Global War : a Japanese AAR

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yvesp
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by yvesp »

ORIGINAL: Cohen
Has the quality of the generator been tested statistically ? Not only the mean, standard deviation, and more generally output repartition, but also the correlation between successive rolls ?

Sorry but here there is little to test - on a tabletop game I pick the dice and roll it.
Here a number between 1 to 10 is to be picked each time.

That's all that is required for that department.

No, that's not true.
You would not want a generator that generates 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10...

In the same way, you wouldn't appreciate an opponent that would know how to roll the die to get, say twice more tens than you roll.

Or, in an air-air combat, you'd not like a generator that rolls appropriate means and standard deviation, but reserves the 8-13 range (about 50% occurence) for your rolls, and the other rolls for your opponent, such as:
8-14-10-7-12-6-9-15... looks correct, but is really badly twisted.

You want something that has the look and feel of randomness. Here, rolling four 1 in a row looks alittlke strecthed, but not impossible : it still calls for an investigation. The same happens when I roll a sequence of attacks and in five or six combats, don't get anything above 11. Possible, but this let my eyebrows rise: that's within a 1% chance of occurence ; it smells. Yet, it cannot be discounted just because it looks weird : with randomness, weird things happen.



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composer99
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by composer99 »

Weird streaks of the dice happen in the tabletop game often enough: one of my fellow local WiF gamers once, when playing Japan in a Global War game, rolled something like 13 consecutive attacks on the 2d10 chart where he got a '12' or worse on the dice before he finally rolled something better, and I've had games where I've rolled hot dice almost the entire game for air combats, and others where I rarely roll out of the average range. I've seen three consecutive 10s rolled on weather rolls on two separate occasions (once in the winter, once in July/August).

All that's to say that, given how many dice get rolled (or, in this case, how many random numbers simulating the die rolls get generated), it's no wonder that some fluky streaks happen.
~ Composer99
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Courtenay
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by Courtenay »

On my machine, after two minutes I got this screen:

The game functioned normally from that point on.

This might be very hard to resolve.

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I thought I knew how to play this game....
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yvesp
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by yvesp »

ORIGINAL: composer99

Weird streaks of the dice happen in the tabletop game often enough: one of my fellow local WiF gamers once, when playing Japan in a Global War game, rolled something like 13 consecutive attacks on the 2d10 chart where he got a '12' or worse on the dice before he finally rolled something better, and I've had games where I've rolled hot dice almost the entire game for air combats, and others where I rarely roll out of the average range. I've seen three consecutive 10s rolled on weather rolls on two separate occasions (once in the winter, once in July/August).

Yes, I know. But 4 ones in a row is a 1/10000 event, whereas 13 rolls of 12 or less is 'only' a 1/300 event.
All that's to say that, given how many dice get rolled (or, in this case, how many random numbers simulating the die rolls get generated), it's no wonder that some fluky streaks happen.

Yes, that's why I'm being prudent: I'm not saying that the dice in Wif are broken! I'm just asking whether they have been statistically checked in some serious way. It should not be two difficult: such checking algorithms are out there, and it doesn't take a master in math to run them and check the results on a table...

The trick is that while it is easy to make a pseudo-random generator that behaves well in number repartitions, it is quite more tricky to get one that behaves correctly in non correlation between consecutive outputs ; and I have observed enough fluky streaks that I am bound to ask the question. Standard 'system' pseudo generators are usually notorious in this way, because it requires a fairly complicated algorithm to get something acceptable.

One way to get a reasonnable generator with no bias is simply not to use a pseudo-generator, but to use the millisecond output of the inner clock ; the current millisecond value is good enough for 1d10 ; the two numbers for the centi and milli second values are good enough for a 2d10 roll. While the game do require a fair number of rolls, it won't roll more than one every second (and that's a fast game!) : so the resulting values are both fair in repartition and uncorrelated in time. Of course, this assumes that the system delivers proper, unbiased, time ; but this is the case. There is a drawback: you can never repeat the same sequence, but we are in a context where that is not needed.
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yvesp
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by yvesp »

ORIGINAL: Courtenay

On my machine, after two minutes I got this screen:

The game functioned normally from that point on.

This might be very hard to resolve.

Image


I dream about seeing this.


OK. I'm going to be more patient ; if it works on your machine, it should work on mine! Shouldn't it ?
So, I'll wait at least ten minutes...

Did you get through a stage where you see the map, can scroll it, but where you can do nothing else ?
Or does the panel appear as soon as the interface pops up ?

Thanks!
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composer99
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by composer99 »

Such a pity this game & AAR might be about to come to an end due to such a strange bug!
~ Composer99
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yvesp
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by yvesp »

ORIGINAL: composer99

Such a pity this game & AAR might be about to come to an end due to such a strange bug!

It won't come to an end.
At worst, I'll replay the combat.
If I am courageous enough (unsure, the combat is so long), I might even try and get the same combat results.
I've not yet decided : Courtenay can load it. But strangely, my computer fails.

Possibly I don't have the exact same version as he has ?
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yvesp
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by yvesp »

No, decidedly it won't load on my computer : after waiting 15mn, I still don't have the panels to continue the combat...

Very strange.

