Mission percentages bugged

Ive been noticing more problems with this as time goes on. It seems that at certain points the game won't let you perform certain things no matter how many times you try. I noticed this awhile ago when I was trying to get my princess to marry a general. She had 8/10 charm but no matter how many times I reloaded the game it never went right and she always "ran off with her lover".

The other day I tried to kill off an enemy faction leader, some lunnybin that had undoubtably been sniffing paint and drinking lead for most of his life, with my top notice assassin (12/10). The mission percentage was 37% and my assassin died. I tried reloading about 10 times in a row and every single time my assassin was killed. On a 1 star faction leader ?! WTF

Now I know what your going to say, the percentages just played against you and you were very unlucky. Well today I was trying to sneek my spy into an enemy town. It said that he had 100% chance of success and he got killed. :inquisitive: :gah:

I've seen the 100% success rated death with spies too.

All mission percentages are rounded to the nearest 5%. IIRC from other TW games, no missions has a true success rate of much over 99%. Hence, on M2TW, if your percentage is 96%, it'll say 100% even though it isn't.

So far the highest percentage I've ever seen is 95%. I've encountered this bug before, which happens commonly with priests, assassins and merchants. On the other hand, I've managed to acquire merchants much more powerful after a few tries. On odds 15% and below don't bother trying anything though. The odds will be so bad that you'll blunder.

As for the spy, I can't explain that. Bug I guess?

As for the reloading thing, people speculate that the random number generator's current seed is saved along with your save game. Possibly the seed is somehow otherwise based on the state of your game though. Either way, reloading any number of times should always give you the same result, provided the next action you take is the same one you've always been taking. The generator may advance once you take some different action, but it's also possible that whatever the current random roll is, it sticks around until you use it for something. So the short of it is that doing something else, or possibly more specifically doing something else that requires use of a random number, may be the only way to achieve a different result than the one you're seeing.

Yeah, people always remember to do something after you reload to reset the seed or you will always get the same thing over and over again

Definately bugged!!

Well I've seen spies in a settlement with a 113% chance of opening gates and fail!!

and a 95% chance of success means the mission will almost always be successful. This is certainly not the case as all my assassins which take on 95% missions end up in failure and death after a few attempts.

Reloading does not reset probability values unless you also include an additional move, besides reloading is a cheat but possibly the only way to make assassins work.

Umm....I am pretty sure you cant have 113% chance. You can only have max 95% chance for anything i think

If you reload you will have the same 'roll' as the seed is preserved. If you do some other action that uses a random roll you get a different roll, but it will be the same different one if you reload again and do I different thing before trying again. I hope the made some sense :dizzy2:

As for having a 113% chance of completing a mission?? I ain't never seen anything like it. I've never had a spy fail a 100% infiltrate mission and other odds seem to go alright. Why reload though? IMO the game is easy enough without reloading whenever something doesn't go your way. If you find assassins underpowered then mod them, but reloading all the time would be a real pain!

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Originally Posted by Xdeathfire

Umm....I am pretty sure you cant have 113% chance. You can only have max 95% chance for anything i think

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Honestly it was several spies in the one settlement nevertheless unless my eyes deceive me that was the case. I might still have a screeny at home of it.

I never checked to see if I could reproduce this. I just no longer paid much attention to the values again.

^^Regarding assassins. No I never said I reload. What I said is to get uber assassins you need to be reloading. Their are a couple of posts in which players are assassinating the entire Mongol 10 star generals which usually have a 10-15% chance of success with a 10 eye assassin. How is this at all possible without reloading even with guild HQ?

i've seen the over 100% chance to open the gates BTW. You need about 5 3 skill spies though.

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Originally Posted by Carl

i've seen the over 100% chance to open the gates BTW. You need about 5 3 skill spies though.

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Accumulated rounding error then?

I don't think so. i've had it hit nearlly 200%. I think each spy has his own chance then they all get added together and thats the chance.

however i suspect a hardcode ovveride ensures that theirs allways a 5% failure chance.

Regarding reloading failed attempts...

It seems that the game only lets you reload one time with a new calculation, that calculation is then remembered in the save, so that any subsequent reloads are given the same calculation.

If you've played Civ, you'd be familiar with the system. Honestly, I think it's good. Stops some of that reload cheating ;)

EDIT: just noticed I'm the third one to post this. Note to self: read entire threads before replying...

