Problems with Die Rolls disparity.

[steve-perkins]

Maybe a solution, would be a series of re-rolls. Each side gets 10 for free and if you want more they come at a cost of 4 production points. You use them to re-roll both dice, not just your die. There are some critical rolls during the game and losing just because of bad rolls leaves a bad taste in the mouth. So at least some re-roll options (Which may turn out to be the same or worse, after all they are re-rolls) may make it feel less random and that what you do on the board does actually make a difference.

[RobertBr]

There are some critical rolls during the game and losing just because of bad rolls leaves a bad taste in the mouth. So at least some re-roll options ... may make it feel less random and that what you do on the board does actually make a difference.

All of those critical rolls are weather rolls. The Axis player rolls for weather so this would give them an enormous and overwhelming advantage (every Russian invasion would be clear skies, every end-game would be cold harsh winters). I think pursuing a 'perception' amongst those players who do not understand probabilities is pointless, the only thing that would make a difference is substituting hidden information or dependent probabilities for the independent ones, and that is a fairly fundamental change.

[Lunalol]

Small precision to make it clear

In no way, a BGA developer will modify the dice rolls.
You can write pages and pages on forums (and some have already done so for other games), we won't move a finger.

Here, an idea! What if for each roll, I opened a dialog window to let you enter the value of the dice you rolled at home with confidence?

Thanks for playing (and sometime losing too).

[steve-perkins]

More extreme die rolls, now in 3 of the 4 games I'm playing. I've seen extreme die rolls in the 35 years of face to face gaming, but only very rarely. It's usually 2 or 3 maybe 4 rolls in a row. But these are 7+ die rolls in a row and in 75% of the game's I'm in. The other players in those games have noticed it too and in other games they are playing. I just gave up in one turn, 3 attacks made, opponent rolls 6.5.6. I thought what is the point? I'm just banging my head against a brick wall and passed for the rest of the turn, I'd lost interest in continuing, I'd lost any enjoyment. Surely something can be done by the coders to flag up these discrepancies and give the victim of these rolls, favourable rolls or free re-rolls or something.

[Romain672]

On internet, usually everything is faster, and you play more.
Dunno if it's your case, but that's normally the reason you saw sometimes more disparity.

Else it look like you got a serie of weirds rolls, and in your next games, it will be more normal.

[steve-perkins]

And once again, my rolls 4,4,2,2,1 total of 13 Ave 2.6. My opponent 6,5,5,6,5 total of 27 Ave 5.4. I stopped attacking after that, what was the point of bashing my head against a brick wall of supposedly random die rolls. Unconditional Surrender is a great sandbox of what could have been WW2 in Europe. It's a good combat system, but these die rolls are just destroying any enjoyment I've got with this BGA implementation. In my 35 years of face to face gaming I have never seen extreme die rolls on the order of this magnitude, because trust me, I would have remembered them, Wargamers tend to remember those times.

3 of the 4 games I'm currently involved in have had these same extremes. Can someone who codes please address this issue.

[steve-perkins]

Following on from my previous post. The last 15 die rolls for me 4,4,2,2,1,1,2,1,2,4,2,3,3,5,5. Total 41 and an average of 2.73

My opponents last 15 die rolls: 6,5,5,6,5,4,6,6,1,5,1,6,6,6,6 Total of 74 and an average of 4.93

12 of my opponents last 15 rolls have been either 5 or 6, whereas 8 of my last 15 rolls have been 1 or 2.

Yes it could happen, but let the mathematicians/statisticians out there tell me what the odds of that happening.

I really like Unconditional Surrender, but this 'Randomness' is just killing any enjoyment for me, I dare say for my opponent too, because what's the fun in automatically winning because your die rolls are so vastly superior to your opponent. It's no reflection on their good play, if they win 90% of the die rolls.

It's the 21st century, can't something be done to rectify this? Like I've said before 35 years of experience playing wargames and this is not normal, this is not random.

[RobertBr]

3 of the 4 games I'm currently involved in have had these same extremes. Can someone who codes please address this issue.

No because it only exists in your head. The strings you are giving are normal random distributions, they are exactly what you would expect to see in short sequences if you roll dice hundreds of times. If you have genuinely never seen that in 35 years of wargaming the problem is with your physical dice not the computer - but you will have seen this, the experience of being on the computer (more, faster, and recorded rolls) and that you don't (as most people don't) have a good sense of probability is creating the false perception something different is happening. It isn't, the numbers you are listing off are completely normal. This is what independent probabilities look like.

[steve-perkins]

Yep, thought someone would say they are completely normal. So you must have seen on a regular and I do mean regular basis, disparities of a 2.73 Average compared to a 4.93 Average over 15 die rolls, not 2 or 3 or even 5 rolls but 15 rolls. One of my other games I looked at the first 33 rolls and found I was a full 0.5 average below my opponent. We should have been roughly 3.5, but I was at about 3.2 to his 3.7.

All I'm asking is if I can see what is going on then surely a program can have a counter added to the random die roll generator to keep a tally of the last 10/20/30/50 rolls and if there is a massive disparity then maybe offer the player suffering, a re-roll, or number of re-rolls if it keeps happening. Or a behind the scenes tweak to the randomness that automatically re-rolls when things have gone too far in favour of one side.

Lets make it about the game and the players and not about the die rolls. It's like when Referees or Umpires get too involved and whistle happy and it becomes about them and not the players. Otherwise we might as well play roll the dice, the game where 2 or more players roll a dice and the winner is the highest roll, no experience or ability required.

[steve-perkins]

Just to let you know, that I don't like posting about the die roll disparity and yes I did notice it because I was on the receiving end of the rolls, but, if I was the recipient of the rolls I still wouldn't like it, because it makes the outcome of the game utterly meaningless. Woohoo! I won, nothing to do with my average die roll being way higher than my opponent, it must have been my experience and skill that did it.