What Auto-Misses really mean.

I wrote this up during Play-testing, I thought some people might find it informative so I cleaned it up a bit.  It's an overview, not getting into statistical analysis at all.

1.  Penetrating defenses vs. getting around defenses.  When a defender rolls three dice there are two ways to damage them, roll higher than they do, or end up with more dice in your attack than they have to defend with.

If the defender rolls three dice and each dice is a 4 that means they can block up to three dice rolled 4 or lower.  If I am to deal that target damage I will need to either roll a 5 or 6, or keep at least 4 dice.  A roll of 5 or 6 penetrates defenses, a 4th dice making range gets around their defenses.

It is easy to figure out that a 6 is your best chance to beat the defense, and a 1 is only dealing damage if you have more dice in your attack than they have in their defense.  This means we have 3 rought categories of attack die results:

1&2:  These are your wrap around dice, scoring hits by outnumbering the defense regardless of what they roll.

3&4:  Average Dice.  They beat bad rolls, but not most die results.

5&6:  Your Penetrating dice, these babies give you a solid chance of scoring through their defenses.

You can still score wrap around hits with any dice, and any dice but a 1 can beat an opponents defense die, but as the number gets lower the odds of penetrating defensees drops heavily.

Now how do Auto-Misses affect this?

When you take away a 5 or a 6 you are lowering the chance that attack dice will beat opposing defense dice.  When you take lower numbers you are taking away wrap-around dice, which are much less valuable.  An attack that Auto-misses on 5&6 will not be penetrating many defense rolls, while an attack that auto-misses on 1&2 are taking away the same percentage of results, but are taking far less valuable ones.

Often an increased number of dice is going to offset the auto-misses being higher numbers, which means that attack is focusing on scoring wrap around dice with a low chance of penetrating defenses.

2.  Range:  an automiss of 6 shortens your range, while an automiss of 1 removes incentive to move closer.  Similarly automisses of 3&4 mean that ranges of 3-4-5 all take the same die, but at really close range you get to take 1s and 2s.  An attack with automisses of 2&3 give you some benefit from attacking at range 1, but range 2,3, or 4 all take the same dice.

3.  Penetrating Defense dice, and Aim actions:  Taking out 5's is a big deal, you are now limited to 6's or 4 and less, 4 and less are easily blockable by defense dice.  But, by allowing that 6, there is increased incentive to aim, since one 6 turns those blockable dice into 6's, which are likely to penetrate defense dice.  Take Ra's flame attacks.  You are likely to take some damage from them because they allow 6's, and you are likely to roll one.  Contrast with Flak Cannon where aiming still results in no 6's, and a 5 is twice as likely to be blocked as a 6.  An aimed Flak Cannon attack isn't nearly as good as an aimed Fire Blast, even though both have 2 automisses and 5 dice.

4.  Feel:  Flak cannon gives an ideal range of 1. Getting right on them gives you a better chance for a wrap around point of damage, the 6 missing means this attack isn't getting through good defense.  Which is great for a shotgun-type attack.  It is ok at 2-3 spaces, since you can take 50% of die results, at 4 or 5 range you are getting 33% or 16%, and at 6 you can't do anything.  A range of 1 nets you 66% of dice results.

Let's contrast that with Micro Missiles.  50% of dice taken from 1-8 spaces away.  9 or 10 gets you a lower chance, but still a chance.  Getting closer doesn't help this attack at all, while the automisses being all the low numbers means this attack is more likely to miss than be blocked. 

Back to the fire attacks.  That 5 and 2 missing are meaningful.  6's are in, those are your penetating dice, able to get you a hit if the defense doesn't roll a 6 to counter.  5's are out, your other only good hope of outrolling the defense, so you get your penetrating dice, and your mid range dice (3&4), which if the defense rolls a 6/2/2 will deliver hits over the tail of the defense.  But you are missing 2's, which really limits your wrap around damage, leaving you with 1's, which any die result blocks.  If you can get a "Feel" from that it would be that Ra's fire attacks are hard not to take at least some damage from, but they are not likely to overwhelm your defenses as much as flood you with dice that you have a roughly even chance of blocking.  Then add on a few 1's that can get around your defense.

5.  Number of Dice vs. Number of Auto-misses:  Number might seem all about the damage value of the attack, but they actually play heavily into the automisses.  Auto miss percentages give you an average, like Micro-missiles, they roll 5 but on average at any range up to 8 you are looking at 2.5 getting through automisses.  That number is going to fluctuate a lot, giving an unreliable attack that has great range and a good penetration chance, but will not get you reliable damage.  

Compare to Throwing Knives at range 1 or with reach equal to range you will always have 3 dice going against defenses.  Snap Shot is going to average less dice facing defense, but it has the chance of putting 5 or 0 dice up against your defender, whereas Throwing Knives gets you 3 every time.  Throwing Knives gives you a 3v3 dice roll-off, Micro gives you a lot more risk/reward.  Throwing knives is also much more friendly to Attack+1 tokens, since that die will pass automisses no matter what, where as Micro-Missles has a 50% cahnce of an attack+1 token rolling an extra auto-miss.

6.  Auto-Misses and Attacks in the current game:

Here's a list I did of every automiss combination and what attacks have those auto-misses.

0: Devious Disruptor, External Combustion, Impulsion Turret, Powered Auto Turret, Throwing Knives, Turret Bot

1: Fission Blaster, Shard Toss, Toxic Dart

1-2: Brain Burn, Custom Hand Cannon, Grenade Launcher, Mind Spike, Motivational Charge, Omni-Cannon, Regression Burst, Rocket Stomp.

1-3: Combat Stance, Hammer Sweep, Razor Ordinance

1-6:   Blade Battalion, Flying Smash, Focused Blast, Poison Breath

1-2-3:  Citizen Battery, EMP Drone, Ocular Beams, Psychic Maelstrom, Snap Shot Micro-Missiles

1-3-5:  Assault Drone

2: Bitter Spiral, Citizen Autumn, The Contract, Head-on Collision, Kusarigama, The Muscle, Nimble Strike, Raptor Bot, Sucker Punch, Swift Bot, T-Rex, Thokk, Thug, Tonfa & Blade

2-3: All Ice Attacks, Automaton Drone, Citizen Assault, Omni-burst, People’s Hammer

2-4:  Automated Hunter, The Deputy, Disintegration Cone, Explosive Launcher, Omni-Burst, Rigged Explosives, Slash and Burn, Velociraptor Pack, Volatile Parts

2-5: All Fire attacks

2-6: Flak Cannon, Hidden Blade Strike

3: Citizens Blood, Sweat, and Tears

3-4:  Arcing Shock, Atomic Glare, Blinding Blast, KREE-OWW!

3-5: Radiant Strike

3-6: Remote Tranquilizer

4-5: Citizen Dare

5-6: Stun Bolts

6:  Adhesive Foam Pellets, Citizens Hack and Slash, Combat Knife, Monorail, Searing Lance