Happy New Years!

The destruction of the WTC and other attacks are known as “9/11”. Its not an official holiday and no one calls pearl harbor “12/7” day because its not catchy or resonant. If we call it independence day, that’s an american-dependent reference; people from other countries are not likely to know (or care) when our independence was declared or why that particular day was chosen to commemorate a 7 year long war or a 30+ year struggle, and are likely to have their own “Independence Day”, in some countries it might ironically mark independence from the rule of the US (like Phil).

It’s like Canada Day. I have no idea why July 1 is marked that way on my desk calendar, it just is. Canada never fought a war of independence and it was peacefully and gradually partitioned off from its parent nation and so unless I open the wikipedia article I have abs. no idea (nor do I care) why or what that is or how its celebrated.

Take Boxing Day. To an american, its WTH is that? But to a UK resident, they’re like–that’s when you open presents. And we say, you mean Christmas? And they say, well no–we don’t open presents Christmas morning thats a custom thats not universal. It might be better called “unboxing day” but there was a point not so long ago when regular people were too poor to afford to give gifts at regular intervals and so such a holiday might have been exceptional in the past but a common and universal event today. The timing of that “feast” or exchange is…entirely customary.

Or Guy Fawkes Day. They set off fireworks–that must be when the UK became independent? How does that relate to a catholic plot to blow up Parliament? Because…well…fireworks? Or perhaps we just liked your July 4th celebration idea and its alot like chinese new year but the chinese are able to provide fireworks all year round–can we just arbitrarily choose a certain holiday then decide how to celebrate it at some other point?

Well, yes.

Same halloween. In the UK they didn’t have a dress-up holiday, but they liked that idea when they saw it in the US and so now they do.

Because these are all cultural customs and without culture-specific knowledge, they’re all meaningless.

On adding a hit differential calculator, I think having this additional info in the game would be quite interesting and useful even though I do agree that not all dice luck in the game is equal. Its more information but will sometimes lend itself to a misinterpretation of the actual luck of each player.

I do think though that if there is a way to avoid counting superfluous hits, that would make it more accurate. Some dice luck doesn’t matter to the game  and so shouldn’t be counted. If 6 fighters attack one destroyer the consequences in game terms of a lucky roll of 6 hits is the same as an ‘unlucky’ role of 1 hit or an average roll of 3 hits. It doesn’t actually matter to the outcome of the game but the measure would make it appear significant.

A TUV differential might have other problems, but it would solve this since superfluous hits aren’t going to impact on it.

But I thought another way to do is to take this hit differential counter and modify it when the hits exceed casualties in a combat. That is to say, in combat rounds where the expected number of hits and the actual number of hits both exceed the number of casualties taken, the hit differential of the victor in that combat round doesn’t get counted in the hit differential. This assumes we can break it down by combat round and I’m not sure if that can be done.

If that can’t be done then perhaps in situations where the combat only goes one round, and the expected number of hits exceeds the number of casualties, we could just ignore the hit differential of the winner of that combat. That would at least remove all situations where you send a stack after a lone unit. I think?

Considering I plan to live forever (or die trying!) I will see the sun go supernova!

@ Gargantua - Some efficient blogging on this forum then!  I wonder who has the MOST time logged in? Is it Commander Jennifer?  Not sure how to check that against everyone else.  You have a sufficiently lower number of posts than her.

lol

No one knows, we are stupid here, ask avalon hill.

ah