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

From: rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace)

Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1993 23:13:47 +0000

srt@aero.org (Scott 'Dr. Pain' Turner) writes:

>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.

Ah, no.  In real life, the leader will be fairly sure what the outcome
will be, under a given set of circumstances (e.g. if he knows his own
troops well, knows what the opposition is like, and knows the conditions
he will be fighting under).  The uncertainty in real life generally
comes from things like not knowing the capability of one's enemy, or
what he is going to do next.  This is where it should come from in games
also.

>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?

He won't, unless he also has found out what the composition of the enemy
force is, and can guess what their strategy will be.  In which case he
deserves to be able to figure out what will happen.

>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.

Which doesn't work, because real life groups of soldiers, all of which
go under the name "swordsmen" (or "archers", or "artillerymen" etc.)
differ in many ways, which their leader learns about, but which are not
expressed in a game printout with the word "swordsmen" on it.  Making
exact formulas available is a game substitute for the tacit information
that would be available in real life.  It produces the same net result.
Making the formulas unavailable produces the result that even the most
well informed commander will have only vague guesses to base his
decisions on, and unless one has a lot of experience in the game (and
probably been wiped out a few times) critical decisions quite often
might as well be decided by the toss of a coin, because you have no
information to base them on.
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
rwallace@cs.tcd.ie

References

Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
rob@ccc.govt.nz (Rob McNeur)
Mon, 21 Jun 1993 12:00:33 +0000
Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace)
Wed, 23 Jun 1993 10:52:00 +0000
Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace)
Wed, 23 Jun 1993 22:47:07 +0000
PBM design: give away the formulas?
skrenta@rt.com (Rich Skrenta)
Sat, 19 Jun 1993 18:12:59 +0000
Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
ulim@coli.uni-sb.de (Ulrich Mayring)
Tue, 22 Jun 1993 10:41:26 +0000
Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
Tue, 22 Jun 1993 21:26:47 +0000
Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
srt@aero.org (Scott 'Dr. Pain' Turner)
Tue, 22 Jun 1993 22:50:14 +0000
Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
srt@aero.org (Scott 'Dr. Pain' Turner)
Wed, 23 Jun 1993 16:59:59 +0000
Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
srt@aero.org (Scott 'Dr. Pain' Turner)
Thu, 24 Jun 1993 20:04:50 +0000

Referenced By

Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
rob@ccc.govt.nz (Rob McNeur)
Mon, 21 Jun 1993 12:00:33 +0000
Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace)
Wed, 23 Jun 1993 10:52:00 +0000
Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace)
Wed, 23 Jun 1993 22:47:07 +0000
PBM design: give away the formulas?
skrenta@rt.com (Rich Skrenta)
Sat, 19 Jun 1993 18:12:59 +0000
Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
ulim@coli.uni-sb.de (Ulrich Mayring)
Tue, 22 Jun 1993 10:41:26 +0000
Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
Tue, 22 Jun 1993 21:26:47 +0000
Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
srt@aero.org (Scott 'Dr. Pain' Turner)
Tue, 22 Jun 1993 22:50:14 +0000
Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
srt@aero.org (Scott 'Dr. Pain' Turner)
Wed, 23 Jun 1993 16:59:59 +0000
Re: PBM design: give away the formulas? (*FORMULAE !)
srt@aero.org (Scott 'Dr. Pain' Turner)
Thu, 24 Jun 1993 20:04:50 +0000