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[Man of Paper]

Honestly? Because I have a real bad history with dice rolls, and wanted to see the numbers actually roll that way.

EDIT: To clarify what I mean, I'm sure we all have felt at some point that how things should go and how they actually go aren't quite the same. I wanted to see for myself that this wouldn't need an insane sample size to become true, like how you'll rarely actually flip an even number of heads and tails in 10 flips.

[NUKE9.13]

...alright. Well, to actually comment on the system: I think one problem is that by having a larger spread of dice results, you make luck a bigger factor. For example, if one side rolls a 12, the other side can't expect a similar result for quite a while. Eventually it all balances out, but how long does an AR last? If you're doing standard 1 Design 1 Revision, then each side might expect 60-80 rolls per game. That's enough to smooth out the results of a d6 (although a d6 results in luck 'spikes' more often, which are undesirable), and I think probably enough to smooth out a 2d4, but a 2d6 has 36 possible outcomes- that doesn't divide very often into 60-80.
Which is what you were trying to investigate by actually rolling the dice, right? Well, I mean, look at your results. In both 50 and 100 rolls, a hypothetical side got 33% more low rolls than high rolls. That side is going to do considerably worse than a side that gets the opposite results. Once you get up to 500 rolls it smooths out pretty well, but ain't nobody running an AR lasting 250 turns.

[Kashyyk]

This is why the card deck idea became a thing. It forcibly smoothes out the averages, making your rolls guaranteed to be fair by the end of the deck.

[Chiefwaffles]

I honestly think the deck of rolls idea was the worst part about Iron Behemoths.
It's not horrible, but I just found that I hated that feeling of impending doom, when you feel like you've "wasted" a good roll on a sub-par design. It may technically be average in the long run, but I think it results in a worse sense of gameplay for the players, which is what really matters with the dice system used.

[Man of Paper]

Part of why I thought about using a larger spread is because those extremes should be highly uncommon. I've seen enough 1s and 2s stacked together to justify, in my opinion, using a method that'll space those 1s out. As a wise man once said, nobody is going to complain about too many 12s, but unfortunately a side effect of fairly reducing the lowest roll is going to affect the highest. Giving a couple extra tiers on either side also helps provide some breathing room in regard to designs: if the standard difficulty modifiers apply then I feel as though people won't feel as deterred from experimenting or being creative. Which now that I say that I guess it's also important to know that the AR I'm working on is intended to be more open to experimentation without having things fly off the rails two turns in. Since Iron Behemoths is finished I feel like I can openly say that (although it was card- and not dice-based) people were unwilling to diverge far from technology we know and trust in our world. I feel like this partly has to do with the larger consequences of trying something Hard as opposed to Normal, and getting an Average roll on a Very Hard design with the method I'm proposing isn't going to torpedo your action.

Don't get me wrong though, I see what you're saying and appreciate the feedback.


Ninja'd, to elaborate on the card system- eS didn't seem to be the big a fan of how it turned out: while it did make things even overall, it led to card counting. eS was actually the person I spoke to about various methods of running ARs since Iron Behemoths was one of my favorites, and that part of the exchange is specifically what led me to check into doing something else.

[Kashyyk]

 Whilst the card counting and "wasted" cards are a drawback, I personally feel it to be a lesser issue than a run of one side rolling better than the other.

[Doomblade187]

Whilst the card counting and "wasted" cards are a drawback, I personally feel it to be a lesser issue than a run of one side rolling better than the other.

Well, that could also be counteracted by a simple tracker to ensure that the GM know the roll averages of both teams, and if one team starts to fall behind by more than like 0.5, then they can either quietly adjust the rolls or add bonuses to the design team. Spire race had averages that were between 0.3 of each other, last we checked.

[Man of Paper]

There are plenty of ways for a GM to balance things out: if a team's average does start to fall behind, give them an event or challenge to acquire a Credit or something along those lines. A good GM is going to figure out how to level the playing field - if they notice the playing field isn't level.  Removing the random factor I think takes away from the game. It'd be like if you and the Ayyys were given a set pool of hit% in X-Com.

After Iron Behemoths came to an end I read through the Toskeshi thread to see if my despair throughout the game was warranted: it was not. Players are going to perceive low rolls as devastating and often disregard how the enemy may be doing in comparison. I swore some of the secret projects they had throughout the game were just things they needed multiple turns to build on when in fact it was them trying to revise low roll designs. Near the end though they had someone counting cards and they knew to push for something ambitious because, if I recall, they only had a 2, 5, or 6 to pull. That kind of knowledge should not be in player's hands. It takes away from the excitement of actually getting that high roll, and makes the GM feel powerless. With die rolls players can figure out their average and know generally what they can expect, but it's still unknown, and can go either way: that's war, baby.

When I take the average rolls of the first three sets of 50 I get 6.68, 6.52, and 6.64. If you assigned any set of 50 to a team then ultimately it'd come down to effectiveness of designs and counterplay. Obviously that's in a perfect world where the high and low rolls are split evenly between teams, but as previously stated, GM-intervention can help tip the scales back into balance if need be.

[Kashyyk]

I guess I just prefer deterministic results more than most then.

I'm disinclined towards the GM "leaning on the scales" like that. If you want random dice rolls you ought to accept the risk of having crap results. Don't expect the GM to make up for your gambling.

[NUKE9.13]

Yeah, the GM giving bonuses to sides doing poorly just cos they're doing poorly is a tricky road to go down. You may have noticed that most of the time, both sides think they are doing poorly- and those rare times they don't think that, they're usually wrong.

I have considered a 'karma' system, where low rolls move you along a track towards a +1 (or somesuch), whilst high rolls move you backwards towards a -1. Like, in the 2d4 system, a 2 might move you 2 spaces forwards, a 3 1 space, a 7 1 space backwards, and an 8 two spaces back, with, say, 5 spaces needed to get a +1/-1 to the next roll.

[evictedSaint]

Honestly, I think most of the issues with the deck system would have been solved if players simply didn't know there was a deck system.  It would only be towards the end of the game where they start going "hey...isnt it weird our average every 6 turns is exactly 3.5?" or whatever.

Another idea I heard a while back was both sides share the same dice rolls - they get the same value for designs, revisions, etc.  Neither side gets a roll advantage, but I suppose there could be the same issue of players complaining that they try all their hard projects when the other side did easy projects and vice versa.

What about a moving probability system? At the start every value has a 1/6 chance, but each time it gets rolled that chance is cut in half and the other 5 values get a probability bump accordingly.  It would lead to rolls being biased towards even distributions without deterministic outcomes.

I guess it would still lead to players posting probability charts and arguing whether their next project should be ambitious or conservative...really, the biggest problems with any balanced roll system is the players.  Those guys suck.

[Cnidaros]

My take on this is that randomness does add to the excitement of playing the game. While runs of good/bad luck can unbalance the game in favor of one side, that's part and parcel of the playing experience. And yes, the deck of rolls idea, while sound, does create a little unhappiness when it comes to good rolls being wasted on simple designs and such.

Whilst the card counting and "wasted" cards are a drawback, I personally feel it to be a lesser issue than a run of one side rolling better than the other.

Well, that could also be counteracted by a simple tracker to ensure that the GM know the roll averages of both teams, and if one team starts to fall behind by more than like 0.5, then they can either quietly adjust the rolls or add bonuses to the design team. Spire race had averages that were between 0.3 of each other, last we checked.

I feel like this crosses the line into outright GM bias. Rolls are meant to be truly random, and if the players did cotton on to the fact that they were being manipulated, even in favor of the losing team, would probably cause a great deal of salt.

My two cents regarding Spires arms race was that the averages were closer together simply because many more dice were rolled per turn than a correspondingly simpler arms race like Intercontinental arms race. Five per turn, as compared to two. With a larger set size, the probability of highly divergent averages should decrease, no?

Also, I feel like having separate rolls for effectiveness/cost/bugs does help to alleviate the effect of bad luck, as it means that you might get some utility out of a 'failed' design, instead of outright wasting the entire turn if each turn was only a single roll. On my part, I don't consider a 1 to be a complete waste, even if you don't get a design out of it, your side has gained experience in what not to do, which would translate into more lenient threshold for success/failure if you choose to attempt the same thing in following turns.

[Parsely]

That dice are the only way of determining outcomes definitely makes for a punishing experience for everyone involved, that said the players should know better than to expect anything less when they sign up for this type of game. It's the players' responsibility to understand that the game is not fair, it's random, y'all are playing a Roll to Die and that's exactly what you got, and people have done nothing but complain every step of the way in many Arms Race games. The game is flawed but I thought it was obvious enough that it shouldn't lead to anger being directed at GMs.

With die rolls players can figure out their average and know generally what they can expect, but it's still unknown, and can go either way: that's war, baby.

Previous results of die rolls don't affect future results. Your reasoning is an example of the gambler's fallacy.

---

If you want the players to own up to their decisions you need to give them some more control over the outcome of the game.

To this end, deckbuilding sounds like a good solution, you could draft cards that represent results by having the group vote for packs of card results at the start of the game. Add mechanics that penalize future turns by letting them draw extra cards when they really need that one design to come out right.

If you really shake up the design results system and tweak the strategy layer somehow to make it more interesting, I think that would make for a worthy Arms Race sequel.

[Doomblade187]

A modified deck system does sound good, but this would be vulnerable to card-counting. And when you say draw extra cards, what do you mean? Adding to the first card or a "pick higher"?

[Parsely]

Card counting is fine, that's the point of a deckbuilding game, is building probabilities you desire into your deck. The goal of this system is to make Arms Race less like gambling. A massive problem with this idea is that unlike games like Pokemon, Magic the Gathering, Netrunner, etc. is that Arms Race games last months. If you built a bad deck you won't know until you've lost. I don't think the point of Arms Race should be who wins or loses though, but it's hard to argue that when the players are so focused on who actually wins.

As for drawing extra cards, I was thinking you just draw extra cards for a chance at a better result but at a penalty. Not sure what the players would sacrifice for this benefit though, it would depend on the details of the system.