Moderate luck option?

Black_Elk

I've always felt that the underlying issue (the frustration people have with dice) has more to do with the design of a map's economy and the replacement cost of units relative to starting TUV, than with the combat mechanics per se.

I think LL actually magnifies the issue sometimes, esp in smaller engagements, since it's easier to predict the likely outcomes of a given combat in LL, and when the "luck" (which is still involved) disrupts the expected result here, it can be almost just as damning to your plans for unit attrition as a string of weird ass rolls would be in a regular dice game. It's just that the upsets typically happen incrementally in LL instead of all at once as in dice.

Unfortunately this insight isn't all the useful, since you usually can't redesign a game's economy once its established. But typically the ratio between starting TUV and starting income is like 10 to 1. That's pretty fucking high. It means that in an average A&A game, it takes 10 rounds of purchasing just to replace what you're given at the outset, and any swing that knocks off a sizeable chunk of TUV (particularly in the opening round, say via scripted attacks) has a huge cascading effect over the entire game. LL doesn't really do anything to address that aspect of the gameplay, it just makes the losses in a given round or in a key battle more predictable. And of course it makes the strafe and the airblitz extremely potent compared to dice.

I don't know what a happy medium would look like. Hepps suggestion seems interesting, even if it allows for a similar bean counting dynamic as LL, at least the mental math involved would be somewhat more challenging than just counting up 6 pips for the entire attack/defense force. Still, trying to think of something that works for a game like AA50 seems kind of daunting. I guess the 5s or 4s idea suggested above might be workable. I wasn't entirely sure if I read it correctly, but I was thinking the suggestion was to somehow create a system without auto-hits? Auto-hits and rolling for the remainder seems to be the defining characteristic of LL, but also the thing that makes LL basically anathema to normal dice players. So it's hard to see how you can excite one set of players without losing the other. Unless you change something about how the pips actually translate into hits.

I agree though, it would be cool if we could find some sort of alternative between the crushing randomness of dice and the exacting slog of LL. Of the two playstyles I favor the former, so I'd probably be biased regardless. But I think a lot of people have articulated the issues they have with both, so a third way might gain traction if only we could figure out what that looks like and then popularize it. Tall order though, definitely beyond my pay grade haha

Cernel

@Black_Elk I mostly agree, but I believe the average is rather about 8 or 9, for the classic games.
I believe, amongst the classic TripleA games, the one with lowest TUV / Production ratio is 270BC, at 6.2.
I've also recently made a variant of that, called 270BC 40% (you can find in 270BC Variants), that goes as low as 5.45 of TUV / Production ratio.
With this said, I've not a problem with TUV / production ratios of even 12 or more (like in World War II v6, that I like), and in a way I actually really like your forces being very valuable. Definitely you need to like dice, in this case, tho.
Really, rather than LL, the best solution, on many levels, would be having maintainment costs (already possible), in my opinion. Tho this reduces the importance of initial TUV swings but increases the importance of initial production swings a lot.

Hepps

@Black_Elk said in Moderate luck option?:

I'm not going to speak to some of the other stuff in your reply because while I agree with what yourself and @Cernel are saying about game design affecting the perceived and real impacts of either dice or LL outcomes on a game... I think that is really a separate matter from the topic at hand. The question isn't whether the design of a game should take into account whether you want it played with dice or Low Luck... we already know this to be true.

What we really want to sink or teeth into is whether there is a viable middle ground that could potentially offer players and designers a better/different option.

I don't know what a happy medium would look like. Hepps suggestion seems interesting, even if it allows for a similar bean counting dynamic as LL, at least the mental math involved would be somewhat more challenging than just counting up 6 pips for the entire attack/defense force. Still, trying to think of something that works for a game like AA50 seems kind of daunting.

As I have already acknowledged... I realize that what I am suggesting would retain a certain level of calculability for straffing attacks... that isn't really necessarily a bad thing... since we are trying to find a middle ground... and anything beyond a one combat round strafe would become increasingly more variable than LL currently is.

CrazyG

Here is an idea. Half Low Luck. Its calculated the same as Low Luck, but for every guaranteed hit, it just rolls 2 dice at 50% (3/6, 5/10, 6/12, etc.)

So if I attack with 8 infantry, instead of having 1 guaranteed hit + a roll on 2/6. I would get 2 rolls on 3/6 and 1 roll on 2/6.

If I attack with 16 total power, I would roll 4 dice at 3/6, and 1 dice at 4/6

You could potentially even have a few guaranteed hits on really large battles to drop variance further. Reduces the variance of dice without creating overly predictable battles. My experience is that most of the time a player wants to avoid dice, they want to avoid large numbers of rolls on 1/6 or lower, because this is where the variance starts to get really high.

redrum

Yeah, after thinking about this for a while I think the 2 most straightforward options would be:

@Hepps suggestion of grouping units by attack/defense value then doing LL on each group
@CrazyG suggestion of doing essentially half LL by totaling all values up but dividing by half the dice max (3 for 6d, 6 for 12d) then rolling for all. @Cernel Also pointed out it could be done more generally by having a parameter to define what do divide it up by rather than hard coding to half of the dice max.

I think both could be useful and have pros/cons. Both do a pretty good job of minimizing the extreme randomness of having to roll many dice @ 1 or 2.

Option 1: still allows for auto hits but introduces more randomness than LL in most situations. The main edge case that you could argue doesn't work great is if you then attack with units that have all the same value with then ends up functioning just like LL. I don't think this would be that common since usually you want max attack power for strafing and for doing weird retreat stuff you usually want to use most units (think switzerland in NWO). I'd say this option leans a little more towards LL than dice.

