Alternate Tech Engine Suggestion

[Desert Dave]

Selecting research areas, and how much to invest are all part of the "grand strategy." You choose to be risk-taking, or not.

The results, along our symmetrical continuum, can be fairly reliably predicted.

Therefore, it is not a gamey tactic, and is not disruptive to the outcome.

What it is -- disbelief! grief! Job in the throes! woe-is-poor-pitiful-me!!... when we LOSE,

BUT... right on! I AM that I am -- like the butterfly boxer Mohammed Ali -- the greatest !and wisest! (... luck? Pshaw, had NOTHING to do with it... )

[John DiFool]

Originally posted by Immer Etwas:

Selecting research areas, and how much to invest are all part of the "grand strategy." You choose to be risk-taking, or not.

The results, along our symmetrical continuum, can be fairly reliably predicted.

Therefore, it is not a gamey tactic, and is not disruptive to the outcome.

snip Muhammad Ali-like histrionics

Except that they are NOT all that predictable. It

IS quite possible for one side to get screwed-it's

called Small Sample Size. If you had two people

do thirty coin flips each, it is highly unlikely

that they will have the same number of heads-and

it is quite possible in a significant minority of

trials (of 30 flips each) that one person will have

a pretty large advantage. Having it come out

even IS the exception, not the rule. 30 flips is

about two years or so in SC, and by then whoever

got lucky will have a healthy edge over his opponent.

Most of the suggestions here recognize that the

current system gives TOO much over to luck-it's

basically a coin-flipping contest. I'm not

saying throw chance out the window with the

baby (yes an awful mixed metaphor ), but tone

it down a bit. Over the weekend I'm going to try

to run some trials-both with the stated current

system and one of the alternatives mentioned here.

Actually the biggest problem is that the tech

system has no memory. That is, it doesn't

remember that Germany just got Advanced Tanks

on the last two turns, so there's nothing to stop

them from getting it again this turn. They

didn't go from Panzer I's to Tigers in a year ya

know...

If something was done to let the random device know

when the last advance was in a given area, and

that there should be a healthy delay (of a somewhat

indeterminate length) before there is another

one, most of the problems will be solved. People

play a game expecting to get a reasonably fair

shake-heck I would hate being on the lucky

end of things, since it would likely mean a

boring and one sided game...

John DiFool

[USGrant]

Originally posted by John DiFool:

I both agree and disagree. I would prefer if it was not common to have Level 5 industry and Air Fleets by 1942 and "memory" is one approach to adjusting this. However the argument that two advances in a row is a problem rests on a belief that each real life "advance" equaled exactly a 10% increase in effectiveness. I would argue that it is quite reasonble to assume that the difference between a PZKW IV and a Panther equals 2 advances (or 20% effectiveness). Yet, IRL, the Panther was the very next medium tank deployed (and before grogspeak starts - I too am oversimplifying because I am not discussing all the permutations of the PzIV, but many of them were contemporaries to the Panther).

So I have no problem with two-in-a-row happening, in a bell curve sort of way. It just should not happen as often as it does now. Simply lowering the bell, by allowing fewer research points per area, should accomplish this without a rewrite of the research system.

[ September 06, 2002, 10:43 PM: Message edited by: USGrant ]

[USGrant]

Originally posted by Immer Etwas:

Selecting research areas, and how much to invest are all part of the "grand strategy." You choose to be risk-taking, or not.

The results, along our symmetrical continuum, can be fairly reliably predicted.

Therefore, it is not a gamey tactic, and is not disruptive to the outcome.

What it is -- disbelief! grief! Job in the throes! woe-is-poor-pitiful-me!!... when we LOSE,

BUT... right on! I AM that I am -- like the butterfly boxer Mohammed Ali -- the greatest !and wisest! (... luck? Pshaw, had NOTHING to do with it... )

I think you were replying to my comment about gamey "results", not tactics. By that I mean that Level 5 Air Fleets represent, to me, that there have been advances in things like aerodynamics, navigation, construction materials, radar, training, etc. Many of these same advances would show up in bombers. So the gamey "result" is having one kind of airplane at Level 5 and another at Level 0 - which is usually the case for me when I play the Germans.

My point was that encouraging players to spread reasearch points around dampens this effect.

[Desert Dave]

Fair points and a good sound rejoinder all around. :cool:

Yes, it is a small sample size, so some immoderate events will occur. I would actually favor limiting the investment to 3 per area, and maybe another simple, easy to code "governor," but am uncertain at the moment which might be best.

I kind of like those arguments already advanced that propose some sort of cost to upgrade existent field units, but that is probably beyond the pale for this version of SC? (My knowledge of computer software coding is nearly NIL.)

I have concluded that I was being a bit drastic after all -- too much caffeine this morning perhaps. Playing the devil's advocate in part, but also surely convinced that the game does need some random elements so to insure replayability.

[Russ Bensing]

Originally posted by Immer Etwas:

In the vast majority of games, each player will have roughly the same advances -- over the defined time span, as the other fellow. That's a statistical FACT, NOT the exception to the rule.

