Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)

From: bruno@cerberus.csd.uwm.edu (Bruno Wolff III)

Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1993 20:51:49 +0000

From article <srt.740952290@aerospace.aero.org>, by srt@aero.org (Scott 'Dr. Pain' Turner):
] rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace) writes:
]>Alright then, how about 200 peasants and 10 swordsmen?  The peasants
]>will only win if the first 30 of them are prepared to die.  In real
]>life, the leader of the swordsmen will have to figure out whether
]>this will be the case, based on his intuitive knowledge of psychology
]>and the tacit knowledge of the area that he has picked up.
]>There is no equivalent of this when looking at a computer-generated
]>turn report, hence to have a basis for a decision you need to have
]>access to the rules.
]
] What you're saying is that in real life, the leader of the swordsman
] doesn't and can't know what the outcome of the battle will be, and the
] same goes in the game.  Seems reasonable to me.  There will always be
] situations (in real life and in a computer game) where your intuitions
] may be vague or wrong.
]
] However...
]
] If the game publishes the exact combat formula, then the leader of the
] swordsman *will* know exactly the outcome of the battle.  How is that
] a good thing?
]
] To put this whole argument another way, why call swordsmen
] "swordsmen"?  You do so to get the player to think of them as
] swordsmen and to draw on his intuitive knowledge about swordsmen.
]
] 						-- Scott T.
]
How do you figure knowing the formulae leads to you knowing what the outcome
of the battle will be? The formulae for the battle may include a randomizer.
You may not know the full details of the opposing forces or even the full
details of your own force.
I have not seen one convincing argument for not publishing the full rules
of the game including detailed formulae. I have seen a lot of people say
that would rather not use them to plan their own moves. That is fine with me,
but it doesn't hurt to publish them.

References

Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
srt@aero.org (Scott 'Dr. Pain' Turner)
Thu, 24 Jun 1993 20:04:50 +0000