Broken

Treeburst155, Do we have a schedule for this tourney? I am out of town next week through July 1, so if I don't respond to any deadlines before then, that is why.

________________________________________________ BATTLE PARAMETERS FORM ____________________________________________________________________ Attack/defend or meeting? Attack Number of flags: 7 Flag value(all flags must have the same value): 300 Flag spacing parallel to frontline: Flag 200m Flag 200m Flag 100m Flag* 100m Flag 200m Flag 200m Flag with middle flag* behind the center of the village. Flag distance from defender's map edge: 100m. Depth of defender's setup zone in meters: 600 meters Depth of attacker's setup zone in meters: 300 meters Defender's Force Points (attacker will get 1.5 times this): 3000 Defending side: Axis ____________________________________________________________________ Map Dimensions, frontline: 2000m depth: 1040m Month: August Time Of Day: Day Weather: Fair Ground Conditions: Dry Game Length: 31 Map Type (Farm, Rural, etc.): Village Tree coverage: Heavy Hilliness(flat, gentle, small, modest, large): Modest ____________________________________________________________________ Established Force Purchase Ruleset: Panther 76 with 155mm limit Allied FORCE (Brits, American Airborne, unlimited, etc.): Single Force, Mixing Prohibited German FORCE (Heer, Gebirgsjaeger, unlimited, etc.): Single Force, Mixing Prohibited FORCE known to enemy? No FORCE TYPE Allied Infantry % : 100 Support % : 100 Armor % : 100 Artillery % : 25 Fortifications % : 0 Axis Infantry % : 100 Support % : 100 Armor % : 100 Artillery % : 25 Fortifications % : 100 ___________________________________________________________________ FORCE PURCHASE EXCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS, SPECIAL RULES mixing of forces prohibited flak trucks prohibited fighter-bombers prohibited HMCs limited to 50% of Armor purchase points AT mines prohibited (Daisy Chains OK) FORCE TYPE fudge limit: none force editing limitations: The deleting of units from within purchased formations is unlimited. No editing of unit quality allowed. troop quality restrictions: No conscript or elite

Mike, I like the standard 3000 pt QB medium attack map, but keep the VLs within 200 meters of the defenders map edge. Typically, for a 3000 pt attack/defend, this generates 2200 pts of VLs. So, just generate a standard map, adjust the VL sizes until you have 2200 pts worth and then move any VLs greater than 200 meters from the defenders map edge to within 200 meters. Also, as I said before, I assumed the attacker in my submittal was Allied, for play-balance. Finally, I don't the the idea of no VLs for an attack/defend. The defender can simply dump all his arty in the attacker's setup zone (takes three turns to unload everything with 120mms and TRPs) and then retreat off the map. Any damage at all guarantees the defender a win.

Mike, In my Parameters form, I asked that the defender be Axis, not that I was defender. Are you saying we cannot select which side is defending? I selected my parameters so that the defender would have a reasonable chance of winning IF the defender was Axis. The parameters, as chosen, assume an Axis defender because of the Axis advantages in infantry, etc., plus the map specifications, give a reasonable balance to the game. Having an Axis attacker would unbalance it. I like Fionn's idea of non-QB map dimensions. It is easy to auto-generated maps of whatever dimensions using the editor. Normally in a QB one can specify troop Quality. Are you saying all quality levels should be allowed or just the typical Regular and Vet choices? I like have three levels to choose from, but I can live with whatever the consensus is.

Mike, I omitted who the attacker is: Allied. And I guess the correct term is "Modest" hills, although their quest for modesty should be satisfied with the heavy tree cover. Also, Quality is Regular, Vet, or Crack.

Just to throw out a target to shoot at, here are my game parameters: _______________________________________________ BATTLE PARAMETERS FORM Defender Force Points: 3000 Max Force Points that can be edited out (dumping 2" mortars, etc.): unlimited Map Size (small, medium, large): medium Month: August Time Of Day: day Weather: clear Ground Conditions: dry Game Length: 31 Map Type (Farm, Rural, etc.): Village Tree coverage: heavy Hilliness: moderate Force Purchase Ruleset: Panther 76 with 155mm limit. Special Purchase Rules: No airplanes, Flak trucks, or AT mines (Daisy-chain OK). Force: Single (Heer, Brit Airborne, etc). Mixing Prohibited. force unknown to enemy Purchase Limitations: Infantry % : 100 Support % : 100 Armor % : 100 Artillery % : 25 Fortifications % : 100

Treeburst, You understood me correctly. Thanks for looking into this.

Treeburst, What you said, man. QBs with Nabla scoring are fine by me. I like a percentile Nabla better, but integer is OK, too.

