Re: PBM design and formulae - a summary

From: Hel, Queen of LogeSpawn

Date: Fri, 02 Jul 1993 16:43:13 +0000

gym@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Graham Matthews) writes:
[GYM:]
: > ... Obviously [knowing formulas] does [give a serious advantage].
: >does. I just said that I think it screws the game up ...
[RW:]
: >You haven't answered the point that people having played long enough,
: >will get some idea of the formulas, by getting killed off a few times
: >if in no other way.
:
: That is inevitable - its called experience.

Much of the satisfaction of playing a game for yours truly consists of looking
at a position without having needing to have ever played the game once, and
figuring out the odds-on play of the situation with a fair degree of assurance
that I can do it quite a bit better than most people, even one who had played
many times, can.  I know that when I first started in Galaxy I spent three
entire days thinking about it.  After that despite some slip-ups in sending
orders and in diploming, I did fairly well and often with a serious time
constraint.   For the most part I even enjoyed the tactical and economical
development of each game unwind in its unique way.

And I had no experience.  I don't want to have to play a game in which I
will lose to players who are no smarter but simply got wiped out more times
earlier.  Zwagonian, now leading in RW's Game 7, was a newbie when he started.
He played by the seat of his pants and did just fine.  That is the kind of
game that I relish and you presumably don't.

: even that is not entirely satisfactory. The best way to avoid having
: experience as a problem is to rely on the players to either :-
:
: a) play only with players of similar experience
: b) help newbie players out alot by sharing strategy etc
:
: I must be frank and say that the basic problem here seems to be
: one of winning. People who game to win are never going to do either
: a) or b) and more's the pity to them. People who game for the
: enjoyment or for the competition will do both a) and b) as it makes
: for a better game.

Give me a SERIOUS Break!!

Do you know what you are saying?  There are people who game to win, yet
enjoy the competition and the enjoyment.  My code of ethics is that you
should _ALWAYS_ strive to win in any situation by the best of your ability
at the given conditions.  That recently lead to a heart-rending quarrel
with a net.friend (and resulted in some measure of growing up :-) when
our ideas of striving for victory differed.  Yet I have always looked for
better opponents, brought back in worthy (IMNSHO) foes for what I thought
was good replacement positions, taught new players, shared my scripts with
people who I regard as sporting, and discussed the intricacies of strategy
and tactics with everyone who cares to talk including people whom I may
have been or am engaged in a war to the death at the time.  I am fairly
convinced that desJ and several others are such players.

: Graham Matthews:
: >>If people know the formulas they tend to :-
: >>a) write scripts/programs etc to find optimal settings for [them]
: rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace) writes:
: >Even in a game as simple as chess, you can't find optimal settings
: >within the age of the universe.
:
: Chess - simple!?!?!

Yes, simple compared to Galaxy.  Any questions about that??

[GYM:]
: >>b) spend hours maximising formulas, adjusting tiny details etc.
: >>My complaint with b) is that it turns the game into a "who has the
: >>most free time at present"

First of all, I see no reason why "who has most free time at present" is
in any way inferior to "who can play the most number of games" (and gain
experience to use in others!) and they end up being close anyway!  Secondly
it is not quite true that whoever is using more time tend to do better,
since yours truly played three galaxy games spending perhaps half an hour on
writing orders each turn during severe time pressure (i.e.  I was getting
about very little free time, incl. sleep time) and despite mistakes such
is inevitable in these circumstances, I did JUST FINE.  Again, David desJardins
and Sjoerd Schreuder seem to be both busy people who at times will have even
less time than I do.  They manage just fine.   Whoever is the better
strategiest does better in almost all intelligent strategy games....
:
[GYM:]
: >>tiny details is (in most games) very unrealistic.

Tell me how realistic a galactic wargame involving faster-than-light travel
is?  Or a game with half-human wizards and elven bards??  Realistic is
just what conforms to _YOUR_ fantasy view (as opposed to mine or someone
else's) of the setting of the game in question.

In _most_ battle situation there is a threshold of force ratio past which
the battle suddenly slants from going one-way to going the other (to put it
in another way: Even battles usually end up being one-sided.) and it is often
the swing point of the battle.  In "real life" situations poeple KNEW what
you need to get to that balanced point (after all, Karl XII of Sweden did
so well because he SAW those things in a flash) when they are actually
commanding the field.  As RW said, if this part is hidden, you can get killed
quite a few times before you realise that it is not ALL bad luck.  And I
don't want to do that-- I want a game I can drop in and enjoy even as a
replacement at a minutes notice, provide I have the rules.

And formulas are part of rules, no matter what anyone says.  Not giving
a formula is having a hidden rule, because rules by definition is what
drives the game and if a vital formula is unknown it amounts to having
a rule missing from the book.

[RW:]
: >Ah, you would forbid the players from issuing more than vague
: >generalities for orders?  Sounds fun.
[GYM:]
: No it sounds like realism! On practically any level of simulation
: nothing should be specified precisely - thats called realism! Even
: at say a squad level you cannot order your squad to do everything
: precisely (eg: 5 footsteps left, 2 forward ..). The trick for a
: designer is to get things precise but not too precise.

WAIT, WAIT!!  The problem with your little scenario is, if the order in
which one of my squad walk actually makes a difference, OF COURSE you
need to be able to control it, or at least have a good enough approximation
to its behaviour!  [Suppose I tell Sparky to run up this passage.  There will
be a 10% chance that he will slip on the ground....]  I can even stomach
hidden information (like Galaxy) in which you know how much of a chance
Sparky is likely to step on slippery floor but not exactly _whether_ this
particular stretch of floor is slippery.  But not if I had to play blind,
because I wold then be at a disadvantage to people who had run into that
particular scenario before.

: Please answer my point with some serious thought [...deletia]
: Graham Matthews:
: >>To my mind this is a game fault. If the strategy is "plausible
: >>looking" then it also should be plausible.

In Galaxy it looks very plausible to built 1-1-1-1-0's, and it is not
the worst design in the world.  Of course, you'd be much better off with
pure drones or shielded drones along with a machine gun.  So you lose.
Would I feel cheated if there is NOTHING whatever that can tell me
ahead of time that it is wrong to build 1-1-1-1-0 aside from asking
someone who had played before or getting wiped out a couple of times??
I know _I_ would.  As it is, if I can't figure out from the rules that
I should not build those small fighters except in very specific cases,
then I deserve to get wiped out.

:
: Again I have to ask for some thought behind your answers. I am
: ... If you had [thought about GYM's posts] you would surely have come
: up with my totally obvious repl yourself!y

Yeah RIGHT!  Anyone who did not agree with him is not thinking.  Just
what we need here in rec.games.pbm.
:
: I don't mean to be aggro but I am trying to conduct a sensible
: thoughtful discussion, and you write simplistic stuff like the
: above. Maybe I am missing something here ...

I have stayed more or less silent because David and Bruno and Russell
are presenting our side just fine, but this little post really have to
be one of the illogical I have seen on the net, and that is saying lots.

References

Re: PBM design and formulae - a summary
gym@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Graham Matthews)
Thu, 01 Jul 1993 11:40:27 +0000

Referenced By

Re: PBM design and formulae - a summary
gym@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Graham Matthews)
Thu, 01 Jul 1993 11:40:27 +0000