m.a@stars wrote on Wed, 16 April 2014 14:13

skoormit wrote on Wed, 16 April 2014 20:21

Are you serious, or just trolling?

Your rule is a joke.

You are the joke. You provide nothing but an endless stream of useless blabber.

How about providing a constructive criticism of my rule?

Please explain.

Why is the rule unworkable?

What is the simplest analysis that it cannot withstand?

What are the unacceptable loopholes?

You vote for improving it and making it simpler, but you have not said anything about how we might do that.

I agree that extracting the messages reduces the time required to find the potential cases of mine damage dodge, while providing 100% confidence that all potential cases are being detected.

If the game host wishes to monitor the game in this way and analyze each case, then this is the best known solution.

But I prefer to avoid putting anything else on the host's plate. Adding this analysis to the host's responsibilities can only slow down the game. It does potentially provide a 100% mine-damage-dodge free game. But as a player, I'm more willing to play in a game that offers a clear, simple, enforceable rule that creates known, balanced costs for employing the mine damage dodge strategy, than a game that may require the host to put the game on hold in order to examine possible cases of mine damage dodge.

I don't think banning mine damage dodge is sufficient, since it can happen unintentionally. You have to specify what the penalty will be when it does happen. And in my opinion, that penalty has to apply regardless of the intent of the dodging player.

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.

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)

Hence my research into the affected messages, and calculating the damage by hand - makes searching through the history of the game much easier.

What about sticking to the Standard Cheat Disclaimer, then? Can anything be simpler than that?

XAPBob wrote on Thu, 17 April 2014 00:08

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)

And can you ever be sure that this amended version has all possible cases covered? What about SD MMLs? Or Freighter chaff? Cheap remoteminers? Or some1 sacrificing top-of-the-line BBs so their Nubs have better odds in battle?

If you are covering Nubs with BBs you probably have more than 5 of them, and this issue doesn't apply.

Well, here I'd like to ask others exactly how many times have they seen a game derailed by a more-or-less-unintentional happenstance of tanking. Can an entire race's fate be decided by a fleet of 5 or less ships? Has anyone witnessed a major battle decided by a few percent dmg points? Why are some people so worried about big mixed fleets? Has anyone ever seen a typical fleet significantly benefiting from this bug?

XAPBob wrote on Tue, 15 April 2014 12:24

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.

You can believe that more people would have noticed years ago if it often happened that a weak ship survived a minehit it never should have.

But in line with your listing of all the possible options, lets recap a bit:

1) Whenever an entire fleet dies by minehit, no one cares or notices about dmg allocations.

2) Whenever an entire fleet survives a minehit, dmg allocation has happened and is unavoidable, but if every ship could have survived the hit on its own, do we care that their dmgs are slightly off-kilter? Do they matter? In battle perhaps? How much? Plenty of games, players, and battles that this bug didn't seem to affect would tell us that "not a lot".

3) Whenever a cheap "decoy" manages to soak much more dmg than it should, dying in the process so other ships survive relatively unscathed, the bug has significantly altered the outcome. Even if it can't be shown that it was triggered on purpose, the "benefits" should be erased. Everybody agrees on that, I believe.

3a) The "decoy" turns out to be a large number of chaff, perhaps all the chaff in the fleet. The "benefits" can be weighed against the losses, and penalties sized accordingly.

4) Whenever a weak ship survives a minehit it should never have, the bug has totally altered the outcome. Even if it can't be shown that it was triggered on purpose, the "benefits" should be erased. Is should be easy to agree on that, too.

4a) A large number of chaff is sacrificed so a weak ship survives a minehit it should never have. See case 4)

Am I missing some other important cases? Do we need to add significant sub-cases?

Case 1) Is easy to police and decide. Case 2) Is easy to detect, harder to decide. Human judgement required. Case 3) is easy to check against historic data, yet it might require human judgement. Same for 3a). Case 4) can be checked against historic data, and the only judgement required would be the size of the penalty. Same for 4a).

