KeldorKatarn wrote:Where I do agree is that maybe it would make it easier for the player if he didn't just see the average result but also the best case and worst case results
Yes, I agree and I almost feel as though the displayed casualty estimate is not as important as the combat estimate. It's nice to see the estimated casualty results, but it shouldn't be the most prominent stat that players can see. Honestly, I'm more concerned about my chance of WINNING or losing a battle. I think this is where Unity of Command does things right. They give the player the stats for both combat and casualties. This way the player (commander) can make a better assessment before deploying.
KeldorKatarn wrote:I personally, as a developer, find it very interesting every time I see such a discussion, how some players percieve random chance very differently from others. You wouldn't believe how many discussions I had with game designers about whether or not to "tweak" a dice roll, so it ends up being "more like I would expect" instead of simply being a mathematically correct dice. Really difficult topic
Absolutely agree. The psychological aspect of results-based wargaming - sounds like a good thesis!
KeldorKatarn wrote:
As for the commanders losing their jobs... as a former officer I find this comment a bit worrying. So you would take away my command because of one battle going wrong?
Well there was a time and places where failure was considered a form of treason and traitors are to be shoot. Luckily most have abandoned this "concept", though I hear some still adhere to this. Was is not just last year North Korea executed a high ranking official with a mortar round?
KeldorKatarn wrote:
As for the commanders losing their jobs... as a former officer I find this comment a bit worrying. So you would take away my command because of one battle going wrong?
Well there was a time and places where failure was considered a form of treason and traitors are to be shoot. Luckily most have abandoned this "concept", though I hear some still adhere to this. Was is not just last year North Korea executed a high ranking official with a mortar round?
I meant in a normal democratic military with normal modern rules of course. I know that in ancient or medieval times or in modern dictatorships that happens all the time. Hitler and Stalin (to stay within the time frame of the game) certainly did it often enough and Stalin even killed several of them. But that was not what I was referring to. I mean whether that was supposed to be justified and fair and it obviously isn't.
It can be very annoying when you have high initiative, roll lousy dice and your feeble opponent rolls a lot of 90+, but it does feel pretty good when your 88 takes 9 points off a tough allied fighter at a critical moment. The most frustrating results seem to come where the odds are close - the 2:3 results that turn into 6:1 or 7:0, but the reality is that most of these are because you're both hitting at about 40% and on similar initiative - one rolls +2 initiative, the other rolls 0, and one rolls 60+ while the other rolls 60- and what look like small differences can cause a very big change in prediction.
However, I have many more bad experiences (and never any good ones) when I use poor tactics or make a dumb mistake. There are some very sensible comments in this discussion (and others elsewehere) on planning your attacks to minimise the risk of freaky results. Like most things in PanzerCorps, the better you plan, the easier it gets.
So sometimes annoying but a good incentive to plan well. I would have voted ut teh buttons weren't working.
Dice Chess for me. I've had WAY too many instances of freaky results on normal-- to the point where I start wondering about bugs, etc. So to me it becomes distracting and frustrating. It feels like the prediction is just a random number that has no meaning, so why even have it? I fully understand there's a psychological component to this, but my personal experience is that "extreme" results happen a lot more than what I consider acceptable.
True story: One time I attacked a Dutch boy on a bike with a 10-strength Tiger (1,186: 1 odds), and I lost 5 strength points. The kid retreated a hex. That's just wrong.
RandomAttack wrote:True story: One time I attacked a Dutch boy on a bike with a 10-strength Tiger (1,186: 1 odds), and I lost 5 strength points. The kid retreated a hex. That's just wrong.
RandomAttack wrote:True story: One time I attacked a Dutch boy on a bike with a 10-strength Tiger (1,186: 1 odds), and I lost 5 strength points. The kid retreated a hex. That's just wrong.
I truly dislike "Normal" and find Battle Chess the best.
Why? Because PZ has already enough modifiers in the game, and too few units are engaged with one target at any given time. Let me explain:
If there are 5 units attacking 2 units (a "standard" approach, I'd say). That's roughly 50 units points attacking and 20 unit points defending.
With Battle Chess, it's possible to get a +-1 or 2 on the rolls, +-1 being the standard. Meaning I can loose or save up to 5 points of unit health. That's a roughly 10% variation in success.
With "Normal" the randomness factor goes up, doh dunno, 30%? Meaning I could loose up to 15 out of 50 unit strength?
This might be acceptable (and often is) in a desperate situation, but during a "normal course" of a battle, my units are expected to beat at least twice as much enemy units.
This would be fine, but for the way Panzer Corps works. There are no superheroes: a 2 strength unit cannot possibly beat a 10-str unit, no matter what. Thus, accumulating losses too early on the map diminishes your chance of success exponentially. That's not counting bad weather.
So, you see, in Panzer Corps its not the "player perception of extremely bad or favourable rolls" that makes me shy away from normal, it's the idea that no matter how well I think through the hundreds, perhaps even thousands of moves I have to make through the whole campaign, I can be stopped in my tracks by a handful (not more than 3 needed, really) of successive bad rolls.
I honestly couldn't care less about extremely lucky rolls. These don't really interest me at all. I wasn't prepared for them, I don't need them, I cannot capitalise on them and I don't feel good about them.
I like to play normal and chess as they offer different tactical ways of completing the game. I find normal more challenging and requires a higher level of planning and tactics. Also its nice to know the outcome of the fight and not have the acrimony of a far fetched random outcome. Normal is also open to a great deal of "reload" cheating. I find that if I receive, I believe, an unfair random hit then I reload and try again or if there is a vital battle to be won I reload hoping to get a better random hit in my favour.
I was playing th AK campaign with "normal" and an experienced entrenched pioneer unit in a city was attacked by two regular british infantry without any arty support. First attack i lose 4 strengh point, next one 3 strenght. Then, i close the game crying in frustration.
In previous campaigns using an infantry unit to attack entrenched pioneers without any kind of supression will surely get you a "rugged defence" and massive losses. But no, the AI doesn´t seem to care.
I think i´m going to restart the AK campaign using "Dice Chess" this time. Some random luck here and there is fine but i´m getting totally unfair and unpredictable results. Usually in favor of the AI, not me.
Really difficult topic
Luckily most have abandoned this "concept", though I hear some still adhere to this. Was is not just last year North Korea executed a high ranking official with a mortar round? 
