PBEM Naval Action Phase
Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 2:58 am
PBEM Naval Action Phase
If you haven’t already, you should read through the postings in the PBEM Overview thread to get a sense of how the communications between players will be performed.
This thread focuses on minimizing the number of emails needed to implement naval combat decisions. Here are the different subphases of naval movement and combat, in order:
------------------------------------------------------
1 Port attacks (Rules 11.2)
2 Naval air missions (Rules 11.3)
3 Naval movement (Rules 11.4)
3.1 Task forces (Rules 11.4.3)
3.2 Naval transport (Rules 11.4.5.)
3.3 Naval interception (Rules 11.4.6)
4 Naval combat initiated by phasing player (Rules 11.5)
4.1 Adding naval air units - by phasing player (Rules 11.5.3)
4.2 Adding naval air units - by non-phasing player (Rules 11.5.3)
4.3 Committing units (subs) (Rules 11.5.4)
4.4 Searching (Rules 11.5.5)
4.5 Surprise points (Rules 11.5.6)
4.6 Choosing combat type (Rules 11.5.7)
4.7 Surface naval combat (Rules 11.5.8)
4.8 Naval air combat (Rules 11.5.9)
4.9 Submarine combat (Rules 11.5.10)
4.10 Naval combat abort by phasing player (Rules 11.5.11)
4.11 Naval combat abort by non-phasing player (Rules 11.5.11)
5 Naval combat initiated by non-phasing player (Rules 11.6)
If I have forgotten something or got some things wrong, let me know.
-------------------------------------------------
Ideally, we want the phasing player to go through this sequence without having the non-phasing player read and answer several emails. Basically, let the phasing player just move all his naval units and resolve the combats. Regrettably, the non-phasing player can be heavily involved in almost all of these if he wants to be.
Defending against port attacks (item 1) is discussed in the thread on PBEM Air Action Phase. Items 2, 3, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1, and 4.10 are all done by the phasing player.
There are 3 distinct ways naval combat can occur: (1) the phasing player moves into a sea area, is intercepted by the non-phasing player, and decides to “fight his way through”, (2) the phasing player tries to initiate combat and is successful in his search roll, and (3) the non-phasing player tries to initiate combat and is successful in his search roll. For our purposes we can treat these as a single topic (items 3.3, 4, and 5). However, item 3.3 and 5 give the non-phasing player to option of trying to initiate combat or not. Item 3.3 Naval interception is one of the big problems to solve. Incy has given us a start on this and the other hard problems in performing naval actions for the non-phasing player (see the last post listed below).
All of the other aspects of naval combat (items 4.2 => 4.9 and 4.11) are hard. I think we will need a system of rules that the non-phasing player can control by setting parameters. Since reading Incy’s post, I have been working off and on to develop one. Hopefully I will complete a first draft this weekend.
Comments?
P.S. I have attached below parts of some posts that appeared in PBEM Overview and seem relevant to this thread.
=====================
How to spend surprise points in a naval combat and if you want to abort it.
=====================
Based on experience this is the area which is most difficult to deal with, since it takes ages to build new ships and a sunk CV or Transport loaded with troops have a big impact on the game. Maybe you also could mark sea areas where you don't want the AI to handle sea battles, and instruct your fleet to intercept units that are weaker/equal/marginally stronger than your fleet.
=====================
The part that I am avoiding is discussing the Naval combats since each moving Naval stack could involve multiple movement * intercept attempt * movement *intercept * pick sea box * add air units * do combats * pick casualties * rinse * repeat phases, each of which requires player input. It may be possible to set up some scripting for the simple decisions but it will be a decision tree which puts a Banyan vine to shame.
======================
The settings I describe are my suggestions for what you term standing orders. Based on experience, I do not think a limited toolbox of quite explicit standing orders will work well. There's just to much the phasing player can do, and way to often something will be left out/be extremely badly covered by explicit standing orders (an ochit, a paradrop, a lucky flip or whatever else can completely change what a good strategy is). That's based on experience, I played several PBEM games where I spent as much as 20-30 minutes/impulse writing explicit-type orders, and still more often than not something would pop up that made a mess of my orders. So gradually, I ended up realizing that I got my intercepts handled a lot better if I left more to the phasing player, and just gave general instructions. Whenever I did give explicit orders, they were sill as general as possible, and the opposing player was always allowed to override my orders if a reasonable justification could be made.
Thus, I think standing orders should be handled by something resembling a quite autonomous, fullblown AI capable of making reasonable choices on its own, but with a few some options to overrule or "push the AI in the right directions".
To elaborate on the flags/variables I suggested (and which are loosely based on the types of orders I found it useful to give my opponents:
-acceptableLossRatio(in expected lost BP vs. inflicted BP) By this I mean how happy I am to take losses/attrition. My opponent will use this to help decide for me whether or not to initiate battles/abort battles, plus also how to behave in naval battles (i.e. increase enemy losses or reduce own losses, think shortterm or longterm, what boxes to pick). For example, as Italy I usually let my opponent know that I need my expected losses to be about 0.5-0.6 of enemy expected losses for me to "want" to fight a battle. My CW usually has an acceptable ratio of 1.5 or higher. Of course, my opponent will also consider other issues than wether or not the attrition is within what I want (such as maintaining presence & supply) and will have to combine pros and cons and make a best judgement.
