Slitherine

Though I'd post this idea, although I haven't given it any detailed thought.

Instead of using attrition points for working out the scores (in the 0-25 system), count the "army size" value and "loss" value of skirmshers as only half their normal value.

This would reduce the impact of filler BGs on scores, while not altering the dynamics of getting or avoiding an army rout (so skirmishers are still not expendable).

Might benefit from a bit of a tweak to allow higher scores than 0-20 if a pseudo-army-rout was achieved (i.e. more "loss" points than "army size points" if you lost a lot of non-skirmishers and few skirmishers).

e.g. if you have 6 BG battle troops and 8 BG skirmishers (14 BG total)

Army size = 6 x 1 + 8 x 0.5 = 10

If you lost 4 BG battle troops and 2 BG skimishers all broken (12 AP)

Loss = 4 x 2 + 2 x 1 = 10

Then you score as if losing 10 points off an army size of 10 instead of 12 AP off an army of 14 BG.

If anything the current scoring system is too complex. While there may be some merit in this suggestion I really don't think it is a good idea. People have enough trouble writing down the number of AP they have lost in a game and getting it right.

Would it not also mean it is possible to lose more than 100% of your force for scoring without your army breaking?

I personally favour the each AP lost to a maximum of 10 equals 1 penalty point. Then score 10 - penalty points lost + penalty points inflicted + 5 for breaking the other army.

This seems to be disliked a lot by the skirmisher proponents so probably does the job you are looking for as well as making things simpler.

hammy wrote:If anything the current scoring system is too complex. While there may be some merit in this suggestion I really don't think it is a good idea. People have enough trouble writing down the number of AP they have lost in a game and getting it right.

Would it not also mean it is possible to lose more than 100% of your force for scoring without your army breaking?

Obviously not, because what I have called "army size" is not 100% of your force, it is just a number used for scoring that reflects the quantisation of combat power of your force. You could call it "par value". Yes, you could score "over par".

If you lost 100% of your force, the "loss" value would be twice the "par" value. In an army rout you only lose 50% of your force anyway.

It is intended that you can score par or over without breaking the whole army - this is to give a fair value to games where you wipe out all the line of battle troops and all that remains is skirmishers dedicating all their efforts to self-preservation. No different in aim from what you suggest below (but not giving results that look odd if you have 8 or 20 BG).

I personally favour the each AP lost to a maximum of 10 equals 1 penalty point. Then score 10 - penalty points lost + penalty points inflicted + 5 for breaking the other army.

This seems to be disliked a lot by the skirmisher proponents so probably does the job you are looking for as well as making things simpler.

Unfortunately this doesn't work either if players can't write down their AP correctly.

lawrenceg wrote:

hammy wrote:If anything the current scoring system is too complex. While there may be some merit in this suggestion I really don't think it is a good idea. People have enough trouble writing down the number of AP they have lost in a game and getting it right.

Would it not also mean it is possible to lose more than 100% of your force for scoring without your army breaking?

Obviously not, because what I have called "army size" is not 100% of your force, it is just a number used for scoring that reflects the quantisation of combat power of your force. You could call it "par value". Yes, you could score "over par".

If you lost 100% of your force, the "loss" value would be twice the "par" value. In an army rout you only lose 50% of your force anyway.

OK, 100% of your breakpoint, you know what I meant.

It is intended that you can score par or over without breaking the whole army - this is to give a fair value to games where you wipe out all the line of battle troops and all that remains is skirmishers dedicating all their efforts to self-preservation. No different in aim from what you suggest below (but not giving results that look odd if you have 8 or 20 BG).

Well an 8 BG army isn't going to be skirmishers. Granted you could I suppose lose the whole army and not lose all your points which is an issue but...

I personally favour the each AP lost to a maximum of 10 equals 1 penalty point. Then score 10 - penalty points lost + penalty points inflicted + 5 for breaking the other army.

This seems to be disliked a lot by the skirmisher proponents so probably does the job you are looking for as well as making things simpler.

