Thinking about a points system

[fredmiracle]

OK, my sense is that it may be a while before the designers give us a point system/scenario builder.

I, for one, would like to have one. I don't have a lot of experience coming up with something like that, but collectively could we devise something workable?

We have basic stats for each ship (i.e. burden, hull boxes, hence total damage capacity; total and average gunnery factors; total and average musketry factors; crew actions)

Some initial musings:
- In a sense, maybe, the value of a ship comes down to its ability to kill and its ability to survive. And to get a basic ship value, maybe these two factors can simply be multiplied together? (this would account for the superiority of SOLs, since they excel frigates in both these respects by roughly a factor of two. Two frigates (1*1 + 1*1) < one SOL (2 * 2)...)

- But is this naive?--at some point is there value to having more hulls or less hulls? Like, if I have two ships to your one, maybe it's hard for you to avoid a rake from one or the other. Or if I have one ship against your two, I can potentially use both broadsides, but neither of your ships will ever be able to do that to me. Do these considerations wash? If there is positive value to, say, simply having another ship, then that would suggest a flat nonzero "base level" from which any ship starts.

- Calculating survivability is maybe easiest, simply burden * hull boxes. But this ignores the fact that every hull bears nearly the same risk from fires, leaks and crew destruction. So maybe it something like ((burden + 5) * hull boxes) ?

- Presumably destructive capacity is determined by adding together gunnery, musketry and melee, with each of these normalized to some scale (or are they already normalized since it's all numbers of chits drawn?), and furthermore with each given some relative weighting reflecting their importance in normal game play.

- In general gunnery and musketry do seem to have comparable number of factors, on average. One naive rule is that musketry is worth 1/x of gunnery, since it only has a range of 1/x on the ruler, so should come into play a lot less often; plus the destructive value of musketry is less since it can only hit the crew (or is this actually more useful)?

- Melee is perhaps trickier. Melee value for a ship, I guess, is simply burden. But then the question becomes how often will melee happen. Will it be rare or common? Simply grappling is by no means a sure thing, even after you've made contact.

- And what about ship maneuverability? Ideally a faster and more maneuverable ship can survive better, by avoiding fire, and also damage the enemy better, by maneuvering for advantageous angles and raking shots. Is there some multiplier to both these factors based on the sailing deck and base card the ship uses?

- It seems like most (or all?) of the Captain and Crew cards, and the Poor Training rules will not have static values, but the value will depend on the ship it's assigned to.

- Poor Gunners seems fairly straightforward--the gunnery portion of destructive capacity is just 2/3 normal. This will require a either spreadsheet calculation or an "approximate rule of thumb"

- I don't have much of an idea how to assign a value to Poor Sailors. A randomly lost action every other turn could be critical or could be not that bad. Certainly not good anyway. But hard to put a value on... thoughts?

- I don't have the C&C cards with me, so unless someone is kind enough to post the text for them, I don't have any place to even start thinking about how to assign values to them--I don't remember them well enough from my quick perusal before hopping a flight.

- Can we assign values to forts? Normally I would expect the enemy to avoid them, unless scenario rules force them to engage. Is there a strategy for hiding under the guns of your fort? Do we assume they will get into action "X percent of the time" and just apply a straight multiplier...? Or do we give them a 100% value, and let scenario builders decide how much to deduct based on the conditions...


hmm, a lot of questions, but I'm sure many people have more experience thinking about these kinds of things. Anyone care to weigh in?

[AlyssaFaden]

Yeah, we did something similar with Torn Armor (which I won't get into here) and we ended up with a program calculating probabilities. It quickly got beyond my spreadsheet skills. I do however have an interest in figuring this out as I'd love to get a sense for one ship vs. another, one trait against another, and those pesky little extra captain/crew skill cards ....

[fredmiracle]

Yes, such an attempt certainly doesn't need to be perfect or to fetishize precision, while still offering ways to think about the different ships and game components, and made some broad comparisons/judgements

[David Manley]

I believe there is a draft points system that Andrea is or was considering. No details though.

[fredmiracle]

I believe there is a draft points system that Andrea is or was considering. No details though.

Well, in the rule book I believe there was a blurb about "go look at our website for the scenario builder rules." So I'm sure something is planned at some point. On the other hand, even the (in my mind) simpler things like basic historical scenarios are tricking out fairly slowly. So my sense is that it will be a long time before an official points system is offered. Hope I'm wrong though...

[The Royal Hajj]

You might also want to have a look on the Aerodrome site. There are several good threads over there about a points system for that game. Since the two games share a good portion of their foundations with each other, you might find them useful to get started. Andrea even posted his suggested point calculations for the planes over there.

[fredmiracle]

You might also want to have a look on the Aerodrome site. There are several good threads over there about a points system for that game. Since the two games share a good portion of their foundations with each other, you might find them useful to get started. Andrea even posted his suggested point calculations for the planes over there.

Thank you for the pointer. It looks like, if I comprehended all that accurately, that the gunfire component and damage capacity components are each assigned a value on something like a 20-40 scale, and maneuverability is assigned on a 0-20 scale.

On the one hand, I suspect maneuverability is a bigger issue in the airplane game, since there is a lot more possible variety (I suppose...?) On the other hand, the combat portion of SoG is more complicated, since there are two damage tracks and multiple ways to inflict damage.

