Idea: Change LL - Neutralized Subs Roll With Main Combat Roll
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@ff03k64 said in Idea: Change LL - Neutralized Subs Roll With Main Combat Roll:
If i know that the destroyer or expensive boat hit in this situation
That knowledge comes after you select casualties (all of them), so you'll never know whether destroyer or expensive boat hit before selecting casualties in any scenario (defenders always roll last).
Maybe the scenario is when selecting casualties of sub vs DD. Let's say you have one sub against another sub and DD. Maybe you want to keep the sub for its own first strike (perhaps as a counter-attack in the next round). But again here, the sub first strike initial roll comes before you gain any further information at all. In this scenario, all attacker dice are rolled and casualties selected before there is any return fire. Hence, you do not gain any knowledge in this scenario.
So we can rule out the only subs vs anything else scenario I think. In any such scenario, all of the attacking subs roll first, you have to choose all casualties before you gain any new information, whether there is a skipped first strike phase or not does not matter.
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@Trevan said in Idea: Change LL - Neutralized Subs Roll With Main Combat Roll:
If a map has the "WW2V2" property, then the subs must fire at a separate time from the rest of the units. The presence of a destroyer doesn't affect it.
But, if a map doesn't have "WW2V2" property, then the fact that subs fire at a separate time from the rest of the units even when a destroyer is around should be changed. I think @Panther even mentioned that that is most likely a bug.
I agree that this should be fixed. The updated rule idea is therefore more applicable to WW2V2.
Fundamentally the problem is how do we solve LL scenarios where units are rolling more dice than they "should". Any battle is supposed to have just one die roll, never more than one. In v3 because you have a defenders roll against non-air and defenders roll against air, you can have 3 units with a power under 6 rolling three dice and getting three hits (an effective power of 18!). If an attacking force has 3 units and a power of 12, then the defenders can wipe out this attacking force with high luck and less than half the strength.
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@LaFayette said in Idea: Change LL - Neutralized Subs Roll With Main Combat Roll:
@Trevan said in Idea: Change LL - Neutralized Subs Roll With Main Combat Roll:
If a map has the "WW2V2" property, then the subs must fire at a separate time from the rest of the units. The presence of a destroyer doesn't affect it.
But, if a map doesn't have "WW2V2" property, then the fact that subs fire at a separate time from the rest of the units even when a destroyer is around should be changed. I think @Panther even mentioned that that is most likely a bug.
I agree that this should be fixed. The updated rule idea is therefore more applicable to WW2V2.
Fundamentally the problem is how do we solve LL scenarios where units are rolling more dice than they "should". Any battle is supposed to have just one die roll, never more than one. In v3 because you have a defenders roll against non-air and defenders roll against air, you can have 3 units with a power under 6 rolling three dice and getting three hits (an effective power of 18!). If an attacking force has 3 units and a power of 12, then the defenders can wipe out this attacking force with high luck and less than half the strength.
So you are thinking of changing how LL is calculated to handle the case where there are groups of units that currently have to fire separately? Interesting. AA's firing groups are affected by this a lot and
canNotTarget,canNotBeTargetedBy, andsuicideOnHitare affected as well. -
@Trevan you raise a good point that changing the calculation in a general sense is difficult. It could also indicate more places where LL is effectively broken.
On the other side of the token, some of those properties are less significant or perhaps do not break LL as frequently or as badly. Suicide units do not stick around, it makes more sense for them to roll separately (to almost pretend that the suicide units is fighting a first battle, one-time battle).
The cannot target by is a case where we would see more 'rounds' of rolls and that is certainly places where you have more dice. The most notable example that is prevalent is boats & sub attacking boats & air.
To another extent, the overwhelming majority of games are WWII games where the extent of the 'cannot target' variations is only the sub vs air case. I don't know if there is a way to ever fix that for LL, probably not. In practice though, I think it's the case that the out-of-order first strike rolls with DD present on both sides (and no air) has actually zero practical effect on battle other than adding additional 'phases' to the combat which breaks up the rolling and grants one side or the other more rolls than they would otherwise get under LL rules.
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@Trevan said in Idea: Change LL - Neutralized Subs Roll With Main Combat Roll:
If a map has the "WW2V2" property, then the subs must fire at a separate time from the rest of the units. The presence of a destroyer doesn't affect it.
Just for completeness:
Also in v1 where Destroyers are not even part of the game. There is nothing that prevents an attacking submarine from executing its First Strike Shot. -
@LaFayette said in Idea: Change LL - Neutralized Subs Roll With Main Combat Roll:
@ff03k64 said in Idea: Change LL - Neutralized Subs Roll With Main Combat Roll:
If i know that the destroyer or expensive boat hit in this situation
... (defenders always roll last).
Oh, that would make a difference. My brain can't think my next though through right now. What if it was defenders with subs and the attacker is trying to decide on which casualties to take between destroyers and expensive ships?
I just can't even think of how that battle would go right now.
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@LaFayette if this change can be limited to LL only or as a universal map option (like 'combine first strike rolls in LL' or something) i would probably not object but reading this thread really makes me think this would be putting LL in front of Dice in terms of our priorities which i strongly object to.
LL is a thing that we invented to make battle outcomes more predictable. we should remember despite the value of this enhanced predictability to certain players it is dampening a key aspect of the game, war is messy, not predictable, and specifically to this point sub warfare should be more unpredictable than regular battle whether or not you are trying to make things more predictable than normal anyway, IMO.
Additionally, if this change were made universally it would definitely seem to break maps like TWW where the sub destroyer dynamic is totally different.
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Let's be careful this does not become a LL vs dice thing. For better or worse, most games are LL (90% of games are played on the lobby, and most of those are LL). So, LL is very significant.
Putting that to the side, the described change should not have any effective difference to dice games as well. Otherwise, any examples of how it would are being requested so we can look at them. I'd much rather this thread get away from "IDK, this feels like a big change" to more concrete examples that we should look at and decide if they can be addressed.
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I'm going to take a stab at the issue of subs firing separately when they don't need to.
The current algorithm has a "first strike", "first strike regular", and a "general" phase. The "first strike" phase is used when there is no destroyer. The "first strike regular" is used when there is a destroyer. The code needs to be updated so that "first strike regular" and "general" are merged. To do that, "general" needs to know if the subs are firing in the "first strike" phase or not.
My idea is to set up the "firing squardrons" at the beginning of the battle turn and assign the unittypes to the different groups depending on the presence of destroyers. Then the firing groups would just fire normally.
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@LaFayette well i did mention TWW but the point is not all maps use the same mechanics for sub warfare how would these changes effect such maps?
Also, i'm not saying this is a dice versus LL thing but the rules of the game and our engine is based on the principle of dice. Any change to the way those outcomes should be expected versus the established rules presents an issue in my mind at least.
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The intent is the outcome would not change at all for dice and would only change in LL to further reduce luck.
Could you @ubernaut present a specific example from TWW?
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@LaFayette destryoers do not negate subs powers in TWW
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@ubernaut said in Idea: Change LL - Neutralized Subs Roll With Main Combat Roll:
@LaFayette destryoers do not negate subs powers in TWW
I haven't followed too closely here, but G 40 House Rules mod uses Destroyers that are not "isDestroyer" as well.
Idk if that affects the proposed change, but it's a key part of how the mod works.
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Cool, in both cases subs would continue to roll on their own if the destroyers do not have the 'isDestroyer' property. A premise of this suggestion is that the subs have a neutralized first strike, if destroyers are not neutralizing the first strike, then there would be a first strike roll.
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@LaFayette as long as we are sure this will not affect dice outcomes i withdraw my objection.
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