I could use some advice on a core formula for a design I'm trying to work on. I'm developing a sim game based on kart racing. The players won't actually drive during races, but instead will develop various stats and skills. A minor factor of luck will be introduced as well, but I hit a point where my planned method is now seeming to make everything except luck meaningless. As a simple example, my current race formula looks like this...

Track type skill * Track surface skill * Luck

Luck is a random number between 1.1 and 2.0. The two skills are numbers between 1.0 and 2.0, depending on the players experience level for each. The problem I am realizing is that the equation here is self balancing for all of the skills. If I give a player 4 skill points, they can put them into the skills in whatever amount they want, and the math will still come out the same, and leave luck as the determining factor. Assuming that computer controlled racers get a similar progression as players, now we have all of the racers coming down to luck of the RNG in every race. How can this type of game logic be altered to make skill allotments actually meaningful? 

Try adding the first two parameters instead of multiplying, then multiply the result by the last parameter.

On 8/8/2018 at 7:32 PM, Darkstorm05 said:

Track type skill * Track surface skill * Luck

I'd would argue that only the skills relevant for whatever action is being performed should be considered.

Eg speeding up would only need "track-type", while cornering would need less "track-type" and more "surface skill"

Each action would get additional parameters for the relevance, like

speeding-up: track_relevance = 1.0

cornering: track_relevance = 0.3; surface_relevance=0.7

Together with the suggestion by @Darkstorm05, you'd get something like (track_relevance * track_skill + surface_relevance * surface_skill) * (0.5 + luck)