FAP breakdowns in the new edition

[Burger]

average over how long? if its average in one turn then you are saying always. if its over 4 turns thats quite poor going.

You really need to understand the meaning of "average". If Manchester United get a goal average of 1, it doesn't mean they score 1 goal in every single game. They could score 2 in some and 0 in others.

Average over 1 turn, yes. That means:

50% of turns you will get 0 hits.
25% of turns you will get 1 hit.
12.5% of turns you will get 2 hits.
6.25% of turns you will get 3 hits.
3.125% of turns you will get 4 hits.
etc...

The weighted average of all these probabilities is 1 hit. Stop digging the hole now

 

[katadder]

and I am saying average per turn. averaging one hit over a game isnt good at all.
you have a 50/50 chance of a hit every turn. no matter what other maths you throw at it there it is. which is why whitestars had to have their beam increased as its not a scary ship if it only manages to hit you every so often.

 

[Burger]

Like I said at the start... I agree with what you're saying, White Stars with 1AD miss 50% of the time, and that sucks. But the maths you quoted was totally wrong. I was correcting it.

 

[katadder]

wasnt really quoting maths, was quoting dice. its 50/50 every turn, no increase in chances or anything like that cos you missed previously.
like i said earlier, on pure maths your stuff works but dice dont respond to pure maths unfortunately and dice dont have numbers less than 1 for 0.5 hits etc either. some games you can have a nightmare and miss everything.
if they did respond to pure maths it would add another tactical element to it or something
personally I hate when people play mathshammer (adding maths to wargames).

 

[Burger]

Heh, you were first to start talking about fractional numbers of hits and averages:

given that all beams now hit on 4+ and you cannot CAF with them the WS needed the increase inbeam to average 1.5 hits compared to the 0.5 if had been left with 1AD.

I just corrected your figures.

Dice follow laws of probability which is a branch of maths... unfoutunately they do follow Murphy's law sometimes as well.

 

[Da Boss]

So you guys really like Maths eh!? Gives me a headache!

 

[MustEatBrains]

Doesn´t really work in wargaming anyway - you sure get your average figures after a couple of games (meaning that I have a few years of PRETTY good dice results ahead of me), but that doesn´t at all help you in your average one-off game

 

[Burger]

Of course dice rolling means that no game will be "average" and the averages will only come out in the long term. So - what can you do? Make the beam 10 AD so that you never have a bad game?

The ships stats have to represent the averages to be balanced. Otherwise you'd win/lose more than your fair share, and that ship would be what we call "overpowered". That doesn't mean unbeatable, it just means it wins more often than it should.

If you took everyone's opinion of their own dice rolling into account, nobody would ever roll well! Everyone thinks their dice rolling sucks. Probably because they remember rolling badly more than rolling well.

 

[MustEatBrains]

If you took everyone's opinion of their own dice rolling into account, nobody would ever roll well! Everyone thinks their dice rolling sucks. Probably because they remember rolling badly more than rolling well.

No, I have witnesses! :roll:

I didn´t say anything about never having a bad game, i just said that doing maths while playing doesn´t really help your game (as a comment about that "mathhammer" thing)

 

[Burger]

Well it does sometimes, I work out exactly how many Strikehawks to point at a ship to destroy it, then add a couple more to cover bad luck... of course it's not guaranteed because you can always get unluckier than you plan for...

 

[thePirv]

If you took everyone's opinion of their own dice rolling into account, nobody would ever roll well! Everyone thinks their dice rolling sucks. Probably because they remember rolling badly more than rolling well.

Except my dice rolling against you at Q-con where i didn't fail a single stealth roll :lol:

 

[Burger]

Oh yeah, except when rolling against me of course

 

[CZuschlag]

Of course dice rolling means that no game will be "average" and the averages will only come out in the long term. So - what can you do? Make the beam 10 AD so that you never have a bad game?

The ships stats have to represent the averages to be balanced. Otherwise you'd win/lose more than your fair share, and that ship would be what we call "overpowered".

Finally! Hallelujah! Mean is the only multi-event mechanism by which we can determine the fairness of the game (just like Standard Deviation is the only way we can determine the luck-dependency of the game).

