Treeburst155

John, No big deal here. It's just that you were on the edge, and players were getting worried. It's best to be completely safe. Put it in those excellent AARs of yours and get the extra points. Treeburst155 out.

What's with the , SuperTed? Do I have to send you a setup to prove it to you? Treeburst155 out. :cool:

Um...the best? Um.....that would be me, I'm sure. Not many know it however, so keep it to yourself. Treeburst155 out.

Players can do a great deal of force manipulation by assigning maximum percentages to the various unit categories. Arty can be limited in this way by the players in "their" scenario. If a player goes with 100% in the arty category then there very well could be an arty duel. The important thing is that both players are held to the same maximum percentages. I think it's all very fair having each player "design" one scenario. Especially when the players don't know which side they will end up playing. I realize in regular QBs the amount of points allowed per category is different for each side, but, I don't think it's that impportant. Am I wrong? The German player may be able to spend as much on arty as the Allied player, but he still can't make the rounds come down any sooner. It would probably be impossible to get all eight players to agree on one set of parameters and rules. By having each player "design" a battle the way he wants, all players are equally dissatified with six of the seven battles. Fairness above all in this tourney, I think. Treeburst155 out.

That's right, John. This is one of those hush-hush tourneys like RoW I. We won't be able to enjoy your colorful DARs because you can't say ANYTHING. Unfortunately, this is the price of our high degree of FOW. Mum's the word. Treeburst155 out.

The highest score from each side will always have equal value (100). In an unbalanced scenario, 30 points may be the high score for a side. This score should be equal in value to the high score from the strong side. Normalizing to 100 allows this. Treeburst155 out.

Swamp, I see no reason why players could not make the choice between attack/defend or meeting engagement for "their" scenario ,other than we won't necessarily get 3 German attack, 3 Allied attack, and 1 meeting. Since sides will be uneven, attack/defend duties will probably be uneven anyway. A player could end up with three Allied defenses, and three German defenses anyway. I see no problem with allowing players to do this. Any objections? Treeburst155 out.

Well, you guys found an ambiguity. I should have made clear that the TYPE (combined arms, mechanized) percentages can be anything you want. They don't have to equal 100% combined. I should have said "maximum percentage of force points allowed". You could set all of these to 100%, meaning 100% of force points could be spent in any single category. (unlimited) Picture the columns in the force purchase screen. I'm just allowing you to set your own upper limit in every category as a percentage of total force points. If you want unlimited, then choose 100% for all categories. If you would rather set some limits for "your" scenario, you have that option. These limits will have to be set by us since these are not really QBs. The TYPE parameter means nothing because it is not in effect in the editor. You have the opportunity here to customize your own TYPE of forces for "your" scenario. EDIT: I've edited the Battle Parameters Form above to make things more clear. Treeburst155 out. [ June 11, 2002, 10:44 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

We have some that I know from past experience are slow and/or erratic with their turns. Since they have finished a tourney before I'm willing to give them some slack. You guys are doing right by posting "no contact" situations however. Please continue to do so every few days. This helps me stay on top of things. I won't let things get too out of hand before I start replacing people. Wreck, You can be #1 on the replacement list for this tourney if you want. Treeburst155 out.

Thanks for summary, Ari. Very interesting. OK, I'm on the verge of declaring Michael Dorosh the winner of the Sportsmanship Award. We'll give the others another day or so to respond. Treeburst155 out.

M. Dorosh, There are basically two types of the Nabla Scoring System developed by Jarmo Hurri (Nabla) of Finland. He came up with them so unbalanced scenarios could be used in competitions. The main Nabla system assigns a score for a player based on the median score achieved by all tourney participants who played that same side of a particular scenario. This score is arrived at through a rather complex formula created by Nabla and then packaged into a DOS program created by Nabla for me. The second Nabla system is for smaller competitions where there are not enough samples to determine an accurate median. In this system there is no complex formula. If you score the best of four players who played the same side of the same scenario, you get three points. The person who scored the worst from that side gets 0 points for that scenario. Second highest gets 2 points, third gets one point for that scenario. "Broken!" has recently proposed "normalizing the scores to 100" in the second system. This simply awards points in a more proportional manner based on relative performance. If four Allied scores for a scenario are 80,50,40, and 20 the original Integer Nabla would assign scores as follows: 80=3, 50=2, 40=1, 20=0 Note that the final points assigned are not proportional to the raw CM points. "Broken!'s" normalized scores would look like this: 80=100, 50=62.5, 40=50, 20=25 The highest score is considered perfect, and all other scores are adjusted to the same percentage of the high score they originally had. This method maintains the actual relationship of players' raw scores. Treeburst155 out. [ June 11, 2002, 04:40 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

The eighth battle will not be thrown out!! It will be used for the mirrored playoff between the top two. Treeburst155 out.

