Gargantua's Hit-Handicap system ->New A&A Concept

  • '19 '18

    @Omega1759:

    Regarding the TUV logic, we would need to figure out how to factor retreat. Once a retreat is called, do you reduce the expected TUV to the number of rounds that were rolled?

    That’s a good point.  In an intentional strafe you might tend to look unlucky if you use pre-battle expected TUV vs actual.  You are giving up the TUV swing of later rounds on purpose but the calc would attribute it to luck.

  • '19 '18

    @Gargantua:

    To illustrate the point on “overkill” attacks.  They should be recorded.

    I’m thinking of overkill a bit differently… not as sending extra to account for the variance in dice outcomes and making sure that you get the kill, but actual hits that are superfluous.  In your example there isn’t overkill in that sense because you achieved just enough hits to clear his units. “evenkill” perhaps?

    In the example of a 50 unit stack marching into a blocker, let’s say your expected hits are 20, but you only hit 10.  The hit handicap calc would yield a -10 result, but this is superfluous data.  It’s true that your rolls were poor, but they didn’t really have any game impact.

    It would be nice if those could be eliminated, especially if you’re house ruling bonuses based on the hit handicap.

    What about the original calc when units remain but if they are cleared your hit score is:

    +0 ->if expected hits were greater than necessary hits
    +(Actual) - (Expected) -> if expected hits were less than necessary hits

    In the example of your 5x fighters vs the destroyer you would still get the -1.5 hit handicap, but if you happened to roll 5/5 you would score 0 rather than +2.5 since the extra hits didn’t actually help you.

  • Liaison TripleA '11 '10

    @Tizkit:

    @Omega1759:

    Regarding the TUV logic, we would need to figure out how to factor retreat. Once a retreat is called, do you reduce the expected TUV to the number of rounds that were rolled?

    That’s a good point.  In an intentional strafe you might tend to look unlucky if you use pre-battle expected TUV vs actual.  You are giving up the TUV swing of later rounds on purpose but the calc would attribute it to luck.

    Assuming we get to the point where we can have tripleA calculate battles, to get the expected TUV gains/losse. This shouldn’t be hard to code and quantify.

    After the combat moves, it can just re calculate and replace data for any retreats.  It will just do the battle calc again, and fill in the “retreat after round X” data field. EZ.

  • Liaison TripleA '11 '10

    @Tizkit:

    @Gargantua:

    To illustrate the point on “overkill” attacks.  They should be recorded.

    I’m thinking of overkill a bit differently… not as sending extra to account for the variance in dice outcomes and making sure that you get the kill, but actual hits that are superfluous.  In your example there isn’t overkill in that sense because you achieved just enough hits to clear his units. “evenkill” perhaps?

    In the example of a 50 unit stack marching into a blocker, let’s say your expected hits are 20, but you only hit 10.  The hit handicap calc would yield a -10 result, but this is superfluous data.  It’s true that your rolls were poor, but they didn’t really have any game impact.

    It would be nice if those could be eliminated, especially if you’re house ruling bonuses based on the hit handicap.

    What about the original calc when units remain but if they are cleared your hit score is:

    +0 ->if expected hits were greater than necessary hits
    +(Actual) - (Expected) -> if expected hits were less than necessary hits

    In the example of your 5x fighters vs the destroyer you would still get the -1.5 hit handicap, but if you happened to roll 5/5 you would score 0 rather than +2.5 since the extra hits didn’t actually help you.

    It doesn’t matter if the hits are superfluous or not.  What we are establishing is how you perform when you get down to it and actually drop a dice - one at a time.

    Here’s the reason:

    In the majority of battles, the attacker attacks with what they perceive as a “winning” or “superior” force.  Meaning they almost always have extra dice, and will often hit overkill.  If on someone’s G1, 100% of their units hit.  That’s outstandingly abnormal.  But if we don’t count the superfluous hits, it won’t actually show how their dice performed; in fact they’ll only be able to establish when they under-hit.

    Forward that over to the end of the game, and both parties will basically have -values.

    This will get worse especially with lots of smaller battles against 1 unit like an inf or destroyer.  At worst you will probably only get to -1 and at best you can only score 0.  Even if in reality you are hitting -2 or +4.