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Originally Posted by Xdeathfire

Yeah, people always remember to do something after you reload to reset the seed or you will always get the same thing over and over again

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I can confirm that this is absolutely not true, at least the last bit. I've had both successes (rarely) and failures (mostly) on just simple reloading and not doing anything else but the mission execution.

I used to think that the "random seed' was saved also, but its not. I've used a 10/10 assassin to kill the pope before and around the 3rd or 4th reload it'll usually work. I think its more of a game mechanic, they dont think you should be able to kill so-in-so because set amount of faction heirs are left or set amount of factions are against this faction. For example, most of the time this problem has occured against smaller factions who are financially poor, dont have big armies or are getting pushed off the map. Maybe its a balance tool so you can't just spam your enemy out of existence with assassins? Either way it sucks and should be fixed :no:

BTW I have also seen the 113% chance of success, it happens when there are a bunch of spies inside an enemy city.

NOTE: To the guy who was talking about all percentages being rounded up or down by 5%. Huh? I could show you a million pictures of spies with 100% ratings for getting into a city/spying on someone etc..etc..

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Originally Posted by Werner

NOTE: To the guy who was talking about all percentages being rounded up or down by 5%. Huh? I could show you a million pictures of spies with 100% ratings for getting into a city/spying on someone etc..etc..

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My thought as well, but I wasn't going to get into that. :grin: The game has always shown me percentages down to the ones digit not rounded, for example 38%, 53%, etc etc.

from my experience, the percentages do not correlate to %success at all. I've had 17% and succeed and 95% and fail. Obviously save before you committ. And after reload, go move something else or what I do is try an inconsequential spy action on diplomat/princess/etc to get diff seed.

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Originally Posted by holycow

from my experience, the percentages do not correlate to %success at all. I've had 17% and succeed and 95% and fail.

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Why should that be wrong? 95% doesn't mean a guaranteed success, and 17% is almost a one in five chance...

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Originally Posted by holycow

from my experience, the percentages do not correlate to %success at all. I've had 17% and succeed and 95% and fail. Obviously save before you committ. And after reload, go move something else or what I do is try an inconsequential spy action on diplomat/princess/etc to get diff seed.

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Holy cow! Seriously, this is about the worst understanding of statistics and probability that I have ever seen. 95% success means 5% failure, which is still 1 in 20. It's not ridiculous at all to fail sometimes when you have a 95% success rate. Just because a result is likely to happen does not mean the random system is broken if it does not. The converse also holds true: just because something is very unlikely does not mean you should expect to never see it. In poker, for instance, the odds of hitting a natural royal flush are 1 in 649,740. The odds when extra cards are involved (draws, or community cards for instance) are a bit better, but still nothing remotely likely. Odds like this should make it impossible to see a royal flush, right? Nope. I've seen 3 already and am only 26 years old - one of them was actually dealt to me. I can sit there and expect not to see that royal flush all day long, and most times I'm right - but sometimes, it does happen. When it does, contrary to feeling like the deck isn't sufficiently being randomized to prevent the royal flush from being dealt, I take heart: a seemingly impossible event should still happen sometimes. It's the occasional unlikely event that really lets you know a random system is working correctly - any simple system can produce the favored result. Those unlikely events shouldn't happen often, but anything with a chance to happen will generally happen sometime if you wait long enough.

The point is that the long odds in M2TW are nothing even close to those of the royal flush, so you can't go around claiming the random system in the game is broken just because you see some things happen that only have 1 in 20 odds of happening. They should be happening a noticeable amount of the time, and in my experience do occur at approximately the 1 in 20 times that they should.

I agree but something else is going on in this game. The percentages dont mean anything...

cripes! who cares about understanding stats and probability, this is only a game! I play this game to dull my higher brain functions anyways. if it was designed to be unpredictable for balance or playability, then let's make it so and do away w/ percentages. All I WAS SAYING IS "FROM MY EXPERIENCE" NOTE AGAIN "FROM MY EXPERIENCE!!!!!" NOT WRITING A DISSERTATION. So get a grip people, sheeesh.

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Originally Posted by holycow

cripes! who cares about understanding stats and probability, this is only a game!

