Sniper Special Rule

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**Deathypoo**

Kommissar Kel wrote:
Drager: it has to do with chaos theory: the initial conditions and the specific conditions of the roll(your individual dice, how many you hold at a time, shape of your hand or depth/width of your cup, the surface you roll on, etc). Combined with years of experience in gaming(war and rpg). These are the reasons why I have started to add Aggregate before average when discussing pure math-hammer and why I have never really put much stock in math-hammer to begin with.

Sorry, no, averages are averages and that's that. You roll better just as often as you roll worse. There's no magical "chaos theory" that makes you roll better than averages in real life than math would indicate. That's just called loaded dice.

**Sgt_Smudge**

Kommissar Kel wrote:
Drager: it has to do with chaos theory: the initial conditions and the specific conditions of the roll(your individual dice, how many you hold at a time, shape of your hand or depth/width of your cup, the surface you roll on, etc). Combined with years of experience in gaming(war and rpg). These are the reasons why I have started to add Aggregate before average when discussing pure math-hammer and why I have never really put much stock in math-hammer to begin with.

For example: lets look at pre 8th twin-linked vs 2 weapons; twin linked gains a higher chance of hitting that had diminishing returns on higher bs models(tl bs 4 would come very close to guaranteeing a single hit per shot, but as you were already hitting at generally more than 2/3rds in practice to begin with it only really mattered on single-shot weapons), but 2 of the same weapon has the same statistical chance to hit with a further chance to hit twice. Both high and low bs models hit more often with 8ths twin weapons than they did with the older tl(part of that is they ate fully doubling the attempts instead of only rerolling failures).

This is useless, because Chaos Theory has just as much chance of making a result less favourable as it does more favourable.

Stock mathammer is purely focused on the dice - no rolling, no air resistance, no surface, no other dice bumping around, etc etc. It's purely random, as it should be. If it's not completely random, then it's fixed, and therefore invalid.

Imaterium: you still didn't read. Op was talking about commissars. Read or sit down.

No, I can quote the first post of this thread for you.
"How many units actually have this rule?

I know several armies got the shaft and can't pick out characters.
As well as how many are effective at long range shooting, like the assassin?
Deathmarks are 24" which is maybe one turn to kill their target. While standard imperial rifles are 36"." Doesn't mention Commissars anywhere in the first post. Nor does it mention Commissars in the title.

OP does then go on (in a later post) to mention Commissars and that they (one of the weakest possible targets) take too long to kill with snipers. Just because Imaterium points out the Commissars are very weak models and are also only found in one army doesn't change the discussion from the the "Sniper Special Rule".

Just because OP mentions Commissars once as a lower bound doesn't mean the entire conversation is based on Commissars.

**Audustum**

Deathypoo wrote:
Kommissar Kel wrote:
Drager: it has to do with chaos theory: the initial conditions and the specific conditions of the roll(your individual dice, how many you hold at a time, shape of your hand or depth/width of your cup, the surface you roll on, etc). Combined with years of experience in gaming(war and rpg). These are the reasons why I have started to add Aggregate before average when discussing pure math-hammer and why I have never really put much stock in math-hammer to begin with.

Sorry, no, averages are averages and that's that. You roll better just as often as you roll worse. There's no magical "chaos theory" that makes you roll better than averages in real life than math would indicate. That's just called loaded dice.

Well that's not actually true either. Mathhammer exists in a void. Real dice are not perfectly balanced (unless we're all playing with casino dice which I don't think most of us are). You ever see players with 'lucky dice'? Yeah, it could be they're just remembering the good more than the bad or it could be that over time they've noticed some of their dice tend to land high rather than low and it's (unknowing to them) due to imperfections in the dice. In that case, the average will certainly be higher. For others, the average could be conceivably lower if they hadn't noticed an 'unlucky' die yet.

