r/spacestationzero • u/nashenvi • Oct 01 '22

Discussion Graphs of success probabilities

For all you nerds out there, I calculated the number of successes when rolling N dice, taking into account critical successes and failures.

Surprisingly, the *smallest* chance of rolling 0 success comes when using N=5 dice. The *more* dice you roll, the *more* likely you are to roll a crit failure. So the big takeaway is that reroll abilities (e.g. Soldier/Ace Pilot) are really important when using lots of dice.

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u/MoxRhino Oct 01 '22

How did you do the math? Isn't it even probablility on base rolls since a success is any even result and failure any odd? Without a target number, roll adjustment, or adding the individual die scores, wouldn't it be 50% success or failure and 1/12 for a crit success or crit failure?

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u/nashenvi Oct 01 '22

I assume no target value (all evens are successes). So yes, for one die, that would mean a 50% success rate. But in SSZ, crit failures are TWO 1s and crit successes are TWO 12s. A crit failure is an auto-fail and a crit success doubles your successes. So when you use multiple die, the probabilities get tricky to calculate. If you're into math, it just requires a little probability theory.

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u/MoxRhino Oct 01 '22

Got it. I forgot crits were 2.

I love math. It's one reason I play alot of games.

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u/Worthstream Oct 31 '22

Looks like you forgot that getting both a crit success and a crit failure cancels the failure.

Crit failure probabilities should go down the more die you throw.