New! Dice Roller is Installed

[frimmel]

@Imperious:

How exactly do you use this thing?

It is groovy. If you have a small battle and are a competent typist you can type the code :mice xdy: and a random number will be generated. Howevre you must use dice instead of mice. x is the number of dice you want to roll and y is the number of sides on the dice or the range for which you need a random number.

Rolling 1 6-sided dice:
5

Rolling 1 12-sided dice:
10

Rolling 1 100-sided dice:
3

or
Attacking INF (3) need 1s
Rolling 3 6-sided dice:
1, 6, 2

Attacking ART (1) and matched INF (1)
Rolling 2 6-sided dice:
5, 4

Defending INF (2)
Rolling 2 6-sided dice:
3, 5

Or
1 INF, 2 TANKS and 1 RTL in BOTB
Rolling 8 12-sided dice:
3, 10, 9, 6, 2, 10, 5, 3

Switch was trying to do some geeky D&D stuff and give a bonus to the random result.

[Guest]

LOL, yep it was indeed my AD&D game heritage that went into thsoe dice attempts.

But alas, AD&D appears to be passe, so it did not work

But I was able to work out the pairings for the Tournament anyway :-D

[frood]

I’ve been using this and actually liking it more than frood.net in some ways - the results are there and saved in the forum immediately, and you don’t have to have as many windows/tabs etc. Also, even pretty complicated battles can be done fairly easily, ex:

(reliving my most glorious recent combat, killed 73 IPCs and lost 35 IPCs:)

Karelia: 14 Inf 4 Art 3 Arm defending v. 5 Inf 14 Arm 6 Ftr 1 Bom

Dice:
Attacking (in sequence: 5 @ 1, 20 @ 3, 1 @4)
Rolling 26 6-sided dice:
2, 1, 1, 5, 6, 2, 1, 3, 6, 6, 3, 3, 6, 4, 1, 1, 3, 2, 3, 6, 1, 3, 3, 5, 3, 2
Defending (18 @ 2, 3 @3(
Rolling 21 6-sided dice:
2, 1, 2, 5, 4, 3, 6, 4, 2, 5, 6, 2, 2, 5, 2, 5, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2

[Guest]

The problem there is to distinguish what units are what… thus the multiple entries for various units.

[frood]

That’s solved by declaring eg “5@1, 20@3, 1@4”, so you know that the first 5 have to be 1’s to hit, the rest all have to be 3 or lower except the very last one which could be a 4.

It would be nice if this gadget could be simplified, so that eg. you only had to type  :5d6: to roll 5 dice

Also, it’s nice because you can’t cheat it, because the forum doesn’t let you post actual html code, eg:

Rolling 8 12-sided dice:
3, 10, 9, 6, 2, 10, 5, 3

[Guest]

Also prevent any attempts to “cheat” because if you attempt to edit a post with dice, it returns to HTML coding.

[djensen]

I’ve updated the dice command to be a little more friendly …

For instance previously you could only roll one set at a time
dice 26d6

Now you can break it up into groups
dice 5d6 20d6 1d6

Dice:
Attacking (in sequence: 5 @ 1, 20 @ 3, 1 @4)
dice 5d6 20d6 1d6
Rolling 5d6 20d6 1d6:
(2, 2, 4, 6, 6)  (1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6)  (5)

Defending (18 @ 2, 3 @3)
dice 18d6 3d6
Rolling 18d6 3d6:
(1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5)  (3, 4, 6)

The results are grouped as specified and sorted lowest to highest.

[djensen]

The next step will be something like this
:dice 4d6@1 3d6@4:

but as you can see it does not work like this now

[cyan]

@ncscswitch:

Also prevent any attempts to “cheat” because if you attempt to edit a post with dice, it returns to HTML coding.

lets see about that.  :-P
okay conculsion you can not edit the dice but you can delete them and reroll(which you can’t do in the games in progres forum anyway) 100% save

[frood]

@djensen:

The next step will be something like this
:dice 4d6@1 3d6@4:

but as you can see it does not work like this now

That would be awesome. I might have to start donating to this site…

[djensen]

Also if you almost get it right but not quite, this is what you’ll see …

dice 3d5 3dd dd3
Rolling 3d5 3dd dd3:
(3, 4, 5)  (?)  (?)

