I took a look at the interaction between Armada dice and the defense tokens. I calculated some damage output with the help of a script and came to some nice conclusions.

Check it out!

http://aripax.blogspot.ro/2015/07/armada-dice-part-i-ship-to-ship.html

This is some excellent research on dice and results. A very good read, if you've got 15 minutes to get to understand probabilities better.

Well I initially did this to help my own games, to understand where my failures where and what I could theoretically do better. I know it's more math and graphs than people might enjoy, but the conclusions are definitely palatable and easy to apply.

Great read And not all of it did I assume correctly on.

Loved it. Thanks for your work and especially the visualizations. That would have been much less impactful as a wall o' text.

Did your side by side CR90 example include the obstruction of one ship?

very well done! Some conclusions I had a intuition about. But it is nice to know that red/blue do about the same average damage.

Next you should cover how evade, affects the dice rolls, or the probability against squadrons. a reroll against a single hit red seems to not be benifical, but a re-roll against a hit/crit on a black die (with the help of mon mothma) is defiantly worth it

For me, Red works best with sensors, as you have a good chance of getting blanks. Blue is for when you don't have sensors and need the accuracy to negate brace, and then Black die is heavy damage, but need support from accuracy so that it cannot be negated by brace.

Did your side by side CR90 example include the obstruction of one ship?

it is not obstructed because the nearest CR90 moves, before the further one fires

Depends on the move and speed that ship moves at. At the same time the VSD will move and thus change what arc from the second ship gets to shoot with

Depends on the move and speed that ship moves at. At the same time the VSD will move and thus change what arc from the second ship gets to shoot with

Yes, you're right. I originally planned it as a "first CR90 moves, makes room for the second one". If the VSD moves between them you might still get double arcs, but on a different hull zone. Let's assume for simplicity that you can get a double arc from two CR90s, either the VSD moves and it doesn't matter, or it doesn't move (the Imperial player activates something else). The "how" is a discussion on its own!

Ok, works for me.

Care to have a go at the demolisher?

This was a great read. Solid data analysis and good visualizations. I know this was a lot of work, but I hope to see more!

Excellent. This will change how I build and deploy my fleets now. Thanks!

A very good read. Thanks for posting it.

Excellent. This will change how I build and deploy my fleets now. Thanks!

Excellent article, thank you.

I think the point you make about arcs being more important than commands is spot on. I was able to cripple a VSD in a turn with a C-Corvette by hitting it in it's slightly weakened side arc. The effect of more ships is also something that people seem to miss. The i go-you go nature of the ruleset means having a greater number of ships than the opponent is a significant advantage.

It is an advantage, most definitely. Personally I am going to run some tests on how much 2 Nebulon-B's base fair vs 1 upgraded Nebulon-B. We shall see. . .

It is an advantage, most definitely. Personally I am going to run some tests on how much 2 Nebulon-B's base fair vs 1 upgraded Nebulon-B. We shall see. . .

Currently my mantra on Nebulons is keeping upgrades on them at a minimum. I run a Support Refit with Salvation, fill up the rest with Corvettes and AF MKII. Still not sure about whether XI7 is worth it.

It is an advantage, most definitely. Personally I am going to run some tests on how much 2 Nebulon-B's base fair vs 1 upgraded Nebulon-B. We shall see. . .

Currently my mantra on Nebulons is keeping upgrades on them at a minimum. I run a Support Refit with Salvation, fill up the rest with Corvettes and AF MKII. Still not sure about whether XI7 is worth it.

Yup. Like the thought process.

It's been a while since I read this but just to make sure people recognized - there's no accounting for the range difference between red and blue dice. (Much like there's no accounting for the differences in situations you might find yourself in with each ship - what's a 15 degree front arc difference worth?) To clarify a clarification, I think this is a really great post, but chilligan is not necessarily saying one die color is better than another.

It is an advantage, most definitely. Personally I am going to run some tests on how much 2 Nebulon-B's base fair vs 1 upgraded Nebulon-B. We shall see. . .

Currently my mantra on Nebulons is keeping upgrades on them at a minimum. I run a Support Refit with Salvation, fill up the rest with Corvettes and AF MKII. Still not sure about whether XI7 is worth it.

Yup. Like the thought process.

It's been a while since I read this but just to make sure people recognized - there's no accounting for the range difference between red and blue dice. (Much like there's no accounting for the differences in situations you might find yourself in with each ship - what's a 15 degree front arc difference worth?) To clarify a clarification, I think this is a really great post, but chilligan is not necessarily saying one die color is better than another.

Exactly. I'm just saying you're going to do just as much damage with a Paragon AF Mk II at medium range as you are with 2 CR90s with aligned arcs, which may seem odd until you realize it's the same number of dice. Aligning the arcs on two corvettes might indeed be more difficult to do on a moving target, or getting in range might be difficult, and so on. I don't have any experience with CR90 swarms, but with Paragon I can get about 2 double-arc turns per game.

One thing I'd like to see if the effect that the X17 turbolasers have on the outcome. They just about negate one of the defense tokens. They seem really good in large dice pool attacks. If you can roll 1 accuracy they pretty much maul a victory. In your example they seem like they'd drastically reduce the amount of available hps a ship has that's being fired at by one.

This is a good article, and I really enjoyed reading it.

However, I have a few questions for you:

1 - In the two Corvette example, did you take into account the fact that the VSD does not have access to the Brace token for the second corvette?

