Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 01:13:49 -0500 
From: Kevin Michael Bernatz <kb32+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: GB at LAR
	<1992Nov20.043528.20593@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>

Excerpts from netnews.rec.games.netrek: 20-Nov-92 Re: GB at LAR Chris
Siebenmann@hawkwin (1435)

>  Or adopt a better scoring
> system than the current one. Hopefully one that can crank out an answer
> to who the current best team is at any time, so that we can ditch this
> entire competetive seasonal nonsense in favour of viewing the INL as a
> cool way of organizing and keeping track of high-clue high-interest
> netrek games.

	Ahh, I hear my name being called :)
	It just so happens (honest... pure coincidence :> ) that I have been
looking at a point scheme for judging INL teams and matches.  Now I
realize this may not be what people want, but please listen and send me
any comments.  I won't guarentee that I'll use them, but I will listen
to you.  Here is the gist of what my system is.

Proposal - INL scoring
1) Preseason:
	Have all teams ranked by the INL commitee as well as individual players
on each team.  Players must rank all teams but their own, and should be
encouraged by their captains to rank teams as correctly as possible. 
Unknown teams can be tied, with all tied teams getting {[highest ranking
+ lowest ranking]/2}, eg.  if 5 teams are said to be tied for first
place, the points each would recieeve would be equivalent to one 3rd
place vote {[1st+5th]/2} = 6th/2 = 3rd.  The following is a proposed
ranking scheme for up to 25 teams.  Since it is all relative, it doesn't
matter if there are less than 25 teams in the league.
	Rating		Points(Council)	Points(Players)
	1		100			25
	2		96			24
	3		92			23
	4		88			22
	5		84			21
	etc.
	Where Points(Council) is the points a team would recieve if a council
member gave them that rating, and Points(Player) is the points a team
would recieve when a team-member gave them the corresponding rating.  I
realize everybody won't vote, but this should minimize favoritism,
especially if team-members can't rate their own team.
	If desired, the rating could start at (number of teams}*4 for council
member votes and (number of teams) for player votes.  This basically
gives council member votes (who should be more impartial hopefully) 4
times the weight of a players vote.  I would suggest that a 1 week or 10
day period be given for vote collecting after official team rosters are
suggested.  It is up to the captains of the team to insure that their
players know when the vote is being taken.

Seasonal Rating:
	Once the preseaon ratings are conducted, there will be no more "people"
interaction in the determination of ranking.  After a team has played a
game, the following will determine the points each team has (and hence
the rating given them).  These are the variables and the formula that I
propose

Team 1 is the winning team
Team 2 is the losing team
Points After Game, Team 1 = P1
Points After Game, Team 2 = P2
Points Prior to Game, Team 1 = Po1
Points Prior to Game, Team 2 = Po2
net planets for at end of game, Team 1 = p1
net planets for at end of game, Team 2 = p2
time game took = t (minutes, round down)

P1 = Po1 + Po2*((p1-10/10)*(120/t)*0.5
P2 = Po2 + (Po2/Po1)*(p2-10)*(120/t)*10

	I've done 1 case study so far, so these equations may need some
tinkering.  This is the result of the Case Study

Case Study 1
-20 INL Teams of 10 players each 
-20 Council Members
-Max Points a Team could recieve in preseaon = 6000
-Min Points a Team could recieve in preseaon = 280
-Average Points a Team could recieve in preseason  = 2940

	15 possible Cases were analysed.  These are presented by (#1/#2).  In
the secound column #1 equals Po1 and #2 equals Po2.  The next column
contains #1=p1, #2=p2 (planets for).  The time is defaulted at 120
minutes and the final column contains #1 = P1 and #2 = P2.  This is the
points after the game depending on how much each team won by.  Adjusting
t<>120 simply increases/decreases the value by the ratio of 120/t.  

Case#	Initial Points		Planets	Final Points
1	6000/280		20/0		6140/275.33
2	6000/280		15/5		6070/277.67
3	6000/280		12/8		6028/279.07
4	280/6000		12/8		880/5571.43
5	280/6000		15/5		1780/4928.57
6	280/6000		20/0		3280/3857.14
7	2940/2940		20/0		4410/2840
8	2940/2940		15/5		3675/2890
9	2940/2940		12/8		3234/2920
10	2940/280		20/0		3080/270.48
11	2940/280		15/5		3010/270.4
12	2940/280		12/8		2968/278.1
13	280/2940		8/12		574/2730
14	280/2940		15/5		1015/2415
15	280/2940		20/0		1456/2100

	This data is interpreted in the following way.  Case 3 means that a
team with 6000 initial points (Po-max) plays a team with 280 initial
points (Po-min).  The should be the same as the best team playing the
worse team.  The planets indicate that the best team (#1 in Planets
column) ended with 12 planets and the worse team ended with 8 (yeah
yeah, so 7+1 indi :>).  The points after the game are 6028 and 279.07. 
Inother words, the best team gains only 28 points for playing the twinky
team and barely winning, and the twinky team only loses 0.97th of a
point for barely losing to the best team.  This should encourage teams
to play people close to their ranking, and to prevent low seeds from
trying to get lucky "pot shots", no team is required to play a team >5
seeds (rankings) below it.  Correspondingly, any challenge from a team
within 5 seeds/ranks *must* be accepted if at all possible.  By "pot
shots" I mean that the lower ranked team wins, as in case 4.  In this
case, the winnng team is the team with 280 points (Po1) and the losing
team had 6000 points (Po2).  Again, the planet distribution is 12 to 8,
but this time in favor of the twinky team.  The twinky team ends up at
880, a gain of 600! points, while the mondo team loses 428.57 to drop to
5571.43.  As the planet difference increases, the gain/loss for each
team also increases. 
	What I like about this plan is that it encourages teams to play similar
strength teams since they know their challenge has to be accepted.  It
also allows the highest ranked team to ignore challenges by teams that
are considered way below it.  Sortof like Side Salad refusing to play
Farm League (no offense guys).  Hopefully with the weighted council
votes and the non-own-team voting of players the teams can be pseudo
accurately ranked initially.  I welcome any and all suggestions.  Thank
you for taking the time to read this.  Now back to our regularly
scheduled flame wars.

-KB
 Master of The Formula
 Ruler of The Plan
 Confuser of the Populus
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA