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[Digital Hellhound]

I believe it was called Eternal Rtd. Iirc the idea was to rotate the gm to avoid burnout, more or less. It didn't last long.

Actually, I don't think that's the Incident that Derm is referring to. I think I remember the endless RTD, and while I remember it failing, I don't remember it quite reaching the spectacle of the Incident. It was still one GM at a time, not 5 GMs knit together by 6th Arch-GM.

You are thinking of RTD Wars, and I refuse to let derm dominate that particular discussion. It was a perfectly workable idea - tricky, yes, but possible to run once there was agreement on how the games would be run. Something which never came to be because our arch-GM rushed ahead, constantly adding new, contradictory parts into the system without ever defining the basics or consulting the GMs. They also thought they needed to input idiotic 'random events' when we were like 3 turns in.

I was running a game fine for the short time it lasted, if only by ignoring most stuff that was coming out of our central government. There was another try at this kind of project recently, but it got bogged down in extra discussion without ever defining the basics and so never started.

Yes, it's a difficult idea in practice. You need a high level of competence and motivation. But it's not doomed to fail.

[Dermonster]

Tricky yes, workable yes, but in practice (In this case) nigh impossible.

It was thirty six players, six GM's and three OverGM's of which Gatleos and I were one, and some idiot the other. I didn't know how to GM, Gat was semi-uninterested, and the third guy, from what I can remember, was an overeager newbie.

On top of that, I believe half the players were the sort that would just not post for extended lengths of time. That's the hard bit, everything would take a lot longer than normal and everybody would be held up by just one absence. I think it only lasted one, two turns, and third guy added a random event to the second turn because 'It was going too slow' and we all called him out on it.

In the end our player base was just not big or consistent enough and our OverGM's were not very well suited for it. I fully admit that I only had a vague idea of what was going on around me at the time.


I miss endless rtd. The concept was somewhat sound, but Gat disappeared off the face of the RTD world without a proper handover and then it died. He also may have made the setting a bit too silly for the next guy (Pretty sure that was you hellhound)? I dunno. There was a mecha hitler in there. I was a necromancer. Fun times.

[Andres]

That brings up an interesting topic of what to do when your players just aren't...well, playing. Do you idle them? Auto them? Kick them from the game? Punt them to the top of the waitlist and get someone else in? Unplayers are also the reason why a few GMs - including myself, though I am new - have scheduled updates. It's not fun for the players that get skipped over but if you wait for them, it's not fun for every other player playing the game as well. The needs of the many vs the needs of the few, I guess.

I don't think Ye Gods (a game from FG&RP) would've been as fun as it was (HEAPS) without daily updates, plus the 3-day time limit before they were considered "inactive" (their god goes to sleep, at which point they either die or get sealed away until they're revived) made sure that players actually took the time to contribute to the game. If they felt they were going to be inactive for a while, they'd just tell the GM and they'd be put in safe stasis where their god couldn't be interacted with at all, then they could start playing again as soon as they wanted.

[lawastooshort]

I miss endless rtd. The concept was somewhat sound, but Gat disappeared off the face of the RTD world without a proper handover and then it died. He also may have made the setting a bit too silly for the next guy (Pretty sure that was you hellhound)? I dunno. There was a mecha hitler in there. I was a necromancer. Fun times.

Yes

It was indeed DH next, and I believe there were creative differences concerning the representation of Marcus Aurelius.

[Digital Hellhound]

I miss endless rtd. The concept was somewhat sound, but Gat disappeared off the face of the RTD world without a proper handover and then it died. He also may have made the setting a bit too silly for the next guy (Pretty sure that was you hellhound)? I dunno. There was a mecha hitler in there. I was a necromancer. Fun times.

Yes

It was indeed DH next, and I believe there were creative differences concerning the representation of Marcus Aurelius.

Yes. I was very angry at the time at Gatleos for messing up the agreed storyline/things, if I recall (or maybe it was just Marcus Aurelius, hm). I remember being pissed off at what was going on at his ending. The next world would have been SKY NAZIS and JETPACK SOVIETS (and also a cameo by ROBOT NAZIS). I still have the plans for that, they are amazing and I wish to run it sometime.

I suppose I should still have carried on (though I remember having to wait a looong time for Gat to finish up and possibly not even seeing it when he did), so I'll take my share of the blame.

[Dermonster]

Well there's nothing stopping us from reviving the concept, or even the thread itself except for the whole 'it's probably been literal years' thing.

[lawastooshort]

I don't see why that is a problem. It was meant to never end!

[Dermonster]

I know right?

It's the sort of thing that's never wrong to necro.

[ATHATH]

Good lord are we talking about over 6 player games again?

