What's the deal with hit chance?

[forrestomintero]

Ok, so I get that my people are going to miss some of their attacks, that's fine. I can even accept when they have low hit chances like 40%. I get it, the game is meant to be hard. But why do my characters miss with 60-70% hit chance more than 2/3 of the time? Is there something I'm doing wrong? It's just so frustrating when the game actively lies to me about its own numbers and I don't understand what I need to do differently.

[JCSato]

The game isn't lying about its numbers - bbros is pure RNG. Takes some getting used to coming from other games.

In terms of actionable things to do - cheat (within the game's mechanics). Surround enemies to get adjacency hit bonus. Fight on high ground. Use spears and swords, try to get people to confident morale and enemies to wavering. 60-70% to hit is still a 40-30% to miss; a lot of the game's strategy is about mitigating that inherent risk and pumping those chances higher.

EDIT: Oh, also - nets.

[Santo]

No, they don't miss 2/3 with a 60% chance. RNG has been tested to death by third parties. Human brains are just that bad at perceiving and understanding chances. Also there are a lot of hidden rolls (morale, calculating damage, etc) that you aren't taking into consideration when you feel like chances are skewered. You aren't taking into account either all the times that you hit with a mere 25% or even a 5%. Chances are chances, and every roll is independent from others to calculate these chances. Streaks happen, both bad and good. This game is all about managing risks and planning around RNG so a bad roll doesn't send you to the cemetery.

[forrestomintero]

Originally posted by Santo:

No, they don't miss 2/3 with a 60% chance. RNG has been tested to death by third parties. Human brains are just that bad at perceiving and understanding chances. Also there are a lot of hidden rolls (morale, calculating damage, etc) that you aren't taking into consideration when you feel like chances are skewered. You aren't taking into account either all the times that you hit with a mere 25% or even a 5%. Chances are chances, and every roll is independent from others to calculate these chances. Streaks happen, both bad and good. This game is all about managing risks and planning around RNG so a bad roll doesn't send you to the cemetery.

I get what you're saying, but I'm telling you I miss most of my 60-70% hit chance attacks

[w.f.schepel]

Originally posted by forrestomintero:

Originally posted by Santo:

No, they don't miss 2/3 with a 60% chance. RNG has been tested to death by third parties. Human brains are just that bad at perceiving and understanding chances. Also there are a lot of hidden rolls (morale, calculating damage, etc) that you aren't taking into consideration when you feel like chances are skewered. You aren't taking into account either all the times that you hit with a mere 25% or even a 5%. Chances are chances, and every roll is independent from others to calculate these chances. Streaks happen, both bad and good. This game is all about managing risks and planning around RNG so a bad roll doesn't send you to the cemetery.

I get what you're saying, but I'm telling you I miss most of my 60-70% hit chance attacks

You probably are. The problem is that we get very small sample sizes. So variation is very much noticeable. Over millions of rolls the numbers don't lie, over 30-40 rolls, just about anything may happen. The 'good' news is, the same goes for the AI. The bad news is that you can't (and really shouldn't) count on to hit chance, other than you should probably prefer a 60% over a 40% THC.

- Do everything you can to improve your chances. (Surround, net, destroy shields)
- Always expect to miss (have a plan for when you do, see the third point)
- Invest in defense (shields, rotation, disarm, stun, goblin poison, overwhelm)

[The Duck Knight]

Originally posted by JCSato:

EDIT: Oh, also - nets.

[Santo]

As Schepel said, it's perfectly possible that within a fight or two you saw that trend. But it's just a coincidence -- over a whole campaign, your results will compensate. I understand the frustration, but again, I'm not asking you to believe my words -- third parties have cracked the code of the game to test its RNG, and it's fair and square.

[Sebslocker]

RNG took ur jobs!

