Vassal Tourney Results

[Dizzy Vree]

blamin the RNG is just like blameing a pack of dice, do it all you like, but probablility dusnt lie(much)

 

[Davesaint]

you made plenty of 6+ saves though for pak redundancy. so it swings in roundabouts.
does seem vassal takes a likeing to differant people in differant games.

6+ saves mean nothing when one person gets all of the criticals, and none of them are bad, and the other player gets none. The RNG is pants.


Dave

As has been established many times, the RNG for Vassal is solid (and that's from both a statistical analysis and from several people analysing the source code itself).

Part of the problem may actually lie in that it's more random than real dice where all sorts of things have an effect that can't affect RNGs such as the orientation of the dice in a person's hand and that the dice only "roll" a very limited distance/number of revolutions.

There were quite a few instances in which people noticed significant bias in the dice towards a given player in the battle. I have tried using the X6 button, breaking up into lots of 2d6, 4d6, etc. It just does not run averages very well. having a 70% crit ratio on one side and a 0% crit ratio on the other side does not equate to balance. Given the number of dice I rolled and hit with, there is no way that a RNG would not give at least 1 6 result on the die roll if it was worth anything.

As far as actual dice goes, there are definately different things that can effect the rolls. If the die is smaller, especially the dotted dice, the weight can be off as the amount of material that is removed to form the dice is porpotionally higher than it is on larger dice. Depending on how you roll the dice, how you hold them in your hand can adjust the roll.

I guess my issue is that with so much in the game determined by critis, and specifically the type of crits on the chart that you roll, an significant imbalance in the number of crits rolled will make or break a given battle.

After Romu got his first crit(the 4-6 crit on my hurr gunship), I PM'd katadder and CALLED correctly that on his next target he would get an all stop critical. I was correct. If the RNG is that predictable, then there is an issue with it.

If the RNG is pants, it makes tactics irrelevant.


Dave

 

[Triggy]

I've had games with dice like that too :? (e.g. For an entire game, 60% criticals on normal rolls and 85% when Precise against me, only saved by my making 90% Dodge rolls with my White Stars!)

At the end of the day it's your call but all I can say is that the code for the RNG has no detectable errors and statistical analysis shows it has a normal mean and variance. Other than that, I can't really counter anecdotal evidence. Sure that game really, really sucked (I can't deny that) but it was a blip (a big one) not the norm.

I'd be saddened if you don't want to come back to Vassal as you're a good general and fun to play against

 

[LaranosTZ]

I have, and always will maintain that the RNG for Vassal is not very good. I don't believe it favors one player or the other, but it definately favors strings of one number set or another. This is especially obvious when rolling small sets of dice, less obvious when rolling larger sets of dice.

I have observed this over and over and over again, where the vassal dice will roll pairs and trips way out of porportion to the number of dice rolled. Of course, over the course of an entire game, or several games the number of times each number is rolled will come out about even, but that doesn't help when you roll paired 5s, then paired 6s, then paired 6s, then paired 2s...etc. etc.

Again, I will say that I am not saying that the dice will favor either person in particular during a whole game, but it certainly turns out that way for periods of time. I will also admit that a person's perception can be skewed...for example Dave complaining about his lack of crits, because he places less importance on the fact that he rolled an unusual number of 6s for damage reduction. To him, crits are more important then damage reduction, and when the sets hit on the damage reduction, it seems as though the dice are not working for him.

 

[katadder]

actually his next crit was a -1AD crit
and i sure dont remember that prediction anyway.
his 4th crit was a no speed crit, but on a differant ship.

 

[Burger]

Part of the problem may actually lie in that it's more random than real dice where all sorts of things have an effect that can't affect RNGs such as the orientation of the dice in a person's hand and that the dice only "roll" a very limited distance/number of revolutions.

Surprised to hear you say that Triggy! Are you saying that by practicing hand orientation and roll distance, I can improve my dice rolling? :lol:

Both are equally random. You just trust real dice more because you can see with your eyes that they are really random. When a computer gives you some bad numbers it is natural to think "are they really random? how did the computer make these up?"

 

[H]

but then I've never had 70+ hits with only 2 crits in, yes i have had bad spells of rolling, lots of em, but so naturally your inclination is to question the PC, especially when your opponent is getting a crit every other hit.

 

[Burger]

Have you ever rolled 70+ hits to see how many crits you get?

Maybe you roll 10 hits, and get no crits. Then roll another 10, and get 1 crit. Another 10 hits, no crits... you don't realize how few crits you've got when you roll them all separately.

 

[H]

I think you do. I have had games wheee I have had low crits, the worst one was 54 for 4. which was bleedin annoying. (yes i do have a habit of keeping track!)

 

[Triggy]

Part of the problem may actually lie in that it's more random than real dice where all sorts of things have an effect that can't affect RNGs such as the orientation of the dice in a person's hand and that the dice only "roll" a very limited distance/number of revolutions.

Surprised to hear you say that Triggy! Are you saying that by practicing hand orientation and roll distance, I can improve my dice rolling? :lol:

Both are equally random. You just trust real dice more because you can see with your eyes that they are really random. When a computer gives you some bad numbers it is natural to think "are they really random? how did the computer make these up?"

You're right that trust is the biggest issue. The luck I've seen IRL and on the PC tend to be about the same (but then again I remember "average" luck well because I hate it when people bemoan their luck then I have to point out they've actually been average or above average). People trust their eyes with dice but the infernal machine does it all in secret.

 

[CZuschlag]

It is worth noting that there is a known exploit in Vassal which allows a user of the client to corrupt the Random Number Generator to make it decided unrandom or even subvert it to convert it to some local program. Vassal is attempting in V3 (due to release fairly soon, IIRC) to fix this problem, but it is a currently known issue until the next version of the engine, which will attempt to send all random number calls to a online Dice Server. I don't know if that will be implemented in time.

 

[Triggy]

That's a good step in any case, of course I doubt anyone here has done anything of the sort but it may help to increase trust in the RNG if it's a centralised generator.

 

[Burger]

the next version of the engine, which will attempt to send all random number calls to a online Dice Server. I don't know if that will be implemented in time.

I can think of a few ways to get around that, too...

 

[Chernobyl]

aren't there other online die rollers you can use? I remember seeing some nice fancy 3D modeled ones...

Chern