News: No news is good news...

Login  |  Register

Author Topic: Fair use and statistical modelling of units  (Read 2140 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline SixEightRob

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 10
  • I *LOVE* 40k Online!
Fair use and statistical modelling of units
« on: November 9, 2012, 08:07:50 PM »
Hey everyone,

I am a commerce major and have been trying to get better at using excel and my use of statistics. I thought a great exercise in this ,which would in turn have a great second use, would be to model the effectiveness of weapons and units based on compound probabilities and model them in terms of graphs showing effectiveness and priorities in terms of targets.

Long story short I want to take a mathematical view of how my Eldar army operates to give me some sort of edge mainly because I want to use skills I am learning in University.

My question is about whether or not my findings and charts would be something I would be allowed to share on the forum due to copyright constraints. I never plan to release any profiles about units but rather things such as "wounds inflicted/point cost" or "resilience/point cost". I am starting to believe that any sort of inference using the "to wound" table may be out of bounds but I would love to here what you think if this is ok or not.

Offline FieryHammer

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 86
  • Country: us
  • I *LOVE* 40k Online!
Re: Fair use and statistical modelling of units
« Reply #1 on: November 9, 2012, 08:18:18 PM »
As long as you don't post specific copyrighted materials you should be fine.  I always have been.  Information derived from copyrighted material is fine again because you are not posting specific material.  People have been using statistics to analyze their units from day one.  However, most people use pretty primitive models, I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Offline The GrimSqueaker

  • The Badger on the Road | Staff Infection Officer | Debased Vassal Slayer | Title Barfly | XOXOXO Gossip Girl | Bent Over
  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 19053
  • Country: nz
  • From the Fourth Necromantic House
Re: Fair use and statistical modelling of units
« Reply #2 on: November 9, 2012, 10:59:04 PM »
Indeed, as long as the final product does not release prohibited information you'll be fine. Problems we've had in the past involved spreadsheets containing forumlae that were basically unit/weapon stat line generators which would clearly be a no-no.
Quote from: @TracyAuGoGO
Tact is for people who are too slow witted to be sarcastic.
Drink
Knights Tippler
Quote from: Surviving the World
If you can't make fun of something, it's probably not worth taking seriously.

You have to love the smell of science in the morning. It smells of learning.... or perhaps a gas leak.

Offline Dev Null

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 465
  • Country: 00
  • GW has copyrighted my ability to be wrong.
Re: Fair use and statistical modelling of units
« Reply #3 on: November 10, 2012, 01:43:59 AM »
The trick that everyone seems to use to legitimately avoid infringing on any copyrighted material is to use "equivalents".  If you want to talk about how a certain unit performs against Tn Ax opponents, find a common model with the same stats, and talk about how your unit performs against it.  The common ones, as you probably well know, are Marine EQuivalents and Terminator EQuivalents, but there's no reason you can't add more to the list.  If I say that my Dire Avenger will cause 1/162 wounds / point against Wraithguard-equivalents then there's no copyrighted material given, and no way to work out any copyrighted material without already having most of it already - you'd have to know the stats of one unit, and the appropriate tables, to work out the stats of the other unit.

You're probably even safe talking about wounds / point vs. T4, for example.  But then you get yourself in trouble the minute you want to talk about an example.  I believe you can say "Dire Avengers wound T4 50% of the time" without getting in trouble, but the minute you want to add "Daemon Princes, for example" you're in trouble because you have (incorrectly, obviously) identified Daemon Princes as having T4.  Whereas "basic-human-equivalent toughness, like Dire Avengers" should be safe, so its probably a better way to go all round.

(It should be noted that I may or may not know what I'm talking about.  These are my best interpretations only, of the rules posted here.  I've rather deliberately pushed the edge a bit above in the most harmless way I could work out, in hopes that the mods will sort me out without whacking me with the banhammer if I'm wrong.  If you're reading this still, I guess I wasn't too far off?)

Offline SixEightRob

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 10
  • I *LOVE* 40k Online!
Re: Fair use and statistical modelling of units
« Reply #4 on: November 10, 2012, 10:21:12 AM »
Thanks for the feedback!

I planned to do this more in a sense of graphs  using the "vs T4" examples. I will hopefully have a preliminary set of analysis done in a few weeks!

 


Powered by EzPortal