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I do. :grin: In terms of the game itself, that is. As werner pointed out, there are probabilities given for certain tasks, but anecdotal evidence points to game mechanics that aren't taken into account (namely spies in proximity). Thus his point, the prob. displayed is most likely misleading or invalid. This is uncertainty that I definitely want fixed/removed. Either don't display a probability at all (no way), or tell us exactly what our chances are with all things accounted for (definitely).

:bow:

And I suspect that even when the spy thinks he has a 100% chance to infiltrate there's still a possibility of something going badly wrong---I hearken back to the old D&D days where a lot of people played that a 1 on a d20 was always a miss, even if by the charts your guy should automatically hit. That is to say, there's never a totally risk-free infiltration.

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Originally Posted by gardibolt

And I suspect that even when the spy thinks he has a 100% chance to infiltrate there's still a possibility of something going badly wrong---I hearken back to the old D&D days where a lot of people played that a 1 on a d20 was always a miss, even if by the charts your guy should automatically hit. That is to say, there's never a totally risk-free infiltration.

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Indeed, they could handle this like that, or something like the character resistances in say like Diablo II. You could actually have gear and skills that raised your various elemental resistances way above 100%, but the max you could ever get to was 80% because the game limited you to that. Likewise I think perhaps 95% as a max chance would be good, it still leaves a very small margin of error, so nothing is actually guaranteed.

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Originally Posted by Nebuchadnezzar

Accumulated rounding error then?

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You can't ever have a probability over 100%.

Sounds like someone at CA missed the lecture on conditional probability.

The probability of two spies with a 75% chance of opening the gate woould be:

p(spy one succeeds) + p(spy two succeeds: given spy one failed)

this would be (75%) + (75%)*(25%) = 93.75%

Add a third spy with a 75% chance and it's:

75% + (75%*25%)+(75%*6.25) = 98.43%

You can never get all the way to 100%.

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Originally Posted by Whacker

This is uncertainty that I definitely want fixed/removed. Either don't display a probability at all (no way), or tell us exactly what our chances are with all things accounted for (definitely).

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Exactly, the least CA can do is fix the problem. Whats the point in using percentages if their not actually true?

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Originally Posted by dismal

You can't ever have a probability over 100%.

Sounds like someone at CA missed the lecture on conditional probability.

The probability of two spies with a 75% chance of opening the gate woould be:

p(spy one succeeds) + p(spy two succeeds: given spy one failed)

this would be (75%) + (75%)*(25%) = 93.75%

Add a third spy with a 75% chance and it's:

75% + (75%*25%)+(75%*6.25) = 98.43%

You can never get all the way to 100%.

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For the record it's far easier to determine the chance that all spies fail and then realize that the balance of the difference to 1.00 accounts for all possible success cases (since only 1 combination can possibly fail entirely to open the gate, all the rest must open it). In the last case, 3 spies fail is (.25)^3 = .015625. 1 - .015625 = .984375, the answer we're looking for. 5 spies for instance give (.25)^5 = 0.0009765625, with 1 - 0.0009765625 = 0.9990234375.

Two points then. One, CA may have decided to simply use one roll to determine the result, instead of multiple ones. In that case, they would simply sum the chances for the agents to succeed, and if the roll is less than the sum, success. In that case you still can only have a 100% chance of success at best, but numbers higher than 100 could be the "number to beat" as displayed and used by the game, lending some amount of sense to what the game displays.

Two, while no number of spies could theoretically make the success rate reach 1 (if they each have a roll), there may be a point where the game can no longer distinguish the success rate from 1, in which case failure would become impossible. That is, depending on the decimal accuracy of the random number generator and the way the devs implement the random tests, failure may not be an option even if it should be statistically. In the case where success = 0.9990234375 above, we've already passed 99.9% success. The game displays integer success percentages, so anything at or above 0.995 could be simply rounded up, and treated as 100% by the game, i.e. will never fail.

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Originally Posted by Foz

For the record it's far easier to determine the chance that all spies fail

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In this case yes, but then you don't get to learn about conditional probability!

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Two points then. One, CA may have decided to simply use one roll o determine the result, instead of multiple ones.

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It's easy enough to calculate the probabilty correctly and then do one roll at the correct probability

We just did it.

Some modder here should try to take a look at the files regarding mission success percentage and try to figure out if they are working properly or needs to be fixed

I have heard way too much anectdotal envidence to believe that people are just simply getting a bit lucky or has no luck

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Originally Posted by dismal

You can't ever have a probability over 100%.

