ORIGINAL: Cik
well, i don't know about all that. i think the scoring is often more a "game" function than a sim function. one might ask why an F-35 costs 25x as much as a mig-21 or whatever- what's that based on? it's not based on cost (well, it could be but in this example it's not) it's mostly just based on the fact that the scenario designer thinks that given the challenge a player should not lose an F-35 often (if at all)
That's exactly the problem. I have no idea what's it's based on. It's an arbitrary decision that says more about what the scenario designer thinks than it actually does about the "winability" of the scenario, the capabilities of the platforms in it, their relative costs, etc. If the point of the scoring system in a scenario is to arbitrate whether you win or lose the game, and the point of the game is simulate something, then the scoring system ought to realistically reflect what a "win" or "loss" looks like. If it doesn't somehow realistically reflect the risks and rewards of the scenario, then you end up with problems like I just pointed out (e.g. no target is juicy enough in the entire scenario to justify risking the platforms most capable of taking it out - the "give peace a chance" school of wargaming).
i guess look at it this way; you're playing a game wherein you are tasked with taking a city and you are given an infantry formation with tank support- the enemy has no tanks. while it's possible to lose the tank to fire (mines, RPGs, flipping it over or whatever) the scenario designer thinks that you shouldn't lose it and that given the calculus of the forces it should be possible for a skilled player to keep it intact the majority of the time. far removed from this is the fact that the army has thousands of these tanks or that they cost X amount a unit or whatever- mostly it's just that in this very focused arena the tank is a survivable unit and it would take a very unlucky fluke or a certain negligence on the player's side to lose it.
All this amounts to the scenario designer turning the tank (or F-35) into a golden magic BB. It's enormously capable, but I can't afford to actually use it, because if I use it and lose it, I suffer such an enormous cost that I can't make it up elsewhere. That's not a usable weapons system. If a real decision maker decided that a weapons system is a golden BB, then it ought to be held back for some other conflict where deploying it is worth the risk (i.e. it ought not be in the scenario).
I don't think that the F-35 being expensive is a geopolitical commentary or a statement on the expense of 5th generation fighters. I think it's simply that the scenario designer wanted you to shepherd them carefully.
It might not be intentional, but effectively they're signaling in the scoring system that it's too expensive to use.
the scoring i think is a surrogate for a wider, campaign-level view- in a real war, you keep your fighters around not because it will give you +5 points and a major victory but because you will probably need them later. the score is a substitute for that- "given the average losses we expected, you did better/worse than average." in the tank analogy, the large score penalty for losing the tank is a substitute for the later campaign level "you lost your abrams and there's a T-62 here now. good luck."
Potentially, it could reflect higher level requirements or metrics. In fact, I think the degree of victory (and therefore the score) ought to reflect the scenario's contribution to the larger picture. To get a good scoring system, you really need to decide up front what victory actually looks like. It might be like:
-Preserve 75% of all strike aircraft
-Lost no more than 1 CVN
-Lost no more than 2 large surface combatants
-Destroy the bridge X, Y, and Z
-Destroy 25% of the enemy tanks
Then you need to decide what contribution to victory or defeat each condition makes:
-Preserve 75% of all strike aircraft - 25%
-Lost no more than 1 CVN - 100% (i.e. if I lose more than a CVN, I lose the war)
-Lost no more than 2 large surface combatants - 25%
-Destroy bridges X, Y, and Z - 50%
-Destroy 30% of the enemy tank platoons - 50%
Suppose the score represented your "percentage of victory" then the max score would be 100 (%). That represents total victory.
If you lose two CVNs then you lose 100%. Your score is zero.
If you lose more than 75% of all strike a/c then you lose 25, and you score 75.
If you lose more than two large surface combatants you lose 25, and you score 75.
If you don't lose 2 CVNs, preserve the required number of aircraft and surface combatants, plus destroy the bridges or the tanks you gain 50 points. Your score is 50.
If you don't lose 2 CVNs, preserve the required number of aircraft and surface combatants, plus destroy the bridges and the tanks you gain 100 points. Your score is 100 (i.e. total victory).
Then, to check if it makes sense, you consider total defeat and the intermediate cases short of total victory:
If I lose 2 CVNs, 2 surface combatants, and more than 75% of your aircraft without achieving the other goals, you get a -150. That's more than achieving the other two goals combined, so you're still firmly in loss territory. That makes sense.
If I lose 2 CVNs, but preserve my aircraft or surface ships, then I'm still losing more than either the other two goals are worth in combination.
If I lose 2 CVNs, but preserve my aircraft and surface ships, then I score 0 if I somehow achieve the other goals.
If I preserve all my CVNs and ships, but lose more than 75% of my aircraft, while destroying the bridges then I score -25+50 = 25. Not great. A tactical level victory even if an operational loss.
If I preserve all my CVNs and ships, but lose more than 75% of my aircraft, while destroying the bridges and the tanks then I score -25+50+50 = 75. Better, but less than total victory. Still maybe an operational level loss, albeit maybe a more justifiable one.
That all makes intuitive sense!
All this would be easy to implement in LUA by implementing counters. That's not usually how people do it though.
for this reason i think often score is mostly superfluous- if you lose an asset early in the fight the slap on the wrist in score you get often pales in comparison to the "well, how are you supposed to spot the TEL without your U-2, genius?"
If it's superfluous then someone did something wrong. That means a player can't realistically judge how well they did based on their score, which defeats the purpose of having a score. A player ought not essentially "throw away" part of the experience because it's perceived to be useless, or it's unclear what it's actually simulating.
there is probably an "ideal" way to design the score, but it's going to be really hard to actually come up with because of how diverse the environment can be.
If don't know if there's an ideal way, but there seems to be a more rational one as I just outlined, provided one has a clear idea up front what the scenario is attempting to achieve. I suspect some of the disproportionate costs and risks I see in some scenarios might reflect a lack of forethought regarding what player victory looks like, or what the player is really trying to achieve in the scenario. Rather than writing the scoring triggers to reflect the destruction of individual units or platforms, it makes more sense to write them in terms of slightly more abstracted conditionals. Otherwise, the score amounts to just a weighted exchange ratio, which potentially looks distorted when you ask how many of platform X is platform Y worth risking to destroy.
