Posts made by frood

What’s the point of end-of-turn summaries if you don’t need to enter the results on a board or abattlemap (which seems to be unavailable for download anyway).

And how big are the save files for e-mailing anyway? I’m guessing they’re small, since they are XML files. Actually, since they are XML-based, there should be no major obstacles to creating some web-based application to display results.

How long do you think before you can post a beta of what you’re working on now? I’d be interested in helping to test it if that’s needed.

It’s hard to imagine why they’d use a different randomizer for the AA Guns than for other attacks.

It may just be observation / confirmation bias -  those times when your bomber is shot down really stick out in your mind, because it hurts so much when you lose that bomber, whereas the times when nothing happens we don’t remember it because it’s no big deal. But everytime your bomber is shot down you think to yourself “Ah ha! This proves that they always hit!”

I’d like to play a four-player PBEM game with TripleA - I’d prefer revised, but any variant would be fine.

I know nothing about AI programming (or Java).

But with the e-mails, it should as a bare minimum indicate what target value the dice were rolled at. That should be an easy fix, no? Or does the dice server only roll as many dice as TripleA requests, and then TripleA interprets the result by assigning the dice in the order rolled?

Sounds like TripleA might be the best option for PBEM out there. Does it allow bidding though?

That looks very interesting. I saw that you’re wanting to add more dice servers - I’d be willing to host one.

Just one question - does TripleA e-mail  the dice to everyone? How does the other player enter the results? Oh wait, I guess you e-mail the game file back and forth. I tried tripleA PBEM just by myself and received dice rolls in my e-mail, but it was just a string of numbers - there was no indication of which ones were hits at which number. This was with the latest beta, not the stable version.

I’ve been playing the Easy AI just to get a feel for tactics and to scratch my itch until I can get into an actual game - is anyone working to improve the strength of that AI? The US usually has 23 transports parked off the African coast by the end of round 6.

@Jennifer:

Well, suceptability to air attack only matters if you cannot get a unit to protect it.

3 Subs are slightly better then 1 battleship.

2 Destroyers are way better then 1 battleship.  They are just as good as fighters attacking them in defending themselves.  They prevent submarines from escaping or going under the fleet to attack soft targets and they negate sneak shots.  Still a punch of 6 on both offense and defense at a cost of 24.

That crack-smoking owl makes some good points about the specific situation in the Baltic.

But aside from that, I still think 3 Subs are still better than 2 Destroyers.

3 Subs v. 1 Bat, Att. survives 80% of the time (Def survives 20%)
2 Des v. 1 Bat, Att. survives 51% (Def survives 32%)
3 Subs v. 2 Des, Att. survives 66% (Def. survives 28%)

But air units throw a wrench into the works. That’s one thing that makes AAR a good game - if there was just one kind of unit that was always the best, everyone would just build that and there’d be a lot less strategy.

So then the question is, IF germany wants to go the Navy route, what’s the best combination of naval units, and what do you do with them?

Another solution would be to use an SVG file, or a Photoshop file with layers, where you could move/add/delete units and send that file to each other. But it sounds like one nice feature is having the moves automatically ported into a window for copy/paste.

Hmmm… I wonder if this would be a good project to learn Flash with. I have a pirated copy of Flash MX that I’ve yet to really do anything with. Just keeping track of units and movement etc. would be a lot simpler than the sim I’ve built, it would be more a matter of learning to program something other than PHP.

Can TripleA be adapted for this purpose? Does anyone know anyone on the TripleA dev team?

I was wondering about a battleship too, but thought, “that’s a bit pricey…”

Another alternative is a stack of 3 subs. Consider:

• They cost the same as 1 BB.
• They add 6 to punch, rather than 4
• They sustain 3 hits instead of 2 (although not self-healing, but cheaper to replace)
• They get that nice opening attack
• But downside: vulnerable to air attack. Depends how and where the RAF are. If Germany has no navy I often fly the RAF to Caucasus to help defend against Germany and be available for support in the east, but if there are a bunch of fighters in UK the BB may be better.

I’m liking that naval option more and more as I think about it. Just spend what you need to to keep Russia at bay, and let Japan grind it out. It makes D-Day a lot more expensive for the allies.

It would be good to actually document that track record with DAAK. Has anyone questioned them on this? I speak German, maybe I should look into it.

Not sure I understand what you mean - that DAAK rolls all the dice, and then assigns all the 1s to your infantry? Or how do you mean, “works its way up through the numbers”?

No, frood doesn’t stand for anything. It’s a word from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It refers to “a really amazingly together guy”as in “A person who really knows where his/her towel is.” See for example: “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who knows where his towel is.”

I was racking my brain for a good short domain name when this one just came to me two or three years ago. Not sure how it came to me at the moment, as I hadn’t read the book in a while – I just suddenly remembered it as I was trying to think of short words that might still be available as domain names.

For more definitions see http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=frood&defid=1247024 although one of them is also “moronic jerk” - oops! Oh well.

As for the defaults you’d like, spell them out exactly and I’ll make a link or a button to preload those options at once. It makes sense to have a quick way to toggle between sim and ADS modes.

Or, I could have it set cookies that would save your preferences, so you wouldn’t have to re-enter them.

I’ve never bought a Baltic CV (or any navy with Germany) but sounds like it is worth trying.

IMO the game comes down to how efficiently the US and UK manage to project their superior production across the Atlantic. For that they need clear shipping lanes. If Germany can prevent or delay that, then Germany has the time to project its superior production against the Soviets.

When I’ve won as Germany it’s because I blew up allied transports as quickly as the allies could build them. If a CV helps with that, I’m all for it.

Thanks. I’ve added a new subpage with some links to some preset scenarios - Pearl Harbour etc. You can play with them and tweak them this way or that to see how you like the odds for variations on certain “standard” battles.

Maybe there’s not much point. But now at least if there’s some glitch, I can be sent the link as a sort of “bug report” so I can reproduce the exact error.

The download page for ABattleMap seems to be borked - are there alternate locations?

The link I found, http://www.flames-of-europe.de/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=2, leads to a page with two PHP errors and nothing else.

5 points if you can come up with a good definition for “howefter” - - okay time for bed…

I’m going to catch up to all of you… with little posts like this… har har har har.

Is there a place where you can see the top posters listed? Also, I’m curious about the ranks, are those spelled out anywhere? I wonder if I’ll ever grow up to be a Tank, or even a Destroyer! (sigh…)

Actually, infantry is not bad. After all, they’re the most cost-effective unit. If you had to choose just one, that might be it… Nah, I’d choose tanks, if only I could find a way to get two on a transport…

Doh - RTFM, eh?

Rolling 8 6-sided dice:
1, 6, 4, 3, 6, 4, 4, 3

just trying it out, neat concept…

:8d6:

Who here hails from Winnipeg? I wouldn’t mind some face-to-face action…