And yes, how players throw dice definitely matters. Some people just drop them from small heights, others basically slide them out of their hand. If you don't put enough force in the roll, there is almost no chance of the die landing on an opposite side from its face-up presentation. Craps players have been aware of this for some time:

https://www.mastersetter.com/craps/how/shoot/

Well, you can't exactly control the dice. I like how the Dice Coach refers to it - Dice Influence.
The 'Loop Hole' is the fact that the casino makes money from craps as long as the dice are perfectly random.
This is how their mathematicians made their calculations.
But what they didn't take into consideration is the possibility that if even one face of the dice never comes up -
the game of craps can be beat.
And how is this accomplished? The magical word is consistency.

That's the term I use with my students.
I believe it more accurately describes the goal than either Dice Control or Dice Influence
Here's a few tips you can use to start seeing a little difference in your dice rolling:
Learn Dice Setting and choose one set to start with
A good beginner set is the Hard Ways. This is a good set for visual feedback
Keep the dice square on the table, parallel to, and facing the backwall
Before tossing the dice, visually choose a spot a few inches from the backwall to land your dice on.
From now on, you'll do everything you can to hit that spot as often as you can
Gently toss the dice, as if trying to "swish" a basketball through a hoop.
When you're hand is 3/4 through the toss, spring open your hand - letting go of the dice
Make sure the dice are level in the air - not twisting around in weird directions
Spinning backward or forward is fine. Try to keep the dice looking as if they were glued together in the air
Observe how the dice land, react to the backwall, and how much they keep rolling after touching the backwall.
I say touching the backwall, because you don't want to slam the dice into those pyramids.
Take a mental note of what the dice show when they come to a stop.
If you're noticing that the dice are now rolling a certain combination more often - you're on your way

So in a pure mathematical void mathhammer gives us the right averages, but there are definitely ways that can be getting (intentionally or not) skewed in the real world.

**Drager**

Kommissar Kel wrote:
Drager: it has to do with chaos theory: the initial conditions and the specific conditions of the roll(your individual dice, how many you hold at a time, shape of your hand or depth/width of your cup, the surface you roll on, etc). Combined with years of experience in gaming(war and rpg). These are the reasons why I have started to add Aggregate before average when discussing pure math-hammer and why I have never really put much stock in math-hammer to begin with.

So a few follow ups:

1) Would this hold true if we reversed the meanings of the pips, without changing the actual markings such that six pips meant one and one meant 6 etc. Effectively make the roll 7-number?

2) If successes are being altered by a chaos theory effect based on hand shape and number held, then would this not vary by person? Or are you claiming people learn to set the intial conditions such as to improve success?

Kommissar Kel wrote:

For example: lets look at pre 8th twin-linked vs 2 weapons; twin linked gains a higher chance of hitting that had diminishing returns on higher bs models(tl bs 4 would come very close to guaranteeing a single hit per shot, but as you were already hitting at generally more than 2/3rds in practice to begin with it only really mattered on single-shot weapons), but 2 of the same weapon has the same statistical chance to hit with a further chance to hit twice. Both high and low bs models hit more often with 8ths twin weapons than they did with the older tl(part of that is they ate fully doubling the attempts instead of only rerolling failures).

I'm not sure what you are getting at. The probability of at least one hit is the same for a twin linked as for two weapons, but the average damage differs, indeed having 2 chances to hit over a rerolled chance will inevitably give more successes, but this is exactly in line with the average.

BS4 with reroll: 8/9 average hits.

2 BS4 shots: 12/9 average hits.

That's an increase of 1.5 times, not at all surprising that we are seeing more hits with twin than twin linked, but perhaps I am missing your point, would you care to elaborate?

**Unusual Suspect**

Drager wrote:
Kommissar Kel wrote:

3) Aggregate averages are not representative of actual results, more often than not you will see a higher instance of success in a d6 system than failure when you start averaging real results(as stated in the quoted post). So you can rely more on 2 wounds per turn while every once in a while not even hitting with a single shot.

If this is true it is interesting. Do you have a source?

His source is Chaos Theory, apparently, which sounds like "Some people have learned how to cheat when they throw dice, intentionally or unintentionally, so statistics are, like, totally wrong."

Then he starts discussing straight-up mathhammer differences, as if he's revealing some trick to the well-known statistical differences between twin-linked and non-twin-linked weapons.

Kinda hard to take him seriously after that, isn't it?