Asok

The Sagger had a flight time of 15-25 seconds. This is plenty. (Modern missiles are generally faster.) Also, the idea of zig-zagging is not to make just one missile miss you. There are many shooters, shooting at more than one tank. (I am not a tanker, but the zig-zag drill makes sense to me)

I'm guilty of misreading myself, here. That last paragraph about precision and usefulness is basically the same thing you wrote, above. I only read the first part of your post, which is the part where you misread my post Why the obsession with picking the best solution? Why not settle for picking a dominant strategy. "Always attacking" is not a dominant strategy any more than placing the largest possible bet is not a dominant strategy in roulette, even though all of the biggest winners have used it.

You misread my post. First, I specifically wrote about "a range of 5..7", based on an input variable. Let weather be the variable. You know the weather pretty much, so you can use it to see if it's better to go with 5 (when it's raining) or 7 (when it's clear skies). Not a single number (5.7), but a range of numbers (5 to 7), based on an input variable. This is basically what JasonC means when he says "ensemble of conditions". Second, I specifically wrote that dumbing down the above formula (5 when it rains, 7 when it's clear and some other stuff in between) to a single number (always 6) will likely reduce your effectiveness on any given flight. But dumbing down the models or tabulating the answers does not mean that we didn't use OR to get to the answers in the first place. Getting rid of low-impact variables reduces the universal precision of models, but it's still often a good idea, since the cost of applying the model comes down, so we get a net benefit. For example, including the effect of the Moon's gravity in blue-water naval models has so little impact on the results that we can just leave it out and proceed. Would the results be more perfect if we included the moon's pull? Yes, they would. Would they be more useful? No, they would not. I have a feeling that a lot of your issues with JasonC have to do with misreading his posts as well as mine.

Rubbish. In many cases, the variables you can control are not the ones that drive the outcome. For example, the variations in W can of course be expressed in a formula such as f(W), which will give you optimal search radius values in the range of 5..7. W may not matter all that much, if big-ticket things like the fuel capacity on your scout plane or ignoring your aft sector since you're faster than the enemy are anyway given. In reality, many big drivers are often effectively out of your control. Does reducing the nuanced f(W) -> 5..7 formula to a plain "use 6" definite number reduce your effectiveness on a given flight? Often it does. Is 6 still a definite answer produced by OR? Sure, just as the formula thing was. [ April 23, 2008, 11:38 AM: Message edited by: Asok ]

I don't buy it. Just as JasonC wrote, the answers you get tend not to fly all over the place based on every detail variable. For example, i consider it very likely that a given search radius works better both when the target distribution is uniformly thin and when the distribution is skewed and when when the distribution is lumped. The whole point of dominant strategies is that they work better than the others most of the time. Pretending that such strategies do not exist is exactly the perfection strawman. If you want a single radius number, you almost always can get it ("when in doubt, go for 6". If you accept ranges (like "5-7 is a good range"), you get those. If the answer is funny, it can often be expressed in vulgar form, such as "6 and 8 seem to be sweet spots".

Good criticism. However, I do not need to make my opponent's point in a debate There are cases where the attacker is acting in bad faith (easy to call, given known motives) or where he makes an "evil" tradeoff (thousands of "collateral damage" enemy civvies against a few friendly KIA soldiers). Drawing the line in the latter case is admittedly extremely difficult. Exactly like you said, that's what all the "fluff" is about.