Unfortunately this doesn't work either if players can't write down their AP correctly.

The big problem is that players write down AP and may do so incorrectly or not but then they don;t always know what their score is going to be as a result. This means that as an event organiser you can end up with people turning up a round or more later explaining that the score for the round before last is wrong.

Making the scoring more complex will I am pretty sure just make things even more likey to go wrong.

In theory the current scoring system is fairly simple but the execution is an issue if you don't want odd results based on rounding errors or army sizes bases on a sweet spot on a table.

Skirmish armies that lose 90% of their breakpoint and cling on for a 'draw' can be annoying if you end up facing them beut even so you are likely to end up with a 16-4 or some other decent winning draw most of the time.

I think that most of the issues with skirmisher 'filler' can be resolved by simply changing the AP loss for BGs that flee off table to be 1 AP if the camp is still intact and 2 AP if the camp is lost.

I can see with the system you are proposing people engineering armies where all the fighting is done by skirmishers and the 'filler' is four or five BGs of unprotected poor mediun foot that just hide at the back because the loss of skirmishers matters less.

Count skirmisher BGs as 1/2 BG for army total, but count them as a full BG when lost. An army with 4 non- skirmish BGs and 12 skirmish BGs counts as 10 BGs. But a skirmish BG is still worth 2 AP if broken, one if evaded off table.
Forces you to avoid combat with skirmishers, and increases the effect of losing the main battle troops.

gozerius wrote:Count skirmisher BGs as 1/2 BG for army total, but count them as a full BG when lost. An army with 4 non- skirmish BGs and 12 skirmish BGs counts as 10 BGs. But a skirmish BG is still worth 2 AP if broken, one if evaded off table.
Forces you to avoid combat with skirmishers, and increases the effect of losing the main battle troops.

I still don't see that there is a problem that needs to be fixed.

What you are proposing could see an army with say 8 BGs of heavy infantry and 4 of skirmishers running away after the 4 BGs of skirmishers are broken and the camp falls.

gozerius wrote:Count skirmisher BGs as 1/2 BG for army total, but count them as a full BG when lost. An army with 4 non- skirmish BGs and 12 skirmish BGs counts as 10 BGs. But a skirmish BG is still worth 2 AP if broken, one if evaded off table.
Forces you to avoid combat with skirmishers, and increases the effect of losing the main battle troops.

That would hurt the wrong armies. There is a difference between an 8 points 4 bases BG of poor LF Javelinmen intended only as a filler and a 48 points 4 bases BG of superior Mongol LH. My Mongol armies already tend to max out at around 13 BGs (@ 800 points). If the LH were to count only half that would reduce their playability a lot.
Lawrence proposal is better balanced in that regard as it also reduces the impact of loosing the skirmishers.

I personally favour the each AP lost to a maximum of 10 equals 1 penalty point. Then score 10 - penalty points lost + penalty points inflicted + 5 for breaking the other army.

I like this better than the other solution, not least because it does not change the game rules and is very easy to calculate. The problem that I see with it is that there will frequently be a potential gap where, unless you can berak the opposing army, you have nothing to gain but will suffer if any of your own APs are lost, which could lead towards negative play. e.g. if the opposing army has 13 BGs and you have broken 5, you cannot score any more without breaking the army.

I think a sensible refinement would be to use the difference in BG losses suffered/inflicted (to a max of 10) which in most cases would give the same result but would eliminate this anomaly.

hammy wrote: I still don't see that there is a problem that needs to be fixed.

I am with you on this, Hammy.

Marc

babyshark wrote:

hammy wrote: I still don't see that there is a problem that needs to be fixed.

I am with you on this, Hammy.

Marc

Tend to agree, although this point that Hammy posted may be an issue:

If anything the current scoring system is too complex.

Although I've tended to find that if you use a scoresheet that doesn't have decimal places in it the number of errors falls quite a bit.

nikgaukroger wrote: If anything the current scoring system is too complex.