Note that for all cases, I'm only looking at the "benefits", plus perhaps intentionality. I don't need to define any other rules to get rid of abuses. I don't need to ban tactics nor game "mechanics". I go straight to the value of what is achieved from triggering a bug, and decide the penalty directly from the size of the advantage gained. This way, even case 2) turns out to be not so hard to decide.

Finally, this is not the only process that can make good use of historic data, even of X files (which SAH backups IIRC), so we better get used to the idea of building and using our own "history" files.

XAPBob wrote on Tue, 15 April 2014 12:24

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!

Who knows with the Jeffs.

I'd rather believe they used one of their usual code shortcuts to speedup/simplify dmg allocation, perhaps assigning rounding errors to the 1st handy place, didn't find any significant problems and went ahead with more pressing things. The years it took for this bug to be noticed would seem to support their (hasty) decision.

XAPBob wrote on Mon, 14 April 2014 21:45

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.

So, zero ships killed cannot be noticed? That's just the kind of message that pokes the eye when reviewing a turn.

As for knowing the ID # of the lowly casualties, I realize that probably requires actually opening the Ship Designer after checking scan data from the previous turn. Not so hard?


Quote:

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

Need I point out that across more than a hundred games I have almost never seen an unintentional instance of "tanking" despite pretty much everyone's use of mixed fleets of all flavors and design IDs? That might be why I won't worry about mixed fleets but you can bet I'll very closely watch anyone suffering even just one "lucky" event of "tanking".


Quote:

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

Oh, there were objections back in the day, but consensus was quick that it wasn't cheap, it was almost precisely spelled out in the helpfile, and it weakened defensive minefields only so much.

no mixed fleets, no fleets with more than one ship (since that reduces per ship damage)

Oh, and no ISB - or IT can't use two specific gates

No more than one SD in any given game?

This whole discussion came about because I spotted a couple of things that "looked wrong" in the current standard disclaimer

There are two ways to make a typical destroyer survive a minehit:
- Stack 5 (or more) of them
- Add a single chaff in a lower slot number

The first of those is considered a legitimate tactic, exploiting the difference between mindamage(fleet) and mindamage(ship).

The second is not, exploiting the allocation of damage in a mixed fleet to "dodge" the damage at vastly reduced cost when compared with the first.

Both rely on knowledge of the damage algorithms, as does missile chaff - and a whole host of other tactics (maximising pop growth, IS colonist shipping, calculating packet sizes etc...) rely on knowledge of the, often empirically derived, algorithms behind the game.

The original question I had wasn't even about the dodge - it was about allocation.

Allocation is built into the Stars! engine, it can't be changed without banning mixed fleets (or minefields ).

What can be done is that ships designs can be coordinated (usually) so that they aren't making the minefield explode onto nothing.

For "allocation" we are merely controlling (to a limited extent) how that mindamage(fleet) is distributed over multiple designs - conditional on the mindamage(fleet) still being allocated somewhere.

I assert that doing so is not a cheat - the damage is taken - for a numerical case study see Lowtek.

Noone expects that the damage dodge be routinely allowed

but allocation is a game mechanic that cannot be reasonably avoided.

skoormit wrote on Wed, 16 April 2014 17:15

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.

neilhoward wrote on Mon, 13 June 2011 17:30

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 wrote on Mon, 13 June 2011 11:08

neilhoward eyeing the banhammer

Don't let it happen again

BlueTurbit wrote on Tue, 14 June 2011 07:51

Live by the rule, or die by the ruler!

Yes. It can affect an empire quite drastically..
I know of a case where the exploit wasn't noticed by the enemies, nor the host. It went on for 30-40 odd years.
The player using it didn't know it was a bug and didn't even realise it was happening.
He didn't even use it for every fleet, but it was used for sweeping or scouting iirc. Don't know the exact details.

Imagine the condition of the host here.
Is he supposed to dole out a tough punishment or a lenient one?

