Randomness does not imply unpredictability. It's very much possible to get develop a system where things are statistically likely but still not certain, and in my opinion these sort of systems are much more interesting than at either extreme of the continuum.

I'd prefer using HP too in an rpg, but for strategy games with many units like total war what would you prefer??

Im thinking of using Armor instead of HP meaning that life of a player is increased by his equipment. Like if you were unarmed 1 succefull hit would kill you but since you have armor the strike is delivered to the armor.

For many units would HP systems work??

From experience under ss13, I can say that rng is not the way to go for combat. Maybe add a little bit, like a damage upper and damage lower, but anything more than that leads to unfun things like getting killed in 1 hit or getting killed because rng got unlucky and something that should take 5 hits to kill on avg taking 25.

Just because one game implemented randomness poorly--and it's my understanding that SS13 implemented most things poorly--doesn't mean it's impossible to do. I wouldn't be surprised if SS13 just went with a uniform distribution for their attacks, meaning they just pulled straight from the PRNG without transforming the values at all, resulting in you being equally-likely to do very well, very poorly, and average. Other distributions would be much more interesting.

As for a 95% shot, you have to keep in mind that 95% is not 100%. There's still a 1-in-20 chance you'll miss, which is pretty big as far as I'm concerned: I wouldn't eat something if there was a 1-in-20 chance of me dying from it.

it's my understanding that SS13 implemented most things poorly

This kind of assumption is unproductive.

Go home.

I always align with a critical organ system. Health is dependent on your actual systems being intact. Get shot in the leg and it impairs that leg and you can bleed out, etc.
By tying it to critical organs instead of HP or chance, you get that feeling of knowing how to stop an enemy without an exact number of hit points or "best 3 out of 10".
Not many games do this, though, with Soldier of Fortune: Double Helix and Arma games being all that comes to mind.

It's okay Pop, I know how you feel.
Stay for us good ones, though! :)

Dwarf Fortress is a good example of a game where the organ system is done pretty well. It also proves your dwarves are every bit as fragile as the goblins who come marching in.

It also results in some very... Odd occurrences. I once had a Bronze Titan invade. Unfortunately, Bronze titans lack blood, hearts, and brains. In Dwarf Fortress, damage to the heart, brain, or fatal loss of blood is the only way that things die from injury. Otherwise, there's drowning, being descintigrated by magma or a bottomless pit, and the odd ionization caused by being under a drawbridge at the wrong time.

TL;DR: After my dwarves ran out of limbs to hack off of the titan, they proceeded to poke whatever sharp things they could into the limbless, headless torso of the bronze titan for several years. Eventually, I had to cordon off that entire part of my fortress into a borough, forbid my military from entering it, and then pump magma into the corridor to put it down for good.

Oh, don't worry, I'm not going to leave yet. See, you've piqued my curiosity; specifically, I'm wondering which delusion, exactly, you are operating under.

(1) That I care enough about you as an individual to be aware that you are an SS13 developer, despite having never known of you prior to this conversation.
(2) That I care enough about SS13--a game I played no more than twice back when I was a regular here--to have kept up with it to know that you are a developer on it.
(3) That you have some Hideo Kojima-like association with the game that you are practically synonymous with it so that knowing of SS13 implies knowing of you.
(4) That, much like I was born knowing to duck when something is thrown at me, that I was born knowing your affiliation with a game I don't play.

Because from my perspective, you seem to be operating under one or more of these assumptions. And trust me when I say that, quite unfortunately for you, none of them are the least bit true. When I quit circa 2012, it had only been in the past couple years that Hobnob decompiled the SS13 source and people started updating it, and that was the most I knew about it. SS13 is a game I did not care about then and I still do not care about now, and for most of the time I'd spent on BYOND back when I was a regular, my impression of Space Station 13 was that, much like if David had been made out of mashed potatoes instead of marble, there was an ounce of brilliance betrayed by a pound of poor choices.

So, to make it plain: until this post that I am replying to now, I had (a) no idea that you were a developer of SS13, and (b) that the codebase of SS13 had improved appreciably since I was last aware of it. In other words, my """ad-homs""" were aside remarks made out of ignorance of a topic I know little about except past impressions, so ~~my most humble apologies~~ for having fractured your fragile ego.

But yes, obviously I was in the wrong for having incensed at having been immediately attacked for a quick remark by someone who just knows in their heart they are the correct and superior one without making a modicum of effort to figure out the other person knows and doesn't know, and because of this I am truly the one who is best characterized with "self-righteous".

So honestly, you can fuck off you sniveling, crumpled-up cockwad. You are, now that your positions is clear, even more the arrogant sort of idiot that helped push me away from this self-fellating slug of a community.

I spoke from experience in game design

I made the assumption that you were speaking as someone who played a game. Mind, an assumption that I feel is entirely-justified considering that players outnumber devs massively here and your profile at a quick glance (i.e., without looking at your forum posts) has no indication that you are nothing other than a player, not a dev.

Unfortunately, that makes things all the worse for you. Now instead of, "I had a bad experience with this implementation of this design, therefore this design is wrong" your post now reads as, "I made a bad implementation of this design, therefore this design is wrong", because

but anything more than that leads to unfun things like getting killed in 1 hit or getting killed because rng got unlucky and something that should take 5 hits to kill on avg taking 25.

says nothing more than "I made something that wasn't fun and boy let me tell you about how not fun it was." It also doesn't bode well for your "game design" ability that you couldn't or can't figure out how to balance it so that it is fun.

And, you see, that is why I'm going to walk out of this conversation thinking I'm right: because you are nothing more than a man with baseless sense of superiority making stupid, ill-founded assumptions about multiple things.

You twat.

[Edit]

And yes, the quoted text is perfectly capable of being balanced if you're the least bit creative.