could someone please explain the luck stats, with maybe a copy paste of one board and detailed explanation on what each figure means?

i tried to understand them by myself but can't really suceed in doing so.

thanks

I would like to echo ecko's question. 

As far as I can tell, a score of 2.0  ten moves into the game is much luckier than a score of 2.0 one-thousand moves into the game.  It's all dependent on how many dice you've thrown.  Or am I mistaken?

I'm assuming there's no correlation to StDev.

I know tom mentioned the luck stats don't apply well to SimulGear boards but why is that?

And do the luck stats work well with damage dice?  

I've noticed in a game of Rockem Sockem that when attacking with 3 units against 2 (75% v 75%), in the event I score 2 kills and the defender scores two kills, the luck stat calculates an even luck.  Help me understand that scenario if "good luck" to me would be to land all 3 units as kills.

Luck doesn't work the same in SimulGear due to how battles are resolved, so games with SG have some wacky luck stats I believe.

(Dice are potentially going to be similar, but I'm not sure that is set up completely yet).

My understanding is that a luck stat of 10 means you really should have 10 less units than you currently do and a luck stat of -10 means you really should have 10 more units than you currently do.  This is based upon your dice rolls attacking and defending, with number of dice thrown (3/2/1), number of sides of dice, and border modifiers.

I'm really not positive on this though.

Example: http://www.wargear.net/games/luck/45463

Dud should really have lost 3.5 more units.

Tesctassa II should really have had (or killed) 9.66 more units.

Sky should really have lost 10.27 more units.

GeneralMustard should really have had (or killed) 3.38 more units.

Neutral should really have had (or killed) 0.73 more units.

Again, I think this is what it means.

Yertle wrote:

Dud should really have lost 3.5 more units.

This is my understanding as well.   But if this is the case, then the  number above doesn't really tell you how lucky Dud is or isn't because it doesn't take into account how many rolls it took to get to that number. 

For instance if with 7 dice rolled, Dud was expected to lose 3.5 armies ..but he lost every roll, he would achieve this number.

One the other hand  if Dud was suppose to lose 1000.5 armies with 2000 dice being rolled ..and he he lost 1004, he would still have the same luck stat.

In the former case we would say he was pretty unlucky, but in the latter we would say that he's pretty much getting the amount of wins that you would expect. E.g. he is neither lucky or unlucky.

In my opinion, at the very least there needs to be some kind of multiplier applied that takes into account the number of events.

I wait till tom says something, but I think this isn't really measuring the "luck". Apparently who wins is the "lucky one".

I just won three games and on everyone I had a luck score at least 4 times higher than that of the second player. Which, by the way, was the last one to be eliminated.

This isn't convincing....

=/

Sry, edited the post while you were answering (=

I'll wait till tom explain something. And here's a question: will the "luck score" appear into the rankings??? =P

Tesctassa II wrote:

I just won three games and on everyone I had a luck score at least 4 times higher than that of the second player. Which, by the way, was the last one to be eliminated.

http://www.wargear.net/games/view/45509

http://www.wargear.net/games/luck/45509

3 games isn't very many to check.

Although it does make sense that the person with the Luck will be the winner, which is the same as when you play manual Risk too.

M57 wrote:

This is my understanding as well.   But if this is the case, then the  number above doesn't really tell you how lucky Dud is or isn't because it doesn't take into account how many rolls it took to get to that number. 

Yes you have to see it in context to get some grasp of what Luck means to the game, but Luck as defined by number of troops you should have will be the same whether there are 10 rolls or 10,000 rolls.

Redefining Luck could lead to other discussion, but I think that could be tough to do as well.

I'll have to defer to Alpha on the best explanation for the Luck figure. But yes a 2.0 luck value after 10,000 turns is not as significant as a 2.0 after 10 turns as your Luck score will tend to 0 and the number of turns tends to infinity. This is exactly what you would expect for a zero sum calculation of luck.

If you want to work out your luck between a limited set of turns you can use the TurnID slider (just below the chart) to change this range.

The luck calculations are valid for border with modifiers, e.g. when you are attacking with a 10 sided vs 6 sided die.

tom wrote:

I'll have to defer to Alpha on the best explanation for the Luck figure. But yes a 2.0 luck value after 10,000 turns is not as significant as a 2.0 after 10 turns as your Luck score will tend to 0 and the number of turns tends to infinity. This is exactly what you would expect for a zero sum calculation of luck.

