Hi all,

My luck has been pretty bad lately in the game. 4 evade dice w/ focus & evade token still see me blown up (literally ). Dark Curse getting hit with Stealth Device. I am thinking that the official dice application might help me out. I figure it roles closer to average. Anyone use it? Is that true? I am sure there are extreme results, but not most rolls. Anything closer to average is good.

heychadwick said:

Honestly, I find I roll worse with the dice app than in real life, but that probably has something to do with the chicken-sacrificing ritual I perform on match day.

Oh, who am I kidding? I do it every day regardless.

Dice app is handy. Would I buy it if I only played X-Wing? Probably not. Do I use it quite a bit for both X-Wing and Edge of the Empire now that I have it? Yes, definitely.

My only complaint about the dice app is the usability is a bit rough. Since you are constantly switching out dice for different combos of pilots and ranges, you are adding attack and defense dice to the mix. For the price, it feels like it should be a bit better in the usability department. Overall the quality is very high.

Also, battery = NOMS! That's to be expected with a 3D app tho, I don't really fault FFG for that.

I made a dice roller for me to use before I got my second core set:

http://home.comcast.net/~jason.fuller/dice.html

I made my own as well, for android:

http://s93768914.onlinehome.us/pub2/X-wingdice.apk

(just copy it over your android device in a known folder, then "run" this .apk install package by using something like ES File Explorer File Manager )

I've only played 3 games of X-Wing and used the dice app for one of them. We used it for both attack and defense the entire game. Didn't see any problems, though one game isn't close to a large sample.

heychadwick said:

I assume that when you say that the Dice App will "roll closer to average," you're suggesting that the Dice App will roll results closer to the expected value of hits/evades with a smaller variance (e.g., there will be fewer instances of rolling ALL hits or ALL evades and more instances of rolling some mix of blanks, hits/evades, and focuses). This is almost certainly not the case. Most likely the Dice App relies on a random number generator which acts independently for each die (i.e., outcome of rolling die #2 is not influenced by the outcome of rolling die #1), and so the variance of rolling your dice in the app should be no different from rolling an actual set of dice. Of course, there is an argument to be made that perhaps the random number generator they use isn't truly random (because in computing RNGs are actually pseudorandom; if you're actually interested in this, Google search pseudorandomness) , but the statistics associated with them will be random so the results you see will still be a good representation of a random process.

TL;DR: No, the dice app will not achieve the lower variance outcomes that you seek.

a4rino said:

The dice aren't actually random, either--or rather they're random but not uniform. Defects in the manufacturing process almost certainly bias the results for each die.

But a4rino is otherwise spot-on: using the dice app might be desirable for other reasons, but almost certainly won't improve your luck. For that, you'll need Cid's santeria .

Vorpal Sword said:

Thank God somebody gave me a shout-out. I mean, it ain't exactly my A material, but not even a chuckle? Day-mn!

I chuckled and almost responded, but there were too many other responses I wanted to respond to and my phone sucks to type on.