Archive through December 14, 2020
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Archive through December 14, 2020
Always with the negative waves Moriarty, always with the negative waves.
Heh, love it.
Of course, the alternative is to take up the Zen flag as Richard Eitzen convinced me to do.
There is no good and bad dice, only dice.
Plan for contingencies, take your chances, and then adjust strategy for revealed outcome - without emotional attachment.
Of course, being Irish at heart that's harder for me than the German-blooded Mr. Eitzen, but I've found his way not only better for clear-headed thinking, but also for my emotional health!
I try to - I really do!!
Alas, it's a tad hard to plan for success when the result is your enemy will do 5% greater table damage (so about 20% greater actual damage) on a regular basis in the major battles.
Which is however, why I didn't attack on the Hydran front - bad dice would have really hurt the Hydrans and good Hydran dice wouldn't have done very much for them (the FRD's would still die - and I might get an extra Lyran ship killed or two).
But saying that - this is the first turn the dice have done it that markedly to me (Other than pursuits...I would swear the dice roller uses a D6 with 3'6s on it for my pursuit rolls....) - both sides have had some mixed success on dice).
As I said to William - the worst thing is if the dice come up the other way - the plan may have worked...but some luck was still needed (and equally in two battles , we both rolled low - and so the chance of success or failure wasn't really dice based 
).
To quote Yoda, "No. Do or do not. There is no try!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ4yd2W50No
If a mission is important enough, send in sufficient forces so that bad dice will not change the outcome.
If the mission is not important enough, send "just enough," and then just retreat when the dice go bad.
Lyran Economy, Turn 8
Survey roll 10
Survey total 81
Survey EP 8
Offmap 24
Capital 35
Planets 24
Provinces 32
Conquered 5
Income 128
From last turn 0
Total Money 128
Repairs
1807 12
707 1
Red Claw 2
413 12
608 3.5
K NR 6
Subtotal 36.5
Builds
DN 16
STT 10
CVL, CW, CWE 18
DW, DWE, DWS 16
3FF 7.5
CA(overbuild) 16
Subtotal 83.5
Conversion
Lyrantan CA>DN 6
Total spent 126
Remaining after econ 2
Command points 5+1=6 (2CP spent on C7 at Marquis SB)
Klingon economy, Turn 8
Survey roll 7
Survey total 51
Survey EP 4
Capital 49
Planets 41
Provinces 52
Conquered 34.6
Income 180.6
From last turn 13.5
Total Money 194.1
Repairs
1807 26
1707 2
1507 8
1307 2
1107 2
906 2
NR 8
SR 1
Klinshai 6.5
1809 2
1811 2
1813 2
2014 2
2215 2
2416 2
2519 2
Tholian SB 8
2218 2
2517 2
Subtotal 83.5
Builds
C8 16
D6M 10
F5 (for D7) 3
8D5, AD5 46
5F5, F5E 19
3xE4 7.5
B10 roll 5
Activations 2
Subtotal 108.5
Conversion
D7V 2
Total spent 194
Remaining after econ 0.1
Command points: 0+1=1 (4CP spent on C7 at various Fed SB)
Like the Hydran campaign before it, the Fed campaign has emptied out the Coalition treasuries.
The Klingons are also command-point-broke as they spent all of their command points killing Fed SB last turn. Fortunately they are not likely to urgently need to spend any CP this turn.
Ouch.
That's a lot of repairs....
Coalition turn 8 op movement is done, and reserves have been dispatched. In contrast to turn 7, there are only a few attacks. Kzinti major 1502 and Fed minors 2509 and 2610 are all under heavy attack. Of these, 2610 was reserved and may hold. The Coalition is also trying to destroy two Alliance FRD -- a Kzinti FRD at 1502, and a Fed FRD at BATS 2609.
Several devastated planets were also reserved by the Alliance. The attempts to retake these positions are therefore likely to fail.
Well, not sure what plan you could get to work with averages of 4 (Coalition) v 2.54 (Alliance).
Average compot for the Alliance has been over 90 so far.
Dice are absolutely brutal.
Fortunately, averages tend towards 3.5, no matter how often a player may say otherwise.
Richard
Can't disagree - but that just isn't happening.
5 1's for me out of 15 rolls... and no 6's so far.
4 v 2.46 is a fairly significant diffence.
To make matters worse - timing is also on Williams side.
Feds lost 2 DE's due to the lowest Coalition roll possible to kill them...
Just 'mugged' a Coalition small force - and William rolled 2 higher in both rounds (normal and pursuit).
Basically, Coalition are taking a lot less crippled - and Alliance is taking more dead.
Any suggestions on what to do in key battles where the Coalition is outrolling you by 4 or better?
Yes - it is as bad as that.
Hope they stop doing it.
Yeah. Stop the battle.
To add some meat to the bone and explain why I am 'annoyed' with the dice, the tail of the tapes so far is.