Here's the Battle Parameters Form I will be sending to you guys. Can you find any ambiguities or omissions? _______________________________________________ BATTLE PARAMETERS FORM Attack/defend or meeting? Defender Force Points (if attack/defend): Meeting Force Points (if meeting): Max Force Points that can be edited out (dumping 2" mortars, etc.): Map Dimensions, frontline: depth: Setup Zones (as portion of map depth), defender: attacker: Number and value of flags: Flag placement (distance from defender's map edge): Month: Time Of Day: Weather: Ground Conditions: Game Length: Map Type (Farm, Rural, etc.): Tree coverage: Hilliness: FORCE PURCHASE RULESET Players may choose from any one of the "Balanced Force" Rulesets so nicely presented at Rugged Defense. Go here: http://www.rugged-defense.nl/cm/Fionn/FionnKellyBFRules.htm Your choice: Special Purchase Rules (no armed Sdkfz, no Volksgrenadier SMGs, etc.): Be specific!! FORCE (Heer, Waffen SS, etc.) will be unrestricted, but can be addressed in your Special Purchase Rules (no mixing, Heer only, etc.). FORCE known to enemy? TYPE (Combined Arms, Mechanized, etc.) will be determined by you by filling in percentages of total force points below. These percentages are the MAXIMUM percentage of total force points that can be spent in a category. For "unrestricted" you would simply put 100% for all categories. Infantry % : Support % : Armor % : Artillery % : Fortifications % : Make sure your Special Rules and TYPE percentages are compatible with the Ruleset you choose. Be thoughtful in setting up "your" battle. Balance is important. [ June 13, 2002, 01:09 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

At this point, if we still have everyone onboard, I would like each player to come up with ALL the parameters for a single battle. This would include one of the widely known force purchase rulesets. I think the best way to do this is for me to send out a form for all to fill out (a .txt file players can simply edit with their choices). I will then construct a battle with their chosen parameters,etc.. I will use the random map generator in the editor, and doctor the maps up a bit. Map size and setup zones will be duplicates of what the QB generator does for the same parameters and force size. In effect, I will be manually creating QBs for better maps, and the ability to purchase forces in the editor. I will put together this "Battle Parameters Form" right now. I must think it through carefully. I will post the form here so you guys can point out any omissions or problems. Players should keep in mind that one of the battles will be discarded at random (picked from a hat). Also, players will have no control over which side they play. There will be three Allied attacks, three Allied defends, and one meeting engagement. Attacker/defender ratio 1.5:1 Flags will be QB default in number and value, but possibly re-situated. Treeburst155 out. [ June 11, 2002, 03:21 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

It is only fitting that your web page for The Invitational was seldom up to date. It fit with the whole personality of the tournament. I learned lots from the tourney though. CapDog is right. There was supposed to be a Sportsmanship award voted on by all the players. Nobody was allowed to vote for themselves. I forgot all about it. The award was $50 if I'm not mistaken. I wonder if we could round up the finishers to get that vote. I think M. Dorosh is the most deserving. He played, he won, those opponents dropped out nullifying his victories, and he did not gripe. He played some more, lost every time, and still he did not gripe. He spent time on the webpage, which he dutifully failed to promptly update, all in keeping with the spirit of the tourney. I vote M. Dorosh for the Sportsmanship Award. Treeburst155 out.

Congrats to M. Dorosh for hanging in there and taking the punishment. Treeburst155 out.