Although I've tended to find that if you use a scoresheet that doesn't have decimal places in it the number of errors falls quite a bit.[/quote]


And people say the school system in Germany is rubbish ...
At any rate, do you really usually do the scoring manually on your side of the Channel? Otherwise I can't see the point. The one simplification (for the players) that I could see is changing the report sheets to have 3 boxes.
1.) Number of BGs in your army.
2.) Number of your BGs that were destroyed or routed (and not rallied before the end of the game).
3.) Number of your BGs that evaded of the table or were fragmented at the end of the game.

That way the players do not need to calculate their AP loss themselves (though if they really can't do that, how can they tell if they or their enemy suffered an army rout?), avoiding that obstacle to correct reporting.

It's a good idea to try to simplify the system and/or the form, but it's worth remembering the following from Douglas Adams:

"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."

Ghaznavid wrote:At any rate, do you really usually do the scoring manually on your side of the Channel? Otherwise I can't see the point. The one simplification (for the players) that I could see is changing the report sheets to have 3 boxes.
1.) Number of BGs in your army.
2.) Number of your BGs that were destroyed or routed (and not rallied before the end of the game).
3.) Number of your BGs that evaded of the table or were fragmented at the end of the game.

That way the players do not need to calculate their AP loss themselves (though if they really can't do that, how can they tell if they or their enemy suffered an army rout?), avoiding that obstacle to correct reporting.

It is normal ath BHGS events for players to just fill in a sheet with the AP lost by each side. The problem then comes if the players have managed to fill in the sheet wrongly in some way they struggle to spot errors in the score from previous games. In effect the problem is transparrency rather than anything else.

I quite like Kevin's idea of a players score being 10+the difference in AP with a 5 point bonus for breaking your opponents army. It still wouldn't work well if one army had fewer than 10 BGs though. Imagine someone only taking 5 BGs to a tournament then they could be assured of 5 points a game even if they inflicted no losses on their opponent.

I quite like Kevin's idea of a players score being 10+the difference in AP with a 5 point bonus for breaking your opponents army. It still wouldn't work well if one army had fewer than 10 BGs though. Imagine someone only taking 5 BGs to a tournament then they could be assured of 5 points a game even if they inflicted no losses on their opponent.

I'm not sure how you come to this as I was suggesting the score be based on the difference in APs lost/inflicted (although I now see I didn't actually write that ) as a refinement to your suggestion.

kevinj wrote:

I quite like Kevin's idea of a players score being 10+the difference in AP with a 5 point bonus for breaking your opponents army. It still wouldn't work well if one army had fewer than 10 BGs though. Imagine someone only taking 5 BGs to a tournament then they could be assured of 5 points a game even if they inflicted no losses on their opponent.

I'm not sure how you come to this as I was suggesting the score be based on the difference in APs lost/inflicted (although I now see I didn't actually write that ) as a refinement to your suggestion.

What I think would be good would be for a really simple system where anyone can actually have a good idea of what they scored.

I read your suggestion as using the difference in AP lost vs inflicted with a cap of 10 as being quite interesting but it does fall apart slightly at the edges of the envelope.

The current system is mathematically fine but there seem to be people who struggle to know what the result of their game is.

Oh and just for the record. Anyone coming up with a system that fails to produce a result that fits seamless into the current 0-25 scheme will be tared & feathered.

hammy wrote:What I think would be good would be for a really simple system where anyone can actually have a good idea of what they scored.

I read your suggestion as using the difference in AP lost vs inflicted with a cap of 10 as being quite interesting but it does fall apart slightly at the edges of the envelope.

The current system is mathematically fine but there seem to be people who struggle to know what the result of their game is.

Getting rid of the decimal points would be a huge start. There is absolutely no non-anal-retentive reason for showing them in the score sheets apart from the vagaries of the BHGS scoring program.

As I have repeatedly suggested, the program could store the rounded versions and the floating point versions, and only use the latter to sort out tie-breaks.

Apart from tie break situations, the rounded versions can be used to determine and display the scores for each game, the total score after each round, and the final total score.

