So I've had a passion project for awhile where I wanted to make a primer for beginner/intermediate players on how to evaluate Face to Face odds in Infinity. The end goal is to give them some quick rules of thumb they can use in tournament to know if a shot is favorable or unfavorable without taking a lot of time. Since it's complex and impractical to just give a formula for % to hit/wound etc. I am trying to build this as a three part process that provides binary answers: 1) Is this a favorable or unfavorable interaction? 2) When I succeed, can I expect more than one hit? 3) When I hit, how likely am I to wound/inflict a status? For step 1 I've been trying a few ways to define what a "favorable interaction" is. The end goal is to give someone the ability to think something like "The reactive trooper is rolling 2 dice on 13's, I need x dice on y's for this to be a good engagement for me". I'm putting this together, I would like feedback on the constraints I've chosen for defining a good shot and suggestions about how to modify them if they aren't aligned with good practices. Constraints: Chance of a Tie in the Face to Face is below or equal to 10%. Chance to succeed is 55% or greater. Ratio of Chance of Success to Chance of Failure (opponent succeeds) is 2.0 or greater. I understand there's a greater conversation about risk overall and how the expendability of a piece affects the equations and while that's definitely part of the game, I'd prefer to leave that part of the conversation out of it for now as it's beyond the scope of a simple tool.
This is a noble goal and those are the some good constraints. If you need one for the next step, I would say at least a 40% chance to cause a wound.
The most basic, quick-firing trick to use for getting a decent approximation of how advantageous a face-to-face is is to count each extra burst over the opponent as +3BS. So B4 on BS11 against B2 on BS12 is extremely roughly close to BS20 against BS 15. The math is far from perfect, but the converted values are generally close enough to give you an idea how risky/effective an option may be.
I think it’s more about avoiding the catastrophic failure. Is the attacker going to survive if the reactive trooper crits?
Depends how important success is to the game plan. ARO troops are usually just trying to waste an opponent's Orders, so survival is important, but an active gunfighter is usually trying to clear the way for scoring troops. I'll nearly always tank an attack unopposed on my Squalo, even an E/M shot or Oblivion, if it saves me from having to use Speculative Fire over five Orders to remove even basic LI. In short, an ARO trooper usually wants to live while threatening damage if it goes unopposed, while an active troop will prefer to get their job done even if it's riskier for them (exceptions exist in most cases, but again outside scope).
Indeed, as an ARO I always advice people to be BS attack biased over dodging, if the margin is withing a 1-2 points bracket.
Agree to disagree. The current state of infinity meta favors ultrasafe alpha strike attack vectors with pitcher+GML, total immunity bears/impersonators and TAGs (if you don't have bears, impersonators or pitchers). If you can scare your opponent into null deployment you can try to trade upwards with fishdude, zellerkeller, monks and beasthunter. Non-fireteam S-tier ARO pieces (Atalanta, Armand, Noctifer ML) are usually in the 2nd group so that their removal doesn't affect your main force. Those troopers are there to waste enemy orders and trying to win a game on 1A with a lucky reactive crit. The best game is where your opponent concedes after his alpha strike failed due to your lucky crit and he rolled couple of low numbers with his ARM save. If you play reinforcement gamemode (where reactive troopers are even more powerful) executing a crippling and reliable alpha strike is very difficult which means that the game is more about objectives and less about annihilation. For this reason alone, everyone should play reinforcement gamemode instead of 300/6 gamemode.
I have heard this too and while I'm all for good rules of thumb, I think that one in particular is, as you've pointed out, very rough. I think I can get more granularity with relatively little work (at least that's the goal). The bigger issue though is that it doesn't answer the essential question of something like"is BS20 vs BS 15 even good?". I think how most players (myself included) evaluate these scenarios is most of the time wildly inaccurate and it comes from a lack of understanding how much of an advantage is necessary before I have a reasonable chance of succeeding overall.
Nuance is always important, how important is the units survival on the overall plan? will the better chance of units survival cause more orders spend against it? will dodge give freedom of movement while a BS attack however slim may cause the unit to shoot back? does shooting back divert shots from more important units? and so on. But for new players teaching them to be aggressive on ARO usually, but not always, benefits them.