Ok, we've hit the limit on posts so this is your new home for the tourney. Ozzie Osbourne will be taking over for f1shlips in TOURNEY III, Section 4. His files have been sent to him. Welcome aboard Ozzie!! ....and YES, this is the REAL Ozzie Osbourne!! EDIT: I'm posting the tourney "Manual" here for easy reference since the other thread is slipping into history. HOW IT WORKS Once the 72 players have been assigned to one of the three tourneys (24 in each) as described in the first post to this thread, they will be further divided into four sections of six players. This division into sections will be done in a completely random manner by drawing names out of a hat. Your section is where the "regular season" action is. You will play one game against each of the people in your section. You will also play each scenario one time. This means you will play five games in the "regular season". The sides you play, and your attack/defend duties could very well come out lopsided. You may play the Germans four times, or you may find yourself defending four times. The only guarantee regarding your matches is that you will play each scenario once, and each member of your section once. The scenarios will be provided by the "Boots & Tracks" design team headed up by SuperTed. They will be historical/semi-historical scenarios never before seen by the community. The guys at B & T are working on our scenarios right now. Without them the tourney would not have happened. The scenarios may or may not be balanced. Don't count on a fair fight! The scoring system will determine balance. It is possible to "lose" the battle, and still win if you perform better than the median established for that side of the scenario. I will explain how this works later. You do not need to understand the nitty-gritty of the scoring system, although some may be interested. You need only be aware of the following: 1) Points for contested VL's will be split. This means final game scores will always total to 100. There is a very good reason for this I'll not get into now. If you think "gamey" you can probably figure it out. 2) Voluntary surrender is ALWAYS bad. Your opponent gets too many points for all the people he captures. You should always withdraw your people from a hopeless situation. This way you deprive your opponent of capture points. The game will auto-surrender you once your global morale drops to a certain point. Every unit that you successfully withdraw off the map will lower this global morale. Try to have all your people step off the map together once you are near the auto-surrender point. This prevents capture of units who would have made it off, but didn't due to the auto-surrender. If you score very poorly in relation to the median for a scenario you will suffer a penalty (your score will be made even worse). This is to discourage surrender, and careless play just to get the game over with. If your score is that low compared to the median we assume you surrendered or got purposely stupid. WITHDRAW YOUR TROOPS IF POSSIBLE when faced with a bad situation!! I'm telling you all this because it is quite possible you will find yourself in a very bad situation due to deliberate scenario imbalance. Do not give up!! Withdraw!! The median score for your side of that scenario may only be 20 points. IOW, if you score 32 points you did very well. You can "lose" and still win if you get your people to safety so they can fight again another day. 3) Your goal with each scenario is not so much to beat your opponent (could be impossible), but to get the highest score of the 36 people (three tourneys) who play that side of the particular scenario. "Winning" the game may be virtually impossible due to imbalance. You never know what hand you may be dealt. LAUNCHING THE TOURNEY Each player will receive the schedule for his section only. Where your name is on the LEFT you will play the Allied side for that scenario. Along with the schedule of games you will receive a contact list with all the email addresses of your five opponents. When you receive these the tourney is officially underway. After this, over the course of the next several days, you will receive an email for each of the five scenarios. For games where you are the Allies you will find two briefing files attached, a general briefing and your Allied briefing. This email will also contain your password for that scenario. Your German opponent will start the game. To open the first file from him you will need to use the password I provide you. This will put you in the Allied setup phase. If you are playing the German side you will also receive a secured saved game file in addition to the two briefings and password. By 'secured' I mean that the briefings have been stripped out, the game begun, and the passwords entered. This is the file you will use to start the PBEM game. It will be a .cmb file, not a .txt file. Start the game just as you would any other new PBEM game. The only difference is that you will have to enter the password I provide you. You will find yourself in the Axis setup phase. DEADLINES AND GAME RESULTS REPORTING All games should be completed within 90 days of the date I send out the last scenario files. This means you will need to keep at it. Don't be the one to hold up the show. Don't get lazy. Take your turns. We want to at least get into the playoff stage before CMBB comes out. The tourney cannot be scored until ALL games have been completed. The LOSER reports game results. If you end up being on the weak side of a few unbalanced scenarios you will find yourself having to report most of your games. This is, as they say, tough luck. Game Report email needs to have the subject, "Game Report". The body of the email must contain the following information: Tourney Number (1-3), Scenario Title, Your username on this forum, the side you played, your score, your opponent's username and his score. The body of the email should then look like this if you are Fred: Tourney 1, The Ambush, Fred (Axis) 37, Joe 43 Reporting games in this manner will save me a great deal of time. With 72 people I NEED to have games reported this way. Do not send me final game files. Keep these in a safe place in case of disputes. FOG OF WAR No discussion of scenarios is allowed on the forum until ALL players in all three tourneys have completed a scenario. I will let you know when it is alright to talk about a scenario. It won't happen until near the end of the tourney. No game results are to be revealed on the forum. You won't know who beat who until all is revealed at the end. Think before you post, and remember, no game scores, no blow by blow descriptions of the last movie, no general discussion about the scenarios, etc.. THE NABLA SCORING SYSTEM Your game scores will be recorded on an input file for the Nabla Scoring Program, created by Jarmo Hurri (Nabla). The Nabla program will crunch the scores and spit out your Nabla Score, also called your "Tourney Score", for each scenario. Below is what the program does: 1) Checks for game scores that total less than 100. Adjusts to 100 if necessary (60-30 becomes 65-35) 2) Determines the median score for both sides of every scenario based on all 36 instances of that scenario. 