From: amead@s.psych.uiuc.edu (Alan Mead)
Newsgroups: rec.games.pbm
Subject: Re: Galaxy help needed
Date: 8 Jan 93 21:58:42 GMT
Organization: UIUC Department of Psychology

curt@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Curt Welch) writes:

>Let me add some thoughts...

>In rec.games.pbm, M22367@mwvm.mitre.org writes:
>>2) In combat *more* ships is better that *bigger* ships (send a couple 
>>      big ones escorted by a lot of small ones)

>[special case comments deleted]

You're quite right.  But IN GENERAL, the bigger fleet will win.  Its 
important to see why:

Ships are selected completely at random to fire.  Thus if a single ship
encounters a large fleet, not only is that ship unlikely to fire at
all, but when it does, it is likely to hit a scout or something, not a
battleship.

Thus there are two effects of having a big fleet.  First, you get more 
shots and second your core ships are less likely to get hit when the
enemy does finally get in a shot.

This is important in understanding that you really don't want a lot of
your ships to be unarmed--that would negate the first effect.  If you
each have a couple large battleships, but you have (only) three times
the number of drones [1 0 0 0 0] as your opponent's(s') escort [1 1 1 1 0] 
then, in general, IT WILL MERELY TAKE HIM A LITTLE LONGER TO CHEW UP
YOUR DRONES at which time his other ships will mulch your battleships.

As a simple heuristic, think about combat this way:  How many times
must you ships fire in order to destory the enemy?   If the answer is
large, then your fleet is not likely (in general) to get in enough
shots.  One common exception is when the enemy ships are unlikely to
kill your ships.  But be careful if your ship isn't totally immune to
enemy fire: let's say that you have one cruiser, the enemy has 30
escorts.  Your cruiser automatically kills any escort it hits.  The
escrots have a 1% chance of killing your cruiser.  What is the chance
that your cruiser survives?  That's really really hard to say.  A
simulation is the best way to answer that question.  But consider that
over an infinite repitition, you would expect the escorts to fire 30
times to the cruisers once.   Then 29 times to the cruiser's once.
then 28 times to once.  etc.  If each escort has a 1% chance to kill,
it has a 99% chance not to.  The chance of NOT killing on n shots if
(.99)^n.  On the above three "rounds", the escorts take 30+29+28 shots
and have a 0.417 chance of NOT killing and a .582 chance of killing the
cruiser.  *AND* combat continues for 27! more shots.  

This is because the cruiser must be selected at random from the
remaining ships 30 times before any escort gets lucky.

Of course THERE ARE NOT rounds like the above in actual combat, I was 
speaking to the expected value of infinite repititions of the battle.

>2a) It's easier to defend than to attack.

I agree that driveless ships are always more powerful, but I VERY MUCH
disagree with the conclusions you draw from that fact.  

First of all, we agree, you always want the element of suprise on your
side.  Maybe I just play with a bunch of bumkins (although I certainly
don't think so), but I've seen thousands of IND destroyed by suprise
waves of drones.  

And its hard to be effectively prepared for an attack. Your opponent is
likely to concentrate his or her attack on a few worlds while you must
defend all your worlds.  Granted you keep more ships on the better
worlds (where s/he is likely to strike), but even if your opponent is
equally strong (and usually the attacker or attackers are stronger),
they have probably sent most of their fleet to pounce on a few worlds.

Furthermore, I always like to launch only sure attacks, wich requires a
degree of freedom and initialtive.  And IMHO, the attacker usually has
the initiative.  The intercept order doesn't save you because its fairly
easy for the attacker to divide up the fleets, you cannot count on catching
all his or her ships.

And if you do happen to loose a battle, you want it to be over the
*other* guy's world, not your own. 

>The winer of a battle
>will normally lose a lot less ships than the looser.
>[..] he will also lose that many.  But it almost never works that way.  
>It's more likely that he would lose 50 or 100 tons to your 500.

This is SO true, is perhaps the best demonstration that combat occurs
between randomly selected ships (ie, there are no "rounds" of combat),
and is another excellent reason for not using unshielded drones as
escort; you loose a larger percentage in each battle.

Also, because of this, if you are defending and start to lose and if
you are not counter attacking effectively, you are in trouble.  As your
IND shrinks, his stays the same and he loses fewer ships each time.
And you're not counter attacking because you have all or most of your
fleet at home, defending.  Meanwhile, your opponent is becoming
relatively more powerful (ie, as your IND drops and theirs stays the
same).

-alan mead
Newsgroups: rec.games.pbm