Regarding base design, field testing, and design rolls.

[Mina]

If I develop a design with field testing but one of the design scores I want (Weapon/Engine/Armor) doesn't increase, is it fine to just put the design through development again until it does? I know successive models will increase the capacity for field testing points by +10, just not sure if an increase in a design roll explicitly requires field testing points to get better or if it's solely based on the new base design score after adding the current model's points.

[redrum68]

Yes, you can. Each iteration on the model will cost more points and increase max field testing by 10. But it re-rolls the component design scores each time so if you feel your structural and base are pretty good already but the other scores didn't go up then you can try iterating again.

[Mina]

Has anyone found the maths on how design rolls work out? So I can know if my rolls are above or below average for a model's Design/Structure scores

[GuardsmanGary]

ORIGINAL: Mina

Has anyone found the maths on how design rolls work out? So I can know if my rolls are above or below average for a model's Design/Structure scores

Engine, weapon and armour design rolls are ((base design/2)+4d20)*(structural design*0.01)

[newageofpower]

ORIGINAL: GuardsmanGary
Engine, weapon and armour design rolls are ((base design/2)+4d20)*(structural design*0.01)

That variance looks *huge*.

Structural design goes from 70-130 and (starting) base design 70-100. Putting median values (100 structural 85 base) into your formula gives the following:

((85/2) * [ 4 to 80 ]) * (1)

Which implies weapon/engine/armor rolls could be as low as 46.5 and as high as 122.5. I've never seen sub 50 rolls on average/median base & structural models, though I've occasionally witnessed >115 on average structural/base new models.

[Mina]

ORIGINAL: GuardsmanGary
Engine, weapon and armour design rolls are ((base design/2)+4d20)*(structural design*0.01)

How does the director's technician skill factor into this then? Or is their skill used for a different part of the process?

EDIT: Also just spent some time dredging up old maths knowledge and mucking about in a google sheet, but I never did well with probability in HS. Short of it is that you can be lazy and just average your maximum and minimum values and get a median around which most values are gonna fall because 4d20 follows a normal distribution (It's not the same as 1-80, or 4-80).

[GuardsmanGary]

ORIGINAL: Mina
How does the director's technician skill factor into this then? Or is their skill used for a different part of the process?

As far as I can tell it only gives bonus BP to the model design task. If it impacts any of the rolls I can't find any evidence of it.