Frood AACalc Dicey / Sim / Odds Calculator: Updates and Opinions

[Guest]

The only difference I can think of in LHTR over the OM rules relate to Heavy Bombers.

In LHTR, it is the better of 2 dice rolled instead of 2 dice added.

All of the other units stay the same.

Also, you may want to consider a “Consolidated Bombardment” check box option that will allow DST’s to fire a support shot of 3 in addition to Battleships during an amphib assault (like BB’s the casualties are taken before the defenders can return fire, they only fire once, and they cannot be taken as losses).

[Jennifer]

Also your list of results is great, Dan.  However, could you also offer an option of numbers of units lost?

For isntance, if you attack with 2 infantry vs 1 infantry you could say:

Most likely outcome 1 Attacking Unit Lost, 1 Defending Unit Lost.

Etc.

That would be especially helpful in very large battles when you want to compare damage dealt in units to damage received. (For instance if Russia attacks iwth 30 infantry, 10 artillery, 5 armor and 2 fighters vs 40 infantry, 10 armor, 3 fighters and an AA gun, you might want to know how many units you destroyed in X number of rounds to determine if you can weaken Germany enough for England to finish her off.)

[Guest]

Agreed, a 50% result highlight would be great.

A result entry that follows the various percentage breakdowns that shows the result that is exactly in the percetnage middle that says:
“Most Likely Results:  Attacker: X, Y, Z units left, Defender destroyed”

Would be great (and would be a great time saver for many of us)

[frood]

@ncscswitch:

The only difference I can think of in LHTR over the OM rules relate to Heavy Bombers.

In LHTR, it is the better of 2 dice rolled instead of 2 dice added.

All of the other units stay the same.

Hmm… that could take some work. No other units hit in that manner, so the logic of my dice rolling routine might have to be slightly disassembled. I have some ideas though. Also, how would this work for Low Luck? I wonder if simply having Heavy Bombers attack on a 5 would approximate the odds of scoring a hit on the better of two dice hitting on 4 or less?
@ncscswitch:

Also, you may want to consider a “Consolidated Bombardment” check box option that will allow DST’s to fire a support shot of 3 in addition to Battleships during an amphib assault (like BB’s the casualties are taken before the defenders can return fire, they only fire once, and they cannot be taken as losses).

No checkbox needed. At present you should be able to add Destroyers to a land battle just like Battleships and they take a shot in opening fire of the first round.

[Guest]

Yep, I just checked, DST’s are able to bombard in the current format if they are entered in the battle sim :-)

[frood]

@Jennifer:

Also your list of results is great, Dan.  However, could you also offer an option of numbers of units lost?

For isntance, if you attack with 2 infantry vs 1 infantry you could say:

Most likely outcome 1 Attacking Unit Lost, 1 Defending Unit Lost.

Etc.

That would be especially helpful in very large battles when you want to compare damage dealt in units to damage received. (For instance if Russia attacks iwth 30 infantry, 10 artillery, 5 armor and 2 fighters vs 40 infantry, 10 armor, 3 fighters and an AA gun, you might want to know how many units you destroyed in X number of rounds to determine if you can weaken Germany enough for England to finish her off.)

There’s a considerable difficulty in displaying most likely COMBINED results as you are suggesting, especially in a large battle such as you describe. Each side has about 50 units, and it is reasonable that each side might survive with as many as 25 units … wait - I was going to say that you then have a possibility of 25*25 total possible outcomes, but that’s not the case if you  fight to the death, because each of the set of 25 results has the other side with 0 units, not with any number from 0-25. So really that means only about 50 different possible results, and of course even many of those will be highly unlikely. With 50 results, the average likelihood of each would be 2%, but obviously a few would be much more likely and many would be below 1%.

However, the number of results is still compounded by the presence of the AA gun (or any battle with subs) because you could have the same number of units surviving with different amounts of air units left.

Sorry, I’m just thinking out loud, as it were. This has been a major shift in my thoughts about how the outcome can break down. I can see that this would be much more intuitive, to see the combined results, not just separate for each side, and now also that it might be doable.

[Guest]

If you just highlight the 50% line, the exact percentage middle, that would be great :-)

[Jennifer]

Actually, I was thinking since you give the amount of money lost, it might be possible to just say:  If you attack with 9 Infantry you’ll probably kill 2 infantry and loose 1 infantry to return fire.

(LL would say 1.5 kills, rounded up to 2 hits; 0.67 kills, rounded up to 1 hits.)

Also, I noticed that if you hit a 1 round only 5000 attempt simulation (you attack for 1 round, but it computes 5000 attempts at the same round) it doesn’t give you even an average monetary loss.  Maybe I’m just blind.  /shrug.

