Loss Aversion Among Scenario Designers

[SeaQueen]

One of the most peculiar things I've noticed in community scenarios in particular, is the rampant loss aversion among scenario designers. Computer controlled forces hurl squadron after squadron into battle, such that some losses would be almost inevitable, only to have you penalized so heavily for aircraft loss that it nearly outweighs accomplishing any other goals. Often, shooting down an equivalent number of opposing aircraft results in little or no benefit scoring wise.

Perhaps this is a reflection of the overwhelming value wargamers place on the loss of imaginary life? No imaginary military/political gain could possibly justify the loss of our brave imaginary pilots. This would be the "give peace a chance," school of wargaming. They've played every war game over and over again and like the W.O.P.R. computer have concluded that, "The only winning move is not to play." It's a laudable, idealistic position. I hope we one day live in that world where even the bleeding of imaginary combatants is too much pain and suffering for our conscience to bear.

Sometimes I suspect it's a statement of value. "Our stuff is expensive and their stuff is trash. Therefore you receive little or no benefit for destroying their stuff, and terrible penalties for losing our stuff." This would be fine, so long as the stuff you're losing is actually that valuable, and the things you're destroying are actually that cheap. Too often, however, the scores associated with the platforms seem disproportionate to their actual cost (e.g. fighters being worth more scoring wise than AWACS, DDGs, CVNs, tanker aircraft, or even the airports which support them).

Sometimes I suspect scoring systems are intended to reflect military utility. Once again, however, this would seem to frequently be disproportionate to their actual military value. If the loss of an aircraft is of such critical military importance, then wouldn't it be better to just have it born out in the consequences? Perhaps you lots of have spares in the scenario? If that's the case why does the scoring loss need to be so big? Perhaps in the course of action I chose, that platform doesn't matter so much? If their stuff is so unimportant, how come destroying it impacts one's ability to achieve the scenario goals? I ought to be able to smash it endlessly and make no headway. Why would the loss of a few fighters not be worth striking a pontoon bridge, leaving an invading force cut off from heavy forces, thus ending the war? It frequently seems to be the case that scenario designers haven't really thought about the scenario they're creating.

Sometimes I suspect scoring systems are intended to reflect politics. Here I have objections. Seldom does the damage or destruction of a platform or piece of equipment result in much political fallout. Rather, it is the associated loss of life, or the potential for service members to be held prisoner associated with it. Therefore, in the case of aircraft loss, political considerations would seem to be contingent on the recovery of the pilot, not the loss of the plane, and a score penalty is not a fair reflection of the intended driver. One must also think about the scenario. What is the conflict about? How much loss of life is a nation willing to tolerate in order to achieve those ends? Too frequently it would seem the answer is "none." In that case, the scenario may be implausible. The only case where it might not be is in "Cold War" situations like the Gary Powers shoot down, where "winning" is never having to fight, or maintaining deniability. Once again, proportionality issues abound, where single seat fighters are worth more than CVNs. It's as if the scenario author is driving towards a preconceived conclusion with his penalties and scores for aircraft struck down.

The software has the "butcher's bill" screen where you can see losses and expenditures. You don't need the score to track that. What is the purpose of a scenario's scoring system and what is a reasonable way to implement it?

[Excroat3]

For my scenarios, I don't score my units based on how expensive/useful they are, but rather I plan my scoring around making it difficult for the player to "cheat" my scenarios. Sure, you can throw F/A-18s with mavericks at a Soviet fleet all day, and you probably would end up sinking it, but at what cost? That isn't a strategy actual planners would use, so why should it be allowed to be played that way in my scenarios? I want players to see my scenarios as realistic as possible, and scoring is one of many ways to make sure you keep the player honest while he/she makes their way through your scenario.

[mikmykWS]

Hi

Scenario authors who build scenarios for fun or to entertain have different objectives than a pro analyst. Its done for the same reason there is scoring in competitive sports. You want to give a player some validation for their efforts and a sense of glory and defeat. So its really about entertaining, providing a challenge, bringing joy etc. which I realize isn't exactly a focus of professional wargaming. It's ok though I accept it's shortcomings![:)]

Might be a sign of my age but I'm now much less judgemental about other's work and don't get too hung up on OOB inaccuracies or some game theory they're not catching. I"m pretty sure that's a good thing!