[frood]

Might need a ruling in my tournament game as a result of this change - I was not aware of it when I rolled my combat for Japan 1. I was pleased to see a high number of hits by my infantry and ACs (attacking at 1), but none of my fighters scored hits. Then I saw this update and realized what happened - went back and checked and sure enough all my dice were sorted. The way I roll :) is like this:

5 Inf 2 Ftr attacking @ 1,1,1,1,1,3,3
Rolling 7d6:
(2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 5)

As you can see, any ones got assigned to infantry, and my Ftrs would end up with 5s and 6s.

Didn’t notice it because they were all pretty small battles and I had no reason to think it had changed.

I don’t know if this helped or hurt me (Pearl went well, but China didn’t), the question is, should I re-roll my entire turn? Only noticed after the US already went.

[djensen]

Any dice rolls rolled today using the new system incorrectly should be re-rolled. Sorry. So, yes, you need to re-roll your attacks.

dice 5d6 2d6
Rolling 5d6 2d6:
(1, 2, 3, 5, 6)  (3, 4)

[frood]

Already rerolled by agreement. Worked out well - killed one more sub and saved an AC, not bad for the ol’ bottom line.

It raises an interesting question - what kind of combination of units would benefit most from ordered dice? Let’s see, I guess you’d want to match what the dice would likely roll at, starting with 2’s - let’s say, 2 Inf 2 Art, 2 Arm 2 Ftr 2 Bom:

Total punch of 28, expect 4.66 hits? Yup, my sim confirms.

rolling 4@2, 4@3, 2@4:
Rolling 10d6:
(1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 6)  
Rolling 10d6:
(2, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6)  
Rolling 10d6:
(1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6)  
Rolling 10d6:
(1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6)  
Rolling 10d6:
(2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6)  
Rolling 10d6:
(1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5)  
Rolling 10d6:
(1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6)  
Rolling 10d6:
(1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6)  
Rolling 10d6:
(1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 6, 6, 6, 6)  
Rolling 10d6:
(1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6)

[frood]

6 + 0 + 6 + 4+7+ 0+ 3+ 3+ 5+ 9

43 hits, or 4.3 - actually worse than expected. It does seem that this will make extreme results more likely.

Hmm - what would be the optimal combination? No matter what, your Boms become useless, unless you reverse the order, in which case your Inf/Art/Subs are useless.

This has inspired me to order the dice in my sim too, easier to visually confirm # of hits.

[frood]

Oops, the two 0 results were actually 1 hits each.

[djensen]

The numbers are still generated randomly. All I do now is put them into an array and then sort the array. Nearly exactly the same.

[frood]

@djensen:

Any dice rolls rolled today using the new system incorrectly should be re-rolled. Sorry. So, yes, you need to re-roll your attacks.

dice 5d6 2d6
Rolling 5d6 2d6:
(1, 2, 3, 5, 6)  (3, 4)

Now another issue has arisen - my opponent has re-rolled his subsequent Russian battle, even though it was in no way affected by the Japan turn which I had to re-roll. The only difference was in SZ 41, which is a long way from Karelia, and in any event he declared the exact same combat.

Initially my two defending Inf in Karelia both hit as they died, and on the re-roll they both missed. Need a ruling - do ALL subsequent battles have to be re-rolled? I rather preferred the results of the first time he rolled the battle.

Switch?

[frood]

Never mind, my opponent has agreed to use the original dice.

[djensen]

New Feature for the dice roller! Now you don’t need the d6 anymore. The default dice are now d6. The new syntax is as follows …

dice 3 2 1 1
Rolling 3 2 1 1:
(1, 3, 3)  (2, 4)  (2)  (4)

The old one still works …
dice 4d12
Rolling 4d12 4d12:
(1, 2, 7, 11)  (2, 2, 5, 11)

You can mix them but don’t do it.