[forrestomintero]

It's not within a fight or two. I just spent over five hours playing and watching as nearly every attack I launched missed. I had to save-scum every fight 4 or 5 times minimum just to barely break even financially, and still spending most of my gold replacing casualties. And I'm talking as someone who beat both Xcoms on veteran difficulty without any save-scumming whatsoever, and often not even taking a single casualty in the run. Time after time I would watch enemies dodge 4 attacks in a row that all purportedly had 60-70% hit chance, while the enemy had no problem hitting my guys even as I invested all my levels into hit chance and melee defense. I finally gave up after spending two hours trying to fight the same group of enemies. Not because they were all that much stronger than me, but because I simply couldn't land enough hits to win.

[Wyrtt]

Originally posted by forrestomintero:

It's not within a fight or two. I just spent over five hours playing and watching as nearly every attack I launched missed. I had to save-scum every fight 4 or 5 times minimum just to barely break even financially, and still spending most of my gold replacing casualties. And I'm talking as someone who beat both Xcoms on veteran difficulty without any save-scumming whatsoever, and often not even taking a single casualty in the run. Time after time I would watch enemies dodge 4 attacks in a row that all purportedly had 60-70% hit chance, while the enemy had no problem hitting my guys even as I invested all my levels into hit chance and melee defense. I finally gave up after spending two hours trying to fight the same group of enemies. Not because they were all that much stronger than me, but because I simply couldn't land enough hits to win.

it a problem of not understanding how to play the game and stuck hit chance buffs.
Xcom cheats in your favour to make things look more dramatic and action like.

[Santo]

Again: RNG has been tested *by independent parties* and *it works perfectly well*. I'm sorry but that is not a matter of opinion, is a *fact*, and personal observation is an anecdote, not a statistic -- even if it's accurate, which it isn't, because as I said there are many hidden rolls that you are not seeing (damage, headshot change, morale checks) so you are only looking at a fraction of the rolls the game is making. Even considering that, you can write down your results over several hours and you'll see a normal bell distribution.

The game is just really hard. A 60% hit chance is a 40% fail chance, which is a lot. Work with the game mechanics to increase that chance, especially in the early game -- surround enemies to get a bonus, use swords and spears to get a +% bonus, and you'll increase it to 80-ish%. On top of that, pick your fights carefully, Battle Brothers doesn't hold hands -- if you bite more than you can chew you will be killed; fight only thugs at the beginning until you get better gear and learn the basics of the game.

[Santo]

Ah, and also that -- games like XCOM show you a % that isn't actually real. It skews the numbers in your favor. This game has pure RNG.

[Gilius Thunderhead]

It's just RNG, I see 90% chances miss all the time, I see 15% chances hit all the time, sometimes I get a run where nobody hits for the whole round, but then we don't miss for a whole round - the key to BB is learning how to stack the odds in your favor as much as possible and always be prepared for the worst - because the worst will happen

If you're gambling your whole fight on one or two rolls then you're doing it wrong

[Heron]

There must be hundreds of threads like this at this point and they're always the same:

1) Someone gets unlucky and feels like the percentages don't match their experience.
2) The unlucky person comes here to express their RNG doubts in whatever fashion.
3) The long time forum users start to make the posts they've made dozens of times before and tell about how it's all been tested, that we're all biased to remember bad rolls more than good ones, that sample size is a thing and that unlucky rolls are possible over an extended period of time with true RNG.
4) In the end it's up to the unlucky person to decide what they believe as people usually don't have the links to the independent tests at hand and even if they do, the complaining person will often decide to trust their small sample size personal experience over the large sample size test of unknown, untrusted origin.

[Sebslocker]

I realized there are 3 types of people
- People who think that whatever bad happens to them is not there fault quick to blame others for their mistakes. Usually immature people sometimes just unfortunate people.
This perception makes it hard to self asses and improve.
- True judges of their environment and actions - very rare.
- People who give themselves credit for most of the things that happen to them.
Good with self improvement ambitious and versatile. However long spells without results can lead to self-doubt or even depression.

Person can change ones type multiple times over the lifetime.

I myself changed type from 3 to 1 then 3 then 2 and I now achieved true knowledge of meaning of everything. Everything I lay my gaze upon is instant success. I can create life with my fleeting thought and death itself needs my permission to take me or anyone I know.

[Cat®]

The game isn't lying to you, you can still miss at 99%, you could miss 100 times at 99%.