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| City: | Fort Wayne  | | Personal Data: | Male, | | Membership | 19years 199days ago. | | Last Login | 14years 187days ago. | | Last Move | 16years 237days ago. | HeadMMoid is currently  | Send a mail to HeadMMoid |
| Message header | Area/Game: | Blue Max | | Topic: | Program code error | | Subject: | Re: why not "retire with honour" ? | | Posted by: | HeadMMoid  - 19years 77days ago. |
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| Message text Bombadil wrote:
pokerguy wrote: sven3012 wrote: HeadMMoid wrote: SkunkGuru wrote: HeadMMoid wrote: SkunkGuru wrote: It looks like you didn't get "Honour" because: 1) Your observer still had a gun. 2) The Honour system simply doesn't take into account situations (like this) where it does make good sense to get out of the fight. yes, but what could I do ? no gun, no observer, I *must* retire...  and in a League, in this case I lose a lot of points... I don't think that's correct  Well, what is correct and how things work are, as here, often quite different. I would argue that it isn't "correct" that someone can win a game if they died in the fight. I just lost a game by shooting down my last opponent. Unfortunately, for me, he had more points at the end. In the real world, the one who came home ... won. I agree with you, that there was nothing else you could reasonably do. Flying around waiting to be shot down would be stupid. But the rules are set up to penalize that sort of behavior. Personally, I think too much emphasis is placed on individual action (i.e., shooting the enemy), and not enough on scenario outcomes and in-game death. Maybe the system could issue 25 "bonus points" for anyone left alive at the end. Staying alive wouldn't count as an extra kill, but would give the same points, encouraging team work, discouraging early exits and making it more likely that the survivor wins (as in real combat  ). Sadly you'd probably get the odd pilot who wants to fly around the edge avoiding the fight just to get the survival bonus Plus that would heavily favor the planes with the most fuel. A number of players currently use that lame tactic, not infrequently in a modified way. A German plane with 30 some fuel duels an Allied plane with 50+ fuel in a game of maneuver. The scores are tied after a number of turns and the Allied pilot scoots off to his side of the board. The German lacks the fuel to bring about further combat thus allowing a cheep kill for the Allied player or it forces the German to exit because of fuel giving the Allied player a one point fuel victory. As this ongoing topic of "Honour" keeps being discussed, perhaps this "honourable tactic" needs to be addressed? One wonders how much this tactic was used by the Allies in WW1? Bombadil
Of course, the Blue Max rules favor aircraft with more fuel, and more efficient (i.e., lower fuel requirement) maneuvers. This hits on one of my greatest criticisms of the Blue Max game system, and one which, from reading what the author wrote, showed a serious lack of understanding about World War I air battles.
During the war both sides developed their separate aircraft design philosophies to meet their own needs. With regard to endurance, as the war progressed, the Allied Powers tended to build fighter aircraft which could stay in the air longer. In most cases this translated to carrying more fuel. This did not, however, mean the German fighters could remain in a fight for less time; it meant that they tended to fly shorter patrols or to react to Allied incursions behind their lines. Both sides were well aware of the fuel requirements of combat, and made provisions for it. The designer of Blue Max apparently either didn’t understand this distinction, or chose to ignore it while seeking a method for limiting the length of fights.
Arbitrarily limited combat time based on overall endurance makes no more sense than limited altitude (in the multilevel game) based on the maximum altitude of each aircraft (another unfortunate one of the author’s major errors). |
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