Sounds like someone at CA missed the lecture on conditional probability.

The probability of two spies with a 75% chance of opening the gate woould be:

p(spy one succeeds) + p(spy two succeeds: given spy one failed)

this would be (75%) + (75%)*(25%) = 93.75%

Add a third spy with a 75% chance and it's:

75% + (75%*25%)+(75%*6.25) = 98.43%

You can never get all the way to 100%.

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Ever seen public order over 100%? Yes, you have. You have to play by the rules of the game, not the rules of the physical world, because, well, this is not a physical thing. If you look at the mechanics for things, you'll notice that most things give things in batches of 5%. For example, the amount of unrest in a city caused by spies, is skill level of the spy multiplied by that 5%. So, it would seem logical too me that this logic in carried over to this section of the game too, and then you'll easily get over 100%...

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Originally Posted by Xdeathfire

Some modder here should try to take a look at the files regarding mission success percentage and try to figure out if they are working properly or needs to be fixed

I have heard way too much anectdotal envidence to believe that people are just simply getting a bit lucky or has no luck

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The only anecdotal evidence I've seen to that effect is "I reloaded the game but I can't make the outcome come out how I want, waaaaaah." No one has said anything close to "spies really fail 70% when they have 95% success rates" that I have seen yet. People complain a lot, but the only thing that I've seen frequently in their reports is the behavior after loading a saved game, and none of the comments at all have any actual testing behind them that should make anyone question anything.

I'm not concerned at all because my game hasn't done anything that would indicate a broken random number system, so I'm probably going to remain unconvinced of any problem here unless someone posts multiple results from 95% success tests where they obtain far more failures than 5%, or something similar.

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Originally Posted by Foz

The only anecdotal evidence I've seen to that effect is "I reloaded the game but I can't make the outcome come out how I want, waaaaaah." No one has said anything close to "spies really fail 70% when they have 95% success rates" that I have seen yet. People complain a lot, but the only thing that I've seen frequently in their reports is the behavior after loading a saved game, and none of the comments at all have any actual testing behind them that should make anyone question anything.

I'm not concerned at all because my game hasn't done anything that would indicate a broken random number system, so I'm probably going to remain unconvinced of any problem here unless someone posts multiple results from 95% success tests where they obtain far more failures than 5%, or something similar.

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I've ran several tests that you can find if you dig around in old threads. Suffice to say that my findings didn't even come close to the percentages given for the actual mission.

Another factor to look at is that the skill levels for spies and assassins go well above "10/10" eyes. I just counted up all the skills, traits, and retinue for one of my assassins and it came out to be 15 points of skill. So my question is how does the game account for this?

NOTE: Foz, its been established that the numbers system is broken. If you dont use assassins or spies very much it wont hurt your game and you can turn a blind eye to it. What we're trying to do is fix it.

It accounts for the extra levels just like any other levels. A level above ten increases your chances.

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Originally Posted by HoreTore

Ever seen public order over 100%? Yes, you have. You have to play by the rules of the game, not the rules of the physical world, because, well, this is not a physical thing. If you look at the mechanics for things, you'll notice that most things give things in batches of 5%. For example, the amount of unrest in a city caused by spies, is skill level of the spy multiplied by that 5%. So, it would seem logical too me that this logic in carried over to this section of the game too, and then you'll easily get over 100%...

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Public order is not a probability. The probability of an event occuring can't be more than 100%. This is inherent inthe definition of probability.

The game may calculate whether a gate opens however it wants, but it's nonsensical to say something has a probability outside the range 0 to 100%.

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Originally Posted by Whacker

I've ran several tests that you can find if you dig around in old threads. Suffice to say that my findings didn't even come close to the percentages given for the actual mission.

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Originally Posted by Werner

Another factor to look at is that the skill levels for spies and assassins go well above "10/10" eyes. I just counted up all the skills, traits, and retinue for one of my assassins and it came out to be 15 points of skill. So my question is how does the game account for this?

NOTE: Foz, its been established that the numbers system is broken. If you dont use assassins or spies very much it wont hurt your game and you can turn a blind eye to it. What we're trying to do is fix it.

