What is the re-playability like for the scenarios ?

[z1812]

In the actual Board game, is a dice rolled for each scenario to determine a seed number.

[midgard30]

In some games, the seed system is used to avoid a player from reloading a previous saved game because he wasn't happy with the dice rolled result. If he reloads a previous turn and do about the same moves and dice rolling, chances will be high that will get the same results (good or bad).

[Wolfe1759]

Again I might be misunderstanding but I think the seed is a "pre-rolled" list of numbers (unseen by either player or I assume the AI) utilised one at a time when die results are needed, which would be no different in practice to rolling the virtual dice as the need arises. This used to be the solution (with a third party umpire or a lot of back checking of published stock and shares trade numbers) to play-by-mail (i.e. you put a letter in the post box) systems. Probably instituted here to prevent turn spamming cheats in multiplayer games. Then again I don't even own the game so I might be completely wrong.

[Gizuria]

Why is this done? Why not let the dice roll as they may?

It's to prevent people from re-loading and trying the same attack over and over again until you roll high enough to get a result that is 'satisfactory'. With the pre-generated seed, you'll always roll that '3' when you re-roll your attack. Of course, if, you are inclined to cheat in this fashion, you can do something else first to use that '3' and then do the attack with the next result in the seed. maybe it will be a '12' or maybe even a '2'. But the seed remains the same.

[jonj01]

ORIGINAL: Fascist Dog

Why is this done? Why not let the dice roll as they may?

It's to prevent people from re-loading and trying the same attack over and over again until you roll high enough to get a result that is 'satisfactory'. With the pre-generated seed, you'll always roll that '3' when you re-roll your attack. Of course, if, you are inclined to cheat in this fashion, you can do something else first to use that '3' and then do the attack with the next result in the seed. maybe it will be a '12' or maybe even a '2'. But the seed remains the same.

No, I believe the seed is attached to unit and action....I wanted to see how this works, so I reran an impulse several times...throwing in all sorts of extra actions requiring rolls...but despite what you throw in the middle...if unit A rolls a 1 for damage check on impulse A....hes gonna roll that again and again. Interesting system...but personally I find very very flawed...RNGs are called that because they are indeed random.

Its not a matter of 'cheating'...its a matter of predetermination....I personally find it the absolute weakest part of an otherwise very very very good system.

As for this system stopping cheating on a mutliplayer game...people who will cheat in a multiplayer game will find a way to cheat.
VASL for online ASL has developed all sorts of cheaters, one of the biggest ones is software that allows you to roll whatever you want in a multiplayer game.

Really when it comes to multiplayer games...if you suspect someone is cheating..then dont play with them again. I find this a much simpler solution than predetermining the dice rolls in a single player game.

[aaatoysandmore]

Well, the way I see it you are getting random dice rolls just a number of them on one sheet of paper and then for every die roll in the game you consult that sheet of paper to the next die roll on it and it was a random number that is just recorded to that sheet of paper (to prevent cheating) that you use that whole scenario when you have a die roll. They are random, just used in sequence of random. I see no problem with that. Sure the game rolls are predetermined even though they are random but you don't know what those numbers are going to be....so random everytime. Just as if you had rolled it on the board itself.

[z1812]

ORIGINAL: jonj01

Its not a matter of 'cheating'...its a matter of predetermination....I personally find it the absolute weakest part of an otherwise very very very good system.

Really when it comes to multiplayer games...if you suspect someone is cheating..then dont play with them again. I find this a much simpler solution than predetermining the dice rolls in a single player game.

I am not sure if the "dice fixing" aspect of the game has been proven. However Jonj01's testing seems to indicate that.

I would say, leave the dice rolls alone or make it optional. I don't want anyone cheating, but most of all I don't want the game engine cheating.

Hopefully Tom or Mark will be along to comment.

[Tom Proudfoot]

Short answer: the rolls are just as random as any other game.

Long answer/treatise: We have to go into some technical stuff. Unless computers have a specific chip (and PCs don't), they don't really have a way to get random numbers. To get around this, people have made pseudo-random functions, which are complicated mathematical messes which give you back a different number from 0-1 each time you check them. But the first time you run your program and check it you get, say, 0.213278, the second time 0.458175, and these are the same numbers each time -- if you start at number #1 on this virtual 'list'. It's not really a list in the sense that these numbers are all written down somewhere but it is a list in that they COULD be written down somewhere if you went through them one by one and wrote them down.