That never turns out well (Unless you're sean mirrisan then you can just barf out a goddamn novel for three hundred turns man was a machine)

Believe me, I know. I was there for the Incident.

What happened to Sean, anyway? Do we know?

[Radio Controlled]

He's around. Plays ER as well, for one. You might be able to catch him on the er irc: http://darkmyst.org/?page=webchat
(or: irc://irc.darkmyst.org/#einsteinianroulette)

[Person]

Oh right, RTD Wars. Not sure why I confused the two. Guess my mind blocked it from my memories or something.

[origamiscienceguy]

I was expanding on my Ender's Game idea, and I came up with a loose outline of how I wanted it to be. There are several details that I do not know yet. So please give feedback.
This will take place in Battle School before the events of the book "Ender's Game" But will be based on the Battle games played at Battle School. It would be lovely if there was one player per army, but there are 22 teams mentioned in all of Orson Scott Card's books, so that is quite a bit. Perhaps it would be best to bring the number of teams down to a more reasonable level. Probably 8.

If I am going with 8 armies, there would be one player per army who tries to win as many matches as possible in order to place first in the standing after 7 games (more games can be added if necessary) I would keep track of their win/loss ration as well as other statistics like Enemies Frozen, Disabled, Damaged. And your own Frozen, Disabled, and Damaged. These statistics will most likely only be used in tiebreakers.

As for the battles themselves, I am thinking of giving each commander the ability to give each of their toons a formation to use during the battle. Different formations would have different stats and each formation would take a certain amount of time to "teach" to your toon in order for them to be able to use it during a battle. The formation that you choose for the battle will be PM'd to me, and then faced off against the other teams formation for the respective toon. So it is kind of a rock paper scissors decision. I will explain how damage is dealt later. If a toon completely freezes or disables the opposing toon, they will then wait for an opposing toon to defeat one of their own, and fight them. Once all the enemy soldiers are frozen or disabled, the team will will win if they have: 4 damaged or uninjured soldiers to put their helmets on the enemy's gate to open it, and 1 completely uninjured soldier to enter the gate. If that happens, that team wins. If one team wins, but does not have enough troops to enter the gate, the match is a draw.

The stats for formations that I can think of are as follows:

Time: the time it takes to teach it to a toon. Each team will get an allotted time between battles to teach formations
Firepower: (reduces effectiveness of enemy evasion)
Protection: (reduces effectiveness of enemy firepower)
Evasion: (reduces effectiveness of enemy accuracy)
Accuracy (reduces effectiveness of enemy Protection)

When two toons face off, their stats will be modified based on the other teams stats. Since Firepower reduces evasion, the enemy's evasion will be subtracted by half your teams firepower. Both teams get this modifier for all four of their stats. The results will be rounded to the nearest whole number (1 is the minimum) then, the calculations will begin.

The first calculation is on number of shots hit. It will be:   ((Firepower-Protection)*(1d6 roll)*(# of healthy or damaged soldiers remaining)/20=number of shots hit.

From here, I need help finding a way to factor in Evasion and Accuracy and a dice roll into deciding whether the shot will be damaging or disabling.

The shots are randomly distributed on the toons 10 members. A damaged soldier will still be able to fight like normal, but any shot afterwards will be disabling.
Each cycle, these calculations will be decided to determine the new number of healthy/damaged soldiers, and the calculations will begin again. It will end when one toon has all of its members disabled.


I need feedback on this. Specifically, I need a way to calculate whether a shot will be damaging or disabling. Please respond. Thank you.

[Draignean]

Step aside, one abuser of overly complex mechanics coming through.

Okay, so if your hit rate generates a certain number of impacts, you want your second calculation to generate a percentage. A 0 would indicate that every shot was damaging, and a 1 would indicate that every shot was disabling. Ideally, we want to strike between a 0.25 and 0.75 for most rolls.

We know we have a term that looks like  (ACC-EVA). However, if we're multiply, there is the potential for this term to go negative, which would produce... odd results. However, this flaw is present in the original equation, so we'll leave it in for the moment and a present an alternative rework at the end.

(ACC-EVA)*(1d6)*(#Remaining soldiers) Is the core of the original equation. To turn this into a number between 0 and 1 we can alter the equation to,

[(ACC-EVA)*(1d6-1)*(#Remaining soldiers)]/[(ACC-EVA)*(5)*(#Remaining soldiers)] Cancel worthless terms to yield...
[(ACC-EVA)*(1d6-1)*(#Remaining soldiers)]/[(ACC-EVA)*(5)

This generates an equation that is 1 if the attacker rolls a 5, and 0 if the roll a 1. If you want to think of it as the defender rolling, subtract the result from 1.