-maintaining<Unittype>ReserveHappiness (how much to keep back) By this I try to assign a value to how important I find it to maintain a reserve of some unittype, for instance bombers. If I make this a high value, my opponent should justify it well if he commits all my bombers. So I let him know that he can use some, but preferably don't use all.
-agressiveness By this I let my opponent know my stance on initiating battles. If I let him know I'm agressive, I'll expect him to intercept air missions more often/stronger, be more liberal with ground support, etc. In a nutshell, I tell him he's more free to commit "consumable" resources (i.e. planes, HQ support, etc that can only be used once befor it will be unavailable for the remainder of the turn. A good time to be agressive is when you have or can hope to achieve air superiority by drawing out enemy FTR, or it's late in the turn and you have oil to spend and feel your air bases are fairly safe from conquest.
-<unittype>Highthened/LoweredValue (care less/more about keeping certain units alive) I use this to let my opponent know what units I value the most, both for my own units and for enemy units. For example, I will often say to my opponent that he should be careful about risking my TRS and/or cp, or my SUBs or my CVs, or I could announce that CW BBs/LS are to be considered "ammunition". My opponent will then consider units to have higher/lower BP values than printed
-holdGroundStance (fighting a mobile defence vs. trying to hold the line) I use this to let my opponent know how I feel about such things as getting my units flipped, comitting short range air & HQ support(all of wich are much less preferable in a mobile defence)
-missionTypeImportance (lets AI know what enemy mission types you worry more about) I use this to let my opponent know better where to use my sparse units, particularly FTR cover. Sometimes I'm worried about ground strikes, other times a looming paradrop is more of a concern.
Yet other times I feel I have good enough control to intercept them pesky strat-bombers, and sometimes I'm definately not in the mood for port strikes or air transports.
Players could also be allowed to assign simple flags (more/less value, save this unit, etc) to hexes/areas/individual units. I use this to designate important hexes, for instance I sometimes reserve air units for reaction to particular sea boxes. Other times I let my opponent know some hexes I definately don't want to allow missions against and/or want to use my bombers to try to save, other times I let my oponent know that he shouldn't waste resources on certain places, for instance units left to their fate.
========================
If you haven’t already, you should read through the postings in the PBEM Overview thread to get a sense of how the communications between players will be performed.
This thread focuses on minimizing the number of emails needed to implement naval combat decisions. Here are the different subphases of naval movement and combat, in order:
------------------------------------------------------
1 Port attacks (Rules 11.2)
2 Naval air missions (Rules 11.3)
3 Naval movement (Rules 11.4)
3.1 Task forces (Rules 11.4.3)
3.2 Naval transport (Rules 11.4.5.)
3.3 Naval interception (Rules 11.4.6)
4 Naval combat initiated by phasing player (Rules 11.5)
4.1 Adding naval air units - by phasing player (Rules 11.5.3)
4.2 Adding naval air units - by non-phasing player (Rules 11.5.3)
4.3 Committing units (subs) (Rules 11.5.4)
4.4 Searching (Rules 11.5.5)
4.5 Surprise points (Rules 11.5.6)
4.6 Choosing combat type (Rules 11.5.7)
4.7 Surface naval combat (Rules 11.5.8)
4.8 Naval air combat (Rules 11.5.9)
4.9 Submarine combat (Rules 11.5.10)
4.10 Naval combat abort by phasing player (Rules 11.5.11)
4.11 Naval combat abort by non-phasing player (Rules 11.5.11)
5 Naval combat initiated by non-phasing player (Rules 11.6)
If I have forgotten something or got some things wrong, let me know.
-------------------------------------------------
Ideally, we want the phasing player to go through this sequence without having the non-phasing player read and answer several emails. Basically, let the phasing player just move all his naval units and resolve the combats. Regrettably, the non-phasing player can be heavily involved in almost all of these if he wants to be.
Defending against port attacks (item 1) is discussed in the thread on PBEM Air Action Phase. Items 2, 3, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1, and 4.10 are all done by the phasing player.
There are 3 distinct ways naval combat can occur: (1) the phasing player moves into a sea area, is intercepted by the non-phasing player, and decides to “fight his way through”, (2) the phasing player tries to initiate combat and is successful in his search roll, and (3) the non-phasing player tries to initiate combat and is successful in his search roll. For our purposes we can treat these as a single topic (items 3.3, 4, and 5). However, item 3.3 and 5 give the non-phasing player to option of trying to initiate combat or not. Item 3.3 Naval interception is one of the big problems to solve. Incy has given us a start on this and the other hard problems in performing naval actions for the non-phasing player (see the last post listed below).
