DICE ROLL OUTCOMES

[Timepilot7]

When is this going to be fixed? So many ridiculous outcomes with snake eyes and box cars WWWWAAAAAYYYY too frequently. Really has ruined the game when 40%+ are determined by unrealistic die rolls. USE A DIFFERENT RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR! UPGRADE IT, LOOK AT IT!!!

[Timepilot7]

BTW, been playing the board game for 35 years, the die rolls are simply "off" and sad you have to alter your play because of them.

[Davy_Hall]

Publicado originalmente por Timepilot7:

OK, 25% strategy, the "winners" just avoid the ridiculous die rolls by avoiding combat until they have enough to overcome the unrealistic die rolls. I just played a sequence with 3 tanks and 3 fighters, in 3 rounds 0 hits. Ridiculous, and these types of rolls happen ALL the time! FIX THE DIE ROLLS SO THE GAME CAN BE PLAYED NORMALLY!

I mean that kind of stuff happens in the board game with real dice too. Can't tell you how many times those old transports would shoot down 3 out of 5 attacking air by rolling 1's. For those that hate it, low luck custom games are an option. Usually the same people still win in low luck too, it's just a little more of a slog - if you get behind the likelihood of coming back is reduced a little. Lot less risk in the 12/9 Russia open though, that's for sure. But I find more people take the SZ37 UK move in low luck, and it's still a little iffy.

Personally I take low odds attacks all the time, just when the upside of winning really outweighs the downside. Probably wouldn't attack with 3 tanks and 3 fighters unless winning that would open up half of Asia because the downside of bad luck is expensive. But if you can lose infantry while the other guy is losing tanks or planes, I'll definitely take some risk.

[HeyZeus]

I truly can't understand how not everyone notices how bad the dice are. I'm not talking about a wild result here and there but how they are constantly bad, even in the smallest battle. Within 5 minutes of starting to write this the following happened
5fgt + 1bom + 3inf vs 1bom + 2fgt
R1: 0-2
R2: 3-3
Attacking fighters: 1/10 (yes, the infantry got one in R2). You should have a pretty good chance of taking out those planes without losing any yourself, but not here. And of course the defending bomber also gets a hit...
Then
4inf + 4fgt vs 4inf
R1: 1-1
R2: 1-2
R3: 1-2 Snake eyesssss
Fighters: 2/12

Everything that's wrong with the dice is on display here:
* 1st rounds are always worse than (or as bad as) subsequent rounds for attacker
* Defending infantry punch way above their weight
* Attacking fighters are absolutely useless
* A duo's amazing ability of rolling face value pairs (both fighters in first battle rolles 2 subsequent pairs and the R3 duo in 2nd battle rolled two 1s).
* Defending fighters hardly ever miss (their hit rate is 86% or something). I recently experienced fighters in russia scoring 21/21 while defending german attack on moscow (3 rounds of combat I think).

And this doesn't just happen once in a while, it happens, like Timepilot says, ALL the time.
In every round of combat something OFF happens, like 3 of 3 lone defenders all hitting in R1 or attacking fighters hitting nothing at all R1. etc. I think everyone here is fully aware that "wild results" happen with physical dice, but not like this. Aaah, it's so incredibly annoying and why not do something about it? How hard can it be to implement a better rng than the current one?
And I have now logged thousands of R1 dice rolls from ranked play and (unless I just happen to be really, really unlucky) the rng is doing a terrible job. Terrible! Everything people are noticing and "complaining" about IS A FACT. It is, there's really no need to discuss it.

=== Update
In that second battle above I went for R4:
3fgt vs 1inf -> 0-1 He rolls a 1. Of course he does, that's what they most often do.
So that puts attacking fighters at 2/15. 15 dice rolled, TWO hits. And defending infantry at 6/10.
You can't make this stuff up.

=== Again, sorry, but I only go onto this here board while playing and if you've started writing something while playing then you enter that old loop because more insanely stupid dice rolls occur. This is the very next battle after #2 above:

4inf + 3art + 1fgt vs 4inf + 1fgt
R1: 4-4
R2: 1-1
I mean...WTAF? (Edit: how did the markup thingy make that a URL??) First, I'm shocked about that attacker result, not very often I get results like that, but then defending infantry rolls THREE 1s. And of course the fighter hits. So battles #2 and #3 were from the same game and same round and defending infantry scored 9/14 hits and attacking fighters 3/14 (if you add fighter results from all 3 battles mentioned here and which were all played in succession you get 5/29 hits for fighters!!!). That is a crazy result, but the insane thing is that this is sooo common in this game. That's insanely crazy and it's what all of us "complainers" are talking about (I think. At least me). And what's even still yet more crazy is how one-sided this is, why does attacker never get those insanely lucky rolls? Why didn't I get 22/29 fighter hits? That just never happens. For some reason it NEVER happens.

And these are only MY attacks, I rarely check what happened to my opponent (and I can't see what dice he rolled anyway unless i stalk him). Just now A guy attacked my 1inf with 1inf + 3fgt and retreated without any hits and 3 fighters left. I'm only seing half the madness but that in itself is just insane.

Yeah, that's it. I'm out of words. It's just so dumb, and it's not going to be addressed so I'll have to quit playing or keep on self-flagellating.

=== Sorry, it's just unavoidable. 2 minutes after adding a few sentences this happened:
4fgt + 2inf vs 2inf
R1: 2-2 Snake eyes. Yesssss. I think a snake eyes has a 7-8% chance of happening in this game for 2 defending inf/art, at least in my last 50 games or so. The prob of that outcome is 0.02? It has happened to me 3-4 times just today. Lord...

