Community FYI - Tech Rolls Broken

[seth4god]

Now that I have your attention. I’ve stumbled upon a bug with triplea regarding rolls to see which tech you get.

I first noticed it just now when I was playing a league game and rolled for tech. It was successful and the dice roll to see which technology I got was a ‘2’  .  .  . but triplea gave me airborne instead of rockets. I already had rockets at the time, so triplea just went down the line and gave me the next technology down. I thought this wasn’t right and I started testing to see if triplea did this consistently.

So I opened up a new game file and started testing by giving each country 4 techs in the same breakthrough chart, I chose chart two because it wouldn’t add things like rockets or airborne which would add steps to each turn. I then made sure each country had 120 IPCs so they’d have more than enough to get a tech.

G1 Tech - I gave Germany 5 tech just to see what it would do. No roll once I had a successful research, so everything was kosher.

R1 Tech - Russia gets tech and rolls a 1 for super subs. Russia already has super subs and jets. No reroll, Russia gets shipyards - the next technology available down the list.

J1 Tech - Japan gets tech and also rolls a 1 for super subs. Japan already has super subs. No reroll, Japan gets jets - the next technology available down the list.

US1 Tech - US gets tech and rolls a 2 for jets. US doesn’t have jets but does have improved shipyards. I mention the shipyards because triplea doesn’t give US jet power which they should according to the roll. They instead get aa radar.

UK1 Tech - UK gets tech and rolls a 2 for jets. UK does not have jets and they don’t have heavy bombers. Guess which one triplea gives to UK? Yup, they get Heavy bombers.

I1 Tech - Italy gets tech and rolls a 2 for Jets. They have everything but Hvy Bombers and Super subs. Triplea goes down the list again and gives them Hvy bombers. No reroll.

A1 Tech - Aussies gets tech and rolls a 1 for Super subs. They have SS, but not jets which is what triplea gives them. No reroll.

F1 Tech - France get tech and rolls a 1 for Super subs. They have SS, but not jets which is what triplea gives them. No reroll.

G2 Tech - I remove 2 tech from Germany and give them another 120. Germany gets tech and rolls a 2 for Jets. They have everything but Hvy bombers and Long range aircraft. Triplea skip long range for some reason and gives Germany Hvy bombers. No reroll.

Despite just rolling 1s and 2s to see what the tech was in this test. In another I ran but didn’t save, I did see other dice besides 1s and 2s. However, most of them were 1s and 2s. Here are the dice rolls: 1, 4, 2, 2, 1, 5, 1, & 4. I don’t know if the high numbers of 1s and 2s was just a weird anomaly. Maybe if others test, you all can post what numbers your dice were. Anyway, it doesn’t appear that triplea is correctly rolling to see what tech you get.
techtesting1.tsvg

[seth4god]

That 2nd test I did was simply giving everyone loads of cash and no technology. There did not seem to be any issue with what technology you got based on the roll. If a country rolled a 4, they got radar. Still I would double check everything from here on out until a newer triplea version comes out that fixes this.

[Jennifer]

If tech is able to be editted in tripleA, then my ruling would be to roll a die using the inhouse dicey and apply the correct technology instead of defaulting to the next available tech you don’t already have.

Bah, the longer I stay here, the more things in TripleA are screwed up….seriously I want my battlemap back.

[gamerman01]

I suspected as much, but did not follow through with testing like I should have

Thanks, Seth, I will make sure that my opponents and I roll tech manually with powers that already have 1+ tech and I will add it to my Triple A bug list.  And this is one of the worst bugs of all, because it is difficult to detect.  AFAIK you are the first.

[Degrasse]

More testing, I took Seth’s file and in round two gave everyone but Germany the first three techs, super subs, shipyards, and jet fighters.  Then I let the program run through the techs to see which ones it gave and tracked the technologies as I ran through the game

A.  Russia - Heavy bombers, managed to miss rolling any tech, bomber, bomber
B.  Japan - Heavy bombers, long range, all missed, long ranged
C.  US - Radar, radar, long range, bomber
D.  Brit - Long range, bomber, radar, long range
E.  Italy - Radar, radar, bomber, radar
F.  ANZAC - Heavy bomber, missed, missed, missed
G.  France - Radar,  long range, radar, long ranged

So seven countries tested four times each.
5 complete misses
Of the remaining 23 tests
Bombers - 8
Radar - 8
Long range - 7

I think you are seeing a bug with the dice server and the die roll that it is reporting.  But this test looks like a very normal distribution.  If the first three results were defaulting to the next highest on the table, then one of the results should have been much higher than the other two.

techtesting round 2 checking on getting radar.tsvg

[gamerman01]

Try it again with each country having FOUR techs

It should be most obvious then.

It should of course be 50/50, but if Triple A isn’t re-rolling duplicates, it should be 5/6, 1/6

[seth4god]

The dice server dice were never wrong from the times I checked. They always matched up 1:1 with what triplea was saying were the rolls. Did you find a discrepancy between what the dice server said and what triplea said were rolled?

