Lottery

[Melusane]

I just started the expansion. I went to the store in Sunset Valley and bought a loto ticket just to see what it did. It did nothing apparently.

I started my adventure in the future. There I got the "check the loto numbers" wish and I went to the town hall to do it.

I came back to Sunset valley and after a little time I was told I won 60k something simoleons.

That was nice!

[Carl]

Lotto Tickets are bought at the grocery store and winnings range from $50 to 1 million without Advanced Technology Skill. With higher levels of Advanced Tech, you'll raise this amount by a percentage. At level 10, this goes to 300% or triple, explaining why so many people win $3 million Simoleons (the max). There is a random roll with a chance at 10 different levels of winnings, with a 5% chance of winning the million at base. Having an Insider Tip will change the possible outcomes from 10 to just the top 5 possible winning amounts, with a 20% chance of winning the Million. This means you should usually win big money with the Insider Tip.

You will get the Insider Tip Moodlet get from checking Lotto Records in Oasis Landing's City Hall. If you don't get the Insider Tip, try again as there's a 60% chance of getting the Moodlet when you Check Lotto Records. With the Lucky Trait, your chance goes another 10%. Unlucky drops it 10% accordingly.

I guess Advanced Tech raising lotto winnings makes sense, as they have to use a futuristic City Hall to find the numbers - but you still get the multiplier without the buff if you happen to win, so my logic kind of goes out the window at that.

Edit: this post heavily edited thanks to the folks who pointed out my mistake below and helped me understand the system.

[Twinmum]

I think I'm missing something here. How do we buy a cheap or expensive lotto ticket? Whenever I send a sim to the store, the only option I get is to buy a lotto ticket for $10, the only thing that changes is that if they have the insider tip buff, it says winning lotto ticket $10.

I really don't understand how the amount is figured.. is there a base amount for each level of Advance Tech.
I've just done a run of 7 days. My sim went backward and forward and checked the results and then bought a ticket every day. All tickets were $10 tickets (the only option) and all were bought while she had the insider tip buff and she got the following payouts

level 1 of Advance Tech --$5,250
level 1                    $104,999
level 2                     $55,000
level 2                     $55,000
level 3                     $5,750
level 3                      $57,500
level 3                     $1,150,000

[callycat]

I think I'm missing something here. How do we buy a cheap or expensive lotto ticket? Whenever I send a sim to the store, the only option I get is to buy a lotto ticket for $10, the only thing that changes is that if they have the insider tip buff, it says winning lotto ticket $10.

I'm confused by this too -- I've only seen the $10 ticket offered.

[Carl]

I think I know what's going on here. I myself got confused when making it and wasn't really thinking about the ticket offering at the shop. There are simply 10 different outcomes of the drawings, explaining all the differences. I will investigate further when I get it into the Guide, but for now I"ll strike that information out and edit the post. Thanks for the help! I was in the middle of Descendants and saw that information in the code. You can't always trust it given they make changes before the final version is released to us, but I now understand the negatives I was seeing with Insider Tip. It is kind of like a 10-number powerball drawing with you being likely to get at least 5 numbers right.

The Tip eliminates the chance of the small winnings so that your chances are shifted to the top 5 or so outcomes, explaining why Twinmum's winnings were consistently high and not something like $500, but always thousands. Your 1.15 million is due to level 3 of AT providing 15%, with 2 at 10%, 1 at 5%. It makes bigger leaps as you approach level 10 to reach 300%. You can see the 5% in your $5250. At level 10 your $5250 would be $15k.

Thanks, this helped me better understand what I was seeing in the game code for lottery winnings. That is not an area I'd focused on yet, but I guess I get it now

[Jess dsyd]

Lotto Tickets are bought at the grocery store and winnings range from $50 to 1 million without Advanced Technology Skill. With higher levels of Advanced Tech, you'll raise this amount by a percentage. At level 10, this goes to 300% or triple, explaining why so many people win $3 million Simoleons (the max). There is a random roll with a chance at 10 different levels of winnings, with a 5% chance of winning the million at base. Having an Insider Tip will change the possible outcomes from 10 to just the top 5 possible winning amounts, with a 20% chance of winning the Million. This means you should usually win big money with the Insider Tip.

You will get the Insider Tip Moodlet get from checking Lotto Records in Oasis Landing's City Hall. If you don't get the Insider Tip, try again as there's a 60% chance of getting the Moodlet when you Check Lotto Records. With the Lucky Trait, your chance goes another 10%. Unlucky drops it 10% accordingly.

I guess Advanced Tech raising lotto winnings makes sense, as they have to use a futuristic City Hall to find the numbers - but you still get the multiplier without the buff if you happen to win, so my logic kind of goes out the window at that.

Edit: this post heavily edited thanks to the folks who pointed out my mistake below and helped me understand the system.

Actually my sim (with only the fishing and gardening skills and had never been to the future) bought some (well, eight) lotto tickets and won 1,000,000 simoleons! I guess it is just based on luck or how many tickets you buy!

[Seabody]

There is an element of luck in it. Looking at the code, EA isn't particularly verbose (seriously, they call things "num4" or "float" instead of "chanceOfWinning") so interpreting it isn't easy. Anyone interested in looking at it (who has the means to), start with looking at Sims3.Gameplay.Actors.Sim.CheckForLotto().

Essentially there are eight levels for winning with different base numbers, $50, $100, $500, $1,000, $5,000, $50,000, $100,000, $1,000,000. So winning at level 4 will net you (at least) $1000. These levels are unrelated to anything else, they're just there because each level has it's own modifiers.

Traits don't do anything to do with it for levels one and two of the winnings ($50 and $100). Insider Tip will increase the chance of winning the last three levels ($50,000 and up).

The game examines each price level and checks what you're eligible to win, and uses the FIRST level it finds. So let's say you had a 100% chance of winning level 6. The game would examine the levels. If you lost the first four, and won the fifth, the 100% chance for six wouldn't matter since the game examines level 5 first, determines you win that, and you win it.

So for best results, maximize your odds of winning big money, and lower your odds of winning low money. That's why the figures are varied, like Twinmum posted.

As a side note, Advanced Technology does NOT modify your chances of winning; it makes it so that if you do win, you win more. At each level of Advanced Technology, your winnings are multiplied by the following:
Level Zero (no skill): 1
Level One: 1.05
Level Two: 1.1
Level Three: 1.15
Level Four: 1.25
Level Five: 1.3
Level Six: 1.4
Level Seven: 1.5
Level Eight: 1.75
Level Nine: 2
Level Ten: 3

As I say, interested code readers should start with Sims3.Gameplay.Actors.Sim.CheckForLotto() (in Sims3GameplaySystems).

[Carl]

Thanks for the extra info, Seabody. Could you PM me information on looking at that? I'm looking at sims3gameplay.package, I believe but do not know how to access what you are seeing.

[Seabody]

Sure thing Carl. I've got to go, so I'll get it to you later today.