Mechanics of Hell

[shadowspar]

So, over in #dreamwidth-bitch, we were geeking around about the probabilities involved with RWHell. Interesting little snippet of how Hell reacts when you feed it an item, gleaned from a brief glance at the source code:

Number of items expelled per item condemned

current # damned items	#expelled	gain/loss per item condemned
<= 5	0.12	+0.88
<= 10	0.25	+0.75
<= 15	0.40	+0.60
<= 20	0.663	+0.337
<= 30	0.832	+0.168
<= 45	0.861	+0.139
<= 60	0.901	+0.099
> 60	1.045	-0.045

In other words, if hell has 6-10 items in it, every item you feed to it results in, on average, 0.25 items being expelled, resulting in a net increase in hell's tally of 0.75 items per item condemned. On the other hand, if hell has more than 60 items in it, every new item condemned results in, on average, 1.045 items being ejected, meaning that the total tally decreases by 0.045 items for every item you put in.

Comments

[kortney]

I wouldn't have guessed that hell held that many items. It seems to me like things come around a lot faster than that. But I have a bad head for numbers, so I'm probably off. That's really interesting, though.

[azurelunatic]

It selects stuff randomly to expel, so there's a good chance of something really recent popping out.

[shadowspar]

You can cheat a little bit and ask it "hell tally" to find out how many items are inside. =) I find it tends to hover just slightly over 60.

[azurelunatic]

Ooo, fun!