If you want to work out your luck between a limited set of turns you can use the TurnID slider (just below the chart) to change this range.

The luck calculations are valid for border with modifiers, e.g. when you are attacking with a 10 sided vs 6 sided die.

Thx for the explanation. (=

And thx Yertle for the games. Noticed them only now.

(=

Yertle's got it right.

Alpha likes to get chatty about these things. I'll say the benefits of the luck system are

-zero sum

-easy to understand and interpret

-***might solve, once and for all, the RNG vs. "streaks just happen" debate. More on this later (maybe).

Alpha, expand. Please.

M, if we divide by the luck stat by number of rolls, to get an "average luck" stat, then a person's luck will almost surely converge to zero, as the number of rolls increase (as predicted by the law of large numbers). For low turn games, it might have some worth.

Damn, student just showed up. Signing off.

Sooo, what about Luck stats for SimulGear :)?

I think 11s was working on them for his WF Script, dunno how far he got though.  It does look as if High Roller and Robolincoln from WF defined BAO "Luck" in Robo's plugin.

It really shouldn't be all that difficult to define should it (actually should be easier shouldn't it?)?  Isn't it pretty much just a difference of what the Attacker/Defender actually killed in comparison with what the SG dice are set to for that order?  Now if that information is kept/stored/easily accessible would be questionable.

Exactly Yert. The SG formulas are easier.

Another complication, M, is when dice mods are thrown in. I remember testing a map with nygma, that had 5v6 dice everywhere. If you remember afssportsguy from TOS, he didn't like the map because "he never felt lucky". I really liked his take on things... even though he was probably near the expected amount of losses while attacking, he was used to 6v6, and, he was never around for the defensive turns when he crushed.

As Yertle said, any luck stat will require interpretation and context from the observer to give it meaning. Also, by tamping down the luck in later rounds, there is the opposite problem: If I lose 100 more units than I should in a late-game turn that triggered my elimination, It might show up as barely a blip by comparison to the -3 luck in the first turn. How can you guarantee that the -100 will be a deeper trough in the luck chart than the early losses, since that was the turn where I was "truly unlucky".

Usually, later turns => more units => higher chance for runs. I wouldn't want to lose that sensitivity in the luck chart by trying to normalize by turns/dice mods/units, etc.

Or at least make two charts where the 2nd chart tries to account for all that stuff.

It's probably the thing I like the most about the luck stat: it's absolutely transparent. You lost more/less units than you should. Period.

This is a response to a post in the Suggestions Box but I felt was more appropriate to discuss in this thread:

How do the luck stats deal once players start being eliminated?  Does the balance of luck then get redistributed among the remaining players?  If looking at the luck stat graph would there be a "jump" in the luck when one player gets eliminated?

I apologize guys, but I cannot be too chatty.  So, here are the basics:

The luck stat is based completely on expected values (in terms of the number of kills).  Here is a brief explanation in a limited case.

When taking a attack, 3 attacking units 2 defending units, 6 sided dice, the probabilities are:
Attacker kills 2: .372
Attacker kills 1: .336
Attacker kills 0: .293
so, the attacker expects to kill 2(.372)+1(.336)+0(.293) = 1.08 of the defenders armies every attack.

This information is well know.  What Mongrel and I proposed is to keep a running tab of the difference from actual kills to expected kills.  That is using the same setup:
Attack kills 2: 2 actual kills - 1.08 expected kills = .92 luck.

This is the way it works for the defender as well with an expected kill of .92.

Without any other details of how expected values are calculated, this is what luck is measuring.

So, as Yertle said, a luck of 33 at any point in the game really means that a player has kill 33 more armies during the game than was expected.

Properties of luck:
  zero sum:  The sum of all of the players luck is always zero.  This implies that for one player to be "lucky", someone else is "unlucky".
  no limit:  There is no limit to how high or low a players luck can be.
  generalizes:  Since this has a basic premise, it easily generalized to all dice modified borders.

Interpretation:
  The best way to interpret luck is locally.  That is, if the luck stat jump up drastically ("good luck") or if the luck stat drops drastically ("bad luck").  Stagnate unchanging luck means that you are killing units at the expected rate.

The one thing that is not fully captured is that if a player is lucky early on, they will probably have a high luck stat as a result.  Usually, the end of the game is what matters the most and if during this time a player is very unlucky, their luck stat may show them as have positive overall luck even though they lost due to a bad turn at the end of the game.