Re: A thought about points systems

I have had some (fleeting) ideas towards developing somthing like this
for my
own use...
For pick up games maybe...

Players deside what their forces are.  (maybe use a table for this
also?)
Both sides roll on each table.

First table: Force condition.
Put in things like:
    No effects.
    Battle damage -- Force is licking its wounds from a recient action.
Lose/damage some units... (roll randomly?)
    Low on supplies -- force hasn't been supplied reciently.  (maybe
make
players roll for any ordinace based weapons, ect?)
    Part of force lost -- Part of player's forces enters game later
on...
   ect.

Second table: Intelligence stuff
Put in things like:
    Compleatly blind -- player has no information on the situation.
    Old info -- Opposing player's force is presented as differant than
it
actually is...(maybe make the player scan units? ect.)
    Good info -- Sees everything.

Or something like this.  If it could be kept somewhat generic, then we
could
apply it to any game...   :-)

Donald Hosford

Roger Burton West wrote:

> I'm thinking mostly of FT as I write this, but it could apply just as
> well anywhere else.
>
> It seems to have been fairly comprehensively established that the
> combat-effectiveness and construction/training cost of a unit are not
> simply related. Construction costs make sense when one's running an
> extended campaign with replacement units coming in; but what are
> combat-effectiveness points really good for? SG2 doesn't have them at
> all; DS2 showed how hard they can be to get right. Why bother?
>
> The standard approach seems to be "to balance pick-up games". But this
> is intrinsically unrealistic; if the forces were really even, why
would
> either commander have attacked? From what I've read, most commanders
> given the choice to attack would rather have at least a 2:1 force
> advantage, so unless we assume that every power has ESU-style
commissars
> forcing its field officers into attacks for which they're
> under-resourced...
>
> No. A "balanced fight" makes no sense historically or psychologically,
> for all it's convenient for a game. Can we instead find a way of
> creating realistic battles as pick-up games? And can
> combat-effectiveness points be a useful tool in that process?
>
> I think so; but it needs a change of attitude. Rather than "let's put
> our forces on the table, slug it out and see who wins", the approach
> would be "here's a situation, see who can make the best of it".
>
> Assume there's a basic ration of victory points for the scenario,
> derived from specific objectives: a freighter that's part of a convoy
> (which might be something both sides wanted control of, or might be
> something one side wanted to destroy), a location that you have to
have
> troops in when the other guy doesn't (basic attack/defence), or
> whatever. That part of the game is zero-sum: there are only so many
> points to be won, and they will be won by one side or the other.
>
> Now, compensate for force sizes. Each side's score multiplier is
> something along the lines of:
>
> (surviving points) * (enemy's original points) / (original points)^2
>
> So. You go in with 500 points against a 200-point defence. You lose
200
> points during the attack. Your score multiplier is
(300*200/500/500)=0.24.
> If the enemy had inflicted those losses on you with a 100-point
defence,
> it would be 0.12; if you hadn't taken any loses at all, it would be
0.4.
> This gets multiplied by your basic victory points to assess how well
you
> did; whoever scores higher is the winner. It's entirely possible to
take
> all the objectives, but to use up so much manpower and materiel doing
so
> that you end up the loser...
>
> Advantages:
>
> - encourages preservation of own forces
> - doesn't directly reward destruction of enemy, unless it helps gain
> basic victory points
> - gives resonably sensible results with very unbalanced sides
>
> Does this make sense? Has anybody tried anything of this sort?
>
> Roger