Yes, he would, if the deaths are a result of his coercing the people to stay put when they try to leave. Using human shields is not ok. The situation is actually pretty simple. The Hezbollah fire rockets from Lebanon into Israel. It is obviously morally ok for Israel to remove this threat. It's ok for Israel to use military force to do so. Wherever the Hezbollah fire their rockets from is a legitimate target for Israel. If it's a hilltop, it's a target. If it's a village, it's a target. If it's a kindergarten, it's a target. This is not hard. Both the customary laws of war and the actual signed treaties go with what I just wrote. Obviously, the above does not mean that any village or kindergarten is a target, and the treaties are clear on this as well. It is not ok to shoot at an undefended civilian target (e.g. Hague IV, article 25). If there are targets in a town, for example, it is generally a requirement for the attacker to give due notice to "the authorities" prior to shooting (e.g. Hague IV, article 26 and Hague IX, article 6). Why is this? Again, the answer is not hard to figure out. The authorities are supposed to evacuate the place to save the populace from the effects of upcoming attacks. If the authorities fail to do so, it's not the fault of the attacker. He has upheld his part of the deal. Now, suppose the inhabitants of a defended village do not leave it after being given notice. The village is hit with arty and non-combatants die. Who is to blame? The shooter, who chose to give notice? The authorities, who chose to disregard it? The answer is clear. The authorities are to blame. The treaties are there to minimize the suffering. The attacker did his part to minimize it. The defender did not. We haven't looked into the motives of the village authorities, yet. Let's first assume that they tried to evacuate the place, but failed. In this case, they were incompetent or unlucky. If the incompetence was not gross, we can chalk it up for bad luck. If it was gross, we can still hold them responsible. Let's then assume that it was so that non-combatants would die and they could call CNN and BBC and gain sympathy for their cause. Does this raise or lower their responsibility? Again, not a difficult question. They are more to blame for this motive. Let's then assume that they hate the attacker so much that they choose to resist him. In this case, the inhabitants are no longer non-combatants and are fair game for the attacker. No. The whole point of the Laws of War is that although war is very bad, it does not have to be as bad as possible. We want to minimize the suffering caused by war, even when it is too terrible to think about in the first place. This does not really merit a response, but do you think the police are evil? After all, the police use violence to make people do what they want.

This is bull****. The Geneva conventions (there are four conventions and three amendment protocols) are chiefly about the treatment of the wounded, the prisoners and non-combatants. There's nothing there about shooting personnel with a .50 cal. or anything. I realize that NCOs do not generally know anything about international treaties and have never read any of them - instead relying on word-of-mouth - but this particular piece of hokum is so far out there that I must speak out. StrykerPSG, which Geneva convention forbids using the .50 cal against personnel? If you think it was the Hague convention, instead, then please provide a specific reference.

5. Paris isn't a 1-1 attack. 1-1 attacks are made against Gibraltar and Leningrad. I remember one game conceded by the Axis after rolling two 5's in a single turn: one against Gib and one against Leningrad. Talk about a turning point...

Doesn't sound correct. There were around a thousand Finnish soldiers in the SS Wiking, Nordland regiment, '41-'43, IIRC. Any pictures of them should display German kit. Some of those Finnish SS-men had previously fought in the Winter War, which also (obviously)does not apply here. After their service with Wiking, they were scattered pretty evenly throughout the army. They were considered to be untrustworthy, and would not even have been allowed to fight together as a unit after their SS service, IIRC (have books, may check if required). The skull helmet is something that seems to pop up once in a while, invariably having something to do with bearded American re-enactors instead of serious historians... hth

Notice that the Advance order is not just zigzagging. You may be familiar with 'syöksyen eteenpäin', which seems to be pretty close to what the CMBB Advance represents.

Playing "Battle of the Minors" off the US version causes CMBB to crash on turn resolution. The crash happens every time I try to "go" on the autosave. Environment: - Windows XP Home with some patches - 1GHz Athlon with 512 MB DD-ram. - Asus mobo, Asus Geforce 4 V8420 video card. Description of the crash: 1. The blue 'resolving' -bar goes to about 25%. 2. A beep sounds. Bar stops to go on. 3. Ctrl-Tab doesn't work. Ctrl-Alt-Del shows the following error message on the Windows desktop: "Unhandled exception: c0000005 At address: 004839be" [OK] 4. Pressing OK halts CMBB. I'll host the save file temporarily at: iki.fi/as/cm/Autosave.cme. If anyone can reproduce the crash or report a smoothly running test, I'll appreciate it. Asok

Remember that CM really plays in 'compressed' time. Arty delays are an example of another sort of communication which is not equal to the real thing. Having borg spotting might represent runners etc. The 'in command' seems to represent 'under the effect of inspiring leadership' more than 'in communication'. An extra variable of 'in communication' could maybe be used to get rid of borg spotting even with (roughly) the current engine.

Running the system at an underclocked 1 GHz solved the issue. regards, Asok

I installed everything I could find, all of which added up to nothing - the problem persisted: freeze after a few minutes. I then thought of the cooling issue. The machine really seems to run pretty hot, so I tried running the CPU at 1 GHz instead of 1.33 GHz. I was able to complete an hours worth of CM without a glitch. No noticeable performance hit, either. I'll try again with this configuration and post the results some time next week. I'm pretty sure I'll try some extra fans and try again later with 1.33. Thanks for the tip, Asok