Re: PBM_ME Cloud Lord

From: Patrick F. McGehearty <patrick@rsn.hp.COM>

Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000

In article <34B7F7A5.1EC6@acsu.buffalo.edu>,
Mark G Jaede  <jaede@acsu.buffalo.edu> wrote:
>Scott Burglass wrote:
>>
>> Currently a 1650 ME_PBM game is taking place where the Cloud Lord/ Ji Indur
>> ventured into North Gondor's Capital and tried to kill their top army
>> commander on turn two. This attempt at assassination seems a trifle
>> aggressive to me, and most unlikely to succeed by GSI's design.
>>
>> What say you more experienced players on this issue.
>
>It's certainly an aggressive move, and carries a serious risk of injury
>or even death for Ji Indur. It's not, however, out of the bounds of
>reason. Ji Indur starts as a 40 agent with 30 stealth and a 20 point
>bonus to kidnaps and assassinations. That means he has an effective
>agent rank of 90 and a significant chance of success against a C60 army
>commander. He might destroy an important army and bag a bunch of command
>artifacts.
>
>Personally, I probably would not chance so good a character so early in
>so aggressive a move, but I tend to be a bit conservative with agents.
>--
>Mark G. Jaede: jaede@acsu.buffalo.edu

I disagree that Ji Indur starts as an effective agent rank of 90.
I believe that his effective agent rank is 75, which still should
give him reasonable (but not great) chances against a C60 army commander.

It is my belief that two points of stealth equals one point of agent rank.
Mark and I have discussed our disagreement on this point before.

Unfortunately, it would take a great deal of work to reliably know which
formula is correct.  Someone would have to collect around 100 attempts at
agent activities by agents with no stealth, and 100 attempts by agents with
high stealth (say an average of 20 points of stealth).  Also, the average
agent skill of the agents in the two categories would need to be the same.
If I'm right, the high stealth agents would be 10% more effective than the
no stealth agents.  If Mark's right, the high stealth agents would be 20%
more effective then the no stealth agents.  With a matched set of 100 tries,
there would still be a small chance of getting a false reading, but it would
probably be under 1%.  If one relys on just the handful of cases that a
typical player has access to, the chance of a false reading is very high.

I personally would prefer that GSI provided more information about basic
success formulas.  For example, I've speculated that for most orders, your
chance of success is increased 2% for each 1 point of skill increase.
Also, for non-automatic orders, there is a 5% chance for critical failure
and a 5% chance for critical success (based on the ICE ME game system
rules).  How would it harm game play to be told about this kind of info?
I understand that it might be tedious to provide a complete formula for
the chance of assassination success, since the target's top rank, the
popcenter's attitude toward the assassin, army command, possible guards, and
other factors all enter into the equation.  But some basic guidelines would
be nice.

Similarly, I would like a more complete combat choices/results matrix, and
terrain and weather modifications table.  Deriving any of that info from
game results is incredibly difficult without active cooperation from
your opposition.

- Patrick McGehearty
sometime teammate and current opponent of Mark
Akhorahil must die (one of these days) :-)
We almost got Ji last turn.

References

PBM_ME Cloud Lord
"Scott Burglass" <pheltapi@worldnet.att.net>
Sat, 10 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000
Re: PBM_ME Cloud Lord
Mark G Jaede <jaede@acsu.buffalo.edu>
Sat, 10 Jan 1998 00:00:00 +0000