As an aside we still need the scoring mechanism in current campaign scenarios because its the only current technical path for players to progress through a campaign. You can conclude that scenarios authors may have used it for only that.

Thanks

Mike

[SeaQueen]

That makes sense, except that a scenario score should be also be agnostic about the tactics and weapons a player should use. Your score shouldn't be based on using the tactic the scenario designer thinks you ought to be using unless the scenario is intended to teach a single tactic.

If the goal is to sink a Soviet SAG, then you should be scored on the ability to do that. The problem with reducing your score based on losses is that the scenario designer must then ask how much of the Soviet fleet is a fighter worth? The answer to that is, "it depends..." Few scenarios seem to take an interest in making that calculation. A lot of the time they seem to arbitrarily make the loss of a single aircraft disproportionately devastating to one's score. It's gotten to the point that in some good scenarios, I find myself disregarding the score entirely and merely judging my performance based on other metrics such as exchange ratio. In some scenarios the score functions as a proxy for exchange ratio, but those are usually oriented towards air-to-air combat. Once you start adding in a strike component it becomes more complex and I'm not sure they get that balance right.

ORIGINAL: Excroat3

For my scenarios, I don't score my units based on how expensive/useful they are, but rather I plan my scoring around making it difficult for the player to "cheat" my scenarios. Sure, you can throw F/A-18s with mavericks at a Soviet fleet all day, and you probably would end up sinking it, but at what cost? That isn't a strategy actual planners would use, so why should it be allowed to be played that way in my scenarios? I want players to see my scenarios as realistic as possible, and scoring is one of many ways to make sure you keep the player honest while he/she makes their way through your scenario.

[SeaQueen]

You're right, they have different purposes than what I do at work but I play the game for fun too. Until online multiplayer is a reality, you're really only mostly competing against yourself. That's great to me. Sadly, I don't think we sufficiently recognize the entertainment value in attempting to do something difficult better than one did before. In light of that, it's important that the score be a fair representation of one's "goodness." Sometimes I look at it and think it's a little arbitrary.

ORIGINAL: mikmykWS

Hi

Scenario authors who build scenarios for fun or to entertain have different objectives than a pro analyst. Its done for the same reason there is scoring in competitive sports. You want to give a player some validation for their efforts and a sense of glory and defeat. So its really about entertaining, providing a challenge, bringing joy etc. which I realize isn't exactly a focus of professional wargaming. It's ok though I accept it's shortcomings![:)]

Might be a sign of my age but I'm now much less judgemental about other's work and don't get too hung up on OOB inaccuracies or some game theory they're not catching. I"m pretty sure that's a good thing!

As an aside we still need the scoring mechanism in current campaign scenarios because its the only current technical path for players to progress through a campaign. You can conclude that scenarios authors may have used it for only that.

Thanks

Mike

[mikmykWS]

ORIGINAL: SeaQueen

You're right, they have different purposes than what I do at work but I play the game for fun too. Until online multiplayer is a reality, you're really only mostly competing against yourself. That's great to me. Sadly, I don't think we sufficiently recognize the entertainment value in attempting to do something difficult better than one did before. In light of that, it's important that the score be a fair representation of one's "goodness." Sometimes I look at it and think it's a little arbitrary.

I know the entertainment value of hard work. We wouldn't be here if I and the rest of the team didn't. Could "we" please stop being like that [8D]

I just think it really doesn't matter why things were done as long as people have fun. Most of these people are putting themselves out there with their work which takes a lot of guts. Just doesn't make sense to me to start banging on them for low rent stuff in front of the crowd but instead engage them directly like humans do.

When are you going to put your work out there? Scared?

Thanks!

Mike

[ExNusquam]

I think the scoring penalty for player losses can also be abstracted to include force preservation for future operations. This stems from the engines inability to carry units between scenarios. If player throws all of their Hornets at a SAG with Mavericks, it might make it impossible to use those Hornets for CAS with follow-on operations (which were probably the reason you had to engage the SAG in the first place!). In these cases where the impact of player losses may not manifest within the same scenario, the player needs some feedback to emphasize that impact.