Heard a complaint that it’s not emailing results anymore.  Tested a couple of tries to my own inbox, havn’t gotten results yet.  Maybe just a slow server?

[newpaintbrush]

@frood:

There’s a considerable difficulty in displaying most likely COMBINED results as you are suggesting, especially in a large battle such as you describe. Each side has about 50 units, and it is reasonable that each side might survive with as many as 25 units … wait - I was going to say that you then have a possibility of 25*25 total possible outcomes,

Haha!  I wrote an analytic calculator once that DID break down the values.  But it always crashed my browser whenever I used it for more than fifteen units because it had to do so many calculations!  Although I think I know a way to fix that nowadays.

It isn’t 25*25 total possible outcomes with a 50 on 50 battle.  Depending on attack or retreat, it’s clearly 2^100, even if the odds for either extreme are astronomically low.  25 * 25 is only 625 outcomes.  2^100 is 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376 outcomes.

I have to wonder just what sort of “logic” your dice roller program uses . . . maybe you should stick the code on here and let us have a look-see.

Whadjoo use to make that webpage anyways?  Quark or somethin?  All that funny formatting in the HTML . . .

[Jennifer]

BTW, confirmed that FROODs isn’t mailing results anymore.  Just did a few trials with both my comcast, yahoo, hotmail and gmail accounts listed individually and as multiple addresses.  been 10 hours, no results in my boxes yet.

[Jennifer]

Well, FROOD’s sending emails again.  Just hit submit 14 times and got 14 submissions to both of my inboxes. (Not good for JSP, all of them were 12-18 hits, with 4 of them at 17 hits!)

[frood]

@newpaintbrush:

@frood:

There’s a considerable difficulty in displaying most likely COMBINED results as you are suggesting, especially in a large battle such as you describe. Each side has about 50 units, and it is reasonable that each side might survive with as many as 25 units … wait - I was going to say that you then have a possibility of 25*25 total possible outcomes,

Haha!  I wrote an analytic calculator once that DID break down the values.  But it always crashed my browser whenever I used it for more than fifteen units because it had to do so many calculations!  Although I think I know a way to fix that nowadays.

It isn’t 25*25 total possible outcomes with a 50 on 50 battle.  Depending on attack or retreat, it’s clearly 2^100, even if the odds for either extreme are astronomically low.  25 * 25 is only 625 outcomes.  2^100 is 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376 outcomes.

I have to wonder just what sort of “logic” your dice roller program uses . . . maybe you should stick the code on here and let us have a look-see.

Whadjoo use to make that webpage anyways?  Quark or somethin?  All that funny formatting in the HTML . . .

I have to say I don’t much care for your tone. It sounds like you’re slagging my math, my logic, and my HTML code. But because I’m the patient sort, I’ll respond politely, even if my flame finger is feeling itchy. I want this thread to be for improving the sim, not for flame wars.

In terms of “logic” that my dice roller uses: it rolls the results of a battle thousands of times and tracks how often each side survives with a different number of units. It is not an analytic calculator. It gets used about 10,000 times a month and only very occasionally do I get an e-mail from someone saying the results don’t seem right. That hasn’t happened in a while. So no, you don’t get to see my source code, at least not if you can’t ask nicely.

I think you might be stretching it with 2^100, and saying that this is “clearly” so just sounds pretentious. It sounds like anyone who can’t see that must be a cretin.

At least without retreats, there is a range of results of maximum 100 possible outcomes, where one or both players by definition will have 0 units surviving. Allowing for retreats probably increases this by a few orders of magnitude, but not to 2^100. The possible results are limited by the order of loss and other aspects of the game mechanics. In any case, since the sim works by actually rolling the results randomly many times over, I only care about the results that happen at least once every 10,000 battles, and I can limit the display to only show results that have a significant probability. No one needs to know about a possible outcome that only happens once in 2^100 or whatever, or even only 1 in 10,000.

As for the HTML source, I am not some quarkhead or frontpage newbie. It’s all hand-coded, and the “funny formatting” you refer to is called inline styles. Usually I control all the style with a separate stylesheet, but because the results also get e-mailed, I have to stick them in-line. Since the source is generated by a PHP script, inline styles are less of a disadvantage, because there is still a single point of control in the PHP script. Or if you mean the way the HTML itself is formatted, that’s because it is generated by a PHP script and indentation etc. is not an issue for me in the final page that is built, since I do my debugging at the PHP level.

If you weren’t being rude, sorry if I misunderstood. You have to be careful online :)

[frood]

@Jennifer:

Actually, I was thinking since you give the amount of money lost, it might be possible to just say:  If you attack with 9 Infantry you’ll probably kill 2 infantry and loose 1 infantry to return fire.

