RE: [GZG] Re: Points systems

Bin-han,

Well put. :)

John K. Lerchey
Assistant Director for Incident Response
Information Security Office
Carnegie Mellon University

On Thu, 12 Jan 2006, B Lin wrote:

> As other people have overlooked before - with the hidden VP values for
> ships includes the proviso that as ships are destroyed, their VP value
> is revealed so that you have a constant running total of how many VP
you
> have earned.	Therefore as soon as you achieve enough VP, the game is
> over - you don't necessarily have to kill the entire fleet to achieve
> your total (unless the remaining 1 ship is of sufficient VP to prevent
> your goal).
>
> If ships hyper-out or escape, then a portion (perhaps 1/2) of their VP
> total would be earned by the opponent, again revealed when they left
the
> board.
>
> If neither side reaches their VP goal, the game is a draw, or if one
> side has earned more VP, but less than their goal, they can claim a
> tactical victory.
>
> In general, by destroying 1-2 ships, you are guaranteed of having
enough
> VP left in the pool to achieve a 50% goal, even if all the remaining
> ships leave the board.
>
> Again people keep making the point that VP will cause strange,
> non-tactically favorable maneuvers or formations.  But that is the
point
> of VP since most players don't use a campaign system that provides
> economic, political, morale, strategic intelligence or logistical
> factors into one-off games. (i.e. your last missile armed BB may be
more
> valuable than your beam armed BB's because your nation was going to
> attack a starbase next and you needed the long-range weapons to take
it
> out).
>
> By allowing a player to allocate VP, they are in effect using an
> abstract system to change the value of a ship to the overall war
effort
> - i.e. the USS Indianapolis was just a cruiser, but it happened to
carry
> the first atomic bomb.  The fact that the bomb was cargo had zero
impact
> on its combat effectiveness or cost to build, but the loss of that
cargo
> could have had a major impact on the length of WW2.
>
> Perhaps people who play one-off games really don't want to have to
think
> about outside factors, in which case designing scenarios or applying
VP
> isn't really relevant.
>
> The point of this thread was to get people to think about scenarios,
> scenario balance and how to increase interest in the game.  I proposed
> VP as a simple method (instead of having to write out dozens of
scenario
> cards or designing full scenarios) that could be implemented by
anyone,
> anywhere, that would provide a consistent system of determining who
won
> a battle, from one-off games to full blown campaigns.
>
> --Binhan
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> <<SNIP>>
>
> I find two issues with this type of thing, and to some degree with a
lot
>
> of non-FT games.
>
> First, let's look at your VP system as outlined above.
>
> "details of which exact ships are worth what VP are hidden"
>
> Ok fine.  But if this is the case, and all you have to work with is a
> "grand total" and "number of ships", how can you POSSIBLY determine
when
>
> you've achieved the goal of having killed more VPs than your opponent?
> You CANNOT know this until after the battle has concluded.  And at
that
> point, it's more likely that either one side is completely destroyed
(in
>
> which case you HAVE to have achieved this goal) or one side hypers
out,
> in
> which case you have to determine the PV after the battle has
essentially
>
> been "won" by the side that stayed.
>
> While there have been lots of examples of objectives (e.g., take out
the
>
> carriers, get a fleet supply ship through, determine the strength of
the
>
> enemy fleet and get out with you lives, etc.), I would caution to
NEVER
> NEVER NEVER (did I mention, never?) assign random victory conditions
> (e.g., each player gets some kind of VP token that has to be held or
> captured!) as it tends to make the game feel even more artificial.
>
> That said, I think that Jon's card based minor plot lines sound really
> cool, and could be adpated to any game system. :)
>
> Thanks,
>
> John
>
> John K. Lerchey
> Assistant Director for Incident Response
> Information Security Office
> Carnegie Mellon University
>
>
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