I think directly using the scoring system is probably a bit ham-fisted - using lua you could easily give the player a target loss rate where small losses are not a problem but losing entire squadrons affects the score. The other solution would be to build longer scenarios, as there's no hard limit on scenario duration. Instead of assigning an arbitrary value to units, you can show the player their value (i.e. taking severe losses on day 1 makes day 2 impossible to execute).

When are you going to put your work out there? Scared?

I think there are a few of us who don't post scenarios due to professional concerns.

[mikmykWS]

I think there are a few of us who don't post scenarios due to professional concerns.

Fair enough. Guess we'll never know.

Mike

[IainMcNeil]

I tend to agree with Sea Queen. I think having the casualties affect the score would make scenarios more replayable so you can attempt to do better. I don't see how it diminishes the fun to reward good play, and I don't see how it implies scenario designers have done something wrong by not adding it. I'm not getting the negativity here

[SeaQueen]

Agreed. They haven't necessarily done something wrong, but I do sometimes think they weight losses disproportionately to achieving other scenario goals, for various, often irrational or illogical reasons. To me, that begs the question, does there exist a rational way to attach a score value to scenario goals?

ORIGINAL: IainMcNeil
I tend to agree with Sea Queen. I think having the casualties affect the score would make scenarios more replayable so you can attempt to do better. I don't see how it diminishes the fun to reward good play, and I don't see how it implies scenario designers have done something wrong by not adding it. I'm not getting the negativity here

[Cik]

I actually generally like the scenarios where "one loss is too many" though really generally i lose at least a few assets, it's nice to play for the "perfect score" and try to achieve everything without a loss (except munitions) it allows the designer to give the player overwhelming force, but it still must be applied carefully- if you get 24 B-52s and you can just lose them willy-nilly there's less tension- where if you give the player 2x CVNs, a pile of subs, a few bases full of sophisticated 4th gen+ but the overriding message is "BE CAREFUL!" even a mig21 then becomes a problem for you- despite the fact that you can shoot it out of the sky without much trouble in the forward quarter, if it DOES manage to sneak up on you, it's a tense situation.

i try to play most scenarios as if i'm actually going to have to rescue downed pilots and extricate stranded crews (even though that's often not an explicit feature) that is to say, any pilot that goes down piles on more risk because I'll have to send in some helicopters which themselves can be shot down, and risk more guys. for that reason it's best to not get shot down in the first place if you can avoid it.

the scoring doesn't need to be too harsh for this sort of thing though. generally i don't pay much attention to it anyway. i get my signals of how careful i'm supposed to be from the briefings mostly and the scoring is mostly an afterthought.

[SeaQueen]

That makes sense, and I like it.

To do that right, you'd need to decide how many aircraft are necessary for the follow on operations. You can use LUA to effect the score. You could create a trigger that goes off when you have lost more than the necessary number of aircraft for the subsequent operations, and deducts points for that. I like that idea, because you could state in the scenario briefing that one of the goals is, "Preserve N strike aircraft for subsequent follow on operations." That puts the player in a position of balancing risk. They could commit (Total Number of Strike Aircraft - N) and play it safe, but they might not achieve the goal in the time constraint. They could commit more than that, and each aircraft committed represents a risk, but it also represents an increased likelihood of success. Where's the sweet spot?

ORIGINAL: ExNusquam

I think the scoring penalty for player losses can also be abstracted to include force preservation for future operations. This stems from the engines inability to carry units between scenarios. If player throws all of their Hornets at a SAG with Mavericks, it might make it impossible to use those Hornets for CAS with follow-on operations (which were probably the reason you had to engage the SAG in the first place!). In these cases where the impact of player losses may not manifest within the same scenario, the player needs some feedback to emphasize that impact.

I think directly using the scoring system is probably a bit ham-fisted - using lua you could easily give the player a target loss rate where small losses are not a problem but losing entire squadrons affects the score. The other solution would be to build longer scenarios, as there's no hard limit on scenario duration. Instead of assigning an arbitrary value to units, you can show the player their value (i.e. taking severe losses on day 1 makes day 2 impossible to execute).

