Frood AACalc Dicey / Sim / Odds Calculator: Updates and Opinions

[frood]

paintbrush - sounds like I took you a little too seriously. never mind.

Okay, I’ve posted a beta to test at http://frood.net/aaa/ - this has highlighting on the results that are closest to the calculated average, and added to each line is a list of the units that have been lost.

I made some changes to the overall code that I think increases the speed of the script by about 20%. Not much, but what the heck. Because of this though there may be glitches. I’d appreciate some beta testing so I don’t launch the update on the main site and then find out that suddenly subs are hitting aircraft or whatever.

[Guest]

A couple of clitches in the highlight coding…

I ran a test battle with 10 INF, 2 ART, 8 ARM, 4 FIGs and a BOM against 16 INF, 5 ARM, 2 FIGs.

The defender was 76% likely to have no units left, thus the median result should have highlighted this line.  It did not, it highlighted 1 line above it: 1 FIG surviving.

[frood]

Switch, that glitch is intentional. I’m highlighting the average result, not the most common result. Two reasons: the most common result can be quickly identified visually because it has the longest bar graph bar. Second, the average is a better indication of what result to expect on the whole. Because the overall percentages given in the first chart describe the average outcome, and Jennifer was asking what those 24.3 units meant, ie. how can you have .3 of a tank, highlighting that line makes it a good reference point for understanding the overall results shown at the top.

I’ve updated the beta at http://www.frood.net/aaa/ with some more enhancements to the output. It now lists the units lost by each side as well as the IPC value of those units, which makes it easy to see the relative losses and costs to be expected by either side.

I’m now leaning away from doing combined results, eg:
2.4% Attacker with X units and Defender with Y units
1.8% Attacker with X and Defender with Z
3.3% Attacker with W and Defender with Y
0.7% Attacker with W and Defender with Z  etc.

Ultimately I think that’s harder to understand, and in any case, if you are doing battle to the death, you can assume that the 16% of the time that you survive with X units the Defender has lost all their units.

I’m going to do a bit more testing with the different kinds of combat to make sure I haven’t broken anything, and then I’ll launch this on the main site later tonight.

[Guest]

The MEDIAN result would be the best to highlight.

And in the example I posted, the 50% line is still inside that 76% ‘no units’ line.

That was all I was pointing out…

[frood]

Okay, I get it now. I can highlight both and keep everyone happy!

[Guest]

LOL, fair enough :-)

And thanks for working with us.

Your dice program has been WELL worth my investment in it :-D

[Jennifer]

Ditto on my end.

[frood]

Okay, I’ve launched the new version. It includes both kinds of result highlighting and Heavy Bombers now work properly in LHTR rules. The double rolling is not displayed (only the lower of the two dice is showed), but you’ll find that if 99 H. Bombers attack, they will score about 85-90 hits.

Thanks for the help. Let me know if you spot any more bugs. By now there are so many configurations in which to test this program that I can’t really test for them all, so my only way of hearing about bugs is when others let me know.

[frood]

He he. I wrote “is showed” - that’s not right!

Okay, this post serves no purpose other than to inflate my post count - how much longer do I have to be a lowly infantry. Hey, can I give myself a special title in my profile? (goes to check…)

[Guest]

@frood:

Okay, this post serves no purpose other than to inflate my post count - how much longer do I have to be a lowly infantry.

47 as of when I type this response :-)

[frood]

New feature that might be pretty cool:

I’ve added the ability to bookmark a scenario. Also, the link to the scenario is included in the e-mail, so when someone sends you a battle result, you can click on the link and toy with the scenario, see what their odds were etc.

Also, this will allow me to create a page of presets for certain first round attacks. I could use some help if people would set up the attacks and e-mail them to me using the dicey, then I’ll create a page with the links I get. Also, they could get posted to forums for discussion etc.: example : Link to 4 Arm v. 4 Arm

Don’t know why I didn’t do this way back, it was pretty easy to implement.

