Hi Anne,
Sorry about the confusion,
(1) currently EE-UQ always expects the job has at least one random variable (either the random variable defined in RV or multiple ground motion events) but running 1 gm with a deterministic model could still be achieved by defining a dummy variable in RV (with a non-constant distribution, please see an example in the attached "dummy-RV.png" and "dummy-RES.png").
(2) yes, EE-UQ would receive and use the "# Samples" in UQ->Dakota to set up the number of samples with sampled random variables (including ground motions) - when the number of selected motions (in EVT) is less than the "# Samples", samples with repeated motions would happen which corresponds to (not limited to) the user case of investigating the response sensitivity to structural modeling parameters.
(3) For the issue on DesignSafe - we tested the run on DesignSafe but could not replicate the problem - Thanks for sharing the log.txt from which the remote application is still v2.3.0. Could you please check the "Preferences" (File->Preferences) that "Remote Applications Directory" is "/work2/00477/tg457427/stampede2/SimCenterBackendApplications/v2.5.0" - and click the "Reset" button to automatically recover the settings if not. Please let us know if this could help resolve the remote run issue.
Thanks,
Kuanshi