There's another factor to take into account, which is the effect of the crit.

• If the shields are up, rerolling the damage gives exactly the same average damage - 1.

• However, if the shields are down, rerolling the damage gives an average damage of 1 - plus the effect of the crit, if you roll one .

Most crits will have an effect on the enemy ship. Some will do extra damage (e.g. Structural Damage, Misaligned Projector, shield Failure). Others may cause damage in the future (e.g. Thruster Fissure, Ruptured Engine). Others will reduce defensive, offensive or repair capabilities.

This means a straightforward calculation without other factors says that rerolling when there is a chance of hull damage is worthwhile, because the average damage is greater than 1.

Of course there are still plenty of factors affecting this, including, but not limited to, how desperately you want to kill the ship, ships on one damage left, the presence of Contain tokens, etc.

Red dice are different, due to having half as many crits - I would't generally reroll a hit there. Ditto for blues - there are two crits, but also two generally useless sides (the accuracies), probably reducing your average damage.

But generally speaking, re-roll a black dice if you can do hull damage and get a crit.

17 hours ago, Tokra said:

Luke has a bad habit on not hitting (as in rolling blanks) 😆 .

WHIFF-WALKER!!!

On 10/11/2019 at 11:29 PM, The Jabbawookie said:

That’s just it though:

In a vacuum, they are statistically the same except for variance. Objectively.

Anything after that is either an external variable (of which there are many) or personal preference.

I will use a previous argument around the use of Quality Improvement science in which the eradication of common cause variation is the aim.....a known result of one has no variation, by choosing the rerolling you are upping the level of common cause variation to 0-2 creating the chance of a poor outcome. Unless you have an absolute need for 2 damage or don’t really care what result you roll it not a great idea.

1 hour ago, player3691565 said:

I will use a previous argument around the use of Quality Improvement science in which the eradication of common cause variation is the aim.....a known result of one has no variation, by choosing the rerolling you are upping the level of common cause variation to 0-2 creating the chance of a poor outcome. Unless you have an absolute need for 2 damage or don’t really care what result you roll it not a great idea.

The eradication of common cause variation is not the aim. The aim is winning. Which can be aided or hindered by variation, depending on the situation.

Edit: and to clarify, I'm not saying consistency doesn't offer important benefits (especially over a series of games, such as in a competitive event.) My point is that chaos is a different tool that can also be leveraged (for example, the TIE Phantom denies your opponent a reliable way to optimally spend defense tokens, because there isn't a pattern to plan around.) Which approach you take depends on the type of fleet you're running and kind of game you're playing.

9 hours ago, The Jabbawookie said:

The eradication of common cause variation is not the aim. The aim is winning. Which can be aided or hindered by variation, depending on the situation.

This is the most important thing. If doing only average damage is sure to result in a loss then you must fish for crits! Conversely if that single hit would ensure your victory then you'd be foolish to risk the reroll.

Everything else falls on a spectrum between those two extremes. Assess the situation, be as risky as that situation demands.

So I thought to continue this train of thought to Norra, and found something interesting

For the purpose of this exercise, I will accept the crit effect as a hit(since while her ability is applicable it does reduce the overall points of the target hull zone) and thus a crit is worth 2 hits

For red dice:

Expected damage when only blanks rerolled = 1 + 0.375*1 = 1.375

Expected damage when single hits and blanks rerolled = 0.75 + 0.625*1 = 1.375

For blue dice:

Expected damage when only blanks rerolled = 1 + 0.25*1 = 1.25

Expected damage when single hits and blanks rerolled = 0.5 + 0.75*1 = 1.25

So the damage is the same, and thus only rerolling blanks help focus on consistency

For black dice:

Expected damage when only blanks rerolled = 1.25 + 0.25*1.25 = 1.5625

Expected damage when single hits and blanks rerolled = 0.75 + 0.0.75*1.25 = 1.6875

So there is actually higher expected damage for a black bomber that aggressively rerolls under Norra(variance higher as well of course)

P.S I understand reliabilty or variance is a good value to take into consideration for a game like 6 turn Armada where every turn is crucial. But I haven't math out any variability of the dice as yet