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Who established that? And how? I said I haven't seen anything, because I haven't, lol. Point me in the right direction so I can read and contribute accordingly.

Well at this point I suppose it would be good to know how the code is written and take a look at the "random seed" generator that another fellow was talking about. Ultimately we need a patch but it might not hurt to understand how it determines the success/failure rate.

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Originally Posted by dismal

Public order is not a probability. The probability of an event occuring can't be more than 100%. This is inherent inthe definition of probability.

The game may calculate whether a gate opens however it wants, but it's nonsensical to say something has a probability outside the range 0 to 100%.

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In the real world, yes, in a computer program, no, it is not nonsensical.

Use the search function until you find them, I don't even remember the thread names anymore as it's been well over a month or two. What I can tell you is my testing methods.

Basically I would set it up so my assassin is right next to the target. I would then attempt the mission, note success or failure, then reload. No other actions were taken or performed so I could limit this down as much as possible so no other variables (such as the supposed "reseeding") could skew the results. What I noted in every case was that the chance for success doesn't remotely match what's given, a random example would be a 3 rank assassin having a 25% chance to kill a 2 star general. My findings would be something like success 4 times out of 50 or so. The bottom line:

1. The probability displayed is not accurate given my and a few others tests.
2. The game may or may not have a 'seed' that affects the outcome.
3. The game may or may not 'roll' exactly when the action is attempted. This is what I suspect happens, FWIW.
3. The outcome is definitely not fixed, as the successes on reloading are evidence thereof.

Others have suggesed two things as well. One, it appears that proximity of other faction's spies (even those not of your target's faction) can negatively impact your chances for success given an assassin's mission. Two, apparently skill/ancils/traits that total up to and over 10 are indeed counted towards success. So you really can have a 20 skill monster roaming around, and the probabilities of successful mission completion will be given based on the assassin being at 20 skill, not 10. I did not do any testing in RTW/BI/A to see if the game would let you have more than 10 skill and if so if that was accounted for, but my gut reaction is no it did not. It is unknown if this 10+ skill mechanic is intentional or a bug, but it's generally accepted to be true.

:bow:

Edit:

I just thought of this. Before you jump all over that example I made Foz, I understand that in general a 25% chance means that 25 times out of 100 an event will succeed. I don't remember ever doing 100 tests, but in the example I gave 4/50 is 8%, which is far less than 25. Sure I could run 50 more tests after that and there's a snowballs chance in hell that the last 21 would succeed giving me 25%, but it's unlikely. My successes were very random and pretty evenly distributed when I did these. Also as a human I can only run so many tests before I get bored or tired, so I didn't run more. In my made-up example with a 25% success rate I should still see at least roughly 12 successes out of 50. The fact that all of my test runs consistently showed success rates far less than what was displayed is sufficient for me.

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Originally Posted by HoreTore

In the real world, yes, in a computer program, no, it is not nonsensical.

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He's right HoreTore. A game may do the math on a certain mechanic so that the outcome is guaranteed to happen given the inputs, but the probability of something happening cannot exceed 100% by definition. For example, say that spy skill is cumulative for opening a gate, and you have 3 spys that each have a 50% chance of opening the gate on assault. You add that up and get 150%, but in reality the probability is 100% because it cannot be more than this. Make sense? Good. :grin:

Also public order isn't a probablity function, it's a cumulative statistical percentage. Your 80% garrison + your charming 20% commander + your 20% fun buildings will all add up to 120% order.

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Originally Posted by Whacker

Basically I would set it up so my assassin is right next to the target. I would then attempt the mission, note success or failure, then reload.

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This is exactly why I asked. It's been suggested multiple times (more than anything else) that reloading is the primary cause of these skewed random results, so reloading says nothing in general about the number generator, it only tells us what happens if you reload to try the same agent mission again. A general test of the system would have to avoid doing this, and more than likely means a bunch of consecutive campaign turns where you keep doing different things with agents so that you actually test the random number stream. Random number generators typically use a seed value to determine how to generate a semi-random stream of numbers... so while any given stream looks pretty random, you can actually get the exact same stream back if you seed the generator with the same number. It simulates random well enough for most purposes, without actually being random.