Having the same numbers each time is usually pretty awful for games, so what we do is tell the computer to not start at #1 each time. You could do this by using the current time, or the mouse position, or how long it takes somebody to click 'start', or any number of ways. This is called the 'seed'. And if the same seed (say 57732) gets plugged into the random function, you get the same number back each time (say, 0.429472).

So far so good, right?

Now, what happens if you are playing somebody in multiplayer, and you want the combat to come out the same on both computers? You have two choices - you can run it all on one computer and then send over the results - which means that the other player is going to have to wait for you to finish everything and then get some kind of command to replay it on their screen - or, to make the game a little more lively, we can exploit this random number seed thing by sending over the command to START all the combat stuff along with what seed we used to do it. Then the other player plugs that seed in and their random numbers are going to be the same as the other player and they then get the same results at about the same time instead of having to wait for a while.

Because of this seed being used for multiplayer games, we're always keeping careful track of it. It seemed like it would be useful, therefore, to save it in the save file, so that when somebody reports a bug and sends a file, when I load up their save it will load up the current seed they were on and then the game would do the exact same thing for me that it does for them. And this has been, and continues to be, incredibly useful for fixing bugs.

But what it does mean is that when YOU load a save it picks up at the same spot each time. However, each time you do something that asks for a random number, your spot on this virtual list of numbers is shifted. If you save it right before shooting a shot with a vehicle, and then shoot and, say miss, and then reload it will be the same die roll. But if you, say, Pass instead and try again on the next impulse it will probably be different because the AI is running through a bunch of random numbers when it does its thing.

I do have to, as an aside, wonder how fun it is to be constantly saving and reloading results that you are not happy with. I basically never do this, in any game. There's no shame in lowering the difficulty. But that's a different philosophy, I guess.

Anyway, to sum up, there is no actual list of numbers that the computer is consulting to make its choices, or that come out the same for each game. You could think of the random numbers as being on a 'virtual list', I suppose, given how they are generated (and I hope my explanation of that whole process makes sense) but every computer game does this because computers suxs at random, yo. But nobody knows what numbers are going to come out are so they are basically just as random as real dice unless you subscribe to some kind of destiny prophecy or something. [;)]

Lastly, your real dice are probably worn down on one edge and not as random as you think. I have a d20 from ~1983 that rolls 17s about 40% of the time. [:'(]

[midgard30]

Thanks for this long but instructive explanation.

Lastly, your real dice are probably worn down on one edge and not as random as you think. I have a d20 from ~1983 that rolls 17s about 40% of the time.

Me too I have an ace of spade in my sleeve. [;)]

[z1812]

Tom, thank you for the comprehensive explanation...........I think. [;)]

[jonj01]

ORIGINAL: Tom Proudfoot

I do have to, as an aside, wonder how fun it is to be constantly saving and reloading results that you are not happy with. I basically never do this, in any game. There's no shame in lowering the difficulty. But that's a different philosophy, I guess.

I'm designing a scenario. Which requires playtesting. Which requires loading the same scenario over and over again..each time you find a big design flaw in the initial placement of the computer forces.

I read your entire post. And you are the expert. I am not. But I've loaded different designs on the the same scenario 5 times (sometimes saved under a different scenario name) . The initial initiative roll on turn 1 each of the five times is german 3 soviet 2. Now if the number list starts out at a different place the odds in rolling the same two six sided dies 5 times in a row...is 1/(36^5) or 1 to 60 million. And it could happen randomly. But it seems pretty slim.

This is about as detailed of a recorded empirical study of the dice rolls of this game I've done. I really don't have time to prove this one way or another ..so I'll take your word for it...that's its random...however...it really doesn't seem random.

Without rigid recording I've seen the same dice rolls come up again 3 times in a row. I fired on a leader and 3 squads one time and all three times their "defense" roll was a "6" and all four of them rolled "1"s on the damage check. This is the sequence (6,1,1,1,1) for times in a row. Or a probability of 1/(6^5^3) or about 1 to 2 trillion. I even threw in "extra" rolls before the attack, twice after I reloaded the save. This would suggest that the seeded number is not simply a list of one black die and one red die that is saved when you save the game and reloaded a few steps back when you reload the game. But that the saved die rolls are tied directly to units and action.