3) Determines the distance, plus or minus, of your score from the median for each scenario. 4) Calculates a Nabla Score based on this distance from the median using a rather complex formula. 5) Averages all five of your Nabla Scores to give your final Tourney Score. By establishing a median for each side of a scenario we determine the balance of the scenario. Your score is then compared to this median. If you score 30 points and the median is only 20 for that side, then you have done very well inspite of your "loss". This is why you don't want to surrender. You never know what the median of a scenario might be. You won't know this until the end. Establishing scenario balance (the median) means we can measure relative performance within your section without the necessity of balanced scenarios. This is a major breakthrough for competitive CM IMO!! With this scoring system we can play virtually any scenario and not worry about unfairness due to the balance issue. AARs Bonus points will be added to your final Tourney Score if you submit AARs. Each full credit AAR will be worth 4% of the highest player's tourney score (before adding his AARs). If you write five full credit AARs you will receive additional tourney points equal to 20% of the highest player's tourney score. AARs will receive either full credit or half credit. You must write more than just a few short paragraphs for full credit. I will let you know if an AAR is too short soon after you send it to me. You don't have to write a book either. Just give us a fairly good description of how the game played out. You are not required to write AARs. You just get a few extra points if you do. This could put you ahead if you're in a tight race in your section. The primary purpose of the AARs is to provide the scenario designers with feedback on their work. If you've ever designed a scenario for the community, you know how rare it is to get this feedback. Writing AARs is one way to express your thanks to the designer. Even negative feedback is welcome as long as it's constructive and not mean spirited. Another thing AARs do is help people learn to improve their tactics. Every scenario is played twelve times in a tourney such as this. There are eleven other people who had to deal with the same tactical situations you did. It can be very instructive to learn how others handled things, especially if you did worse than most. (BTW, all the AARs will be sent to you upon request once you have completed your games.) Lastly, by writing an AAR (feedback) you are doing the community a small favor. This is because the designer can tweak the scenario based on feedback before releasing it to the community. Having a scenario played twelve times by twenty four different people is a great test of a scenario. I think it's safe to say that very few scenarios get that degree of testing before they are put out to the public. They may get played twelve times, but not by twenty four different people, and certainly not under blind conditions. Those of us who enjoy these tournaments need new scenarios (security). In return for these scenarios the designers get the feedback they like. IMPORTANT! Submitting AARs 1)AARs should never be sent in with game results. Send them in a separate email. 2)AARs can be .txt, .doc, or .pdf files. Do not write them in the body of an email. 3)AARs should not be more than 4 MB UNcompressed. Screenshots can cause you to go over this limit easily. I would recommend the .pdf format if you want to include several screenshots. 4)In the subject line of emails containing attached AARs, write your username and the scenario name. For example: Madmatt, The Ambush THE PLAYOFFS Everybody makes it to the playoffs! However, only the four section winners in each tourney are eligible for the prize. The four section winners will play a 3 scenario round robin. The second place finishers in each section will do the same, and so on. If you place last in your section, you will face the other three last place finishers in the playoffs. The playoffs will be scored exactly like the "regular season". Those of you who aren't eligible for the wine (not first in section) are still very important to the tourney. Your scores will determine the accurate median we need for the playoff scenarios. THE PRIZES The winner of the "First Place Playoff" in each tourney will win the prize. The winners of Tourney I and Tourney II will each receive six different bottles of WineCape's fine South African wines, postage paid to their doorstep. The winner of Tourney III will receive three almost new VCR movies. They are, "Stalingrad" (by the people who made "Das Boot"), "Cross Of Iron", and the somewhat obscure "A Midnight Clear". I purchased these a year ago from Amazon.com and watched them all twice. All three are very good war movies IMO, and the tapes are in mint condition. REPORTING MIAs In order to keep all games proceeding at an acceptable pace we need to identify any potential dropouts (MIAs) promptly so I can find out their intentions regarding the tourney, and replace them if necessary. Please email me if you have not heard from an opponent in 3 days unless that opponent has informed you beforehand of his inability to send turns for a specified period of time. This way I know what is going on. The tourney cannot be scored until every last game is completed. By informing me of possible problems (3 days and no turns) I can act promplty so matches don't get way behind. It's up to you guys to keep me informed. That should cover just about everything. Ask questions if you have them. I probably left something out, or explained something in an unclear manner. Treeburst155 out. [ June 19, 2002, 02:01 AM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

