UFO: Female Invasion?

[SgtDave]

Alright, I just played one campaign, and throughout it seems there are more female soldiers than male. Feminism, political correctness and all granted, sure, but are they on steroids in the future? Not only do they seem more numerous, but are likely to be as strong or stronger than men, despite (for instance) the US Center for Military Readiness stating that female soldiers are, on average, shorter and smaller than men, with 45-50% less upper body strength and 25-30% less aerobic capacity, which is essential for endurance, etc. Sure, there are exceptions... but what's up in UFO:AI?

[Hertzila]

I'm guessing it's random. I have more males than females in my game.

[SgtDave]

I chalked it up to a straightforward random soldier generator, yeah. It would seem more realistic if either stats varied to reflect strength difference, or male volunteers outnumbered female volunteers to reflect you are getting the "more exceptional" female volunteers. However, I'll skip realism if instead I get more revealing armor for "Team Valkyrie"...

[poppadrake]

Alright, I just played one campaign, and throughout it seems there are more female soldiers than male.

"Lucky Dog!!

[QkiZ]

I also noticed that trend. There are more available women soldiers than men.

[poppadrake]

Accurate strength stats would be a nice addition...but a touch hard to swing if gender assignation is random.  My troops seem to be split 60/40 male/female...but no female scientists or laborers.  Doesn't really matter to the game play though.  Would matter much more probably if the stats were accurate. Hmm.

[Destructavator]

This seems to be contagious, whatever it is - I've been starting a lot of new games to test things lately and get a lot of female soldiers in the lists and less male soldiers.

I'm wondering if the seed for random picking needs to be adjusted or something.

Although I'm not an experienced coder compared to some others here, in my experience when I need to determine random numbers in C/C++ using just the rand() function I sometimes get the same results repeatedly, until I start "mixing" the seed with other program variables, which usually solves the problem.  By "mixing" I'm talking about adding, multiplying, etc. the seed number with several unrelated other variables that could be anything, even if they aren't related (such as exact "X" screen coordinate of the mouse cursor, for example...).

If I just base it off of elapsed time in seconds like some people do, I often get same, predictable results repeatedly, which can cause things like this.

Just a suggestion.

[Duke]

The rand() implementation in Windoze is known to be not truely random.
But afaik it doesn't depend on the seed.

[Destructavator]

But afaik it doesn't depend on the seed.

Then what is the seed for?  I'm not saying you're wrong, but in my personal studies and research on random numbers a seed should first be set before a random number is called, or set to NULL.

What am I missing here?
 

[poppadrake]

Realistically though, there are only two genders to choose from.  Won't the trend naturally swing back and forth?  The stats aren't dictated by gender so capabilities seem to be sufficiently random. And wouldn't connecting random number initialization to time be random enough?  Mouse cursor tends to begin from the same area because it generally remains in the same area...the Icon you start the game from...or maybe not.

[Duke]

I don't know the current implementation of MS rand(), as it's not OSS
For large numbers eg. a million, the random distribution seems ok.
But it seems to produce unusual long *series*. That is, for small numbers, eg. 20 draws, you may end up with 16 females in a row, followed by 13 males. (I'm exaggerating a bit to make it clear).

Maybe someone wants to google for the latest findings about MS rand() ?

[Bartleby]

u could make it like this:
- all odd new persons are 75% male
- even persons are 75% female

so every 2nd person has a good chance to be not the same gender as the one before.

[poppadrake]

But unless gender effects the stats distribution, does it really matter?  Can we tie in a limiting parameter on gender? ie. if gender=male then strenth would be a random stat in a range 25% higher than if gender=female?  And if gender=female then sniping (or intelligence! ) would be random in a range 25% higher than male?  Then gender would matter, and Bartley's suggestion should work quite nicely to even out the gender trends.

[Destructavator]

Maybe someone wants to google for the latest findings about MS rand() ?

I've actually already done that, when I was learning (on Windows, MS) and what I've been describing is part of how it works, needing to set a seed first.  The MS system for random number generation is indeed awful, and can produce predictable results more often than it should.

Regardless, if a different implementation is used in this project anyways (which is what it sounds like), then the issue obviously isn't with the MS rand() function because we don't use it in this game.

[Destructavator]

Side Note:  What is a good way of getting random numbers anyways?  One that's cross-platform and not tied to MS?
I could really use something like that for another project...