[mikmykWS]

ORIGINAL: SeaQueen

Agreed. They haven't necessarily done something wrong, but I do sometimes think they weight losses disproportionately to achieving other scenario goals, for various, often irrational or illogical reasons. To me, that begs the question, does there exist a rational way to attach a score value to scenario goals?

ORIGINAL: IainMcNeil
I tend to agree with Sea Queen. I think having the casualties affect the score would make scenarios more replayable so you can attempt to do better. I don't see how it diminishes the fun to reward good play, and I don't see how it implies scenario designers have done something wrong by not adding it. I'm not getting the negativity here

Thanks for clarifying that SQ!

Mike

[SeaQueen]

The problem with "one loss is too many," is that it undermines the whole premise of the scenario, which is that hostilities have begun. If any losses are too many, then you probably shouldn't be risking any forces at all in a military conflict; it's a job for the guys in Foggy Bottom, not Arlington. The only time to me "one loss is too many" makes sense is in "Cold War," "pre-hostilities," or ISR sorts of scenarios where the goal is to avoid fighting.

I see what you're saying, though, regarding it as a way to add some challenge to an otherwise over-matched adversary. I typically avoid those sorts of scenarios, just because I'm less interested in conflicts with weaker powers, at least on the level that Command deals with them.

If the scoring is so uninteresting for a scenario that it's almost an afterthought, then something is probably wrong, and it needs to be improved.

ORIGINAL: Cik

I actually generally like the scenarios where "one loss is too many" though really generally i lose at least a few assets, it's nice to play for the "perfect score" and try to achieve everything without a loss (except munitions) it allows the designer to give the player overwhelming force, but it still must be applied carefully- if you get 24 B-52s and you can just lose them willy-nilly there's less tension- where if you give the player 2x CVNs, a pile of subs, a few bases full of sophisticated 4th gen+ but the overriding message is "BE CAREFUL!" even a mig21 then becomes a problem for you- despite the fact that you can shoot it out of the sky without much trouble in the forward quarter, if it DOES manage to sneak up on you, it's a tense situation.

i try to play most scenarios as if i'm actually going to have to rescue downed pilots and extricate stranded crews (even though that's often not an explicit feature) that is to say, any pilot that goes down piles on more risk because I'll have to send in some helicopters which themselves can be shot down, and risk more guys. for that reason it's best to not get shot down in the first place if you can avoid it.

the scoring doesn't need to be too harsh for this sort of thing though. generally i don't pay much attention to it anyway. i get my signals of how careful i'm supposed to be from the briefings mostly and the scoring is mostly an afterthought.

[mikmykWS]

ORIGINAL: IainMcNeil

I tend to agree with Sea Queen. I think having the casualties affect the score would make scenarios more replayable so you can attempt to do better. I don't see how it diminishes the fun to reward good play, and I don't see how it implies scenario designers have done something wrong by not adding it. I'm not getting the negativity here

Never said any of that and wasn't angry. My issue was that players weren't leveraging the scoring because they were missing something but that their goals were different.[:)]

Thanks

Mike

[Gunner98]

Reflecting on it. I suppose that I generally use three different themes when setting up scoring:

-Losses, because losses hurt overall, both directly in the game (which shouldn't be penalized to harshly as you lose the asset), and more importantly in an overall campaign. Rightly or wrongly I tend to put an arbitrary value on units:
--multi engine AC are worth more than single engine (in VP loses)
--Ships (FF & larger) are worth more than AC, and the value goes up as the tonnage and capability does, CVNs are way high.
--Subs are valued about the same a CGs
--Player is usually worth more than opposition to add a tension in a knife fight - a 1:1 loss ration means you lose

-Special missions - and this is where the fun comes in. You can use these to add spice and variety to the scenario which will cause the player to balance task accomplishment with estimated losses. And some missions are tough enough that the player has to take significant risk to achieve it.