However, the above methods have significant flaws, some of which are present in the original hit equation. Notably, the above equation is undefined whenever ACC = EVA, it will generate bizarre values when EVA exceeds ACC, and it doesn't take into account the difference between damaged and healthy soldiers. We can patch the equation with this new form,

[(ADJ_ACC/ADJ_EVA)*(1d6-1)]/[(ACC/{0.5*EVA})*(5)]

Where ADJ_EVA = {EVA*(#HealthyDefSoldiers/#RemainingDefSoldiers) + 0.5*EVA*(#DamagedDefSoldiers/#RemainingDefSoldiers)}
         ADJ_ACC = {ACC*(#HealthyAttSoldiers/#RemainingAttSoldiers) + 0.5*ACC*(#DamagedAttSoldiers/#RemainingAtSoldiers)}
This equation allows use to simulate damaged soldiers having worse evasion than healthy soldiers, and likewise with accuracy.

This new equation is only undefined when ACC = 0 or EVA = 0. (Or when there are no remaining soldiers, but that's irrelevant). This can easily be patched by starting the base value of all stats to be 1. However, the form of this new equation is different enough from the original that we should probably rework that one too. However, that one is relatively easy to massage...

A toon has 40 soldiers, and (unless you're draggin') 4 toons of 10 soldiers... So...


[(ADJ_FIR/ADJ_PRO)*(1d6-1)]/[(FIR/{0.5*PRO})*(5)]*(10/#RemainingAttSoldiers)

Where ADJ_FIR = {FIR*(#HealthyAttSoldiers/#RemainingAttSoldiers) + 0.5*FIR*(#DamagedAttSoldiers/#RemainingAttSoldiers)}
         ADJ_PRO = {PRO*(#HealthyAttSoldiers/#RemainingAttSoldiers) + 0.5*PRO*(#DamagedAttSoldiers/#RemainingAttSoldiers)}

This is essentially the same equation as above, except we're now saying that we want a number between 0 and 10. (0% and 100% hit rate). The additional #RemainingAttSoldiers avoids the conservation of Ninjitsu problems where the attacker could still get 10 hits off with a single soldier.

So, need to test these equations, but they look decent. Have to go or I would run through them further myself.

PPE: Parentheses might be a little off. I noticed and fixed one error before it hit, but there may be others.

[origamiscienceguy]

That is very helpful, but for simplicity's sake, I would prefer to have damaged and healthy perform the same. The books imply that soldiers could still perform well even when damaged. Also, number of remaining soldiers shouldn't factor into this equation. It should just be based on # of shots hit, which it is a percentage of.

I am thinking possibly

[(Acc-.5Eva(minimum value of 1))*(1d6)*3(maximum value of 100)]/100 yields a percentage.

 I am planning on stats not exceeding 6, so the absolute minimum percentage you could get is a 3% and the max is a 100%. I don't think that this is too overpowered, since 2 damaging shots on the same person= a disabling shot. So you could just overwhelm them with multiple shots rather than accurate ones.

[IronyOwl]

That sounds rather complicated. If we've got one Team Red with 5F/6P/3E/3A and one Team Blue with 3F/6P/3E/5A, Team Red's actual stats end up as 2F/4P/2E/2A, while Team Blue gets 0F/5P/1E/4A. When Team Red attacks, it rolls (-3 * [1d6] * 10) / 20, which in this particular case means nothing happens; Team Blue attacks with (-1 * [1d6] * 10) / 20, which is likewise a flop.

Adding ten to each number gives Red 15F/16P/13E/13A and Blue 13F/16P/13E/15A, or (15-(0.5*16))=7F/(16-(0.5*15))=9P/(13-(0.5*13))=7E/(13-(0.5*13))=7A for Red and I've Lost The Will To Live for Blue.

Assuming that defensive stats will always be lower than offensive stats and rearranging our bonuses accordingly, we get 5F/2P/1E/3A for Red and 3F/2P/1E/5A for Blue, which is computed down to 4F/0P/0E/1A for Red and 2F/1P/-1E/5A for Blue. When Red attacks, he hits (3 * [1d6] * 10) / 20 times, or 0.5 * 3 * [1d6] per soldier remaining. When Blue attacks, he hits (2 * [1d6] * 10) / 20 times, or 0.5 * 2 * [1d6] per soldier remaining.

THEN we can move on to calculating what each Hit does!


So yes, as far as I can tell this thing is nightmarish to run. Most notably you're double dipping with the (X - Y; X = A - 0.5B, Y = B - 0.5A) type thing; you should probably commit to either calculating everything ahead of time so it's ready to go for the rest of battle, or making the calculations simple enough that running them directly off opposed stats is easy. I don't see a mechanical reason to attempt both.

Ninja'd by another calculations fiend, I see.