  • '21 '20 '18 '17

    An interesting proposal.  Sure is easy to gather the data.

    While you’ve already addressed it in your comments, I would mention that luck, in the abstract, and in general, does not matter–most battles are not outcome-in-doubt.  You send what you need to win;  usually this 3-4 units + 1 air to blast 2-3 defenders, its a 90% odds battle.  Whether the Chinese infantry gets a retal or not, or whether 4 units attack West Russia and 2 survive or 3, really don’t move the ball enough to matter.

    You could have great, consistent rolls across most of the game, during blowouts, and attrition, but miserable luck during the situations it matters, which account for less than 20% of the total rolls.

    Alternately, you could have awful general luck, but simply hit the averages during key battles, which may be all you need to win (for example, when your opponent blows the retal).

    When you get 9 hits among 12 “2s”, or get few or no hits at all for an entire round during a big fleet battle, those are luck-excursions occurring when they matter.

    Dropping 3 / 5 AAA hits is devastating, but during dark skies, Germany just replaces the bombers and continues the blasting, such is their structural advantage.  The same hits would a lot worse during a fighting combat for Moscow where you lost punch at the start of the fight…

    Big battles for Moscow, India, Fleet tend to move towards the averages, such that you don’t know the outcome and have to go to the odds, and there is always a chance for a flub.  However, you tend to roll a lot of dice during these battles, which regresses to the mean.

    Luck matters, but you have to make it matter as little as possible, to retain the value of skill, vs luck, since skill would be your advantage (we hope!)

    The real challenge then is to consistently win, regardless of what the dice do.  Good efforts.

  • Liaison TripleA '11 '10

    The Key benefit of this is being able to quantify how good or bad things have been, and tangibly being able to present it, and have a baseline.

    Suddenly one game can actually be compared to another on a somewhat similar scale for how good or bad it has been in general.

    For example, lets say Karl7 says he got diced terribly, and I say oh no this game I played with Variance was worse.  Now we can actually compare the differential, and enjoy our misery together :)  Or say I played three games against a top 5 opponent, and won 1/3,  I can then compare the handicaps to see if the luck mattered more than the strategies I may have employed.  Or maybe some strategies (like continuing to take risks) need to change depending on the status of the handicap.  If you’re down a bunch of units, maybe you should be playing more conservatively, or maybe you should press the attack. whatever.

    Maybe we can have achievements on the new forums for winning a game with a great than 50 unit handicap lol or whatever lol.

  • 2023 '22 '21 '20 '19 '18 '17

    I’ve seen bits of the discussion and I saw that my game with Gargantua had been referenced. I’ll first note that this has been easily the most luck I have had in a game since I started league play (and I’ve had more than my share of luck so far).

    In G3, my German stack wiped out his Soviet stack on 50% odds. I didn’t just win though, but had about twice as many units surviving than the calculator predicted. Given the situation, I didn’t think I had a choice but to do this, but had the result been even slightly less in my favour, the Soviets could have countered and would have had Eastern Europe open to them. I had nothing following that stack, whereas the Soviets did. This gave me time to recover. Following that, he had a couple of more significant combats where his units significantly under performed and we have had several rounds (especially in the Pacific) where my destroyer blockers, defending lone subs, or single infantry get hits. None of these combats were individually critical  but the net effect has been that his forces have taken far more attrition and have had fewer options as a result. There have been a few battles where the luck has gone the other way but no rounds where the luck consistently and substantially went against me (except the very last one played- J12).

    Obviously, luck and the uncertainty it provides is a key component of the game and, in my mind, makes it far more interesting and fun to play. The luck in that early stack battle was a pleasant surprise but I didn’t feel any guilt around benefiting from it. One should expect that to happen sometimes. And having the odd round where one’s destroyer blockers hit at 80% is going to happen too. This kind of luck is at best usually the difference between defeat now and defeat next round. But the consistency of my luck and Gargantua’s bad luck has had the effect that in a game where I was ready to surrender after G3, I am now in round 12 and have a reasonable shot at winning. I am certainly far closer to winning than my play (especially early on) deserved.

  • 2023 '22 '21 '20 '19 '18 '17

    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?

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