Finally, I was not saying the AI is consulting this number list, and making choices based on it.

[Tom Proudfoot]

I just right now went New Game->Bitter Enemies and got initiative of 1 and 4, exited the scenario back to the main menu, New Game->Bitter Enemies and got 5 and 2. I'm not sure how you are starting a scenario and getting the same initiatives.

[Barthheart]

ORIGINAL: jonj01

....
Now if the number list starts out at a different place the odds in rolling the same two six sided dies 5 times in a row...is 1/(36^5) or 1 to 60 million.
....
This is the sequence (6,1,1,1,1) for times in a row. Or a probability of 1/(6^5^3) or about 1 to 2 trillion.
...

These are not quite true because the odds of a die coming up a certain number have no effect on the next number the die will be.

The odds of a normal 1d6 rolling a 1 is one in 6, the odds the next roll on the same die will be a 1 are 1 in 6 not 1/6^2.

Given a perfectly balanced die and it is thrown exactly the same way every time, the chance that each roll will be a 1 is 1 in 6, because one roll has no effect on the previous roll.

Given that random number generators are generate numbers the same way, ie previous number has no effect on next number, it very possible to get strings of similar numbers or sets of numbers, in fact it's 1 in 6.

[jonj01]

That scenario design had a lot of bizarre problems..strange LOS problems..ignoring some polygons while not ignoring others (using the game's mpp files, all described in the "mod and scenario" section of this forum). It is for the best I put it down peacefully. I probably should not have used it as an example. The other rolls took place in one of the game's scenarios. And they do suggest in an anecdotal way that the dice rolls are saved for specific events.

However, you say they are not saved to specific events but saved at a specific spot on a long long list of die roll numbers. And when you go back several impulses...the spot is moved back to the exact same number of spots on that long list of die roll numbers as have transpired since the old impulse was saved.

I believe you. I was incorrect, have no rigorous evidence to suggest I was correct, and will drop the matter.

You and Mark are correct..your system is the best system for multiplayer games.

[jonj01]

ORIGINAL: Barthheart

ORIGINAL: jonj01

....
Now if the number list starts out at a different place the odds in rolling the same two six sided dies 5 times in a row...is 1/(36^5) or 1 to 60 million.
....
This is the sequence (6,1,1,1,1) for times in a row. Or a probability of 1/(6^5^3) or about 1 to 2 trillion.
...

These are not quite true because the odds of a die coming up a certain number have no effect on the next number the die will be.

The odds of a normal 1d6 rolling a 1 is one in 6, the odds the next roll on the same die will be a 1 are 1 in 6 not 1/6^2.

Given a perfectly balanced die and it is thrown exactly the same way every time, the chance that each roll will be a 1 is 1 in 6, because one roll has no effect on the previous roll.

Sorry, this is incorrect for a sequence of die rolls. Use the penny toss as an example. Throw the penny 100 times the approximate probability BEFORE you throw a single penny toss that All 100 land heads is 1/(2^100). So the chances of throwing the sequence (6,1,1,1,1) on a six sided die...BEFORE...you roll a single die roll...is 1/(6^5). If you want the probability of doing it twice in a row BEFORE...you roll a single die roll it is 1/(6^5^2) and so on.

You are right about the zero causal effect of the first roll on the second roll. But there have been people (I looked into this crap 2 years ago when I was playing VASL and don't remember the sources) who have run numeric simulators and it pretty much works out. The numeric simulator could roll 1's 6 times in a row the first try but when they count the number of tries and the number that 1 came up 6 times in a row..the numbers work out.

They use this sequence analysis in determining the probability of winning the lottery (e.g. 1 /(40*39*38*37*36)) for a lottery having the numbers 1 through 40 and having to pick 5 numbers right, how many redundant systems they need in airplanes, forensic DNA analysis, etc. Its not exactly correct but it very close more times than it is very far.

Given if you buy one lottery ticket and you win having only bought one lottery ticket..your chances AFTER the lottery draw are 1 in 1. But to give magnitude to probability of sequences occurring I've seen the above formula a lot.

[Barthheart]

Yep, you are correct.... Not sure what I was thinking, or drinking, last night but I sure messed that up. Sorry all. [:o]