Is luck smoothed out over time?

ruskicanuk · Post by **ruskicanuk** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 7:13 pm

Does the engine automatically "balance out" things or is each attack totally random? Unless I am going crazy, it seems that if I win a few attacks (beat the odds) then shortly after I get bad luck and it seems to kind of cancel itself out. Is this the case?

edahl1980 · Post by **edahl1980** » Thu Sep 29, 2011 9:14 pm

I have bad luck every time my BF109F tries to shoot down a Soviet fighter that is not the I16.

Kerensky · Post by **Kerensky** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 12:18 am

That 109F has the low attack of 12, which hurts it pretty badly. I usually stay with the 109E until the 109G comes out, skipping the F all-together.

ffl310 · Post by **ffl310** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 12:30 am

But the F had the best flying performances. It was the cleanest one.
For the game I prefer more fuel. 109E has really short legs.

Kerensky · Post by **Kerensky** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 1:03 am

To each their own.

The F has superior everything over the E (defense, initiative, fuel and even speed) but with my play style, all that takes back seat to raw killing power, which the E wins at.

The point though is that bad luck 109F is attributed to lower attack ratings (lower % to kill will more consistently result in under-performance or 'bad luck') 10% kill chance to doesn't mean you get 1 kill per 10 shots, it means 10 shots each have a 10% success rate. Miss 9 times in a row, that 10th shot still only has a 10% success rate.

Obsolete · Post by **Obsolete** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 3:49 am

Unless I am going crazy, it seems that if I win a few attacks (beat the odds) then shortly after I get bad luck and it seems to kind of cancel itself out. Is this the case?

There is no memory, but due to the way that averaging works out in the long run, this could be what you are seeing.

Post by **IainMcNeil** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 8:31 am

With the number of combat calculations made, even within a single turn its very likely the luck will even out. Statistically it will be almost guaranteed to be even in a scenario and over teh course of a campaign almost impossible not to average out. One issue is that bad results are more noticeable. This is just human perception though - we often forget the times when we were lucky and put it down to good generalship, while bad results are bad luck

If you have ever been to a wargames compeition you'll see the bar after a game and you only ever hear how unlucky people were. Nobody ever says they were lucky!

Longasc · Post by **Longasc** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 10:50 am

Kerensky wrote:To each their own.
The F has superior everything over the E (defense, initiative, fuel and even speed) but with my play style, all that takes back seat to raw killing power, which the E wins at.

The point though is that bad luck 109F is attributed to lower attack ratings (lower % to kill will more consistently result in under-performance or 'bad luck') 10% kill chance to doesn't mean you get 1 kill per 10 shots, it means 10 shots each have a 10% success rate. Miss 9 times in a row, that 10th shot still only has a 10% success rate.

I think the BF109E,F,G,K are superbly balanced and also portray history quite accurately.
One thing that is near impossible to portray in Panzer Corps is how lousy the early FW 190s performed at high altitudes.

But the Messerschmitts are really nicely balanced. The E has more firepower but the F is likely to shoot first against most planes due to initiative. I like that!

Longasc · Post by **Longasc** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 10:53 am

P.S.:

http://www.amazon.com/Statistics-4th-Da ... 393929728/
&
damn, I forgot the title of the book dealing with the psychological effects of random numbers: basically, we often tend to see patterns where there are none and tend to forget out lucky wins while remembering disaster a lot. As Ian McNeil stated, human perception.

So yes, random number generator is random!

ruskicanuk · Post by **ruskicanuk** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 4:19 pm

Yes - I thought that might be the case. The law of big numbers.

Longasc wrote:P.S.:

http://www.amazon.com/Statistics-4th-Da ... 393929728/
&
damn, I forgot the title of the book dealing with the psychological effects of random numbers: basically, we often tend to see patterns where there are none and tend to forget out lucky wins while remembering disaster a lot. As Ian McNeil stated, human perception.

So yes, random number generator is random!

Razz1 · Post by **Razz1** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 5:31 pm

I'm not sure the luck is spread out. A few people have reported all bad luck for one turn or all good luck per turn.

I believe that's what I see too.

It's really hard if you get bad dice roll for the whole turn.

Still would like more feedback to see if this is what others are experiencing. Streaks.

Tarrak · Post by **Tarrak** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 11:16 pm

Well it's hard to really says if there are massive streaks of bad or good luck really then what Longasc posted is very true. Human tend to see patterns where there are none and remember bad rolls a lot better then good rolls. Over a long period the luck surely even out but short term it can have devastating effects either to the good or bad. I seen both good luck streaks and bad luck streaks tho they do not happen often. In any case they can change an else quite balanced scenario into easy win or almost certain loss tho. But as the frequency is not very high, rather on the contrary i can live with that.

The problem i see tho is that in a campaign you love and care for you precious core units and it really sucks to lose some of them. If i make a mistake it's my own fault but if i lose one or even more high experienced units just to a bad RNG can be very frustrating. I personally do not mind it really so much as it keeps me on my toes and hey it's war so casualties happens, others may see it differently of course.