Anyway, the point is that the random system may be entirely fine even if it gives horrible results when you reload the game - all it needs to do is generate a sufficiently random number stream so that each new event is ~random. If it does that, then it's working flawlessly, because it's not even clear that reloading the game should give you a different result the next time, nor does it matter since the same exact event never happens multiple times in the same game. You may try the same thing again the next turn, but it's not the same event because the turn has changed, the random number stream may have advanced, and any number of other conditions will be different. Loading the game may be removing all those different factors, which means the failure of the random system here is insignificant unless it can also be shown to fail under the typical operating conditions of an ongoing campaign. Only then would it have a problem that will actually affect gameplay, where the current results indicate only an obscure quirk, unrelated to ongoing gameplay, and not even as yet shown to be unintended...

Well it's easy to test this. All someone has to do is keep track through a campaign... write the percentage for each strategic character event, and whether it succeeds or not. Then afterwards organize them by the particular percentage... all the 35% together, etc. Then you could get a pretty clear idea how close it's getting.

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Originally Posted by JCoyote

Well it's easy to test this. All someone has to do is keep track through a campaign... write the percentage for each strategic character event, and whether it succeeds or not. Then afterwards organize them by the particular percentage... all the 35% together, etc. Then you could get a pretty clear idea how close it's getting.

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Yep, although it can take large number of readings for samples to converge on their underlying means.

Pulling a random number and checking it versus a value is pretty rudimentary stuff in the grand scheme of computer programming, so it would be rather surprising to me if it were bugged. But you never know.

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Originally Posted by JCoyote

Well it's easy to test this. All someone has to do is keep track through a campaign... write the percentage for each strategic character event, and whether it succeeds or not. Then afterwards organize them by the particular percentage... all the 35% together, etc. Then you could get a pretty clear idea how close it's getting.

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Originally Posted by dismal

Yep, although it can take large number of readings for samples to converge on their underlying means.

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Yes indeed. IIRC the normal approximation of binomial (that is, a 2-option trial, like success/failure) only holds with sample size at least 30, so that would be the least you'd want for the testing. It also requires p (the probability of success) be [.05, .95], which I believe were determined to be the limits the game typically allows for agent success or failure: 5%, and 95%. Perhaps those bounds are not only to ensure a chance for either option always, but more statistically motivated: it's far easier to test the agent missions if you know you can approximate the situation with the normal distribution.

If anyone does intend to test this in a campaign, it's probably simplest to just cheat (via console) some agents up to godlike status, then run them around doing 95/5 missions and record a ton of results quickly. It has the benefit of making all the tests have the same odds, which piles up useful results far faster than any other way likely would.

Well Foz, couldn't wrap around become a problem with that idea?

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Originally Posted by Whacker

He's right HoreTore. A game may do the math on a certain mechanic so that the outcome is guaranteed to happen given the inputs, but the probability of something happening cannot exceed 100% by definition. For example, say that spy skill is cumulative for opening a gate, and you have 3 spys that each have a 50% chance of opening the gate on assault. You add that up and get 150%, but in reality the probability is 100% because it cannot be more than this. Make sense? Good. :grin:

Also public order isn't a probablity function, it's a cumulative statistical percentage. Your 80% garrison + your charming 20% commander + your 20% fun buildings will all add up to 120% order.

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Yup, if the game handles probability like the real world, then it's true. However, that might not be the case. Consider a board game rpg, say D&D. Now, you have a 20 sided dice, and you have make the thing you attempt on any outcome. However, a rule says that a roll of a one is always a failure. Now, even if you have 100% chance of success, you can still fail it. However, if you have say 150% chance of success, then you are entitled another roll if you roll a 1, and will have to roll more than 10 on that roll.

I have no idea if that's the case in this game, however, it COULD be, and thus you will see 150% "probability".

And yes, I know that PO isn't a probability, it was just representing the game stacking percentages.

Public order is mechanically different. It isn't stacking. It simply stats a point at which no disorder can happen as 100%, and how far above that you are is the margin you have against things like spies, etc. It is a probability issue below 100%, but above it it isn't anymore because the events it is measuring against can't happen anymore. 130% public order is 0% chance of riots/rebellion with a 30% safety margin that has to drop before it can happen.

Yes yes, I know that, but that was quite besides my point...

A bad example, nothing more.