]Soon thereafter]
A lot vs 2inf
R1: enough - 2.
100%.
Again. I'll shut up now.
Hopefully...

[Timepilot7]

Here's a great example that just happened 30 minutes ago. Russia (me) attacking Ukraine with 9 infantry, 4 artillery, 3 fighters against 9 "exposed" German tanks. First round Russia scores an amazing 2 hits, Germany defends with 5 hits. Not normal but not crazy. Second wave Russia has zero hits, impossibly weak, and German tanks defend with all 7 tanks hitting. Round 2, game is over, odds of this outcome is ridiculously small yet things like this happens ALL THE TIME! I have hundreds and hundreds of examples like this. My favorite is 3 Japanese subs attacking 8 American subs (the guys just went all out because he was losing) but ends up destroying all 8 subs sustaining zero casualties. Something is very off.

[Davy_Hall]

I mean I would take that sub battle if I'm the attacker. Battle calc puts it at -4.7 IPC for the attacker which is less than 1 sub difference. Greater than 50% odds that you kill 2 subs and lose 3. but 33% chance to break even and kill 3. 17% chance of killing 4, 9% chance to kill 5, 5% chance to double your money and kill 6. 4% chance of killing 7 and 3% chance of getting all 8. I mean I'm sure he didn't go into that thinking I'm going to get super lucky and kill 8, but it's a pretty good gamble to take knowing you're only putting 18 IPC at risk and putting 48 of your opponent IPC at risk with at least a 1/3 chance of breaking even and a 50% chance of killing 2 vs losing 3.

Very frustrating to be on the losing end I'm sure, but definitely not an out of the park result with a 3% chance and well worth the gamble.

Definitely tough luck on the tank battle though. That's a 0.1% result. Have been on the losing end of a few of those. They are game changing without a doubt.

[Timepilot7]

Brand new game, 5 minutes ago, round 1, playing Russia and used everything available to attack Ukraine, a very common move. 3 tanks, 3 infantry, 1 artillery and 2 fighters, result: 2 hits. Not very good, well below average. Germany defense, 3 infantry, 1 artillery, 1 tank, 1 bomber and 1 fighter, result; 6 hits! Game over after the very first move.

All we want is to help improve the game so it plays "normally" like the board game. This can't be that hard! First, however, we must agree that there is a problem and get past the denial stage. I would love to hear folks perception of the percentage of Bombers getting shot down, for me it's heavy losses for many runs then seemingly free reign of the skies for many rounds. Die are VERY streaky. How about defending infantry? Particularly in the Pacific whether American or Japanese always seem to defend extremely well (well above average), especially on the islands or mainland China. What do you think the effectiveness is of battleship bombardments? Should be 67% hit rate, but seems much more like like 33%. These are only a few of anomalies, would love to hear about more and for someone to actually take the time to look at battlefield results, not just the overall die rolls but each attack and defense stats. That is where the sticky die are causing so much consternation.

[Timepilot7]

BTW, the 3 against 8 subs, the attacker never took a hit! Add that to your calculations!

[Frog5]

I can't tell if its the dice or me :)

[Timepilot7]

If you play A&A board game for 35+ years like me and then play the online game (for at least 8 years) the die roll results are stunningly different. I have never seen so many "exceptional" battle results continuously come up online. Just amazing, we live in the age of AI yet the creators can't get a working RNG that can simulate real die rolls. And it's such a shame because everything else is damn good because setting up the board game is terribly time consuming. Online is genius, just fix it (do something).

[4touchdowns1game]

We never see the top players on here or on discord claiming the dice are rigged, unfair or not accurate.

Why is that?

[Vanessa777]

Its always when new season starts. Seems to favor certain quite good players over and over. I tend to throw these games after a while. No fun. Likewise dice starts favoring me mid till end of season when I go against weaker opponents.

[rocky1242]

When you play online, you play a lot more games a lot faster than what's possible on the board, so you're going to see a lot more wild results. I've played the A&A classic CD rom as well as revised on game table online, and people thought the dice were broke on both those versions too. I understand computers have limits on how much they can truly simulate random, but don't see the dice on this version as any different than the other two.

[Timepilot7]

Please explain this one that occurred just now: Russia attacking 6 German troops with 7 infantry, 3 artillery and 1 fighter. First wave, 0 hits for Russia, Germany has 3 hits. Second wave, again, Russia 0 hits, Germany 4 hits. Third wave, because it's a total joke now and I was curious, Russia yet AGAIN, zero hits, totally unrealistic even the fighter missed yet again, Germany 3 hits. This happens ALL the time.

[rocky1242]

I have had battles like that, but not all the time. If you're a good player and you get good luck, the game usually ends pretty quick. If you get bad luck the game can be a long drawn out battle. This can create the illusion that you are unlucky because the majority of the time you are playing a game where you got bad dice. Perhaps you have had a long string of bad luck, it won't last forever.

[Timepilot7]

I've played hundreds of games, the die are simply "off", all I want it to be much more realistic. I've slaughtered many opponents with unrealistic die rolls, not a matter of luck or much strategy, just "sticky" and "streaky" dice. It can't be hard at all to fix it! Hire someone from a casino game creator for a day. There are so many people with so many examples and complaints, we all just want to make this game better (like no defense against battleship bombardments).