-Overall story awards - because most of my scenarios are in a mega campaign, the story is important, to me anyway. Some of the early scenarios, simply surviving is a victory, so I set points up to reflect this.

The problem with this approach is that it takes time to set up. Probably 20-30 events in some scenarios. Some authors don't go into that level of depth, and I am sometimes disappointed with the scoring, but if the scenario was fun, that's what counts.

Playtesting is important, helps with balancing the values so a victory is achievable but a you have to work at a triumph.

Anyway that's my $.02CAD

B

[SeaQueen]

I like that way you order the loss of a platform's score value, but how do you weight their loss against accomplishing the mission at hand?

Example: Suppose the goal of the scenario was to safely deliver a group of logistics ships from their home port to a distant UNREP area. Protecting them are MPAs, a large surface combatant and a small surface combatant, equipped with helicopters and UAVs. Along they way they encounter mines, air, sub and ship launched ASCM raids and sub launched torpedoes. Since the scenario goal is to deliver the 4 logistics ships to the designated area, no loss of surface combatants ought to outweigh delivering those ships. Putting those 4 ships in the box with no remaining surface combatants is still a win, although it might not be the same degree of win as delivering the same four ships to the box with all escorts remaining. In that case it's pretty simple to come up with a reasonable scoring scheme.

Now consider a more complex case: Attacking an airbase. Attacking a well defended airbase means destroying the enemy CAPs, destroying their air defenses, attacking their runways, attacking their opened parking spots, attacking hangers and attacking POL storage. It's almost certain you'll take losses. How many fighters is it worth expending to damage a runway below a certain threshold? How many fighters is a POL tank or hanger worth? I haven't really been able to decide.

-Losses, because losses hurt overall, both directly in the game (which shouldn't be penalized to harshly as you lose the asset), and more importantly in an overall campaign. Rightly or wrongly I tend to put an arbitrary value on units:
--multi engine AC are worth more than single engine (in VP loses)
--Ships (FF & larger) are worth more than AC, and the value goes up as the tonnage and capability does, CVNs are way high.
--Subs are valued about the same a CGs
--Player is usually worth more than opposition to add a tension in a knife fight - a 1:1 loss ration means you lose

[mikmykWS]

Interesting.

Your boss gives you a task you get it done but it costs a ton. So job done well done but you're not likely to get any further tasks unless the outcome was spectacular and nobody cares about the cost.

Moving this thinking to scenario building and playing you don't have to worry about getting the next job but should the penalty for high loss (wherever) factor into win-loss so it actually does in a way?

I think so.

Mike

[SeaQueen]

ORIGINAL: mikmykWS
Moving this thinking to scenario building and playing you don't have to worry about getting the next job but should the penalty for high loss (wherever) factor into win-loss so it actually does in a way?

Since the tendency in a scenario is to wear multiple hats (the player needn't necessarily correspond directly to a single commander, and might actually correspond to multiple people at different levels), I'm not sure that's a good analogy, but the cost/benefit calculation is definitely a real thing. So, how does one determine the score values such that there is a reasonable valuation of the losses versus the benefit of doing whatever they're trying to do in the scenario?

[mikmykWS]

ORIGINAL: SeaQueen

ORIGINAL: mikmykWS
Moving this thinking to scenario building and playing you don't have to worry about getting the next job but should the penalty for high loss (wherever) factor into win-loss so it actually does in a way?

Since the tendency in a scenario is to wear multiple hats (the player needn't necessarily correspond directly to a single commander, and might actually correspond to multiple people at different levels), I'm not sure that's a good analogy, but the cost/benefit calculation is definitely a real thing. So, how does one determine the score values such that there is a reasonable valuation of the losses versus the benefit of doing whatever they're trying to do in the scenario?

Maybe some contrived value based on the court of public opinion modified by the speed of transmission and sensitivities of the era? This might be a little too contrived. Hmm...

How about just a measure of how capable your force is to do whatever after the win/loss? I think at high-level points are doing that now but maybe more thought has to be done at the detail level (loss of logistics assets, sites, etc are major losses etc.)?

If you really want to turn things on its head get a human ref or to evaluate the win-loss[:)] Covers the things that can't be quantified.

Mike