2 - for the Corvette analysis, did you take into account the situation where the opponent will not use the brace token 40% of the time against a front arc shot without a CF command vs the ~20% with a front arc CF command?

3 - What do the probability distributions look like for the Paragon? By my calculation of average damage, the Vic would save an extra .25 damage by saving the brace for the second shot. The probability of this outcome is much higher anyway due to the increased number of accuracy symbols in the front arc vs side arc (6 vs 4).

4 - Would it be smarter to add a blue due to the front arc shot to provide the expectation of one accuracy symbol in roll (8 symbols in total. Dice are 8 sides)?

5 - Or, would it be better to fire the weak arc first, then the strong arc due to the increased accuracy symbol probability?

The reason for asking about the AF is once a low probability event becomes a statistical expectation, fun things start to happen.

For example : Front arc [2 red + 1 blue] damage expectation is 2.25 [opponent will almost never brace this Attack due to damage expectation of next attack], side arc [4 red + 2 blue (cf)+ 1 black] is 5.5 with an expected 1 accuracy symbol. Total expected damage is 7.75). So,, what mistake am I making in the above analysis?

Anyways, I am only asking because I enjoy this type of analysis.

*** just did a quick calculation on the accuracy probabilities for the AF scenario above:

Without a blue die, accuracy will not appear 44% of the time

With an extra blue die, accuracy will not appear 33% of the time.

Blue die vs black die expected damage: 5.5 vs 5.75

Actual expected damage due to change in probability of an accuracy symbol 4.6 vs 4.2

Conclusion: accuracy symbols ROCK!

Edited to add:

And the total damage from the attack, by boosting the side arc with a blue die, is 6.8 damage. (This of course assumes your opponent will save the brace for the strongest attack)

Finally, as an exercise for the class, do H9 Turbolasers in the place of Enhanced Armament increase the overall damage?

This is a good article, and I really enjoyed reading it.

However, I have a few questions for you:

1 - In the two Corvette example, did you take into account the fact that the VSD does not have access to the Brace token for the second corvette?

2 - for the Corvette analysis, did you take into account the situation where the opponent will not use the brace token 40% of the time against a front arc shot without a CF command vs the ~20% with a front arc CF command?

3 - What do the probability distributions look like for the Paragon? By my calculation of average damage, the Vic would save an extra .25 damage by saving the brace for the second shot. The probability of this outcome is much higher anyway due to the increased number of accuracy symbols in the front arc vs side arc (6 vs 4).

4 - Would it be smarter to add a blue due to the front arc shot to provide the expectation of one accuracy symbol in roll (8 symbols in total. Dice are 8 sides)?

5 - Or, would it be better to fire the weak arc first, then the strong arc due to the increased accuracy symbol probability?

The reason for asking about the AF is once a low probability event becomes a statistical expectation, fun things start to happen.

For example : Front arc [2 red + 1 blue] damage expectation is 2.25 [opponent will almost never brace this Attack due to damage expectation of next attack], side arc [4 red + 2 blue (cf)+ 1 black] is 5.5 with an expected 1 accuracy symbol. Total expected damage is 7.75). So,, what mistake am I making in the above analysis?

Anyways, I am only asking because I enjoy this type of analysis.

Ok somehow I missed your post, replying a bit late

1,2 - definitely, that's the main reason I did the calculation.

3 - depends on how you do the Paragon shot. In my example I had 2 extra black dice from Paragon and Concentrate Fire, one extra red die on the side (so 4,1,0 and 2,1,2). I haven't put in decisions for the opponent, because then I have to account for all the possibilities of him not using them, so I'll do the following "trick": I shoot the paragon shot first (even though it's second), and the opponent will automatically use Brace if possible. The caveat is that if it isn't capable of spending the Brace, it will use it in the side shot, breaking the fabric of space-time With these in mind, I had 6.45 damage for Brace on the first, 6.42 damage for Brace on the second. The difference should be smaller due to the timey-wimey thing.

4 - No. This takes me to 6.37, asuming again the opponent braces on the non-Paragon shot if possible. Keep in mind that there's a chance that 1) he used brace already and 2) I roll accuracy anyway. An extra blue die brings you to 57% chance of at least one accuracy, up from 43%. Is that worth it?

5 - My main conclusion is that it's always better to split fire. It's damage that gets in anyway, if you put too many dice on one attack, you're putting all your eggs in one basket. Variability goes high, average goes lower. I prefer consistency, so I'll take the better average shot

I'll be back in a few moments, but let's just say 4 red 2 blue means 67% chance of an accuracy or more. So that's 33% you're going down to 2.75. If you add that up then you're going to 5.88 expected

*** just did a quick calculation on the accuracy probabilities for the AF scenario above:

Without a blue die, accuracy will not appear 44% of the time

With an extra blue die, accuracy will not appear 33% of the time.

Blue die vs black die expected damage: 5.5 vs 5.75

Actual expected damage due to change in probability of an accuracy symbol 4.6 vs 4.2

Conclusion: accuracy symbols ROCK!

Edited to add:

And the total damage from the attack, by boosting the side arc with a blue die, is 6.8 damage. (This of course assumes your opponent will save the brace for the strongest attack)

Finally, as an exercise for the class, do H9 Turbolasers in the place of Enhanced Armament increase the overall damage?

Let me give you an interpretation of what you just calculated. Because you're putting all your eggs in one basket, you're desperate to get at least one accuracy symbol, willing to take 0.25 dmg in exchange for a higher chance of preventing Brace. If you split into even attacks, then that problem would disappear, and the black die would be marginally better.