In my own gaming experience, I was playing a test IS One World Race that was meant to kill 1 neighbour and die fighting a 2nd neighbour..
Sadly, a mine dodge penalty cut out my intel gathering AND part of my fleet...
3-4 years later, my OWW station died against a jihad DD fleet and obviously died soon after.

ps (what the hell was the shortform for that.. OWRace/OWWonder?)

either deciding the punishment before hand (slightly tough, as it depends on how much it's been abused or taken advantage of).. or allow it all together... (which I don't really like as it removes the few advantages of minefields even more)...
I guess the host sending out an email explaining the bug (so that enemies can spot it too) + a standard punishment?

There seems to be no way to standardize the punishment, that means that we come back to the same point.. the effects can range from one extreme of crippling an empire or allowing it to get away with a substantial advantage.

How many fleets of <4 nubians do you fly into battle?

Additionally you are unlikely to have BBs which are so damaged they will avoid the maximum damage...

It's just not an issue.

The definition of dodge seems pretty clear - (ships overkilled) && (damage to remaining ships << damage they would have had without overkilled ships in fleet)

Enforcing that is like anything else, it needs player honesty and observation - no host has the time to go through every move by every player for every turn.

Punishments decided by the host, as best they can - probably after talking to all affected races.

Allocation is unavoidable and is not a cheat, it is an algorithm like any other in the game.

Allocation HAS to be allowed as it breaks no rules, as currently stated.
If so, then you can't use ANY combo ship fleets in ANY game, because allocation happens EVERYTIME a minefield hit happens.
The only differentiating factor is that no advantage is being ostensibly taken by others.

so point 2 has a subjective reaction.. Human judgement required?
Doesn't that lead to the same problem I mentioned in the earlier post?

I apply the same logic of gate heal merge here.
If the gate heal merge was allowed, I don't understand why this is any different.
As long as all the damage is soaked up, it's not a bug.

If you disagree (@m.a stars), you host a game of more than 8 players and keep checking.. and if it happens, I would love to see how you resolve the problem without affecting the balance in that area of the universe.

I tried, but I really can't quote and reply to every post that m.a made.

All I know is that if I'm ever playing in a game where he's playing as well, I'm going to discuss mine damage ***allocation*** very clearly with the host.
If it's allowed, great.. if not, I'll know that I can find a different game.

Quote:

I apply the same logic of gate heal merge here.
If the gate heal merge was allowed, I don't understand why this is any different.
As long as all the damage is soaked up, it's not a bug.

It is a bug, just not a very prevalent or damaging one. "gate heal merge" is hard to avoid as merging has many legit uses. It also gives a slight advantage to overgating defenders, something they could use more of. The "mine damage bug" gives a potentially enormous advantage to attackers, something they don't really need more of.

Quote:

All I know is that if I'm ever playing in a game where he's playing as well, I'm going to discuss mine damage ***allocation*** very clearly with the host.
If it's allowed, great.. if not, I'll know that I can find a different game.

Hopefully they'll be able to dispel your doubts and misconceptions. If not...

For small fleets, 5 ships or less - with multiple designs in fleet:
The first design in the fleet menu (sorted by F4 design order), takes damage as for a single design fleet, but the 500 (600) is modified first by the number of missing/gained engines * 100 (125). The rest of the ships in the fleet take 100 (125) per engine. Missing engines are compared to the number of engines the fleet would have, had all the designs had the same number of engines:

yea, that was the OWW IS race I was trying out in early 2011.
Btw were you the host of that game? I am pretty sure it was maniclurch and not you.
The posts make it look as if you were the host.

... still on ignore and have only read the quotes.


ccmaster

Your suggestion thus precludes me from using minicolo fuelers for my sweeper dds in any way.

Anyways, the point is there are valid uses of having fleet combos that will prima-facie look like they are using the dodge.

.. AND gate heal merge is used for HEALING as well, very specifically and blatantly. It's not just to minimize MM.
Same way, the allocation CAN be used.