PBEM Offline (More) Options

[kemal81]

I think it's frustrating to all of us, that offline options given to us are very limited. I think we should have the options for each territory. Cause sometimes i would want some of my subs to submerge in one sea zone while other subs in another sea zone not to submerge, in the same turn. You can't have one offline order fits all. Other than that we should also have killing order. With the current offline options no matter what i choose, i can't have a dd killed before the sub. And i encounter this in everygame as Germany. I move my baltic fleet to sz7 and I know UK will attack that in T1. And when they attack I want to choose the transport and dd first, and then submerge my subs. This way I would most likely have 1 or 2 subs threatening any approaching allied fleets. But ai keeps picking the subs first, and so by G2 i have my baltic fleet completely gone. Frood.net's dice calculator has this option, choosing the order of casualties. Additional to subs, there are other units which we need to have different killing order. Sometimes i would want killing order to be inf-bomber-fighter, rather than strictly to be inf-fighter-bomber or bomber-inf-fighter which we have now. Or with the sea battles, we might want first dd then fighter then ac. You can't give this order with the current offline options we have. How about multinational defense. There are times i would want a russian soldier to die before the uk soldier. And this can become very important. Consider this scenario, there is 1 uk inf in russia allong with russian soldiers. Kazak is open and there are japanese tanks in sinkiang that can attack Moscow. Obviously u will move the uk inf to kazak so u can block the japanese tanks. But the german player attacks Moscow even though its a very weak attack and fails. But the ai picks as a casualty the uk inf instead of russian. And now u have Japanese tanks ready to take Moscow. It wouldnt matter if u had lots of russian units in caucasus. I know what i am asking requires lots of programming to do, but it is also necessary to have it to have fair games here. We should be able to click on a territory, and choose the killing order in which ever way we want, and this should apply to that territory only, not others.

[Zhukov4]

I agree this can create problems. Below is one of many scenarios where the PBE OOL (order of loss) might fail.

Let's say you have a Japanese fleet in SZ 62, composed of 1 destroyer and 1 loaded AC.

Let's say USA can attack this fleet with 1 fig 1 ss, and UK can follow up with 1 ss 1 bmb.

Now, if USA were to attack in a live game, then success would hinge on whether the sub hits in this first round, because if the USA fighter hits, surely Japan would choose a fighter as casualty and not an AC or sub. However, given the limited range of choices, there is no way to make a fighter my first casualty in offline mode (it is neither the cheapest nor the weakest unit). Therefore, if the USA fighter hits, either my dd or my ac will be chosen. This leaves the Jap fleet vulnerable to a British follow-up assault.

Right now the best way to avoid these naval OOL problems is play the first 2 rounds live, as there are plenty of naval battles in the first 2 rounds where OOL choices are dependent on many variables. Indeed if there is any battle where computer OOL simply won't be accurate, it's best to schedule a time where both players can be online to play it live.

How to fix? Develop an OOL interface (for naval battles, if not also land battles) that allows users to declare the order of losses in case (eg the priority of what gets killed) of attack.

[rockismyreligion]

I agree this can create problems. Below is one of many scenarios where the PBE OOL (order of loss) might fail.

Let's say you have a Japanese fleet in SZ 62, composed of 1 destroyer and 1 loaded AC.

Let's say USA can attack this fleet with 1 fig 1 ss, and UK can follow up with 1 ss 1 bmb.

Now, if USA were to attack in a live game, then success would hinge on whether the sub hits in this first round, because if the USA fighter hits, surely Japan would choose a fighter as casualty and not an AC or sub. However, given the limited range of choices, there is no way to make a fighter my first casualty in offline mode (it is neither the cheapest nor the weakest unit). Therefore, if the USA fighter hits, either my dd or my ac will be chosen. This leaves the Jap fleet vulnerable to a British follow-up assault.

Right now the best way to avoid these naval OOL problems is play the first 2 rounds live, as there are plenty of naval battles in the first 2 rounds where OOL choices are dependent on many variables. Indeed if there is any battle where computer OOL simply won't be accurate, it's best to schedule a time where both players can be online to play it live.

How to fix? Develop an OOL interface (for naval battles, if not also land battles) that allows users to declare the order of losses in case (eg the priority of what gets killed) of attack.

Yep.

[kemal81]

Here two examples I have encountered which I didn't understand why the computer picked in this order in PBEM games I played.
1st one is I attacked as USA with 2 fighters 1 bomber and 1 battleship to the Japanese battleship and empty carrier in AA 1942. I scored 2 hits and the computer picked the battleship to have both of the hits. The defenders scored no hit. And then in the second round of shooting i sank the carrier, too. The carrier is neither stronger nor more expensive than battleship so I didnt understand why the computer simply let the battleship sink instead of the carrier.
2nd one is even more interesting. This one happened in Revised. I attacked the German battleship and transport with 3 british fighters and a bomber. Again I scored two hits and the computer picked the battleship to sink and allowed the transport to continue the fight. Everyone would of course give one hit to the battleship and sink the transport. This way you will have bigger chance to kill a fighter. You will lose the battle but at least it will cost your opponent more.
Is there any reason with current programming of the game that the computer will pick the casualties in this order or is this some kind of a bug? Most of the time the casualties are picked in order of weakest to strongest or cheapest to most expensive. But I think once in a while for some reason the computer doesn't follow the offline options.

