I want everyone to say sorry to the Dice Calculator.

X-Wing Dice Calculator

Greetings from Recon Specialist TV.  Once again my ear drums are filled with the cries of people griping about their dice.  With the recent expansion of virtual X-Wing it seems there are complaints about digital dice and the Dice Calculator from Tabletop Simulator's, X-Wing Unified mod.  Which, to be honest, causes me to chuckle.  So I dusted off my recon files of ole and plan to talk about your dice.  So if you want comfort in knowing your dice are fine,  Read on.  No one is here is going to take your natties.  If you dislike facts and want to keep living in the land of denial then I would suggest you stop reading.  You have been warned.

Before we get started, I want to make it crystal clear.  I do not blame, dislike, or want my words to reach the developers in a negative way.  I love the Dice Calculator.  It tells me information I need to know from the match and I use it to make myself a better player.  I want it to stay and I want the developers to know I appreciate it very much.  This is for the people who try to use it to show they are losing due to false data representation.  So with that lets get started!

Dice rolled without modifications

You should all recognize the photo above.  These are the dice results produced by the calculator from tabletop Simulator.  If you are unaware of it, or didn't know it existed, right click the mat and choose present dice statistics at the end of your match.  It will appear in the chat and tell you the total number of dice rolled and give a count of each result.  It then tells you the percentage of each result when compared against the total, and the statistical average that those results 'normally' produce.  It is fairly simple and very useful.  From this I can see how many red dice I rolled, how may my opponent rolled, compare our ship counts, initiative and turn counts.  Don't worry, the dice calculator also produces your green dice results, but for simplicity sake, lets stick with the red dice.

So!  To the right of my photo (above) you will see No Modifications.  This means I rolled 3 dice, 33 times, for a total of 99 results.  For this example I rolled less blanks and more hits and eyes than the normal average.  For those wondering that is a variation of about 5 dice out of 99, so not really hot dice.

Spending a Focus to modify

In this next example (above) I rolled the same amount of dice and modified every focus to a hit.  The first thing you should notice is the results are relatively the same.  Hits did not increase after I modified them with focus, changing them to Hits.  Your focus tokens are sometimes used to modify defense dice, offensive dice or none at all if you rolled blanks.  So right out of the gate this calculator isn't telling you the whole truth to your dice results.  It doesn't say you actually had 51 hits after modifying them with a focus.  It also doesn't tell you if your action economy was well spent.  If you are flying 5 X-Wings and all your actions were spent on barrel rolling, accidental bumps, or spending the focus on defense, then your dice will average out to these default results (above photo).  So to start, keep track of how many focus results you did or didn't modify during a match.  That will then show if your dice results were above the average mark.  If you aren't spending focus on attacks, look into the why.

Spending a lock to modify your dice

Finally we get to rerolling dice (Above).  As you can see, it still only shows statistical results when I reroll the blanks and focus.  You will also notice the dice total is 143 and not 99.  This is due to the app counting rerolled dice as rolling another die.  This gives you your average result of how many times hits came up.  However not your hit percentage.  For example if you roll one die you have a 50% chance of a hit or crit; simple enough.  A lock doesn't allow you to roll two dice and take the best result.  So again the calculator is not giving you the best representation of your dice.  Your initial roll combined with rerolling a die, after you don't link the result, gives you a 75% chance of it being a hit or crit.  Rerolling the die also increases your odds for a Crit to come up.  So you notice my crit results are 24 instead of the expected 17 (Above Photo).  That is also the difference between a focus and a lock action.  Although they allow your die a 75% chance to hit, locks allow more of a chance of crits to come up.

Rerolling dice and then spending a calculate or Focus

So now lets take just a step into accurate math when playing X-Wing.  The example (above) is a match I played.  The dice results are from four, T-70's, with Temmin Wexley's calc ability, while taking lock actions (list is in the photo above).  The top red total comes to 57 dice.  You can see I am close to being statistical and it seems like a normal game, but the dice counter is still counting rerolls towards total dice.  

Now lets go over the second Red Total after modifications are applied:  8 Dice were rerolled during the match when I attacked, 6 Focus were modified to hits,  and I lost a ship in the first round of engagement.  All this should be taken into account when looking at the Dice Calculator as the game progresses.  Normally I should reach about 80 or more red dice from the Calculator.  Less than that either means I lost a ship or took out enemy ships faster than expected.

I now want to keep the Red total at 49 because this is how many attack dice were actually applied after modifications.  I didn't attack with 57 dice in a game, I attacked with 49.  The results in the second chart shows how many of each dice remained after they were modified.  Which is why my Eye results drops from 15 to 5.  After rerolling them and applying focus or calculations they no longer exist since they were modified.  So the 'expected' and the final results are vastly different.  They tell a completely different game.  Even if I had more blank results, they most likely would have been rerolled into other results as well.  It is the action economy that made the results possible.

Understand, increasing my expected crit results and adding 6 hits to my rolls can be a huge swing.  That could be 1-2 ships being destroyed and one of my ships living.  Also you must understand not all of my shots were perfect.  Some were range 3 and sometimes I didn't have a lock on the target.  Naturals rolls were also letting me keep the lock and use it to mod another attack in a different round of engagement.

Lets be frank, these results are possible because this lists mechanics produce such results.  The other half of this list is flying in formation, picking the correct target and keeping this going an entire match.  I don't take focus since Temmin allows for the Calculate and I want my other action to be a lock.  If I have the lock, I take the focus or Barrel Roll and opt for the Calculate.  So don't look at my dice results and think your game should produce these results, and if they don't, think that your dice failed.  This list is built to work exactly like this.  If I lose, it isn't due to my dice but my lock selection, bumping, number of shots taken and so on.

For people who fly other lists with different mechanics, you need to understand where your dice 'fail'(I understand the irony of using dice fail).  If your ship is getting one hit each roll ask yourself, did I have a modification?  Did I spend my modification on defense or for another ability?  Was my shot blocked by evades when I finally rolled 3 hits?  Was my fire focused on one target or spread between targets?  All of these are questions you should be asking instead of focusing on dice percentages.

I want everyone to understand, your complaints about dice are sometimes warranted.  You can take all the right steps and still 'miss'. You have have Vader at range one after he bumped, you spend the lock and focus for four hits, and you can smell him sweating in his armor.  Then he rolls evade, evade, focus, and spends the force for 1 shield.  Then as he runs for points, you chase him down and he dodges everything.  You still need to asses that situation.  Are you chasing him with a lower initiative ship that can only take one action?  Hitting a force user that has a higher initiative and can take multiple actions, isn't something that you can hit easily.  You must also asses your positioning after that forced bump you created.  Is the next movement you make optimal, or are you in a worse spot since the bump failed?

So take my advice with a grain of salt and a shot of Tito's (that is tequila for those who are wondering) Edit:  I just realized I put tito's as tequila when its a vodka.  I assure you neither were used while writing this blog, but I'm sure you have you suspicions.  .  I used to blame my dice all the time when playing.  We had\have Lady Luck for vassal and I loved rushing to it and proving I lost because you rolled better.  I slowly learned I wasn't making the best choices while playing and maximizing my dice.  Instead I would play the dice odds and lose that battle.  It wasn't the dice that killed my bomber.  It was me putting my bomber in the arcs of three ships and getting shot at.  Please o not blame the dice calculator for showing you limited data.  Then use that data as the reason you lost.  Admit you chose a poor approach and figure out a way to not relying on the dice so much.  You will enjoy the game so much more.  So hope you had a good read and see you on the tables.