From: Mikko Kurki-Suonio <maxxon@s...>
Date: Sun, 1 Mar 1998 01:58:06 +0200 (EET)
Subject: DirtSide II tables
What can I say? I did it. With help from Andy Skinner and Thomas Barclay (and an collegue who does not play DSII but appreciates a mathematical problem), I calculated the various damage tables for DirtSide II. Those with itchy fingers can rush off to http://www.swob.dna.fi/mini/gzg/ds.html for vehicle damage tables http://www.swob.dna.fi/mini/gzg/ds-inf.html for infantry (and AA) tables And those who always bitch about my slow connection, can fetch http://www.swob.dna.fi/mini/gzg/dsdam.zip It's only 4kB for both tables zipped. Even the rusty UK lines should swallow that. There's also an Excel 5.0 version at http://www.swob.dna.fi/mini/gzg/ds-tab.zip Roughly 20kB. Oh, and yes Virginia, the vehicle damage table *does* print readably out on a single A4. I could have fit the other one there too, had I tried (more on that later). A word about the tables: They are based on a single 1d100 roll. What you do is check your number of chits to be drawn, your opponent's armor and your validity code to find the correct row. Then roll away. There are ten possible end results, marked with a number each. That is the minimum number you must roll to get that result. Look up the number that is the same as the one you rolled, or the closest one lower -- that's your result. Now, while I realize it's very satisfying to pull a BOOM chit, it doesn't affect game play at all (providing BOOM is valid). A kill is a kill no matter how you got there. Thus the ten possible end results (miss, btw. is simply shorter than "No Effect" -- it doesn't mean you somehow blew the to-hit roll retroactively). Most of the chances have been rounded, but no more than a fraction of percent in any case. Some chances are rounded out of the table, because their probability is significantly less than 1%. While I personally feel it doesn't affect gameplay much if such rare occurances are ignored, you're free to fetch the entire data from http://www.swob.dna.fi/mini/gzg/ds.zip and formulate new tables for 1d10000 or something. It's easy if you know how to work with Excel. Now, the infantry tables are interesting. I was actually a bit unclear how they should work, since the rules are a bit, hmmm, fuzzy. Ok, they say rather clearly that NO special chits are valid when drawn against infantry. BUT: SD:Firer is also a special damage chit. So this means if you aim your MDC/5 at an infantry squad, the chance for it to go "phut" drops from roughly 10% to blank zero. Sounds dumb, right? So, maybe SD:F is always valid (a special special chit), but they forgot to tell us about it? Well, then what happens to an infantry squad that draws it in an infantry firefight? At this point I gave up second-guessing Jon and Mike and just did it the way they had written it... What about replacing each chit after drawing? Well, let's consider this one example: Out of the 119 counters, there are two SD:F ones. This is the most rare counter. 5 chits is max draw. Combining these two elements, we get the case where it makes about most difference (wrt the end result, not the actual chit spread pulled) whether you pull your "hand" at one time, or one chit at a time each from a fresh cup. Looking at my tables, it's roughly a 10% chance to pull a SD:F with 5 chit draw using the vanilla method (you can dig the exact chance from my Excel table if you wish but it's actually something a little lower, 9.xxx%). The other way around, the chance is 1-(117/119)^5 == 8.125% Quite frankly, I don't see much of a difference. In fact, I'd probably die of old age before I noticed a difference of that magnitude in playtest sessions, if I was not carefully recording each chit pull result and analysing those. I won't argue math. It's all there. Should I have made a mistake, I'll gladly correct it.