[gingerbenjamin]

I had an issue in a PBE game recently where taking a tranny as a casualty last could effect the outcome of a finely balanced game. It took us a week to get online at the same time.

I'm would be concerned, however, that programming the interface with rule-sets for a series of options would be a complex task. Could we not have just one option "take fleet casualties manually" which (if there are actual options to chose from, and this is not just a single tranny alone) flips the turn to the defending player and gets them to logon.

Seems like a simple solution that would cater for the once in every 10 or so games where this really matters.

On the other comments in the post, I have not seen these strange order pickings as your describe below (though it can be a bit random when units have same defense value). The siutations where the picking order really fails in land battles are quite rare, so we might have to live with limitations?

[kemal81]

Usually land battles are easy except if you have a bomber. I mean if your opponent has a bad roll, you might spare the bomber, if they have a good roll then you pick the bomber first. And I don't think this can be fixed unless there is something like pick the bomber as the 15th casualty. Probably lots of programming. But when it is multinational and you have situation like above I have described, I would rather even pick a russian tank before a british infantry to block the japanese tanks. And this can be matter of winning or losing a game which is right now all is up to AI. How does the AI pick the casualties btw if they are multinational? Anybody knows? Is it random or is there a specific order?
Sea battles are definitely problem. Many times I pick subs as casualties before the transports especially in the Pacific theater, so that I can keep going and capturing islands. But when AI kills the transports and leaves the subs I have to go back again, build new transports, pick up my troops whichever island they were strangled at. Puts my progress back at least by 2 rounds.

[dgss1]

This Post needs to be addressed.
I agree and hope gto can make all, any or some of this happen!

I too have seen strange Naval default orders(battleship getting droped) and I believe it has happened to me as well when I am not there.
I am refering to 1942 though I havent seen it in Revised (naval).

Perhaps people should honor requests of being live in the big navy battles & mixed land battles.

Mixed fleets and Mixed land units, seeing the first toss and picking the right units can be Key to an outcome for both sides. Being able to take advantage is not right, I know I have seen it in both revised and 42(mixed land units) but like ginger said, it is not an every game thing- It does effect both sides though, mixed axis in sudan.

dg

[Zhukov4]

I like Ginger's idea of requiring the other player to log on to select naval casualties. It slows down the game somewhat, but pausing for OOL is normal for play-by-email formats.

Though an OOL program is preferable, by nature such a program would be imperfect, since in a battle with multiple rounds, OOL is contingent on dice rolls.

[RobEng]

I am afraid that a procedure to allow for in depth and adjustable casualties is fairly complex and we don't have the bandwidth to tackle it at this time. We will keep it in mind. We looked into the battleships situation described by kemal81 and were unable to recreate the bug. We will continue to keep an eye out for the cause of this glitch.

[whooper]

While I agree that most of the suggestions would be nice, I can definately see them as being very difficult to build.

Also, so that no one thinks that kemal was mistaken, I would like to mention that I have seen the exact same thing with the battleship bug. If memory serves me, I believe it even took a battleship over an aircraft carrier just like with kemal.

[kemal81]

I don't want sound like, have the AI do picks like human. That is very hard to program. Most of the time even I don't know what I will pick until I see the hits. But if we can get something like the dice calculator website http://frood.net/aacalc/ where it is possible to pick order of casualties, I think it will be really nice. It will be even better if it can be done territory by territory as in each territory the situation could be different. Also have it in multinational. So lets say as an example we can say defense for territory Russia should be as in the order of:
USSR inf, USSR art, UK inf, USSR tank, US bomber, UK bomber, UK fighter, USSR fighter.
It can be like where we type in the chat box.
"//Offline order: Territory name - (order of casualties something like above) //"
I know it is not as easy as I am saying it, but if any improvement that is done will solve most of the offline problems with pbem games. I agree with sometimes communicating with your opponent for a battle is a good idea, but that also sounds like giving them suggestions where to attack or at least reminding them. Many times I did have fleet standing by waiting to be destroyed and my opponent forgot about that. I don't want to be the one who reminds them. If it can be done I will satisfied with kill order option as I have given.
I appreciate GTO's concern on this matter. Thank you

[RobEng]

We will look at the combat calculator interface on changing the casualty orders. In general, our PBE games use the same code as our live game with some minor tweaks to enable the asynchronous play and I assume that the casualty orders are determined by the AI. A procedure to add on a variable OOL would be a major tweak.

[rockismyreligion]

Don't bite off more than you can chew, Rob. PBEM is just a taste of the quality of playing A&A live. If perfection was possible this situation would have been rectified from the get-go.

[kemal81]

BBbeforeAC.jpg (229.58 KiB) Viewed 4117 times

Here it is another example. The battleship is picked before the carrier. You can also see my opponent is offline.

[CaptainColeslaw]

Here it is another example. The battleship is picked before the carrier. You can also see my opponent is offline.

Like transports carrying a full load, the game sees the aircraft carrier and the fighters as a single unit when determining the cheapest unit. Battleship is worth 24 and the combination of AC & fighters is 34. Thus the battleship is killed off first.