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Originally Posted by HoreTore

Yup, if the game handles probability like the real world, then it's true. However, that might not be the case. Consider a board game rpg, say D&D. Now, you have a 20 sided dice, and you have make the thing you attempt on any outcome. However, a rule says that a roll of a one is always a failure. Now, even if you have 100% chance of success, you can still fail it. However, if you have say 150% chance of success, then you are entitled another roll if you roll a 1, and will have to roll more than 10 on that roll.

I have no idea if that's the case in this game, however, it COULD be, and thus you will see 150% "probability".

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I think the point is that the game should be clear that the number it is displaying is not an actual probability in any case where it is not. If they want to use percentages to mean something other than the actual chance that the event happens, they could do so, but it requires very clear explanation, as percentages as commonly used by anyone always indicate the chance of an event happening with 100% being absolutely will happen no question and 0% never ever cannot possibly happen.

Even in the situation you point out above, the probability of your success is still not above 100%. You actually have a (0.05)(0.5) = 0.025 chance to fail, and thus a 97.5% success rate...

I think the biggest issue here is that probability and statistics are very well defined things with absolutely clear meanings, and the developers should not be using statistical terms if they do not intend to invoke their statistical meanings as a result.

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Originally Posted by Foz

I think the point is that the game should be clear that the number it is displaying is not an actual probability in any case where it is not. If they want to use percentages to mean something other than the actual chance that the event happens, they could do so, but it requires very clear explanation, as percentages as commonly used by anyone always indicate the chance of an event happening with 100% being absolutely will happen no question and 0% never ever cannot possibly happen.

Even in the situation you point out above, the probability of your success is still not above 100%. You actually have a (0.05)(0.5) = 0.025 chance to fail, and thus a 97.5% success rate...

I think the biggest issue here is that probability and statistics are very well defined things with absolutely clear meanings, and the developers should not be using statistical terms if they do not intend to invoke their statistical meanings as a result.

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I'm still not convinced that there's always a 5% pad on the high and low end of the mechanics here. I'm also not convinced that there's a random "seed" that's generated each turn for events, it'd be much easier and less memory intensive to generate a random number and just calculate the result when the action is performed. And as for my testing, it's the best we can do given what we've got to work with, it's as close to a "control" in test as is possible. Someone just playing the game normally and recording results would be possibly useful information provided they recorded actual skill and target strength (command skill, merchant skill, etc depending on target), as well as probability given for success. There's still too many variables introduced when you do this, and you're still assuming that the game actually does a random seed.

The bottom line is we all can't know what's going on for certain what's going on and how this game handles the mechanics, the best we can do is guess. CA is the only source that can give us a definitive answer.

All I know is that what's displayed to me in the game does not remotely reflect what my actual chances are in practice.

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Originally Posted by Foz

I think the point is that the game should be clear that the number it is displaying is not an actual probability in any case where it is not. If they want to use percentages to mean something other than the actual chance that the event happens, they could do so, but it requires very clear explanation, as percentages as commonly used by anyone always indicate the chance of an event happening with 100% being absolutely will happen no question and 0% never ever cannot possibly happen.

Even in the situation you point out above, the probability of your success is still not above 100%. You actually have a (0.05)(0.5) = 0.025 chance to fail, and thus a 97.5% success rate...

I think the biggest issue here is that probability and statistics are very well defined things with absolutely clear meanings, and the developers should not be using statistical terms if they do not intend to invoke their statistical meanings as a result.

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I know of course that something cannot have over 100% chance of happening. My argument, is that in a GAME, you CAN see those odds represented, event though you still don't have over 100% probability. It might be an explanation as to why you see spies having over 100% to open the gates. Statistics may be clear, but you have a lot of games representing stuff in ways that break it.

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Originally Posted by Whacker

I'm also not convinced that there's a random "seed" that's generated each turn for events, it'd be much easier and less memory intensive to generate a random number and just calculate the result when the action is performed.