There’s definitely SOMETHING wrong with the triplea tech rolls. What the dice were and the technology triplea actually gave are off way too many times. Did you check each time to see what was rolled and then what the results were?

We still need to roll the tech results on the forum even if triplea manages to goof one aspect such as not rerolling or giving the wrong tech but still somehow manages to give an even distribution of the tech. One of the reasons we have the dice server in place is to back up what it shows in triplea.

If that check is failing when it comes to tech, well that opens up the potential for cheating or at least doubt. I think it’s safe to say that at least 95% of us aren’t going to cheat for a game like this, but still I’d rather know for sure .  .  . I’ve seen too many battles I ‘should’ have won go south in a big way and I’ve been on the other side of that equation as well.

[Jennifer]

I’m getting less and less sold on triplea the more people use it and find issues with it. lol.

For now, I’ll post that tech is to be rolled with the in house dicey.

[seth4god]

Btw, I took that file and ran with it once through so see what would happen. Every single roll was a 1 or a 2. Every 1 resulted in aa radar and every 2 resulted in LRA.

Granted that was only one run through, but so far 1s and 2s are hitting at 22/25 from the times I’ve actually been tracking and an astounding 100% when countries already have multiple tech.

moretechrolls.tsvg

[seth4god]

I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark that you aren’t an inventor, scientist, programmer, designer, or anything like that.  :wink:

Yeah, it’s got issues but the product is already WAY better than battlemap. If it was really arguable, you wouldn’t have seen an almost 100% switchover* from battlemap to triplea. You just have to know what the issues are and how to handle them. Having to roll tech or subs manually beats the heck out of rolling EVERYTHING manually and typing EVERYTHING out as well. There’s maybe 1-2 features from battlemap that I’d like to see out of triplea, but that’s it.

*You’re the only one I know of who’s vocally anti-triplea in favor of battlemap, that should tell you something right there.

[Veqryn]

FYI: tech rolls are not broken

If you have 6 techs available, it rolls a 6 sided die

If you have 4 techs available, it rolls a 4 sided die

If you have 22 techs available, it rolls a 22 sided die

If you have 2 techs available, it rolls a 2 sided die

therefore, if you have a nation with multiple techs (say, already has 4 techs), then of course you are going to get more 1s and 2s (actually you will only get 1s and 2s if you have only 2 techs left).

[gamerman01]

Ah, so Degrasse’s conclusion was correct even though it was a small sample size…

Thanks for the timely reply, Veqryn.

I’ve removed it from my list

[Veqryn]

unlike the boardgame, triplea is not limited to rolling 6 sided dice

we can roll a dice with any number of sides we want

instead of testing the dice results, you should have been testing the tech results

if you have 2 techs, then the chance of getting either tech is 50%

if after 5000 tech rolls, you have gotten each tech close to 50% of the time each (within 5 standard deviations anyway), then the results are good

rolling a 6 sided die, then re-rolling anytime it hits a tech you already have (which is what you do in real life), is the exact same thing mathematically as simply rolling a dice with a number of sides equal to the number of techs you have left (which is what triplea does)

so, with 2 techs left, triplea rolls a 2-sided die

[gamerman01]

Of course.

How’s it coming on my list?  :-)
I spent some time last night editing it and organizing it

Triple A problems.doc

[seth4god]

Right I can see how that would be the case as far as being able to roll multiple dice. But you could see that someone was bound to notice the weird dice and how they didn’t match up with the tech tree.

I regret nothing.  8-)

:wink:

[gamerman01]

I think the only thing is, you should have done more testing of results with 2 available techs remaining.  It would have become obvious fairly quickly that they were coming up 50/50, and you wouldn’t have sounded the false alarm

That said, I don’t fault you for how you handled it, especially because I would expect the engine to continue to roll d6’s.
But now that we know it’s method, we can for the first time accurately verify die rolls in our e-mail with the tech gained.
Until now, it was like “how did that roll of a 3 give him LRA???”

[Degrasse]

@Gamerman01:

Ah, so Degrasse’s conclusion was correct even though it was a small sample size…

Thanks for the timely reply, Veqryn.

I’ve removed it from my list

I’m showing this to my wife that I’m right once in a while.  :)

[seth4god]

@Degrasse:

@Gamerman01:

Ah, so Degrasse’s conclusion was correct even though it was a small sample size…

Thanks for the timely reply, Veqryn.

I’ve removed it from my list

I’m showing this to my wife that I’m right once in a while.  :)

I think she already knows about your small sample size.

Ba dum dish . . . I’ll be here all week!

[Jennifer]

@seththenewb:

@Degrasse:

@Gamerman01:

Ah, so Degrasse’s conclusion was correct even though it was a small sample size…

Thanks for the timely reply, Veqryn.

I’ve removed it from my list

I’m showing this to my wife that I’m right once in a while.  :)

I think she already knows about your small sample size.

Ba dum dish . . . I’ll be here all week!

Low, funny, but real low!  lol.