Posts made by akreider2

How to stop the members list from displaying.  Add this to index.php at the top of the script:

if ($_GET[‘action’])==‘mlist’) exit;

This destroys one of their larger incentives to register. So if they are slightly intelligent people behind this, they should figure it out and stop registering.

You could also remove all urls from people’s profiles. Or add the “nofollow” tag to them so they don’t get any search engine benefits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow

(People can still post spam urls, but that is more work.  And in my limited experience the spammers generally stuck with spamming the members list and not doing posts.).

That is weird. I’m familiar with phpbb2.  I didn’t bother banning people, I just didn’t let them link to their website until they had posted.  Do you have email authentication on?  That helps.

Unfortunately the evil spammers employ real people. So even a good captcha will only get you so far.  Do you have one?

Captchas have been getting really hard to decipher recently, even if you are a real person.

On my blog I don’t approve users unless they manually email me.  Depending on how much traffic you get, that might be less work.

It is also possible that the slowdown has nothing to do with us. If we are hosted by a company that hosts multiple sites, it could be anywhere from 10-2000 sites sharing your computer.

If we’re on a vps or dedicated server - then we might need to throw more resources at it.

Hmm, does anyone know if SMF 2 will be better? It should be out soon.

You can get rid of that membership list.  There isn’t any need for it.  Mod the software, or just delete the memberlist page.

At a minimum people shouldn’t appear on the members list who have made zero posts.

You can also remove websites from it.

Any of these methods get at spammers whose goal is to post a single link to their website.

Are you referring to site down time? If so, I agree.

It happens to me several times per game.  Especially with those small battles where nobody dies and I’m just copying and pasting the battle.  (Ex 3 inf vs 1 inf, or fig and 2 inf vs inf)

While numbers are limited, an advantage of quantifying strategies in terms of average IPC gain/loss is that you can compare two strategies.  If you try comparing with arguments that aren’t based in numbers, it is much harder to come to an agreement.

Ideally we’d want to have games played by the same sets of people - where you try the Egypt attack once and another time where you don’t (against the same opponent).  Then you could compare win percentages.  My guess is that there would be so little impact that you’d need to play 20-50 games to see a statistically significant difference (95% confidence level).

In practice, a lot of people like to put the Allies bid in Egypt (I always do), so it is hard to get solid statistics on this.

I also didn’t include the probability of an Italian fleet wipeout (if the G attack on Z12 kills nothing (10%) AND a fighter survives the attack on EGY fails (19%)).

That’s a 1.9% chance.  Expected loss of 6.5 IPCs.  So it subtracts about 0.1 IPCs (more like 0.13, but who is counting) from the expected gains for Scenario 2.

I didn’t include the probability that Germany would take and hold EGY, and then the value that it (and/or Italy) would get from being able to blitz/march into the rest of the Africa one turn earlier.  If the Axis takes 2 IPCs away from UK, that is a swing of 4 IPC and it might be multiplied by three or more turns.  They might get SUD and EAF on G2, CNG and RHO on G3, and SAF on G4 - all one turn ahead of schedule.

Oops, I already see that I didn’t include the UK chance of retaking EGY and that causing ITA to not get the NO.  That is worth around 0.6 IPC.  Making the overall gap between the two strategies around 3.5 IPC.

These figures are based on 10,000 simulations using AACalc (as modified and running at www.campusactivism.org/aacalc).  The IPC figures are all approximate - with an accuracy of around 0.1 to 0.4.

Now of course some of these units aren’t worth as much as their IPC cost (German subs) and others are worth more (any land unit in Africa).

If the German transport isn’t worth $7 then the attack on EGY is more lucrative.  I think the transport is useful and shouldn’t be thrown away.