BIR is the pre dice combined BIR - VBIR, Coalition and Alliance
2610 - Modest Lines on both sides plus the Minor Planet. I felt I was going to win based on what was there.
93/EW v 95/EW - and about equal on Defensive compot (including the planet).
BIR 5, 1 5 1, so 25% v 15%
Round 2 91/EW v 80/EW
BIR 2, 3 4 2 - pretty much any chance of holding the planet gone.
Round 3, 86/EW v 64/EW
BIR 2, 1 3 1 - blamb nil chance.
The VBIR dropping 2 and rolling 2 1's really hurt me
2310 - Mugging of a Federation FF -no dice
2411 - Possible mugging of a Federation FF
31/0 v 5/0 - BIR 2, 4 1 2 - Actually lived - caught in pursuit and died though (4 5 3).
2509 - Planet going to fall.
101/EW v 79/EW
BIR 5, 4 4 5 - William missed the 1/12 chance of killing the TG+VAP - equally I missed the 1/6 chance of killing the Mauler.
I ran.
2609 - the biggest compot battle.
85/EW v 117/EW
BIR 2, 4 6 3 27.5% v 20% 
William got the 33/67 chance to kill a DE (and got the CVA DE with a 1/6 chance)
Round 2, 84/EW v 108/EW
BIR 2, 1 4 5, 17.5% v 20%.
Round 3, 78/EW v 108/EW
BIR 4, 5 4 3 30% v 27.5%
William got the 50/50 needed to kill a DE...
Round 4,78/0 v 105/EW
BIR 5, 5 3 1.
William got the 67/33 chance of killing another DE...
Round 5, 77/0 v 103/EW
BIR 2, 1 5 2 - 20% v 12.5%
Round 6, 78/0 v 96/EW
BIR 5, 2 1 1, 17.5% v 20%
2306 - Mugging of a Coalition force attempting to mug a Fed FF - Alliance reserve turned up
Round 1 - 29/EW v 61/EW
BIR 3, 2 5 3
Round 2 - Persuit (Hurrah did catch for once), 22/EW v 42/EW
BIR 5, 5 6 4
So can't even mug the mugger....
1602 - 44/EW v 10/0 (I wanted to avoid the 1/12 chance the CVS could get crippled)
BIR 5, 2 4 1 - missed the 50/50 chance of getting a cripple.
and onto the key battle (for me) - 1504
83/EW v 76/0 - I have more depth than William...
BIR 5, 4 6 2....35% v 22.5%
Current turn average 4.1 v 2.4.
That's about 55 less damage done - and so even if 1/3rd of they fell on fighters - it's still about 38 damage William hasn't had to take.
If we reverse the dice....it's about 85 extra non-fighter damage William would need to take.
So, I am being serious - what can you do when you can't roll, anywhere near average?
You can expect to win a modest number of battles - but it's just the consistency that gets me.
16 battles
13 Coalition 'wins'
1 Draw
2 Alliance 'wins'
I have lost 7 of the last 8 battle rounds (other 1 was a draw)!
And so going back to my original point and the most relevant battle battles round
Coalition have rolled + 4 in both of them (5.5 v 1.5).
In other relevant larger battles, Coalition have rolled an average of + 1.78 (9 rolls - 4 v 2.22).
How can I be that unlucky?
I would love to counter my own argument, but I can't think of a turn I rolled significantly better than William (Hydran front, generally both both sides have rolled average to well - the Hydrans wasn't unlucky over 617 - but equally didn't roll above average - Federation did OK over the SB's (maybe marginally above average) - but over the planets and BATS did terrible).
So I think it's fair to say no relevant and real significant luck for the Alliance so far.
P.S. I also feel sorry for William as there is nothing William can do - he just has to sit there (and get the good dice) and listen to my rantings
Well, dice didn't really get any better.
1st round of the biggest fight (1502 - I had 132 compot) - was 6 v 1 AND VBIR went down 2, so 22.5% v 10% done.
Average for the 6 main rounds was 4.67 v 3.83 - so I actually rolled better towards the ends - plus got my only 6 of the turn.
Persuits - William keeps his 100% success record (every 1 passed) and I got one 1 of the 2.
Average for the turn was 4.03 v 2.86 (30 rounds).
P.S. To add salt to the wound - final battle saw the Coalition retreat onto a battered fleet - and William rolled a 6 (on top of VBIR 6) for the pursuit battle.
Timing of good dice (other than missing the 1/12 chance) - far better for the Coalition.
Key dice at the start of key battles (including some the 100+ compot 1st round battles) - every one far better for the Coalition (+4, +3, +4, +5 and +4!)
General good dice in getting the right number (i.e. needing say a 4+ and getting a 4) - far better for the Coalition.
VBIR helping one side - totally 1 sided towards the Coalition.
