So I am terrible at doing the math for infinity so I am hoping someone has already done the math for me. there are 2 rem driver profiles that I can see that increase the odds to kill the target, the +1 dam and the +1 bs. the +1 dam profile is 3 points cheaper which indicates to me that it is the slightly inferior option. My question is has anyone done the math to know at what weapons, what ballistic skill, and target bs and arm the +1 dam profile is the inferior choice, and by how much? I am coming from an aleph perspective where I'm generally going to put it on a bs 11 (base) rem with an hmg potentially with mimitism (tr bots and dakini's are prime suspects from my faction). But I know there are the nomad selection with a bunch of weapons as well. If someone has done the math, what were your findings?
i found it ultimately it comes down to the remote and partially what you plan to do with it: as aleph the dammage/wip/bts or the armor/cc/ph Remracers are great choices for a ruda gunbot for defence or attacking respectively. aspra (as overpriced as it is depending on sectorial/ vanilla) are best used on tacbots specialist and paramedic or TR remotes that have 11bs (12+ better to use the bs +1 Remracer)
I agree with dhellfox that in the case of Aleph, RemRacers are mostly going to be buffing our Rudra as the Apsara brings the bigger modifier for a Dakini or Zayin. As for which one to use on the Rudra, it will depend on how you wish to use it, and which weapon loadout you wish to go with. The +1Dam, +1WP, +3BTS Racer is probably my go-to, especially when using the k1 marksman rifle. Getting to damage 14 on a weapon that completely ignores armor is great chance for getting damage through against absolutely anything that doesn't come with Immunity. With the increase of TAGs and HI, having tools to counter high armor values is key. And with those being more prevalent so will hackers be, and the extra WP and BTS suddenly gets extremely valuable. It's hard to get hacks through a BTS9 bot. Having such a high BTS on a repeater also grants the opportunity to move into range of enemy hackers relatively safely and killer hack them into the ground from across the battlefield. The defensive Racer that grants +1ARM, +3PH, +9CC is very interesting actually. Getting from ARM 4 to ARM 5 is very nice indeed. That threshold gets you an extra armor against AP ammo. +3PH helps you get a somewhat decent dodge value to use your +1" dodges. +9CC is nothing to scoff at either since combined with the -3 para CCW it suddenly makes it somewhat risky for a melee specialist to take out your robot. You get close to a 50% chance to win the roll, and even if you lose, your opponent has to get through the heavy armor which could end up getting order intensive. If close to a model with a bad CC, you also get the option of moving into CC yourself and using your heavy pistol to take it out with a dam14 shock round. While the +1BS Racer may give a greater chance to win the firefight than the +1Dam racer, the secondary bonuses the other one gives more than makes up for it. The +1BS Racer with the hacking device interests me much more. Not only do you get the bonus to your robot, you also get a secondary specialist that has the ability to go into suppressive fire in your backline. While the other ones are cheaper, this one also actually has the ability to move upfield and provide some value when the Rudra eventually goes down. This also makes it the only one actually likely to make use of its deployable repeater which is a tool unique to the RemRacer in Aleph. If, however, what you're asking is simply if whether +1BS or +1Dam has better chances for getting a kill for a HMG Dakini or Zayin, the +1BS is generally the superior choice. Can't roll damage if you don't win the attack roll.
If playing Nomads, I'd pick the ARM/PH/CC RemDriver to goof around with a melee Vostok at every opportunity.
vanilla araidna can remdive the muls, any remracer is equally viable on it but are you willing to spend the points to make them worth something more than a over-engineered baggage bot? going though the entire list of rems the overall optimal used seems to be remracer +1dam/+1wip/+3bts followed by the +1bs. the CC/ARM/PH is more viable for faction specialized rems, usually ones geared for CQB such as panO armbots, yu jing lu duan, nomad sputniks, etc and peripherals
Hmm... Can't double-check the rules to see if you can REMdrive Peripherals, but come November I'd definitely like +1 BS on the Guarda de Assaulto's special Auxbot. Unless it sees big changes, that crappy BS10 smoke dispenser/shotgunner will need help.
Agreed with most posts here, but I was specifically curious about the mathematics about which of these effects is superior, +1 BS or +1 DAMAGE for attempting to kill the targets. I realize many people are not a fan of math hammering the numbers to find which has the higher probability and therefore the "stronger" option, but i love knowing the optimal move when i have the time at home to give me hopefully more informed options during a game. That said, I am wondering if anyone has decided to do just that and hash out the results and figured it out so I don't have to recreate the wheel? If not, I have decided to use brute force for the answer and am working on building a crap console app that will just go through all the basic ftf numbers and just record the results and see in which cases the +1 bs is better than the +1 dam. Specifically for friendly and enemy models shooting from BS 8 to BS 16, friendly model shooting at burst 3 or burst 4. The target will be burst 1 and target having arm 0 to arm 10. I will not be using double action for these rolls and just use basic ammo, but ap and k1 should be easy to pull from these results. At what points would +1 BS be more prefered to do atleast one wound to the target then +1 DAM? For each instance, I'll do about 10,000 rolls to figure out the probability instead of intelligently mathing it out. I will be aiming for next week ish to put up my findings unless someone already has beat me to figuring out what is better by what percentages.