I've been looking for 'simple rules' too, but without all the useful restraints outlined above. And looking more at the number of dice rather than the value. Happy to be corrected if my numbers are way off... I generalised a lot! I used the https://infinitythecalculator.com/ app to build a few scenarios and see what came up. I only looked at winning the F2F, nothing more, so super simple rules. It's all very loose, but: When Attacking (active turn): I counted a success as 'winning' the F2F. When both sides have the same target number: For a ~60+% chance to win the F2F you want to be rolling at least 2:1 dice more than your opponent. i.e 2 dice vs 1 dice, or 4 dice vs 2 dice. For a ~70+% chance to win the F2F you want to be rolling at least 3:1 dice more than your opponent. i.e 3 dice vs 1 dice, or 6 dice vs 2 dice. If you're attacking with -3 BS compared to the opponent (tested at 7s vs 10s, and 10s vs 13s) For a ~60+% chance to win the F2F you want to be rolling at least 4:1 dice more than your opponent. i.e 4 dice vs 1 dice. For a ~70+% chance to win the F2F, not likely possible. If you're attacking with +3 BS compared to the opponent (tested at 13s vs 10s) For a ~60+% chance to win the F2F you want to be rolling 1:1 dice compared to opponent. i.e 1 dice vs 1 dice, or 2 dice vs 2 dice. For a ~70+% chance to win the F2F you want to be rolling 2:1, but can get away with 1 dice more than the opponent. i.e 2 dice vs 1 dice, or 3 dice vs 2 dice. So in summary for a 'good' chance to win the F2F when opponent is B1 ARO: you shooting at -6BS compared to opponent = don't bother you shooting at -3BS compared to opponent = 4:1 dice you shooting at same BS as opponent = 3:1 dice you shooting at +3BS compared to opponent = 2:1 dice you shooting at +6BS compared to opponent = 1:1 dice and for a 'good' chance to win the F2F when opponent is B2 ARO: you shooting at -6BS compared to opponent = don't bother you shooting at -3BS compared to opponent = don' bother you shooting at same BS as opponent = 5:2 dice (roughly 3:1 as above) you shooting at +3BS compared to opponent = 3:2 dice (roughly 2:1 as above) you shooting at +6BS compared to opponent = 2:2 dice (roughly 1:1 as above) ------ When defending (reactive turn) (if its 1 dice dodge, or 1 dice shoot, that's clear, but if your in a fireteam or otherwise B2 in ARO, it might be worth considering) I had a quick look at dodge vs shoot ARO against opponents 2-4 dice at 10-13 success value. I counted a 'win' or 'nothing/opponent misses' as a successful outcome for ARO F2F. Dodging on a 10 seems to be about the same as shooting back 2 dice on 7s, so (in a fireteam or otherwise B2 in ARO) shoot if your BS is -3 or less than your dodge, otherwise dodge if you want the highest %chance to survive the order. If you want to kill the attacker -> shooting back 2 dice on 4s is only 10% 'worse' than dodging in the best case (against opponents 2dice on 10s), and only 1% 'worse' than dodging in the worst case (against opponents 4 dice on 13s). So shoot. So assuming dodge B1 or ARO shoot B2: If you need to live -> dodge if Phys = your BS+3 If you need to kill the attacker -> almost always shoot, even if phys = your BS+6.
Problem is that 90% of times you dodge WORSE that BS Attack. And in ARO it is always 1 dice, no matter what. And if you have 2 dice, it's for BS Attack, not for Dodge. So why the hell one should ever Dodge over attacking and maybe removing the enemy? At the state of the game today, THIS is the greatest problem of the rules.
I usually find that I'm being shot at by enemies with vis mods or who have successfully placed themselves in favourable rangebands. Then, the Dodge roll is at a better target number than the BS attack. Also, if the dodge succeeds, you get to move, possibly into cc or out of LoF, which can have tactical value.
For me, using the same rough conversion Weathercock described above, I'll consider a 6 point advantage to be worth an order, as long as I have 12 points or more of base success. I'm mostly running damage off on vibes, as I don't quite know how the conversion rate on burst goes there, but damage matters to the "good shot" calculation. I do know HRMC is silly amounts better than MHMG at least, practice has very much taught me that.
So the damage question is an interesting one. I think something that the calculator does (which isn't incorrect) is that it gives the average wounds per order across all outcomes, including all those where you lose or tie so of course damage is zero. I think it might be more useful to think of it as two separate questions. 1) how likely am I to succeed (burst) and then 2) and when I do succeed how hard I hit. I've got a weapons analysis with this philosophy as part of the project. You've arrived at something close to what I've arrived at l, although the windows are smaller due to more constraints applied. If you'd like, I'll send you some of the visualizations and we can discuss.
The calculator is a lot better than nothing when it exposes how many orders I am likely to need to accomplish an attack, however, it doesn't quite show whether this is 1.2 wounds per order or roughly 5.3 wounds at some point within 6 orders, and that also matters a lot Biggest thing is, however, that I am searching for a way to conceptualise this during a game. Is it a risky shot? Is it a good shot? Do I have a better shot? How many orders do I need to spend on this, I've got places to be and buttons to push?