All of the other aspects of naval combat (items 4.2 => 4.9 and 4.11) are hard. I think we will need a system of rules that the non-phasing player can control by setting parameters. Since reading Incy’s post, I have been working off and on to develop one. Hopefully I will complete a first draft this weekend.
Comments?
P.S. I have attached below parts of some posts that appeared in PBEM Overview and seem relevant to this thread.
=====================
How to spend surprise points in a naval combat and if you want to abort it.
=====================
Based on experience this is the area which is most difficult to deal with, since it takes ages to build new ships and a sunk CV or Transport loaded with troops have a big impact on the game. Maybe you also could mark sea areas where you don't want the AI to handle sea battles, and instruct your fleet to intercept units that are weaker/equal/marginally stronger than your fleet.
=====================
The part that I am avoiding is discussing the Naval combats since each moving Naval stack could involve multiple movement * intercept attempt * movement *intercept * pick sea box * add air units * do combats * pick casualties * rinse * repeat phases, each of which requires player input. It may be possible to set up some scripting for the simple decisions but it will be a decision tree which puts a Banyan vine to shame.
======================
The settings I describe are my suggestions for what you term standing orders. Based on experience, I do not think a limited toolbox of quite explicit standing orders will work well. There's just to much the phasing player can do, and way to often something will be left out/be extremely badly covered by explicit standing orders (an ochit, a paradrop, a lucky flip or whatever else can completely change what a good strategy is). That's based on experience, I played several PBEM games where I spent as much as 20-30 minutes/impulse writing explicit-type orders, and still more often than not something would pop up that made a mess of my orders. So gradually, I ended up realizing that I got my intercepts handled a lot better if I left more to the phasing player, and just gave general instructions. Whenever I did give explicit orders, they were sill as general as possible, and the opposing player was always allowed to override my orders if a reasonable justification could be made.
Thus, I think standing orders should be handled by something resembling a quite autonomous, fullblown AI capable of making reasonable choices on its own, but with a few some options to overrule or "push the AI in the right directions".
To elaborate on the flags/variables I suggested (and which are loosely based on the types of orders I found it useful to give my opponents:
-acceptableLossRatio(in expected lost BP vs. inflicted BP) By this I mean how happy I am to take losses/attrition. My opponent will use this to help decide for me whether or not to initiate battles/abort battles, plus also how to behave in naval battles (i.e. increase enemy losses or reduce own losses, think shortterm or longterm, what boxes to pick). For example, as Italy I usually let my opponent know that I need my expected losses to be about 0.5-0.6 of enemy expected losses for me to "want" to fight a battle. My CW usually has an acceptable ratio of 1.5 or higher. Of course, my opponent will also consider other issues than wether or not the attrition is within what I want (such as maintaining presence & supply) and will have to combine pros and cons and make a best judgement.
-maintaining<Unittype>ReserveHappiness (how much to keep back) By this I try to assign a value to how important I find it to maintain a reserve of some unittype, for instance bombers. If I make this a high value, my opponent should justify it well if he commits all my bombers. So I let him know that he can use some, but preferably don't use all.
-agressiveness By this I let my opponent know my stance on initiating battles. If I let him know I'm agressive, I'll expect him to intercept air missions more often/stronger, be more liberal with ground support, etc. In a nutshell, I tell him he's more free to commit "consumable" resources (i.e. planes, HQ support, etc that can only be used once befor it will be unavailable for the remainder of the turn. A good time to be agressive is when you have or can hope to achieve air superiority by drawing out enemy FTR, or it's late in the turn and you have oil to spend and feel your air bases are fairly safe from conquest.
-<unittype>Highthened/LoweredValue (care less/more about keeping certain units alive) I use this to let my opponent know what units I value the most, both for my own units and for enemy units. For example, I will often say to my opponent that he should be careful about risking my TRS and/or cp, or my SUBs or my CVs, or I could announce that CW BBs/LS are to be considered "ammunition". My opponent will then consider units to have higher/lower BP values than printed
-holdGroundStance (fighting a mobile defence vs. trying to hold the line) I use this to let my opponent know how I feel about such things as getting my units flipped, comitting short range air & HQ support(all of wich are much less preferable in a mobile defence)
-missionTypeImportance (lets AI know what enemy mission types you worry more about) I use this to let my opponent know better where to use my sparse units, particularly FTR cover. Sometimes I'm worried about ground strikes, other times a looming paradrop is more of a concern.
Yet other times I feel I have good enough control to intercept them pesky strat-bombers, and sometimes I'm definately not in the mood for port strikes or air transports.
Players could also be allowed to assign simple flags (more/less value, save this unit, etc) to hexes/areas/individual units. I use this to designate important hexes, for instance I sometimes reserve air units for reaction to particular sea boxes. Other times I let my opponent know some hexes I definately don't want to allow missions against and/or want to use my bombers to try to save, other times I let my oponent know that he shouldn't waste resources on certain places, for instance units left to their fate.
========================