(LL would say 1.5 kills, rounded up to 2 hits; 0.67 kills, rounded up to 1 hits.)

Also, I noticed that if you hit a 1 round only 5000 attempt simulation (you attack for 1 round, but it computes 5000 attempts at the same round) it doesn’t give you even an average monetary loss.  Maybe I’m just blind.  /shrug.

Heard a complaint that it’s not emailing results anymore.  Tested a couple of tries to my own inbox, havn’t gotten results yet.  Maybe just a slow server?

Must have been a slow server - I didn’t fix anything.

Did you do the 5000x simulation with “No Luck” mode? Because it should show the averages just as normal.

Switch and Jennifer, are you suggesting just stating in one line what the most likely result for the attacker is, the most likely result for the defender, and the amount they survive with and lose in that case?

[Jennifer]

It’s okay, Dan.  It was a very touchy battle that could have gone either way on round 1 and then suddenly we had no email confirmations!  Luckily I had the page still up to save time so I got a screenshot of it for confirmation, whew…

Yes, what I am asking for is:

Attacker attacked with X units
Attacker remains with Y units

Defender started with X units
Defender remains with Y units

Currently you show a bar graph of IPC value in attack and what’s left after the battle.  Instead of the IPC value (I think it’s IPC, maybe it’s punch, didn’t really look at it very hard) a graph for each unit and how many are left would be better, IMHO.  (Light gray for starting overlaid by dark grey for remaining would be fine.)

After all, from that, we can determine the cash lost. (Your program rounds to the nearest decimal anyway, and since you can’t have 0.8 IPCs, you have to round anyway.  And what if that’s 0.8 of 1 infantry?  that’s really 3 IPC since you either have it or you don’t, right?)

[Guest]

@frood:

Switch and Jennifer, are you suggesting just stating in one line what the most likely result for the attacker is, the most likely result for the defender, and the amount they survive with and lose in that case?

Yes, IN ADDITION to the full readout.

Just a seperate line as “Median Result” with the pecentage center result from the detailed breakdown of potential results.

[Jennifer]

I concur.  Keep the full readout.  But a listing of most likely units left vs units you started with would be greatly appreciated.

[Guest]

Even if it is just highlighting the median entry in the full table would be fine!

[newpaintbrush]

@frood:

I have to say I don’t much care for your tone. It sounds like you’re slagging my math, my logic, and my HTML code . . .

If you weren’t being rude, sorry if I misunderstood. You have to be careful online :)

Seriously, who gives a damn what a crack pipe smoking owl thinks?  Unless it’s Bucky the Katt.

ZOMG, you said I was “stretching it” with 2^100.  I don’t think I care for YOUR tone.  It sounds like you’re slagging my, um, crack pipe!  God, I shall never forget this, um, dire insult.  And if you reread your post, saying that I’m pretentious and calling people cretins, it sounds like you were real pissed.  Lawl.  So shoot me, my bad.  I am unintentionally rude a fair amount of the time, and if you take offense, that’s a shame.

I would apologize, but I don’t think I shall after reading your edited reply.

We can both just call it a day.

–

BTW, if you have, say, an infantry and an artillery attacking a tank, here are your possible outcomes after 1 round:

IL, AL, TL (infantry live, artillery live, tank live)
IL, AL, TD
IL, AD, TL
IL, AD, TD
ID, AL, TL
ID, AL, TD
ID, AD, TL
ID, AD, TD

That’s 2^3, or 8 results.

Now, it’s true that usually you’re not going to kill off the artillery before the infantry, but that only adds to the complexity of the computer calculation.  And after you stick in things like retreats and playing until one side is deceased, the program becomes even more interesting to program.  But whatevs.

[frood]

paintbrush - sounds like I took you a little too seriously. never mind.

Okay, I’ve posted a beta to test at http://frood.net/aaa/ - this has highlighting on the results that are closest to the calculated average, and added to each line is a list of the units that have been lost.

I made some changes to the overall code that I think increases the speed of the script by about 20%. Not much, but what the heck. Because of this though there may be glitches. I’d appreciate some beta testing so I don’t launch the update on the main site and then find out that suddenly subs are hitting aircraft or whatever.

[Guest]

A couple of clitches in the highlight coding…

I ran a test battle with 10 INF, 2 ART, 8 ARM, 4 FIGs and a BOM against 16 INF, 5 ARM, 2 FIGs.

The defender was 76% likely to have no units left, thus the median result should have highlighted this line.  It did not, it highlighted 1 line above it: 1 FIG surviving.