Look, there is exactly two other averaging mechanisms that can be considered useful if you want, Median and Beyesian Average. However, with both of these, you either assume that one set of results is all that matters, rather than the accumulation of many results (the Median), or that there is a statement of which you are evaluating the truth (Beyesian.) I discard Median here, as a given Whitestar is more likely than not to get multiple shots with a beam in a game. I discard Beyesian at my own risk, but it is unlikely to vary far from the true Mean.

Burger's math is SPOT ON.

 

[Greg Smith]

Burger's maths is indeed spot on.

Makes me wish I'd continued with statistics instead of doing relativity and group theory and so on for my degree.

 

[Triggy]

Burger's maths is indeed spot on.

Makes me wish I'd continued with statistics instead of doing relativity and group theory and so on for my degree.

Burger - I've tried to explain to katadder (and others) several times but it just seems to come down to an appreciation of what the statistics actually mean (rather than what you think they mean). Some people find the concept that 1AD = 1 hit on average quite hard to accept because it isn't very intuitive and doesn't take into account variance/spread. Even harder to understand is the 0.7 hits with a SAP beam vs Hull 6.

It's a bit like saying a 1AD Precise beam is almost as good as a Double Damage beam (they are very close in effectiveness) - it may not look like it on the surface but run the numbers and you sometimes get counter-intuitive results.

 

[CZuschlag]

Don't worry too much Greg -- I have found a lot of use at my workplace for Group Theory (Computer Science -- who would have thought! Not me while I was at university...). My relativity stuff .... I have Misner/Thorne/Wheeler's book in my library, not that I know how to calculate the Stress-Energy tensor anymore.

 

[Triggy]

Of course dice rolling means that no game will be "average" and the averages will only come out in the long term. So - what can you do? Make the beam 10 AD so that you never have a bad game?

The ships stats have to represent the averages to be balanced. Otherwise you'd win/lose more than your fair share, and that ship would be what we call "overpowered". That doesn't mean unbeatable, it just means it wins more often than it should.

If you took everyone's opinion of their own dice rolling into account, nobody would ever roll well! Everyone thinks their dice rolling sucks. Probably because they remember rolling badly more than rolling well.

Amen to that!

Nice to see that explanation so clearly worded.

 

[Burger]

Some people find the concept that 1AD = 1 hit on average quite hard to accept because it isn't very intuitive and doesn't take into account variance/spread.

Yeah, thats why I used the football example... a goal average of 1 doesn't mean 1 goal is scored every game... it can mean 2 scored in one game and 0 in the next.

*Shrug*... spreading probability to the masses

Lets not even bring chaos theory or the 2nd law of thermodynamics into it until 3e :lol:

 

[No. 1 Bear]

Lets not even bring chaos theory or the 2nd law of thermodynamics into it until 3e :lol:

Wait untill its 3d then the maths gets fun. :wink:

 

[katadder]

Burger's maths is indeed spot on.

Makes me wish I'd continued with statistics instead of doing relativity and group theory and so on for my degree.

Burger - I've tried to explain to katadder (and others) several times but it just seems to come down to an appreciation of what the statistics actually mean (rather than what you think they mean). Some people find the concept that 1AD = 1 hit on average quite hard to accept because it isn't very intuitive and doesn't take into account variance/spread. Even harder to understand is the 0.7 hits with a SAP beam vs Hull 6.

It's a bit like saying a 1AD Precise beam is almost as good as a Double Damage beam (they are very close in effectiveness) - it may not look like it on the surface but run the numbers and you sometimes get counter-intuitive results.

but as has been said this can be spread over numerous games. pure maths just doesnt work for standard one off gaming, and you would have to record results over numerous games anyway.
take the 1AD whitestar, ok its gonna get 0.7 hits per turn, but as you cant get 0.7 hits this results in either one hit or one miss, or occasionally more than one hit or in extreme cases (managed it once) 5 hits.
mathshammer just is annoying, and you know how much it annoys me triggy. it also doesnt make up for 12AD beams or all the other crazy amount of dice you have tried to put onto weapons cos they would be really broken