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There in lies the problem. You cannot simply "generate" a random number. Where would it come from? Computers deal in rules, 1s and 0s, and calculations - random is anything but that. Thus the process of generating numbers that are seemingly random yet dispersed uniformly throughout the range [0, 1] is not a trivial task on a computer. The way it's typically done is to define a process that gives the general uniform dispersal you want, with a suitable period (since it's all function-based, the sequences always repeat at some point - the idea is to make that a LONG time). Then you use the seed to set the starting state of the system - you start at a state that isn't ever the same, in order to avoid giving the same set of numbers every time from the generator. So the seed doesn't really determine the result, it only mixes up the result some so that the generator does not become predictable, while still being able to generate numbers to the given specs. Outside of using a physical random number generator, the pseudo-random number generator I've attempted to describe is the only way I know of to get "random" numbers for computing purposes. Coincidentally a generator does calculate the next result on demand, it's only the internal state of the process that is needed to do so, which typically does not take up much ram at all (could easily be ~100 bits, and would never need to be much larger). It's this internal state I've suggested is saved in the savegame, thus giving the duplicated results some people have noted when loading to attempt something again.

I realize that may not be the easiest thing to digest... so for the moment I guess I'll let people try to do that, and see what if any remarks follow as a result.

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Originally Posted by Foz

There in lies the problem. You cannot simply "generate" a random number. Where would it come from? Computers deal in rules, 1s and 0s, and calculations - random is anything but that. Thus the process of generating numbers that are seemingly random yet dispersed uniformly throughout the range [0, 1] is not a trivial task on a computer. The way it's typically done is to define a process that gives the general uniform dispersal you want, with a suitable period (since it's all function-based, the sequences always repeat at some point - the idea is to make that a LONG time). Then you use the seed to set the starting state of the system - you start at a state that isn't ever the same, in order to avoid giving the same set of numbers every time from the generator. So the seed doesn't really determine the result, it only mixes up the result some so that the generator does not become predictable, while still being able to generate numbers to the given specs. Outside of using a physical random number generator, the pseudo-random number generator I've attempted to describe is the only way I know of to get "random" numbers for computing purposes. Coincidentally a generator does calculate the next result on demand, it's only the internal state of the process that is needed to do so, which typically does not take up much ram at all (could easily be ~100 bits, and would never need to be much larger). It's this internal state I've suggested is saved in the savegame, thus giving the duplicated results some people have noted when loading to attempt something again.

I realize that may not be the easiest thing to digest... so for the moment I guess I'll let people try to do that, and see what if any remarks follow as a result.

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I just realized I was misunderstanding what I *think* people were meaning by the 'random seed' in terms of how these events are calculated. Perhaps I am wrong and I did understand, but I'll elaborate. Before I get into this, I did check with two codemonkey friends before I posted this just to make sure some of my understandings were still correct. It's been a long time since I've banged out code for a living. :juggle2:

First in terms of random number generation, the C/C++ rand() and srand() functions will work absolutely fine, with the srand() seed simply being the system time in most all cases. Some software shops, I think Bioware being one, have made it publically known that they've improved on these base functions to get "better" results/"rolls" for their various D20 based games. As you pointed out it's only pseudorandom, esp. if one goes with the base C/C++ reference functions, but it's still been found to be sufficient in most cases. Someone on my floor in my dorm back in the day had to write a paper on this subject for a 200 level course, the overall observation (which is in line with the general viewpoint) is that it's not perfect and can vary somewhat by platform, but generally does give a good, consistent, full spread of results given a particular range set to work with.

The point where I was both misunderstanding and making an assumption was; as a matter of good programming practice, one should ALWAYS reinitialize the srand() seed before running a rand() to ensure that a new random number is generated. Thus in my thoughts, reload or no reload, the game should be performing the srand() first immediately by the actual rand() to decide of the event is a success or not. In my view (and in buddy's views) running reseeding only at the start of the campaign map turn or on reloading the game is "bad programming". This is of course subjective and depending on the particular needs, reseeding once may be a legitimate strategy to use, but again * can only guess and assume based on my limited previous experiences, education, and input from more knowledgeable sources. In terms of modern pc power and even the minimum specs required to run this game, running a simple srand() to reseed would require a minimum of cycles and should quite honestly be absolutely zero performance hit whatsoever on the cpu. In terms of memory again this is going to be minimal, seeing how much is required simply to run the game, much less good ol' Windows. Storing a 'seed' of some kind in a savegame in my view would be completely pointless based on the above. Given how frequently this needs to run, what maybe 10, 20, 40 times per turn towards the start of a campaign?, it's not like this is something that needs to be constantly recalculated and would put more strain on the system resources.

Now I don't know how CA is doing this, they could be doing something completely different for all we know. /shrug Just some thoughts, and it's late and I'm really tired. Good discussion though.

:bow: