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| "Sir, our algorithms are failing!" |
By Eric "R1H4" Riha
Now that I've completed my consciousness transfer from The Mathemagician into the R1H4 Battle Computer, it's time to delve into my favorite topic again: MATH.
Star Wars: Armada's unique dice arrangement - both in facing and in color - makes calculating "Expected Results" extremely difficult or super fun(!) depending on how you look at it. Defensive abilities that modify those dice directly (rather than simply modifying the final result) add a layer of complexity that makes Armada a highly variable (and super fun!) game to play.
Today, we are going to talk strictly about Expected Outcomes from each set of dice in the quantities we see from Capital Ships - specifically in terms of damage output. We will also look at these outcomes through the lens of a basic
Pareto analysis; that is to say, which outcomes are greater than 80% reliable. We all know there's a chance we can roll 4 blanks on 4 black dice, but how common is it? Should the rare chance of that occurring impact how we make decisions? Using this "80% Rule" allows us to make decisions based on reasonable outcomes when chance/risk is involved.
Unlike the world of Flames of War or other games where the outcome of a die roll requires additional "calculations" (skill + modifiers = required value to hit), Armada's dice deliver results that are applicable across all (or nearly all) scenarios. For example, if I am firing out of the front arc of a Nebulon B using 3 Red Dice, the outcome of my attack roll is the same regardless of what my target is. Different targets may have different mitigation profiles (defense token sets), but the initial attack roll always has the same probability to damage, crit, accuracy, etc.
Let's start our analysis with a single Red Die.
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