The COST of war...

[Mgellis]

Just playing around with ideas for making scenarios more challenging and more interesting...

One thing that occurs to me is that you can add a cost for weapons used as well as units lost. Sure, you can destroy the target if you use 25 Tomahawks, but is the target WORTH 25 Tomahawks? But you can create an Event that is triggered by the destruction of a Tomahawk (or any other high value weapon). Each time you use a Tomahawk, you lose points, so you get a higher score if you can win using only 10 Tomahawks instead of 15, and if you have to use 20, maybe that actually counts as a loss.

Another idea...losing a drone has a smaller point penalty than losing a manned aircraft. And with a manned aircraft, a second Event can take place a certain percent of the time that indicates the loss of the crew, which increases the cost of losing the aircraft by a certain amount.

Any other ideas? What are your thoughts on this?

[Gunner98]

You could add an 'escalator clause' into the scoring to simulate that excessive losses are unacceptable. For example, aircraft losses cost 10 VP, but when you lose so many, the penalty goes up to 25 VP. You'd have to send the player a message indicating Government displeasure or something as well.

Measuring and scoring based on the cost of weapons is a tricky business. Government spends $$ on weapons for two key reasons: general effectiveness and to reduce casualties. So if you factor in the cost of weapons, you need to scale up the cost of casualties considerably.

B

[Nikel]

I requested that human lives (casualties) should be added to the losses.

They are not counted right now.

A way to simulate it is as you say with the crew, no points for drones, 1 for each crew, so 2 points for a F-14 and 5000 for a carrier.


In fact I did it 2 times

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 7#p5094377

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 5#p5132805

[blu3s]

It is not practical to implement a KIA or WIA number on the sim side. There are scenarios that simulate SAR, how do you count whether a unit is rescued or not? The same when you do a strike against a ground facility, how do you count the number of casualties. This can be done relatively simple from the scenario designer side and implement a scoring based on that.

Another idea...losing a drone has a smaller point penalty than losing a manned aircraft. And with a manned aircraft, a second Event can take place a certain percent of the time that indicates the loss of the crew, which increases the cost of losing the aircraft by a certain amount.

This is done a lot of times in numerous scenarios, different units has different values. One simple way to do it in lua:

https://github.com/GrandStrategos/Comma ... troyed.lua

You just need to get a table with all the units from the different sides and then tweak the value and the crew parameters (you can even set a math.random() function to get the crew in land installations, you can do it with this script

https://github.com/GrandStrategos/Comma ... coring.lua

You can also implement thresholds so from a certain number of losses you can increase the value change in the table for that unit.

[Kushan04]

One thing that occurs to me is that you can add a cost for weapons used as well as units lost. Sure, you can destroy the target if you use 25 Tomahawks, but is the target WORTH 25 Tomahawks? But you can create an Event that is triggered by the destruction of a Tomahawk (or any other high value weapon). Each time you use a Tomahawk, you lose points, so you get a higher score if you can win using only 10 Tomahawks instead of 15, and if you have to use 20, maybe that actually counts as a loss.

I've done this for a few pro scenarios. Use a unit destroyed trigger set for weapons. In my case I used a lua script to get the information of the destroyed weapon, grabbed the cost from a table, and then iterated a variable. I outputted the total cost as special message when the scenarios ended with the total cost in USD, Euro, and GBP. Could tie this to scoring, where if the cost exceeded certain thresholds the score would be reduced.

Another idea...losing a drone has a smaller point penalty than losing a manned aircraft. And with a manned aircraft, a second Event can take place a certain percent of the time that indicates the loss of the crew, which increases the cost of losing the aircraft by a certain amount.

I've done this in all of my scenarios. Depends on the drone too. An FPV would be smaller amount of points then an MQ-9, which would be below a Loyal Wingman UCAV, which is less than a manned fighter.

I no longer reward points to players just for the hell of it. I only reward points for completing objectives. Shooting down aircraft, targeting SAM sites, etc are just the cost of doing business.

[hanzawa1991]

One thing that occurs to me is that you can add a cost for weapons used as well as units lost. Sure, you can destroy the target if you use 25 Tomahawks, but is the target WORTH 25 Tomahawks? But you can create an Event that is triggered by the destruction of a Tomahawk (or any other high value weapon). Each time you use a Tomahawk, you lose points, so you get a higher score if you can win using only 10 Tomahawks instead of 15, and if you have to use 20, maybe that actually counts as a loss.

I've done this for a few pro scenarios. Use a unit destroyed trigger set for weapons. In my case I used a lua script to get the information of the destroyed weapon, grabbed the cost from a table, and then iterated a variable. I outputted the total cost as special message when the scenarios ended with the total cost in USD, Euro, and GBP. Could tie this to scoring, where if the cost exceeded certain thresholds the score would be reduced.

Another idea...losing a drone has a smaller point penalty than losing a manned aircraft. And with a manned aircraft, a second Event can take place a certain percent of the time that indicates the loss of the crew, which increases the cost of losing the aircraft by a certain amount.

I've done this in all of my scenarios. Depends on the drone too. An FPV would be smaller amount of points then an MQ-9, which would be below a Loyal Wingman UCAV, which is less than a manned fighter.

I no longer reward points to players just for the hell of it. I only reward points for completing objectives. Shooting down aircraft, targeting SAM sites, etc are just the cost of doing business.

I think this idea is fantastic! However, where can I find information about the cost of these weapons? Also, would it be possible to share some of the scenario scripts? That would be greatly appreciated if you could!

[bladesinger79]

...I requested that human lives (casualties) should be added to the losses.

Human life is cheap. War machines are very expensive.

[Gunner98]

...I requested that human lives (casualties) should be added to the losses.

Human life is cheap. War machines are very expensive.

The difference between an army - which equips the man and the air force or navy - which man the equipment...