Responsibilities of CM-level commander (regulars and grogs invited)

[Nabla]

Hmm, this idea about unbalanced battles may be a bit more complicated that I thought.

Basically once the commander knows that he has a very poor chance he should contact his superiors. Unless, of course, he has "no matter what" -type of orders, or fallback orders.

As an example, consider the case where axis is defending against allied attacker. Once axis commander notices that he will be unable to hold his positions he would contact his superiors for advice. This is of course impossible in CM. In a normal, balanced scenario contacting superiors is unnecessary since the defender knows he should have a chance. Well, actually this holds only at the beginning of the battle - once you screw up or Lady Luck screws you the situation may be such that the forces are out of balance. Then you can decide whether to retreat or try to hold your positions, thereby emulating the decisions of your superior and assuming that the result of this battle is the only thing that matters.

Now consider the case where the axis commander has been told to hold the positions "no matter what". This simulates the situation in which the battle is extremely important from a larger point of view. But how can you implement this idea in CM? I mean, if you run all your units out of the battle ground your during the first turn the end score will be higher than if they all die during turn 15. (At least I think so.) So it seems that in such a case one must add some new point systems (such as +1000 points if the first enemy unit can not exit your side in 30 minutes).

As an example of fallback orders, let us think of a situation where the axis defender has been told to hold the positions, but if it is impossible (force of attacker >= three times your force) then they should retreat. Ok, this might work. In such scenarios gathering information about the enemy as fast as possible would be crucial. The defender would prepare for enemy attack, but if he found out that the enemy is too powerful he would try to break off. If he would find this out too late all his forces might be destroyed. If he would guess that the forces are too large and run off, he might be right or wrong. If he's right his forces will be saved. If he is wrong he could have held his positions and scored more points.

There is a danger here from the point of view of creating and scoring such unbalanced scenarios. I think that in the real world when someone attacks, on the average the defender will be outnumbered. Therefore, if unbalanced scenarios would be drawn from a historically correct distribution, you might have something like "the attacker crushes the enemy 9 times out of 10". Number 9 is just a guess here. So if the defender decided to run at the first round he would be correct 9 times out of 10. Whether such coward behaviour would be beneficial depends on the number of points you receive for each alternative.

I think I'm a bit confused. I'll have to think about this further. Does this stuff make any sense? Opinions about what I've said above would be greatly appreciated.

[Rifle1860]

Dear Nabla

Sorry, I have been hiding for a bit. Still want some input on this?

[Nabla]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rifle1860:

Dear Nabla

Sorry, I have been hiding for a bit. Still want some input on this?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Sure. All kind of input is appreciated. Right now I'm leaned towards fallback orders. I also intend to randomize the occurrence of events which trigger the fallback conditions.

[Wreck]

Nabla, I see the problem you are talking about, but there are two ways of dealing with it.

If you use the exit-scoring feature, then a "coward" defense of just running away is a lot worse idea. It *might* still pay off, but it is less likely than in a game fought for VLs.

I think the main solution is what you bring up at the end of your last post. Whether or not the "alway flee instantly" defense is better depends on how likely it is the defense can hold onto anything. If you set it up so that most defenses are drastically inferior, then you may well promote "always flee instantly". The answer, then, is to set it up so that enough defenses are not dramatically inferior, so that people playing "always flee instantly" get worse scores than those not. Simple, as far as that goes.

As to what might work, consider something like this. For each battle, you roll a die for both attacker and defender. Attacker gets 600 + d6 * 150 points of stuff. Defender get 400 + d6 * 100 points of stuff.

The average attack here has 1.5x the points of the defense. But some of the attacks are drastically overbalanced -- up to 3 to 1 odds are possible (1500:500). And some of the attacks are weaker than the defenses! (It might be as bad as 750 points attacking vs 1000 defending.) Perhaps we might estimate that at odds of 2:1 or worse, the defender will be better off with "run away instantly". Even so, in this example less than 1/4 of the fights would be 2:1 or worse. Many or more or less "normal" balanced CM fights. And many others are imbalanced fights, but not dramatically so.

[Wreck]

Nabla, I see the problem you are talking about, but there are two ways of dealing with it.

If you use the exit-scoring feature, then a "coward" defense of just running away is a lot worse idea. It *might* still pay off, but it is less likely than in a game fought for VLs.

I think the main solution is what you bring up at the end of your last post. Whether or not the "alway flee instantly" defense is better depends on how likely it is the defense can hold onto anything. If you set it up so that most defenses are drastically inferior, then you may well promote "always flee instantly". The answer, then, is to set it up so that enough defenses are not dramatically inferior, so that people playing "always flee instantly" get worse scores than those not. Simple, as far as that goes.

As to what might work, consider something like this. For each battle, you roll a die for both attacker and defender. Attacker gets 600 + d6 * 150 points of stuff. Defender get 400 + d6 * 100 points of stuff.

The average attack here has 1.5x the points of the defense. But some of the attacks are drastically overbalanced -- up to 3 to 1 odds are possible (1500:500). And some of the attacks are weaker than the defenses! (It might be as bad as 750 points attacking vs 1000 defending.) Perhaps we might estimate that at odds of 2:1 or worse, the defender will be better off with "run away instantly". Even so, in this example less than 1/4 of the fights would be 2:1 or worse. Many or more or less "normal" balanced CM fights. And many others are imbalanced fights, but not dramatically so.

[Wreck]

[ 10-23-2001: Message edited by: Wreck ]</p>