🎲😢 PRNG dice support group — and ranting

Its called:

Tragic: The Disbursement

https://imgur.com/a/hkkBNop

Why does this opening attack by the Soviets succeed magnificently almost every time? I have heard time after time that the Axis has an advantage even in the Genco Harris mod, are dice rolls being manipulated on the part of the Allies to offset this? Calculate the loss in in IPC’s of these two territories for Germany and it cost the Soviets 3 infantry? Are you kidding me? I hate the Bomber being moved to the Ukraine. I have modified my defense profile so that Bombers will go before tanks, to try and get some defense rolls but do I move Bomber down even lower, will it make a damn bit of difference?

It’s a bum move. Your not supposed to TAKE Ukraine, only reduce and leave. The 3 tanks get stuck and 18 IPC die. Just kill everything but one German and LEAVE. The losses are not replaceable in the near term. It’s almost as bad as losing the 2 Russian Fighters!

@Brian-Cannon For your defense profile, you should have bombers set to die first. Yeah it sucks losing a 12 IPC unit on the first turn but it only rolls at a 1 on defense. You’re going to lose the territory anyway so you need to maximize your odds of taking more Russians down with you.

Thats good from the Soviet standpoint. They save 3 tanks and Germany loses the Bomber. Oh great

How the “heck” do you lose 9 INF attacking West Russia R1?

Thats easy. Play 1942 Online. Its a typical result

Really get some strange results. There seems to be some tendency towards favourable defensive rolls. My latest painful attack was last night. I found that I had a very strong play of taking a factory with Japan instead of Germany and so I played the somewhat unbalanced attack:

1 tank, 3 fighters and 2 bombers

Against

2 infantry and 1 fighter

I always cringe when attacking only with tanks and fighters, but with the bombers I felt pretty safe. Basically we both lost everything and I couldn’t take the factory with Japan. I still think I am winning that game, but still had to impart the customary abuse to the computer screen.

I don’t remember all the dice rolls because it went for a few rounds, but the first round was I missed everything: four 5s for the tank and fighters and double 6 for the bombers.

I also notice my opponents having crazy bad attacking rolls and consistent better than average defence (for me). Planning to try to find more defensive strategies… but not always possible…

@Daen-Hudspeth I know you listed that suggestion quite a long time ago (to simulate the rolling of dice graphically). I still thought I’d answer it though.

Simulating a die roll graphically requires a known outcome in order for the die face to be represented “up”. There is nothing more random about a GPU (or even the integrated graphics portion in the case of an integrated chip).

The way to generate better random outcomes (or in this case psuedorandom outcomes) without relying on expensive entropy devices is to have a better seed and a better algorithm for generating pRNG based on that seed. Also rotating the seed frequently is necessary (maybe even every dice roll).

There’s definitely seems to be something weird going on which is more pronounced when one obtains some significant advantages on the board. It’s like there’s a kick back to help the embattled forces. I only started actively playing this online A&A a couple of months ago, just before the reset. I was losing my fair share from some bad play and unfamiliarity with this version. I didn’t have this sense of something weird going on nearly as much as I do now, especially in the last few weeks and really bizarre this last week. ‘Coincidentally’ it coincided with me having a good start to season 2 and reaching platinum. Now it feels a bit horrendous to be honest, especially this last week nearly getting in to the top 10. To the point where I am overcompensating (over defending) which can also lead to mistakes. Maybe just finish my current games and call it. The way the rolls come out on these long runs with the heavily numbered combats and then consistent hit/miss combos with the small attacks, not to mention the timing of AA hits… The way it’s often all ‘coordinated’ has this unnatural weirdness. So okay, in real life yes I have ‘missed with everything’ on a decent sized attack (say 10-15 units) and maybe even twice in the same game/day, but here it happens on consecutive rounds of combat, only to be followed by heavy losses for the other smaller battles/bombing runs. I have virtually stopped doing bombing runs now. After all that, next game I’ll have a rare run of rolls, but mostly when it really doesn’t matter. Okay rant over, but yeah I dunno 🤯

Very first battle after I write that and roll 4 1s with 4 at 3 against 1 at 3 lol. Just to rub it in lol.

Nah that’s it. I might finish the current games. Really good job on this version of the game, but for this weirdness with the `roller’. Taking screenshots is a pain, but I did just for the bizarreness.! Just ONE OF MANY. Even more pronounced again this last week. One of them I felt bad because I had made a blunder and missed a sneak attack on Japan. Yet miraculously defended it, even to excess. I know how it feels from the other end and it happens way too much compared to over the board. SOmething is going on where the game tries to balance back out, but the effect is that it often rewards bad play. When defenders roll with just one (3sided?! :face_with_rolling_eyes: ) dice and consistently hit (attackers miss). Again and again. I wish there was some way to see the overall detailed stats of the dice rolls. The in game log is not enough to see definitively.

Anyway, just a game and other things need doing. Thanks for the games to everyone I played :duck:

I did manage to hit infantry on the next round of rolls, but of course took another in return.

AAjoke.png

@DrSfloon thanks for the contributions! I really like the 3 sided dice comments.

If you’re on discord, you’re more than welcome to hop into a server the community has setup. https://discord.gg/45Cxbcg

Psst we have dice emojis

Is there any way to flag up a game to some kind of devs to look at?

I’ve essentially been completely been rolled off this one game where my opponent’s forces literally “hit everything in sight”. The combat that initiated it was one where I really think it’s a suicide attack like 95%+ of the time. Not only did the attack succeed, but it did so in combination with me being smashed in the retaliatory attack from me. Both times (and other smaller attacks elsewhere during those two rounds have meant that a game that was completely in control and I would even say winning advantage is lost in the space of a round and the only way I can think I made a mistake was to try a consolidate a fleet at a key position. I never resign after a run of bad rolls, but in this case there’s just now way back. The Japanese position in the pacific can be very fragile to this kind of thing. It’s round 5 and all I have left is 14 infantry/artilleries lol. All fleet and aircraft. The position just looks bizzarre. The round before this last round Japan earned 47 IPC and I wasn’t worried about anything in the position. The only mistake I can think of is that I should have set the Japanses subs to be saved until after a round of combat for submerging. I would normally do it, but it feels like literally a billion to one shot how all of it combined in one round to shonk a dominating position. Is there some way people cheat? Because I can’t think of anyone normally doing the intial attack.

But yeah the 3 sided dice. Sometimes that’s what it’s like. Either a 1,2,3 dice or a 4,5,6. But some of this crazy rolls stuff is not the exception but the rule! Especially the consistency of single unit defensive hits.

They take bug reports at https://beamdog.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/3 . Not sure how they respond in the case of reporting bad dice as bugs. Never tried it.

Yeah but the point is, it should be "bad `online dice’ " than “bad dice online”.

If there is a bug, I wonder if it might be that whatever twiddles the dice rolls so that a player can’t lose the tutorial battles is not disabled in the main game.