They're indistinguishable in terms of the M file - you just know how many ships were lost, without the m AND x files from previous years you can't tell which.

I don't think tanking is an issue - if we do then mixed fleets are over

chaff sweeping (which for some reason has drawn no objectors...

Why is this "suspicious" at all?

Why do you keep repeating the nonsensical claim that accompanying every single sweeper fleet (which still have to be at least DDs) with a BB is "cheap and unanswerable"?

You're still saying that mixed fleets should be banned, you're just claiming there should be leeway in enforcing it.

magic9mushroom wrote on Tue, 15 April 2014 06:03

Why is this "suspicious" at all?

Plain statistics. See above.

The nonsense is pretending that any ship that cannot stand a minehit on its own will automagically be allowed to do so just because there's a bigger ship (the "tank") sharing the hit.

Whoa! That's the exact opposite of what I've been saying. It's not me who's trying to shield the questionable tactics of "tanking" under the wider umbrella of mixed fleets!

And yes, enforcement leeway would be better than hard-and-fast rules designed to take advantage of the unwary. Using the brain is a prerequisite for playing Stars!" after all.

I can't believe you've never seen a case where a ship has received less damage from a minehit that it would have done alone - because that happens in EVERY mixed fleet.

we either accept that this is an intentional decision (and it looks like it is) with an unintended consequence of the damage vanishing (hence banning the dodge) or we assume the Jeffs put a significant amount of logic into the game for fun? Surely an equal spread of damage would have been far easier to calculate!

That's a huge mm and planning cost to get all the ships in the right slots, and leave gaos for upgrades etc...

The dodge is fairly easy to avoid - in the early years reserve slot 16 for chaff and minicolo designs.

No, you're missing the point. What is suspicious about it at all? We've agreed that the damage allocation algorithm is only noteworthy in the case of the mine damage dodge and is not actually helpful in other situations. So, um, what's the big deal? If it's not worth doing in the first place, why ban it?

This is equivalent to saying that a ship that can't take a minehit on its own shouldn't be allowed to do so because there are 4 other ships in the fleet.

"tanking" applies only to ships that can survive a minehit as a fleet but not as a single ship,

Tanking is unavoidable for many configurations of mixed fleets without using mine damage dodge. That's a fact, so unless you want to start banning whole swathes of fleet compositions, you can't ban it.

I have an idea for a simple way to effectively nerf mine damage dodge.

Therefore we either accept that this is an intentional decision (and it looks like it is) with an unintended consequence of the damage vanishing (hence banning the dodge) or we assume the Jeffs put a significant amount of logic into the game for fun? Surely an equal spread of damage would have been far easier to calculate!

1) For each design in the fleet
   assign minimum mine damage to each ship with that design
2) If the total amount of distributed damage is still less than the minimum fleet damage for this mine type
   Assign the first design in the fleet an additional amount of damage equal to the minimum damage * (5 minus the number of ships in the fleet)

skoormit wrote on Tue, 15 April 2014 20:46

I have an idea for a simple way to effectively nerf mine damage dodge.

Mine is simpler, and since you're already looking at costs vs benefits...

Yours requires an in-game subjective analysis of costs and benefits on a case by case basis.

skoormit wrote on Wed, 16 April 2014 19:30

Yours requires an in-game subjective analysis of costs and benefits on a case by case basis.

...while yours requires doing the same before the game even starts (and perhaps for all games from here to eternity?). Which won't work. And that's without considering the built-in loopholes.

Are you serious, or just trolling?

I have proposed a simple rule that does not require any analysis of costs and benefits.

skoormit wrote on Wed, 16 April 2014 20:21

Are you serious, or just trolling?

Your rule is a joke.

skoormit wrote on Wed, 16 April 2014 20:21

I have proposed a simple rule that does not require any analysis of costs and benefits.

It also is unworkable, cannot withstand the simplest analysis, and has unacceptable loopholes. My vote is for improving it. A lot. And make it simpler along the way.

The "chaff in highest slot" rule isn't bad, but it needs to be paired (at least for HE) with the three minicolo designs being there as well... (i.e. slots 13-16 are pre defined for an HE)

The only real solution is to extract the messages, and check the cases where the above listed messages are seen.

How's this for a 'rule':
Mine damage dodge (i.e. fielding a fleet which is partially destroyed, and the remaining ships take less damage* than they would have done if the destroyed ships hadn't been there) is banned.
* less damage is not just numerical (in many cases a handful of dp is the difference) but critical if those dp are the last few, or the difference between surviving one hit and two, or two and three.

Are you sure about that? Perhaps you meant "a ship that can take..."

I would not want to be the host stuck with making a judgement about a borderline case, especially if that judgement could swing the result of a game.

2436: Nmidian Space

Disaster! An unnamed commander apparently slept through the academy course which advised against using front-line cruisers as crash sweepers. Despite being accompanied by older frigates, the cruisers were destroyed and all hands lost. The admiralty announced minutes ago that the designs for both the Matchstick class cruiser and the Pebbles in the Skies class frigate have been decommissioned.

The admiralty suspended all fleet activity and movement this year for procedural review.

Colonists of the Nmidian worlds have declared they will commemorate the mineral alchemy of 2436 to the memory of this tragedy, and spend the year in peaceful reflection.

neilhoward eyeing the banhammer

Don't let it happen again

Live by the rule, or die by the ruler!

Here is a blast from the past, one of the first discussions about the subject started ~5 years ago Mine Damage Dodge - bug or feature? (split from: Late game minesweeper)

Other folks had discussed parts of the issue even earlier iirc, but this might bring some perspective.

No, I meant EXACTLY what I said. All "mine damage tanking" (or, for that matter, mine damage dodge) can do is reduce the damage from mines to a ship to the minimum, the same minimum that it would get were there 5+ ships in the fleet. You cannot save ships (like frigates/minibombers/SFXes) that cannot take a minehit as part of a fleet.

Thus, mine damage dodge is banned as an unintended exploit which violates the intended rules, while "tanking" is legitimate use of knowing the algorithm code.