My game version is: 1.2.1.5

EDIT: oh, and I just clicked 'exit' in the menu : now the game is frozen...
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Centuur
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by Centuur »

Using the current beta test version 1.2.2.2, I was able to load this game normally. So I'm afraid you've got the choice to either wait until the next public beta version becomes available or to do it again. Not nice, but that's how it is, I'm afraid.
Peter
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yvesp
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by yvesp »

Do you know when this beta will be available ?
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Rijssiej
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by Rijssiej »

You can also replay the battle and set the die rolls to get the same result. (as long as you know what the rolls were)
Enable that option in: Interface > Player Interface Settings > Simulation Control > Set die rolls

btw I really enjoyed your AAR this far :)
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yvesp
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by yvesp »

ORIGINAL: Rijssiej

You can also replay the battle and set the die rolls to get the same result. (as long as you know what the rolls were)
Enable that option in: Interface > Player Interface Settings > Simulation Control > Set die rolls

btw I really enjoyed your AAR this far :)

I don't know the rolls... Only the results which I wrote as they arrived! So, I'd have to consult the table at every roll and find the appropriate value to get the desired result ; about 50 times...

Hum...

In any case, the loss of pilots would not be correct.
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Courtenay
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by Courtenay »

OK, I just tried an older version of MWiF, and found that it had the bug. So whatever the problem is, the new version will fix it. Don't know when that will be, though.

If you want to tell me how to run the combat, I could do that for you. Not nearly as satisfying as doing it yourself, I know. Alternatively, if you do plan on redoing all 20+ air-to-air combat rolls, at the end of the first round, Japan had two pilots in the reserve pool, the CW five, and the US four. From these figures, you can figure out how many pilots were killed and how many survived.
I thought I knew how to play this game....
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yvesp
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by yvesp »

ORIGINAL: Courtenay

OK, I just tried an older version of MWiF, and found that it had the bug. So whatever the problem is, the new version will fix it. Don't know when that will be, though.

If you want to tell me how to run the combat, I could do that for you. Not nearly as satisfying as doing it yourself, I know. Alternatively, if you do plan on redoing all 20+ air-to-air combat rolls, at the end of the first round, Japan had two pilots in the reserve pool, the CW five, and the US four. From these figures, you can figure out how many pilots were killed and how many survived.

Thanks!

I have enough info to replay the combat. But this will require that I have some time in front of me, because that will be long, I cannot save, and there will be the second naval combat round... I guess that may take me more than 1h30 without any saves...
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yvesp
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by yvesp »

Replaying the combat, I find a problem, which may explain why the game crashed later.

In the initial combat, there were 'but' 13 allied bombers ; repalying, I have 3 more! While I see two planes which might have been put on the fighter side, I'm pretty sure that there should have been at least on more bomber ; reviewing all planes in details leaves little doubt : any plane with 0 or 1 in AA rating isn't fit. Most planes with an AA rating of 2 won't qualify, unless their naval rating is at least 3. Possibbly some of these were put as fighters when I did not this time...

Anyway, I've played the combat round and aborted planes that did not fit.
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yvesp
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by yvesp »

This is going extremely not satisfying.

The planes were not allocated in the same precise way, yielding some differences (in addition to the curious discrepancy I noted above.)

I failed to get the same AA result against Japan, resulting in a much more pusnishing result (but I can discard some of its effect : anyway, some ships will abort that should not!)

I clicked too fast and destroyed the Astoria (a light cruiser) instead of the Alaska carrying troops. So I'll have to destroy the Alaska anyway, but now the USA will have lost one ship too much.

Worse ; I was not vigilant and did a bad job of the initial return to base. The result is that I have to destroy a 6 naval bomber : this will have an important effect for the rest of the game : less damage to the Japanese navy, one 3 bomber less. This is very bad.

Overall, the result is severely skewed in favor of Japan over the original combat.

Thanks for the bug!
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yvesp
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by yvesp »

On the second naval combat round, the Japanese begin by sending back the best US fighter. The F6F-5 lands on its carrier...

AND THE GAME CRASHES AGAIN!


If I try again, I will replay the naval combats from scratch, forgetting anything that was written here.
I'm quite pissed off!
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yvesp
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by yvesp »

I finally decide to replay the whole combat, hoping that the bug do not reproduce. This time, I don't try and mimick the previous combat, but do a brand new one.

The result is quite different, although probably not as much as the previous combat followed by a second naval round with surprise, which would have been quite devastating.

This time, the USA manage to get rid of the Japanese air cover, and very soon the Japanese fight at -5/+5. In the end, they decide to abort the air combat rather than suffer that many useless casualties.

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yvesp
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by yvesp »

Under these conditions, the Japanese cannot even manage to reach the US fleet!

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yvesp
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RE: Global War : a Japanese AAR

Post by yvesp »

And the Japanese fleet is devastated.

Under these conditions, the Japanese do not try and stick to the sea area : on a second combat, they would lose most of their remaining carriers.

With no second round, I probably escape the nasty bug.

If I compare this with the first combat, the Japanese get ahead if we consider the second round (which would have looked like this combat), and the USA too as they suffer no casualties, and their 2 reinforcing divisions stay.

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