Option 2: works well in most situations but has some cases that end up with more randomness than dice. The main edge case I thought of is attacking with a single high value unit like a battleship. Instead of it attacking with 1d @ 4, it would instead roll for 2d @ 3 & 1. I think this mostly affects sea battles as they tend to have higher value units as ships and planes on many maps have greater than half of the max dice.

Cernel

@redrum The @CrazyG proposal is just a subset of what I said, with:

Special Luck = true
Special Luck Dice = 3

And, as I said and you see, this does not necessarily lowers luck, thus it should not be called with a name hinting so.

Cernel

And, as I said, also the current Low Luck option would be a subset of what I said, with:

Special Luck = true
Special Luck Dice = diceside (normally 6)

This would be the setting of games having Low Luck default, and you could play dice by setting it false, or play some less low luck by setting it true and at 5 or 4, or play as per @CrazyG by setting it true and at 3, or go for high luck by setting it true and at 1.

Cernel

@Cernel Sorry, actually no, just noticed now.

This is as per @CrazyG :

If I attack with 16 total power, I would roll 4 dice at 3/6, and 1 dice at 4/6

While what I said would have ended with 5 dice at 3/6 and 1 dice at 1/6.
So not exactly the same.

Anyways, I'm not really that interested in this matter, as I personally believe that regular dice is just fine, as long as the map is fine for it.

David_VanDyke

I don't like the force grouping idea so much, as it one of the irritations of any LL game for me is that way it rewards meticulousness most, rather than strategy. I don't like the idea of an option that rewards even more detailed planning and pre-calculation of each battle, trying to refine most likely outcomes, than LL already does.

However, I'm totally on board with Cernel's proposal to choose per game:

Special Luck = true/false
Special Luck Dice = X

This gives player the greatest flexibility and over time and play would "let the market decide" best of all the proposals IMO.

My gut says the midrange players, the ones that want a mid-luck option, would settle on 4, but it might be 3 or 5 after all.

The "half dice" option seems like merely a subset of this, set to 3.

redrum

@David_VanDyke @Cernel Fair point, I edited by previous point to add that the second option could be done with more flexibility. At this point unless there are other ideas, I think it boils down to probably choosing 1 of the 2 options I laid out then deciding exactly how best to implement and name them. In theory, both could be added though probably best to pick one to start with.

Zim Xero

The Hepps suggested method is a logical middle ground between Luck and LL.

As far as playability... it offeres more luck that some players prefer, while at the same time, eliminating the possibility of a stack of 20 attacking infantry getting lucky with 8 or 9 hits. Everyone hates stacking luck of the 1s.

CrazyG

@Cernel
Great mind thinks alike? Sorry I didn't understand your initial proposal, the flexibility is a fine addition on top of my suggestion. I hope that 50% would become the standard used though

I want to point out that Hepps suggestion won't be much different than LL on maps like the NWO series, which is probably where I want to see the strafing behavior changed the most. Keep in mind that defenders get LL too, and on many maps its quite common to see all defenders firing on the same value (like infantry or artillery on a 2). Being able to guarantee the defenders damage is never more than X is a big deal, especially for trading territory with aircraft

BTW, do we need to consider anti-aircraft attacks? If I recall correctly there were certain things you couldn't do with AA in low luck.

Hepps

@redrum That seems like a fair analysis

David_VanDyke

@Zim-Xero if by the "Hepps suggested method" you mean low-lucking separated by roll (1, 2s, 3s, etc), I strongly disagree that that would be the best option. That's merely LL 2.0. I want moderate luck with a compressed, steepened bell curve, not a more complex, more figure-intensive LL with a tiny bit more variability. Frankly, I want dice without the extremes, not LL with a little more spice.

One alternative brute-force method would be to place upper and lower bounds on the dice results of, say, plus or minus 50%.

Let's say the statistically average hits are 8 for your firing round. The algo could simply chop off results below 4 and above 12.

CrazyG

I had a good discussion with Hepps about this topic. An idea that came up was basically Hepps' suggestion, but with one more addition.

Make it optional for each level of dice. So I could set my 1's and 2's to LL, but still roll the 3's and 4's normally.

It seems like a pretty clean solution. You can reduce the variance on the units you want to have low variance. Since offensive units tend not to have only 1 attack it does a pretty good job of reducing strafing.You can leave the dice effects on other units. This address a lot of the concerns raised by Black Elk and VanDyke.

Plus its flexible and can customizible.

David_VanDyke

@CrazyG I'm okay with trying that. It's not my optimum solution, but it's much closer.

I presume it would be selectable once at the start of the game, but then it would be fixed in place?

Zim Xero

@David_VanDyke: I understand what you want. Keep in mind that "medium luck" should be something any player can visualize and play out on a board game without using a calculator.. Another possiblility, besides CrazyG's which might cause a lobby to argue over what settings to use.... would be to make it Low Luck per specific engaging unit type:

4 armor defending at 2
8 infantry defending at 2

The defending player would get 3 automatic hits. Remaining armor would hit on a 2. Remaining infantry would hit on a 4.

prastle

@Zim-Xero think i like it ! and YES we need something they can math in their head.

David_VanDyke

@Zim-Xero That's a slightly tweaked version of what was proposed above (LL per roll number). All that does is cause people to do more calculations to try to minimax the desired "sure thing" result. It will have no positive effect on the strafing problem, and little on the problem of large stacks.

The best solution is one that encourages NO head-calculations, but simply narrows the variability of the dice.

CrazyG

Just so this thread is even farther from a consensus, I'll add another idea

What if Medium Luck rolled your 4 highest dice, but then the remaining units use LL. The number of dice could be adjusted

Super simple and easy to understand. I think its enough to reduce predictable battles