I don't think that's true. A good German player can have as many as seven or more tech investments by the time the US and USSR enter the game, and will generally have had those for up to a year prior to that entry. The British, the only ally in the game at that point, can rarely afford to invest more than three or four. Once Russia enters, it has to spend its MPP's building corps for the Germans to kill. At 180 MPP's a turn, investing for the US takes a while. The net result is that I haven't had a PBEM game yet where the Germans didn't have a substantial technological edge over the Allies for most of the entire game.

I certainly agree with you that you want to keep a random factor in this; otherwise, you wind up with a "it's Tuesday, so it must be time to invade Belgium" routine. On the other hand, the supposed benefits of the current system that you wax so eloquent about really don't exist, or are immaterial. So what if player can blame his defeat on the other side's tech advances? What good is that? This is supposed to be a game of skill, after all. And no, it doesn't force you into alternate strategies. If you're the Western allies and you find that the German has gotten to level 4 anti-aircraft, what do you do? Decide that you'll go for tanks? Well, good luck, because the chits he used to build up radar are now in anti-tank.

There's certainly a fun and random aspect to research that I wouldn't want to eliminate. On the other hand, the present system affects play balance too much, and in ways that go beyond the research system itself. There are some other problems with play balance, too, which I'll start a new topic on.

[Scorpion_sk]

Yes, exactly - lucking out and not lucking out will do much to determine the winner of the game.

I have experiences both as the "lucky" side and the "extremely unlucky" side.

And yes, the opponent lucking out and me not lucking out at all was the one major reason I found myself in a simply impossible, unwinnable situation, and we both agreed on it, and that was that game.

(As you might have guessed, it involved the Luftwaffe flying around in level 5 jets for well over a year before the USSR got there - and by then it was obviously much too late, the Luftwaffe having 2-3 exp per average per airfleet, and there were about two dozen of them)

[Randell Daigre]

Try this on for size. Most of the Allied (and Axis) countries were working, simultaneously, on most (if not all) of the research catagories that are available in the game throughout the entire war. To simulate this type of effort in a game would mean putting a maximum of *one* point in any given catagory. I seriously doubt that anyone will be flying around in level 5 jets in 1941-1942 at that level of research. In fact, I would be astounded to see a level 5 even at the end of the game in a catagory with only one research point devoted to it. I could, of course be completely wrong. I've never had the patience to leave anything on just one point. I usually throw 3-5 points in to a couple of areas and just leave everything else alone. To my way of thinking 5 research points in one area (*Half* the total research resources available to you at any given time!!) represents a cocentration on a single technology that is on a level with the Manhattan (sp?) Project. Who's to say that an operational jet fighter aircraft couldn't have been devloped by 1942 with such a level of concentration and priority. Both fighter aircraft and jet engines were already around before Hitler's troops fired their first shot. Niether was actually *invented* during the war, they were merely put together into a workable combination.

Just my two cents.

[Bruce70]

Most people seem to agree that luck can play too big a part in then game (to the extent that a few games are 'ruined') while some of people think that this hapens so rarely that it doesn't matter. But if you can stop any games from being ruined (however small the percentage) then surely tht is a good thing.

I like the one point change per turn idea. And other ideas have been good too.

Here's just one more idea. Someone mentioned the principle of diminishing returns (in another thread). So why not have the first point give you a 5% chance, the second increasing that by 4% the third giving another 3% and so on. [bTW it has been that long since I read the early posts in this thread that I may have forgotten that this has already been suggested]. This would have the effect of evening out the tech advances (since it is better to spread your research), but it still doesn't solve the problem of excessive luck (good or bad).

[Brian Rock]

I'd also support a dimishing returns model, both from a game balance point-ofview, and from a real life point-of-view.

(Pf course appeals to "real life" are a very gamey way to win an argument.)

[Yohan]

What about a subtle change. For every tech level your opponent is above you in a category you get a few bonus % points per turn. The idea being that you would gain some access to there advances through spies, captured weapons etc.

[John DiFool]

Even better, let the US and Britain share tech

advances. Yes I was reading a preview of H**rts

of Ir*n, and they intend to do this. It makes

pretty good sense and will allow the Allies to

at least have a chance to be competitive in the

tech race. Russia OTOH should NOT be able to

share (either way).

John Difool

[Scorpion_sk]

I have a solution that you can implement in a PBEM game....

Limit maximum tech level to the current year-1940

That way, tech advances should come in at more or less historical dates....with jets being available (rather, becoming the norm as in this game) in 1944 at the earliest.

There is still some amount of luck involved, (you might get that boost of the aircraft level several months before the opponent does) but you won´t be able to make a gap of 2-3 levels by luck alone. I take it we all agree that the problem is the greatest with the aircraft....

Air power being much too strong in this game and all (think CoS, ie. readiness and supply could be devastated, but not the whole damn army, tank units could even suffer some hits).

This way there´s much more strategy involved in the placement of the research points, and it becomes a real question of how many points you are willing to spend?

If you only really need the industrial tech and the aircraft, are you going to buy all the 10 research points to get those yearly advances ASAP, or.....?