a random variation in there as well), when targets are spotted, how effective fire is, whether a vehicle bogs in this particular tile and on and on. There are probably thousands of pseudo-random-number draws made every turn in a moderate-to-large scenario. Remember too that a particular shot is not "lucky" or "unlucky;" rather, it either hits the target or misses. If the actual hit chance is say 5%, there is no difference between "rolling" 6% and 99%: both times, the shot is a miss. Was the 6% roll "luckier" than the 99% roll? But to get back to your example numbers, for you to expect to see a "1% event" occur in 25% of your games, then there would have to be a chance of that event (that is, a random draw made to determine whether the event occurred or not) occurring roughly 25 times per game. If the event in question is an unlikely hit/kill of an AFV, this means that many shots would have to be taken over the course of the scenario. This number isn't out-of-line even for fairly small scenarios. And of course, this notional "1% chance" is just a number someone pulled out of thin air. We know very little about the detailed probabilities of occurrance of any of the events CM models. And finally, as others have pointed out these chances are independent. If you get a weak-spot penetration on your first shot of a scenario, this has absolutely no effect on the likelihood of your panzershreck team hitting a fast-moving hellcat at 200m on the next turn. [Actually, with a pseudo-random-number generator the events aren't really independent, but with a good algorithm they are effectively independent, and more importantly they are not predictable without knowledge of the state of the algorithm.] ------------------ Leland J. Tankersley Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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