(The problem with the previous non-decimal version was that the floating point version was being used internally in the program and did not always agree with the non-decimal score sheets, which caused confusion and annoyance. However, if the floating point representation is only used for tiebreaks this problem goes away.).

Quite apart from anything else, having the floating point version on fieldofglory.com potentially brings tournament wargaming into disrepute by making it seem more obsessional than it really is.

rbodleyscott wrote:Getting rid of the decimal points would be a huge start. There is absolutely no non-anal-retentive reason for showing them in the score sheets apart from the vagaries of the BHGS scoring program.

As I have repeatedly suggested, the program could store the rounded versions and the floating point versions, and only use the latter to sort out tie-breaks.
Apart from tie break situations, the rounded versions can be used to determine and display the scores for each game, the total score after each round, and the final total score.

(The problem with the previous non-decimal version was that the floating point version was being used internally in the program and did not always agree with the non-decimal score sheets, which caused confusion and annoyance. However, if the floating point representation is only used for tiebreaks this problem goes away.).
Quite apart from anything else, having the floating point version on fieldofglory.com potentially brings tournament wargaming into disrepute by making it seem more obsessional than it really is.

The software used at Britcon didn't show the decimal point scores, that doesn't however solve the issue of players filling in score sheets wrongly and then not noticing they have done so because they don't understand the system

I agree that the table looks far more intimidating that it really is and if printed on every score sheet is a huge waste of paper. The problem with not including the table is that people then don't know what their score was.

Well, we are living in a world full of computers and laptops everywhere, so I cannot see the point in NOT using the decimal value.

Due to the fact that I have entered hundreds of tournaments worldwide I also started with using 'only' the rounded value.
The problem with this is, that, the more rounds you play, the worse the result can be.

As an easy example.
Having 2 players in a tournament of 4 rounds.
Player 1 got the following results
Round 1: 15.4
Round 2: 15.4
Round 3: 15.4
Round 4: 14
With using non-decimal values he will have 59 points at the end, with decimal values he ends up with 60.2

Player 2 got the following results
Round 1: 14.6
Round 2: 14.6
Round 3: 14.6
Round 4: 15
With using non-decimal values he will have 60 points at the end, with decimal valies he ends up with 58.8

The the ranking will be different, and in this example, the difference is really important.

When playing tournaments with more than 10 or 16 players, it is even better to use the decimal values to have a more granular ranking at the end (it looks not good if you have 5 players tied on the 15th position for example, but this is only my opinion.

And for all people not wanting to calculate all the different results, I can only point to the tournament management software created by a player from Germany, which is bringing you completely around each manual calculating at all.

Martin0112 wrote:Well, we are living in a world full of computers and laptops everywhere, so I cannot see the point in NOT using the decimal value.

Due to the fact that I have entered hundreds of tournaments worldwide I also started with using 'only' the rounded value.
The problem with this is, that, the more rounds you play, the worse the result can be.

As an easy example.
Having 2 players in a tournament of 4 rounds.
Player 1 got the following results
Round 1: 15.4
Round 2: 15.4
Round 3: 15.4
Round 4: 14
With using non-decimal values he will have 59 points at the end, with decimal values he ends up with 60.2

Player 2 got the following results
Round 1: 14.6
Round 2: 14.6
Round 3: 14.6
Round 4: 15
With using non-decimal values he will have 60 points at the end, with decimal valies he ends up with 58.8

The the ranking will be different, and in this example, the difference is really important.

In what world view?

I think there is a problem of philosophy here. When all is said and done, it is only a game of toy soldiers, and there are no 10,000 Euro prizes.

Moreover, If the decimal points are only to be used for tie breaks, then the rounded scores are the correct scores. This is fair to everyone even if there are rounding errors, because the same rounding errors have the same chance of affecting everyone. (Just like the dice luck in the games).

With luck being such an important part of the game results, these rounding errors are really not (statistically) significant.

In any case, from a rankings point of view, they will even out over a series of tournament results.