Because of the way cruise ships navigate (see what we did there) around various regulations, slots are often only available when the ships are in international waters (as well as some ports where they’ve obtained permission to operate). A player wondered about the impact of that on how they operate:
In Vegas the slots are on all the time. On a cruise ship the slots are turned on and off daily due to port restrictions and international waters. Does this constant recycling of the slots have any effect on the odds or payouts?
Robert N.
Technically, the slots aren’t off – they’re just disabled. If you walk through the casino, you’ll usually see the screens (mostly) lit up with an error message labeled overtop it. The slot itself is still on, but you simply can’t play it because its access to put money in or wager is turned off.
As such, the underlying pieces like the random number generator are working just the same. But even if they were actually turned off and on, it still wouldn’t impact odds/payouts because the random number generator (RNG) still works the same way when it is operational.
Based on the game’s return to player (RTP) setting the RNG is working with a set range of outcomes for that RTP, and any of those outcomes are available on any given spin.
The biggest benefit to the machines simply being disabled vs. being turned off is the boot up time. Given the high level of importance around security, a slot booting from a cold power down scenario has to go through various validation processes before the game can come back, which can easily take 10-15 minutes. By comparison, disabling a machine can be instantly reversed.
If you’ve been in a cruise ship casino when the gaming is turned on, you can see all the machines come back to life in just a few seconds, so ultimately the machines are on, just locked out until such time as gaming can be initiated.
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