Moderate luck option?
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@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.
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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.
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@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?
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@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 2The defending player would get 3 automatic hits. Remaining armor would hit on a 2. Remaining infantry would hit on a 4.
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@Zim-Xero think i like it ! and YES we need something they can math in their head.
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@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.
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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
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@CrazyG why 4?
maybe it rolls all dice over 3? -
@prastle
Rolling all dice higher than 3 is similar to a suggestion from earlierNo particular reason to pick 4 dice. It just sounded about right no me, I would guess that you could select exactly how many get rolled (and 0 would just be LL)
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@CrazyG yah we are creating a long argument here that lasted for years in lobby
just throwing my 2 cents in
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So rather than creating a long argument, let's try something.
See if it works and is popular.
If not, try something else.
But trying something that's farthest from LL, while still reducing dice variability, is the goal. Nobody's going to pry the LL people from their spreadsheets and slide rules. There's nothing wrong with LL if that's the game you want to play. The sand in the gears is the high variability of dice. That needs to be reduced to moderation, not lowered to barely above the LL of today.
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@David_VanDyke to clarify i am fine with anything new:) and will give it a shot
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CrazyG made an interesting point there in passing. Under the current LL scheme the advantage to attacker over the defender is pretty extreme, the strafe and airblitz being prime examples. Unlike in dice, where rush air defense (whether with fighters or bombers) or a lucky AA shot can be equally potent, in LL it seems like more often than not it's the defender getting the shaft from the air.
I wonder if a system that somehow compensates for this, by introducing more variability only on the defender's side might be worth exploring?
Not sure what that might look like exactly, but the basic idea is that the attacker can calculate their own hits to the Nth degree, but the defending opponent's hits might still hold some surprises. That would make it harder to predict perfect strafes or the perfect airblitz or the perfect bombing raid. Since the defender could throw a wrench in your plans. Something beyond just hitting on the usual remainder, like the remainder hit doubles in some cases?
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When I was a kid, our home rules allowed us to place as many AA guns as we wanted and to use them as casualties. The first AA gun gave D1 defense vs every air unit. Additional AA guns added additional single D1/6 defender shots.
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@Black_Elk I've been around this block (discussions on how to fix problems) a long time in 50 years of wargaming. The best fix to a broken or bent system is not to pile a counter-fix onto the problem, because players always figure out how to finesse the counter-fix, or it only fixes part of the problem. The best fix is to fix the underlying problem.
The underlying problem is too little variation in LL and too much on dice. That means the fundamental fix is to find a middle luck option, not to counter the worst of the LL issues with an injection of a little more luck in those circumstances by means of some special mechanic. The underlying dice mechanic needs to be modified across the board.
The underlying problem of high variation is worst approaching the extremes, in this case the 1s. Combine all 1s and you're partway there. Combine them not to packets of 6, but of your choice (as in the "set the luck level" proposal, probably 3s or 4s) suppresses the worst problems without undue side-effects or unintended consequences.
But again, the simplest solution is the one I proposed above, a brute-force limit of +-50%. That is transparent and there's no extra figuring or weirdness, and it comes close to optimum.
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@redrum said in Moderate luck option?:
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.
No. With what @CrazyG was saying, the battleship would still attack at 4, as you would roll 2 at 3 only in substitution of 1 autohit. On the other hand, with what I was saying, yes, it would. Anyways, if you have 2 battleships, you would have 2d3 and 1d2 in both cases, which is more random than 2d4. Also that the d3 would always been even feels odd to me, so I would suggest my way. And I don't think that rolling d3 is that much less random than rolling d1 (it is some, but not very much); as a dice player, I've seen some serious strings of hits and misses on d3 rolls; only with d4 and d5 you start really getting down on variability.
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@David_VanDyke said in Moderate luck option?:
@Black_Elk I've been around this block (discussions on how to fix problems) a long time in 50 years of wargaming.
So only a little experience...
But again, the simplest solution is the one I proposed above, a brute-force limit of +-50%. That is transparent and there's no extra figuring or weirdness, and it comes close to optimum.
I'm excited to see how this takes shape... I am curious... since you have clearly been examining this with more grey matter than I...
Given these proposed changes.... to only the extremes of the dice scale.... would this have any effect on the value of units that would be subject to these changes? Since some units would then not be affected?
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@Cernel said in Moderate luck option?:
And I don't think that rolling d3 is that much less random than rolling d1
It is, if you're combining those d1s into one-third d3s. If I have 30 1s, it's conceivable I could get 30 hits. But if I combine them into 10 d3s, I can only possibly get 10 hits. That's a HUGE reduction in outlier cases.
would this have any effect on the value of units that would be subject to these changes? Since some units would then not be affected?
Great question. I believe the answer is "not much," because much of a unit's value is bound up in its cost and maneuverability. This might reduce the theoretical value of infantry at the statistical margins, mainly on attack, which isn't their main function. You give up the possibility of getting a super-lucky, but you get back more consistency. Take the simple case of 3 inf attacking. By combining them into one roll at 3, you give up the possibility of getting 3 hits, while gaining about 8% in the chance of getting 1 hit (50% vs. 42%), dramatically reducing the high end case and somewhat reducing the low end case.
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Imagine attacking with 6 units that have an attack of 5. (average results would be 5 strikes). You have bad luck and roll a 2 and five sixes. This is similar to the probability of a bunch of attacking infantry all hitting..
To minimize the extremes, you could use Low Luck rules... combining the 1s, 2s, 5s, and 6s, and then roll all d3s and d4s normally.
Even though this would create a more average spectrum of results.... a stack of tanks and bombers attacking at 3 and 4 would still be subject to a wide range of results;
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@Zim-Xero On absolute terms, yes, rolling 6d5 can go off the average the exactly same way as rolling 6d1.
However, on relative terms, that is much less variability.
If I get 2 hits, instead of average 5, on 6d5 (3 less than the average), I've obtained 40% of the average, thus the average would be 150% more than what I got.
If I get 4 hits, instead of average 1, on 6d1 (3 more than the average), I've obtained 400% of the average, thus I'm getting 300% more than the average.
So, despite the fact that getting 4 or more hits with 6d1 is exactly the same probability as getting 2 or fewer hits with 6d5, the variability relative to the average of the first case is much higher.
I'm sure everyone agrees that rolling 6 dice at 5 is less random than rolling 30 dice at 1, that is what we were talking about.But, yes, I would agree that, even on a d5 setting, we are talking about something still much closer to dice than low luck, rather than an intermediate solution. And, as I said, I believe that, on most games, rolling on d3 would be a very little reduction in the impact of luck, overall, and I believe even hard to be perceived at all, by most gamers.
On this account, it would be good if the "Standard Deviation" is added to the battlecalculator, telling the Standard Deviation for all the "Units Left" values (I guess it would be easy to add). That way we could, like, roll 18d1 and 6d3 (same average of 3 hits) for 1 combat round, and see what's the difference in standard deviation between the two, to have a good idea.
Again, I'm kind of an observer on this, as I personally think that regular dice are fine, or at least I like dice, as long as the map is sound.
However, just to add up on the possible proposals, you could have a property like "Low Luck for Defensive Side".
That way, the attacker would roll normal dice, while the defender would use Low Luck, which means that you can never be sure to win, but the variability should be significantly reduced.
Anyways, I don't think I would like this solution, as it feels lame, but I guess better than Low Luck, and can't hurt have the option (who knows if it might get popular).
An advantage of this solution would be that it seems to me the most understandable of all made so far, especially for players that already know how Low Luck works.Of course, you could have the opposite (attacker on LL and defender on dice), but I don't think that would make a better sense.
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