Example:

[frood]

More changes at http://frood.net/aacalc/ :

• Option to swap the Defender’s and Attacker’s units. This way you can see what might happen if you decide not to attack and your opponent then attacks you instead with the same forces.
• Option to just evaluate the value of your units. Displays Unit count, punch and IPC value. May be useful as a tool in purchasing units, and with an e-mail address entered you could use this to submit unit purchases.
• Cleaned up the form a bit.

Now it’s time I focused on some other things…

[Guest]

You have done a darn fine job!  Thank you for your efforts!

[Guest]

Just noticed a very annoying display glitch…

When using a BB to bombard…

Display came back with the word “Bombarding” over and over in large type and repeated about 100 times down the page.  Then at the very bottom… the results.

[frood]

Oops - left one of my debugging outputs on. Fixed.

[DarthMaximus]

I’ve gotta say, Great Job Frood!

I can see this becoming more and more of a possible “go to” roller.
Certainly for people that may not want to register at the various Clubs (DAAK, FoE) to use their rollers.

I know Switch has a link for this in a few places but I’m also going to add a link to your roller in the PBEM Hints, Tips thread in the Play by Forum area.

[Jennifer]

@frood:

More changes at http://frood.net/aacalc/ :

• Option to swap the Defender’s and Attacker’s units. This way you can see what might happen if you decide not to attack and your opponent then attacks you instead with the same forces.

Now this is an awesome idea!  No more accidentally putting the defender in the attacker slot or vice versa and having to reset the boxes and start over!

[frood]

@DarthMaximus:

I’ve gotta say, Great Job Frood!

I can see this becoming more and more of a possible “go to” roller.
Certainly for people that may not want to register at the various Clubs (DAAK, FoE) to use their rollers.

I know Switch has a link for this in a few places but I’m also going to add a link to your roller in the PBEM Hints, Tips thread in the Play by Forum area.

I’ve never really used DAAK or FoE, can you tell me what features they have that I don’t?

[DarthMaximus]

For DAAK, FoE, and some of the other clubs I was more talking about the “rating points” aspect.

There if you play a rated game and you win a game you get X points, and the loser loses Y points and they keep track of the players total pts.  However, there are ways to play unrated games if you wish.

I see you’re roller as a great way for players to play unrated games without playing in a specific club.

For example, if I just wanted to play friendly PBEM games and not worry about rankings your dice roller will work great.

Up until being aware of your roller, I’m not sure if there was another roller to use without joining a Club.  It’s free to join, but you still have to join.

Your roller has a little more universal appeal in that aspect, in that you don’t have to “Join Frood” to play.

In terms of differences, I’m not sure if there really are many.  They do provide game #'s.  However in DAAK I’m not really sure what the purpose is other then to distigiush one game from another.  I think the purpose was to automatically enter the emails for games started and to be able to go back at anytime and check a log of your rolls, although I’m not sure if that works at DAAK.  For FoE, they DO keep a log and DO NOT email the results.  So, I play a game there, log in, pick the apporpriate game # and do my turn including combat and Non Combat and submit it and FoE stores the information in the game log.  I like FoE at times b/c it means you aren’t getting bombarded by emails if you are playing multiple games.  You just go to each game log and read up on the turns.

I’m not sure if that is a path you’d want to go down.
I mean assigning game #'s, such that If I were to play Jen or Switch I just type in my game number and your roller automatically populates an email line with the appropriate players and game conditions.  Obviously one of the players would have to set that up at the start of the game and then get a random game #.  But again, I wouldn’t want to suggest you do that, as it seems like an awful lot of work and perhaps storage space and could possibly cause a whole series of other issues.

For the most part I think yours might be a bit superior in that you can roll a battle X1000 (5000) times and see about where you should come out then go a head and roll for real.  The others simply roll the battles and don’t provide any of the helpful ancillary information.

[Jennifer]

BTW, did you ever fix that glitch where a battleship doing shore-bombardments would do them every round if you didn’t take the ship out of the attacker pile and if you performed a 1 round at a time result chart?

Also, any way you could have it go through a scenario but stop when it becomes 80% likely you’ll loose aircraft on your attack?  If not, that’s ok.  If it already does but I don’t see it, then let me know!

So much easier sometimes to just have it run to the end instead of doing 3-30 individual rounds just to avoid the risk of loosing a plane!!!