Ozzie Osbourne will be taking over for f1shlips in TOURNEY III, Section 4. His files have been sent to him. Welcome aboard Ozzie!! ....and YES, this is the REAL Ozzie Osbourne!! Treeburst155 out.

Congratulations, Ari!! WineCape will be in touch soon to discuss shipment of your prize, I'm sure. Here are the final results. There are two unfinished games, but all players are mathematically eliminated at this point. Ari Maenpaa.....514.... 8.......64.25 Jarmo.......... 509.... 9...... 56.56 Jshandorf...... 508.... 9...... 56.44 Texas Toast.... 470.... 9...... 52.22 Ben Galanti.... 458.... 9...... 50.89 CapDog......... 446.... 9...... 49.56 MickOZ......... 414.... 9...... 46.00 Fuerte......... 342.... 9...... 38.00 John Kettler....205.... 7...... 29.29 M. Dorosh.......115.... 8...... 14.38 Whew! I'm glad that one is over. Treeburst155 out. [ June 11, 2002, 12:27 AM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

Broken, I think your idea is an improvement over the Integer Nabla IF I understand it correctly. Given four Allied scores for one scenario: 69, 54, 38, 36 I understand the scores would be adjusted as follows: 69 becomes 100, 54 becomes 78.26 (because 54 is 78.26% of 69), 38 becomes 55.07, and 36 becomes 52.17 IOW, the high score becomes "the whole" and the other scores are raised to the same percentage of the whole they had with the original high score. I think this is a good little tweak to The Nabla System. I like it! Contested/unclaimed VL points will still be split based on a player's percentage of the total points scored. 60-30 would yield a score of of 66.67-33.33 for example. From here we would move on to the normalization to 100. I also like Fionn's idea of a mirrored playoff between the top two considering the unavoidable inequities of uneven comparison and attack/defend/sides distribution. Remember though, the scheduling program WILL optimize these things as much as is possible with priority going to an equal number of comparisons with all other players. Treeburst155 out.

Broken, I was just going back to look at your scoring proposition right now. I just rushed through it before. This stuff is interesting to me, which is why I like running tourneys. I'll have some feedback for your scoring variation soon. Treeburst155 out.

Assuming we go seven QBs there are still some balance problems. The attack/defend ratios and sides will not work out. This, IMO, does not matter as long as the Nabla System is used. Players will always be compared with players who were presented with an identical initial situation. If a guy ends up playing five games as Allies and he feels he's better with German forces there is nothing we can do about it. Any inequities left can only be dealt with through mirrored games, which nobody seems to want to do. I think that each player should be able to set the parameters for one scenario. One unlucky guy will see his scenario parameters thrown out, but there's nothing we can do about that. If all can agree on the 7 QB plan with Integer Nabla scoring (the only type we can use)we can move on to actual selection of scenario parameters and force purchase rulesets. Everyone simply needs to post their scenario parameters here. I would suggest actually stepping through the QB screens to do this. I'm ready to move on at this point. Let's have some scenario parameters. Be thorough. Don't omit any item where there is a choice. Treeburst155 out.

Fionn, I believe the scenario we played was a no-win for the Allies even in a Titan vs Titan situation. I will grant you that. Even a Titan attacker would not do much better than an average attacker in that one as long as there is a Titan defender. You have illustrated your point quite nicely by bringing up that scenario. I'm finally convinced that a contest among Titan's should include only scenarios that are as balanced as possible. However, and you knew there would be a "however", simply totalling raw scores is definitely inferior to any form of the Nabla system if we don't play mirrored games. This because ALL scenarios are unbalanced. Treeburst155 out.

I've come to the conclusion that "The Aftermath" was highly dependent on luck. Note the Allied scores below. They swing wildly from big wins to big losses. One section is missing as they could not be scored properly. My reasoning could be flawed here, but with scores spreading clear across the spectrum for one side I suspect a high luck factor. Allied Scores For The Aftermath Mr Johnson........76 Strider...........72 Cpl Carrot........70 Cogust............69 Wreck.............65 Thumpre...........64 Tero.............62 Jack Trap........61 Tuomas...........59 Kingfish.........58 ciks.............57 Juha A...........54 a1steaks.........53 Lopaka...........52 _____________________ PasiN............39 Fate.............38 Romeoman.........37 Ugbash...........35 J. Porta.........29 vskalex..........20 dragoon..........19

It seems Cogust disappears from time to time. He should be due to return soon since it's been a month now. Treeburst155 out.