–------------------------------
Scenario 1 - no Egypt attack

Z2  (sub, fig, bom vs bat/tra)
IPC gain of 18.3
(11.7 for the loss of bat vs the loss of fig/bom/sub + 6.6 for the loss of the tra)

Z12 (sub, 2 fig vs des, cru)
IPC gain of 8.8

Total IPC gain 27.1

Scenario 2 - Egypt Attack

EGY (assumes 2 inf, art, 2 arm, bom vs 2 inf, art, arm, fig)
I assume that G is willing to take the bomber casualty to take EGY (in practice, I don’t think this decision has much of an impact on the IPCs).

IPC gain (for the units, not including taking the bomber casualty) is 5.3

If you take EGY with a bomber and armor or better - you gain 9 (5 NO, 2 for G getting EGY, 2 for UK losing EGY).  This is a 60%.

If you take EGY with a single armor, by losing the bom - you gain 2 (5+2+2 - 12 +5 (for the armor)). This is a 15%.

Total value of the attack on EGY
5.3 + 0.6 * 9 + 0.15 * 2=10.9

Z2 (fig, 2 sub vs bat, tra)
IPC gain of 10.4 (loss of bat vs loss of 2 sub, fig) + 5.8 (loss UK tra) = 16.2

Z12 attack (2 fig vs des, cru)
IPC gain of 1.7

Loss of German transport
I assume that UK will only attack the bomber if they cannot attack a single armor on EGY.
-7 * 0.66 = -4.6

Probability UK takes back EGY by attacking it with 2 inf, bom
arm (34% chance G has a single armor - assumes they were willing to sacrifice a bomber) - then UK has a 93% chance of winning

0.340.93-7 (UK gets NO + EGY money)= -2.2

if there is 2 arm left (21% chance) - I assume UK goes for killing the GER transport instead of having a 45% chance of taking EGY.

UK chance of retaking EGY with IND transport (UK: 3 inf, art, bom vs EGY)
Note: UK has a 5% chance of a tra surviving an attack on Z35 (2 fig vs des, tra) and this gives it a great chance of retaking EGY.

ITA gets NO
(0.75 (Germany chance of taking EGY) * 0.58 (ITA chance of taking TRJ with 2 inf, fig, cru/bat vs 2 inf)) - (UK chance of retaking EGY)  * 5 =2.2

Scenario 2 total
10.9+16.2+1.7-4.6-2.2+2.2=24.2

Conclusion: Who knows!  Tentatively the decision looks very close. I’ve got the non-Egypt attack having a 3 IPC advantage, but there are a lot of factors that I didn’t include.

Looking for another game. 1941 no tech.

I’m looking for a game.  Probably 1941.

The question is can Italy survive if the US or UK takes GER and starts using the IC. Maybe if UK takes it and cannot build too much because it doesn’t have anything in Africa or the Pacific.

But my guess is that it’d normally be too much, as France would either fall to the Allies or at least be trading hands (and making UK/US lots of income).

Note: I’m not interested in Japan alone - since that is pretty common.

I’m wondering if anyone has seen I and J survive with G dead?  Is it possible for there to be a relatively close game with that combination?

So I regularly run into the 15 second time limit when I’m posting game moves.

There is a bug. If I hit the 15 second time limit, it gives me a “a go back to my message” error. But if I wait 15 seconds and hit post then it gives me a “you have already posted this message” error. So the solution is that I need to do a completely new reply.

Also - I don’t like the 15 second time limit.  Could it be bypassed for people who have made more than 100 posts, or people who have had accounts for over a year (eg with a simple forum mod)?  I run into all the time, when doing a simple battle (like fig and inf vs inf) as those battles can take 5 rounds or more.

Thanks to a patch from Greg Massaro, he fixed the bugs that I had with subs and battleships.  So now both should work for the AA50 simulator:  http://www.campusactivism.org/aacalc/

(Originally designed by Dan Rempel who did almost all of the work)

If there are any bugs, let me know.

Looking for a 1941 game, or 1942 if you can convince me =)

I’m looking for my first 1942 game - no tech - NOs, bid for allies.

I’m looking for a game - 1941 - no tech - NOs, bid for allies.