A truly truly truly horrific turn, which with average dice would have been actually pretty good I think.
I can't think of a single battle where the Alliance either got lucky or a reasonable roll to actually kill a good target (over 1502, I twice missed getting a BT and a Lyran BC by 1 on the dice).
William - fair analysis?
These simple stats show has bad it was
30 battles
20 Coalition Dice 'wins'
2 Draws
8 Alliance Dice 'wins'
Once would think 10/10/10 with perhaps +2/-2 being a reasonable Statistical range?
(So basically William won a lot which should have been drawn)
No, one would NOT think that, unless you did those 30 battles 1,000,000 times and averaged the results.
You do not understand probability.
My calculation is that the a-priori probability of a given side winning 20 out of 30 die rolls (with a 5/12 chance of the given side winning), is roughly .5%.
.5% is small, but that's not usually enough to be considered statistically significant in my book. It is close enough to be worth further investigation if you have a reasonable sounding hypothesis. Usually I would now warn about the danger of the family-wise error if combining results from multiple runs of an experiment, but it seems pointless given that Paul was clearly testing for a single hypothesis in the initial data gathering.
Paul: Expectation is 12.5/5/12.5, not 10/10/10, ties are only 1 in 6, not 1 in 3.
Standard deviation on the expected number of wins for a side is ~2.7, so +/-3 is reasonable expected variation on the number of wins or losses, ties have a standard deviation slightly over 2.
Sound statistics involves a hypothesis being formulated before any measurements are taken. The data to be included are chosen before they are actually generated. The actual measurements should be taken by a person or apparatus without any desire to reach a particular conclusion. We are meeting zero of those three requirements here.
The Kzinti were getting annoying, with an expeditionary fleet in the Federation, a forward-deployed fleet in Kzinti space, and even an FRD that had ventured forward from 1401 to 1502. So we bopped them on the snoot. We killed the FRD, briefly took 1502, killed some ships, and inflicted a lot of cripples. Our intention to cut off their forward fleet was foiled by Kzinti reserves. But the Kzinti do now have a repair backlog, with 50+EP of crips, but only 22EP per turn of repair capacity. It is hoped that they will now behave themselves.
On the Fed front, a lot of our forces were repaired this turn. They therefore started the turn on various Klingon hardpoints. The main Fed line of resistance was 7+ hexes away, so these forces could not reach. The forces that could reach were sufficient to push towards Earth in the center, or to get something done in the North, but likely not to do both. We chose to push in the center. We took the two minor planets on the main road to Earth (2509 and 2610) and have a large concentration of Klingons in the region.
On turn 9, they could either strike at the Earth region, or move into the North-Central Federation, where the Feds still have BATS or minor planets at 2505, 2603, 2606, 2705, 2905, and 3005, and have even re-taken 2306.
Sorry to say it, but if the dice continue as they are - I am not enjoying this game and so will probably resign between now and turn C10 - William will at least get to some fun.
Survey rolls remain horrible.
Kzinti rolled an 11 (so yes, average), but miss the province by 1 (79 - 84 average) - so are down 8 Eps on average dice.
Hydrans rolled 9 (50 - 63 average) - and so are down 6 Ep's on average dice.
Federation rolled (37 - 49 average) - and so are down 4 Ep's on average dice.
The Federation powerhouse economy - isn't. Will be 162 (including survey) this turn.
You can't give this number of Ep's up, without massively affecting the game - and because the survey Ep's are probably always going to be behind the curve, those Average Eps lost will increase (i.e. the Alliance survey totals will always be 1-2 provinces a turn behind where an average set of rolls would be - this turn the Alliance is 3 provinces behind).
I can't see how the Alliance will last turn to turn 16 - the Coalition will just swallow up the rest of the Federation.
This may seem doom and gloom - but why play for zero fun (and that's what the problem is at the moment - can't hit a barn door due to the dice)?
Alliance Turn 8
Kzinti Survey 11 (total 79 and so 6 Eps).
Total income 65
4 x CM and 6 x FF built
BC to CVS conversion
18.5 Ep's of repairs.
10 Ship Expeditionary Fleet
Balance 0.95 Ep's and 6 CP's
Hydrans
9 Survey (total 50 and so 4 Ep's)
Total Income 21
8 Eps on repairs
13 Ep's on a New Ship Yard
Balance 0.5 Ep's and 3 CP's.
Federation
22 Survey (total 37 and so 2 Ep's)
Total income 162
Builds CVA, ECL, 2 x DE, NCD, 2 x NCL, 3 x FF
Mothball - 8 Ships
Conversions 3 x FFE, 2 x FFS, CVS and FV
Command Point
9 Homeless Kzinti Ships and 2 CV slots (total 10 and 2 Carrier)
Balance 4.75 Eps and 4 CP's
(Kz and Fed started with negative Ep balances).
On the map I see 22EP of Kzinti repairs.