Fionn, If the four Scenarios were scored under Nabla and the three QB were scored by points, you are correct that the situation would be unfair. But what Wreck and I are saying is to use Nabla in all SEVEN games. I know that in an earlier part of this thread the dual scoring system was mentioned, and maybe that is the source of confusion. Also, Fionn, you are right that opponent mismatches will add some degree of imbalance to the tournament if you only play each player once, from one side of one of the seven Games. This is inherent in any system where we don't play every opponent from both sides of every Game. But, as you pointed out earlier, it would be nice to keep our social lives. The only practical way to be completely fair would be to have only one QB type where we play every other player from both sides. This would still be 14 games apiece and sounds pretty boring, to me anyway. As for non-linearities, well, hey, most things are non-linear. We can't solve this problem out to third order, or we will be here forever. So, I like the seven game format, even with it's inherent unfairness. We get to play each other once and each game is different. If I get the toughest players in games that favor their strengths, so what? Life isn't fair, but it can be fun. The winner gets bragging rights, but if he didn't win by much, he shouldn't brag too hard. I think the integer Nabla system has too much "quantization noise" as shown by the Fionn and Wreck examples above with the 90-79-79 vs 80-80-80 scores. Why not just scale to 100 the four scores playing one side in a game? This would reward the player who, on average, proportionately scored the highest. For example, if player A and B had the best Axis scores in four of the games, with scores of 80-80-30-30 for A, and 60-60-50-50 for B, these scores would be scaled to 100-100-60-60 for A and 75-75-100-100 for B. B wins even though their unscaled averages were the same. This is fair since B had proportionately higher scores than A. In the first two games, A outpointed B by 33%. In the last two games, B outpointed A by 66%. So, here's a proposal: Seven games in QB format with maps that have picked for their interesting terrain and maybe "spiced up" a bit. Each player plays every other player once and is sided with every player three times. This so nobody gets sided with, say, Swamp six games out of seven. All four scores on one side of a given game would be scaled to 100, (e.g., 50-40-30-20 would scale to 100-80-60-40). Highest total score over seven games wins. If people don't like this system, I can live with Integer Nabla as long as it is applied to all games. Sizes could range from say 1500 pts to 3000 pts (4500 for the attacker). A mix of ME, Allied attack and Axis attack. Each game would have the same purchase rules (e.g., P76) for all players, but they could differ from game to game. I like the proposal (TB155's?) that each player submit one set of playing conditions. Maybe the playing conditions include the map type, battle type (ME, etc), and purchase points as well. Purchase could be blind, pre-look, or a mix. I think pre-look is only necessary for really out-of-the-ordinary maps (see the RD Tourney Round 4 AAR thread, the map had a large body of water running through it).

I agree with Wreck and TB155, it doesn't matter if the scenarios are balanced or unbalanced, you are really competing with the other three players playing the same side of a particular scenario. To be fair, you should be sided with each player exactly three times. Is it possible to arrange seven scenarios of eight players so that each player is opposed by every other player once and sided with every other player three times? If so, does anyone know the trick for making the seven seating charts? For example, Scenario 1 1 - 2 3 - 4 5 - 6 7 - 8, Scenario 2 1 - 3 2 - 4 5 - 7 6 - 8, etc.

Likes: Lots of purchase points (helps reduce the luck factor, tests grand-tactical skills, not just tactical), Panther 76 (avoids uber-tanks and uber-arty without being overly restrictive), Late war (more equipment variety), Spring or summer (concealment is better), Hilly, forested maps (wide open maps are kinda boring). Dislikes: Fighter-bombers (too random), AT mines (can't see them - Daisy Chains are OK), Rules which require each gun to have transport (these rules make guns too expensive, taking them out of the game).

I agree to the proposals in Wrecks last two posts. I like "cherry picking" within battalions, companies, etc., but I am not obsessed about it if the other players are uncomfortable with this style of play. I prefer to see the map before hand, but buying blind is ok too. I like Wrecks suggestion of German attack, German defend, and ME as a format for the three "player selected" scenarios, I would strongly suggest identical conditions for all players within a particular scenario. For example, the German defend games would all have the same unit purchase rules (Panther 76 in September, Short 75, or whatever). I don't want a situation where I am "negotiated" out of using SMG infantry in my German defend game, and then find that it was allowed in the other 3 German defend games. I don't think the other players would want this either. Having the same purchase rules would also make it unnecessary to send "unit purchase contracts" to the organizer for each game.

Ghost, Just out of curiosity, under what names have you played on the RD ladder? Have you played anyone currently active?

Rob, I appreciate the endorsement, especially since you do such much to make RD "happen". I am sure you, Buckeye, Titan, Zahl, and others on RD I have not played, could give a good accounting of themselves in this tournament.

Fionn, Zahl, I agree that TH is somewhat over-represented. Part of the problem is that Ed, who could give some coherence to the RD position, is missing. There is no clearly dominant player at RD, as there is at TH (Swamp). If Ed re-appears and selects someone new, I will step aside, since Ghost is a much more "known" player than I am. I hope "Titans" becomes a regular event. Then the relative strengths of the different ladders will become more apparent, and the ladder representation can be adjusted accordingly.

email address is ADSL3060@verizon.net

I agree, Rob. Although I appreciate Zahl's endorsement, there are a number of good players on RD. However, As Zahl mentioned, ladder position is not the best indicator of CM skill, since a decent player can rise to a high ladder position simply by playing mainly "newbies" and low ranked opponents and avoiding tough players. I would suggest that RD ask players who are interested in representing RD to submit their availability to Ed. Matching your TO&E to the battlefield is a valid CM skill, or am I missing something? The more information the players have available at game-start, the more skills they can bring into play. For example, a more able player benefits from human-selected, as opposed to computer-selected, forces. I second that.

I think the format of only 5-6 players is too small. There are a fair number of excellent players out there, not just the big names. How about 3 players each from TH, RD, and BoB, plus the outstanding "free agents" such as Fionn and Wreck? I would suggest first round mirror match elimination followed by a round robin of mirror matches with the winner determined by overall point total, somewhat like Wreck's suggestion. I agree with Fionn that predominantly ME battles would be pretty boring. Mirror matches with well made human-generated maps, with a look at the map before purchase, would be balanced, allow the contestants to display their skills under a variety of circumstances, and remove the luck factor of not knowing what the battlefield looks like before purchase. For example, Robert Hall produced a great map for the RD tournament, round 4, as can be seen in his post on this board.