+1 BS will maths out better because of its effect on the FTF. It's not even a question. The question is: is it so much better that also it outweighs also getting +1 WIP and +3 BTS and being 3pts cheaper? The answer is probably "it depends, but often no". The exception is Sensor REMs: the answer for them is clear. They benefit from both the +1 DAM and +1 WIP so get a lot better. The +1 WIP and +3 BTS also make them harder to Hack and the +1 WIP makes them better specialists. Ergo, Pi-well (and other Sensor bots) with the +1 DAM, +1 WIP, +3 BTS > +1 BS.
DAM is only better than BS in insane edge cases, like Jotum in Cover against a Combi type stuff. Think about it this way. Let's say I have a BS13 Spitfire shooting against something like a BS13 ARM7 TAG in cover. I have a 20% chance to wound per hit, and in a shootout, something like a 67% chance that I win that f2f roll, a 5%ish chance nothing happens, and a 17% or so chance that the TAG does. On average, I'm hitting about twice, so I have a chance to wound in the mid to upper 30% range. Let's take my BS up a point now. I now have about an 80% chance of winning the f2f roll, and 20% of my hits do wounds. What happens if I instead take my DAM up? I still have a 67% chance of winning the f2f, but with a 25% chance to wound per hit. Which one of those works out to a larger odds to wound? Probably the BS buff. The other important part is that the BS buff also reduces your own chances of getting wounded in return, making you safer. Alternatively the odds need to be so heavily in your favor that your chance of losing the f2f is basically nothing (thing that can benefit from a REM Driver is actually in this range as far as I can tell). It's hard to hammer out the specifics because there are so many changing parts here. You have the attacker's BS, the defender's BS, their burst values, and their ARM values that are all going to impact this.
the problem with giving you a mathematical answer to you vague question is there are so many variables that change wildly depending on what remote you are using, what you intend to do with it and what it is facing and modifiers. the generic flash pulse repeater (lameth for alpeh) has no use for +1BS but thewip/bts driver or aspara increases its effectiveness from 65% with 0 modifiers in a straight roll to 70%. giving you a 5% boost. now if fusiler hacker was hacking your Daleth through hacking range through a behind cover as an ARO the bs+1 remracer will assuming you both roll equal below critical gives ..... ugh you get what i'm getting at right right? edit: meikyoushisui ninjaed me while typing, he does a better job explaining that i.
The reason I'm so interested is because I played a little with seeing how n3 would have worked and found there was a break point somewhere that made +1 dam better for a dakini hmg than for +1BS. For a dakini hmg with supportware at bs 14 after mods against a base arm of 2, in cover for total of 5 and BS of 9 after mods, +1 dam was better than +1 BS by .3% to do atleast one wound. This was using n3 rules of crit which changing to n4 rules of crit will favor +1 dam more. That said, at bs 11, the dakini hmg without supportware against the same model with base arm of 1 and BS of 9 after mods, +1 BS was better than +1 dam by 1% to do atleast one wound. So it appears there is a point where damage is favored over bs when shooting is so heavily favored, but a jotem is not the bar. Just an arm 2 model in cover was favored for damage at a bs difference of 5.
I ran it through the Hideous Provisional N4 Dice Calculator with the Dakini HMG vs. Octavia Grimsdottir which seems to be roughly the matchup you're looking at? Both in cover, good range, no supportware. Unmodded, the Dakini is 61.76% to wound, 11.19% to suffer a wound. With +1 BS, it's 65.82%-9.32% With +1 Dam, it's 65.13%-11.19% So the BS and Dam boosts each increase the odds to wound by almost the exact same amount, but the BS boost also decreases the Dakini's risk by 2%.
Is it a bug or on purpose that only vanilla armies are able to list rem drives? I find it distinctively odd that Ariadna vanilla can field them for their traktor mules and rather high tech sectorials such as JSA or the Aleph ones can't.
It's intentional. They're "Vanilla" Mercs like Libertos. The weirder bit is that the BS Hacker REM Driver is Ariadna's lowest SWC Hacking option.
If you run one with Assisted Fire as well as +Dam / +BS you'll see what a higher BS looks like as well.
