I have already inserted the idea in my proposal that VP could be open
information if the players agree to it before the game. People seem to
be hung up over the idea that you don't know the exact value of an
opposing ship and seem to expect to have 100% knowledge over every
aspect of the game. (How real is that?)
Again people are describing "tactical" aspects as being the only
consideration for winning a game, whereas using VP I'm trying to
introduce "Strategic" or "Campaign" factors into a tactical game in an
abstract way.
VP don't have to constrain your tactical thinking - if you have a sound
tactic that will eliminate all the opponent's ships, then that is one
way to achieve victory. If you are able through luck and deduction,
able to win the game with a single shot, then that is another method of
victory. Just because a DN might be worth 1VP shouldn't PREVENT you from
shooting it, but the chance that a DD might be worth 10VP should cause
you to CONSIDER shooting it. If we used 50% NPV as a criteria for
winning a game, and killing a DD you bring your kill total over 50% NPV,
you're saying that you wouldn't shoot at it to win, because it's not
"tactically sound", but would instead keep firing at the Battleship
because it is more of a combat threat?
----
In real-life you'd have flankers, early warning pickets, escorts for the
logistical train, units that don't show up on the board but are
necessary for the operation of the fleet - but no one is going to
allocate 25-50% of their fleet point value for such "non-tactical" uses
- they are going to bring every single point allowed to the board. You
can say that the point values for fleets already include such overhead,
but then you bypass the whole question of logistical efficiency, fleet
size and resources, and military intelligence that in real life can have
a huge impact on what arrives on the battlefield. By focusing solely on
the combat value of a tactical unit on the battlefield, you eliminate a
large variety of factors that really should impact how you play.
Expendable munitions/equipment have been another key point of
contention. For instance, Fighters are considered to be under priced
when purchased in large numbers. If fighters were not as easily
replaceable, or had a significant logistical cost (many more parts and
technicians required) then they might not show up on the tactical
battlefield in as large numbers or expended in suicide attacks so
lightly. For instance if each fighter group were valued at 1VP, then
massed attacks by fighters would be less worthwhile as they are no
longer "cost-less" attacks.
Your tactics should be influenced by larger considerations. For
instance a missile cruiser fleet that is a week away from re-supply will
expend it's missiles differently than a missile cruiser fleet within
hours of a supply base. Or a Carrier fleet may not expend all it's
torpedo bombers on wiping out a cruiser fleet if it were on the way to
attack an enemy base. Tactically it doesn't make sense for an admiral
not to use weapons that could destroy the opponent, UNLESS there was a
larger strategic reason to retain those resources. In the strategic
view, the cruisers might win if they can destroy the torpedo bombers -
either by destroying the carriers or luring the bombers to attack them
to be destroyed by PDS. It may not make sense tactically, but could have
an impact on the overall war.
Once again, if people who play one-off games are uninterested in
modeling strategic effects, they have no reason to implement VP. Just
like there is a subset of players who ONLY play using published designs,
but Jon has provided an NPV system to allow others to create their own
designs that are still compatible with the published ones. Just because
a subset uses only FB designs doesn't imply that EVERYONE has to play
with just the FB designs. VP are the same way, if players are
interested in adding additional factors to determine who a winner is,
they can choose to use the system or not as they please. At this point I
am more interested in designing a system that is simple and easy to use
but has enough influence to produce interesting games.
--Binhan
-----Original Message-----
From: gzg-l-bounces+lin=rxkinetix.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:gzg-l-bounces+lin=rxkinetix.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Robert Makowsky
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 5:08 AM
To: gzg-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [GZG] Re: Points systems
Binhan,
Given that I understand your points about VPs being
closed at the start but open as you kill off ships.
And given that I understand that you are using VPs to
simulate the effects of an economic, strategic, or
logistic setup that is not being gamed,
I agree that VPs can have merit. The argument remains
that random assignment (or assignment by player based
on some sort of player desire) does not meet any
criteria for any sort of game that simulates at all
real world tactics.
As John continues to point out, one side may not know
that the heir to the monarchy is on one ship. But
they will know that DNs or Fleet Carriers are able to
best project power. They may not know that you value
Cruisers more than DNs due to your far flung empire.
But they do know that if they kill all your DNs that
it will be much easier to then kill off all of your
cruisers. For their mission, your VP assignments do
not matter. The DD with the prince is going to live
or not, the cruisers are going to get hit or not all
based on their fire priority towards their primary
objective (Kill your combat projection power).
Now having said that. VPs as you say can work to help
make the game more fun and more exciting but they have
to be assigned based on some sort of rational basis if
you want the "simulationists"* to play the game.
I think what keeps happening is that we keep
explaining this, you keep countering with "But you
don't understand". I for one do understand your
position but as a simulationist as well I reject
random VPs or player assigned VPs that do not reflect
some sort of actual likely situation.
If the player was to assign higher VPs to Carriers
than to DNs of the same NPV and say that was because
it is easier for them to crew fighters than to crew
DNs I would agree with that aspect. I would not kill
a DN and then be surprised at how little VP I got,
kill a carrier and be happily surprised about how much
VP they earned. I would hope that my intel would tell
me the relative values of the units so I can formulate
my strategy before the tactical battle.
Of course I may not know the values that your side
puts on its units. I would try to kill your major
power projection units and may concentrate on your DNs
while you are happy that your "more valuable" carriers
are getting off lightly. In this situation after I
killed a unit I would not instantly know the VP of
that unit. I may kill all your DNs and then leave the
battle. I would have achieved my goals.
v/r,
Bob Makowsky
*simulationist - gamer that tries to use games (even
science fiction games) to model real-world or
real-thinking creature events and actions. For them
the fun is seeing what happens when you game events
given these rules.
--- B Lin <lin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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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