Another thing that appears quite difference is that ships' capacity to inflict damage degrades as they themselves take hits, whereas that doesn't seem to be the case in WoG.

[The Royal Hajj]

There are a lot of differences. Those threads were just to give you an idea and insight to what has been done before and what methods were used. If you found and read the one by Andrea, it could give you a better idea about how he thinks these things through.

[AlyssaFaden]

I own both games and the maneuverability in SoG is more complex imho, even taking into account changing elevations in WoG. The ability for a ship to tack close to the wind is a factor here and those angles for green/orange and certainly red may be something you want to accommodate for. Certainly just doing damage output and maneuverability is the simplest baseline, perhaps counting the broadside damage track higher than the crew track, due to the crew track being so close. I think burden and sheer should also have a factor, particularly burden, as should the number of boxes for the ships hull and crew spaces.

The difficulty is going to come in understanding how the additional cards or optional rules affect the game: is a Charismatic Captain the equivalent to "Give them Grog?" Better? Worse? And how do you quantify that enough to be able to assign a number to it? Therein lies the crux to me.

[Diamondback]

The other thing is, some crew cards should have a sliding scale: since there are some that benefit small ships more, and others large ships more, those who benefit most should have the highest associated cost. For example, Poor Gunners on a Wave 2 Ocean-class 118-gunner should be a HUGE discount, while on a little Swan sloop it's kinda already on its knees gunnery-wise so you ain't really gonna be able to add or subtract much. Conversely, Repair abilities (including any kind of "ignore damage" or "damage reduction") should cost more on a smaller ship that has less damage points to spare.

[AlyssaFaden]

The other thing is, some crew cards should have a sliding scale: since there are some that benefit small ships more, and others large ships more, those who benefit most should have the highest associated cost. For example, Poor Gunners on a Wave 2 Ocean-class 118-gunner should be a HUGE discount, while on a little Swan sloop it's kinda already on its knees gunnery-wise so you ain't really gonna be able to add or subtract much. Conversely, Repair abilities (including any kind of "ignore damage" or "damage reduction") should cost more on a smaller ship that has less damage points to spare.

This is a fair point, but REALLY hard to translate into any form of point system unless you start doing percentage adjustments: "ship cost +10%!" Which may be doable, but otherwise reallllly tough and not extensible.

[fredmiracle]

I own both games and the maneuverability in SoG is more complex imho, even taking into account changing elevations in WoG. The ability for a ship to tack close to the wind is a factor here and those angles for green/orange and certainly red may be something you want to accommodate for. Certainly just doing damage output and maneuverability is the simplest baseline, perhaps counting the broadside damage track higher than the crew track, due to the crew track being so close. I think burden and sheer should also have a factor, particularly burden, as should the number of boxes for the ships hull and crew spaces.

As of right now, at least, it looks like veer, burden, the angles on the base cards, and the maneuver decks themselves will all be tied together pretty closely, so we could assign a single maneuverability value that subsumes them all. Of course how important relative to gunnery or damage capacity is another question.

The difficulty is going to come in understanding how the additional cards or optional rules affect the game: is a Charismatic Captain the equivalent to "Give them Grog?" Better? Worse? And how do you quantify that enough to be able to assign a number to it? Therein lies the crux to me.

I couldn't glean as much information as far as how the game designer assigned costs for the similar kinds of cards in WoG. I wondered if that was just more of a best guess. But I too can't see how they can be properly costed without being done on a percentage basis, which I agree is much less usable

[Diamondback]

Not as bad as it might seem... maybe make it a different point value by Rating (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Unrated).

I'd also add a House Rule for First Rates, since they were such rare and expensive symbols of national prestige, giving a bonus for sinking or Mission Killing (military term for "it may not be destroyed, but it's useless as a combat asset for the duration of this campaign and possibly longer") one.

[fredmiracle]

ok, here's an idea: maybe a middle-ground solution is to assign some cards/abilities a cost of "X points * ship burden" -- that might represent a more manageable level of complexity, while providing a "good enough" assessment of their value, given (as seems to be the case) that the variations between ships in a given rate are relatively small, and the differences between different rates are large.

EDIT: great minds think alike :)

[Diamondback]

Or, Guns, maybe "X points per Broadside number?" And there's still an inversion problem for things that disproportionately benefit Sixth Rates and Unrateds... but Fred has a good idea too. :)

[Coog]

Here is a link to the Iron Ships & Wooden Men rulebook. A list of ships with a point value is on pages 30 and 31. Values are given for each crew quality, but only average quality could be used for SOG. Point values for other than average could be used if Captain and Crew cards were being used.

http://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/7090001.PDF

[Cmmdre]

Here is a link to the Iron Ships & Wooden Men rulebook. A list of ships with a point value is on pages 30 and 31. Values are given for each crew quality, but only average quality could be used for SOG. Point values for other than average could be used if Captain and Crew cards were being used.

http://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/7090001.PDF

Awesome thanks for the link Bobby.

[Coog]

Here is a link to the Iron Ships & Wooden Men rulebook. A list of ships with a point value is on pages 30 and 31. Values are given for each crew quality, but only average quality could be used for SOG. Point values for other than average could be used if Captain and Crew cards were being used.

http://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/7090001.PDF

Smaller ships and their point values for are not listed in the lists on pages 30 and 31 but by looking at the scenarios involving smaller ships, point values can be found.

[David Manley]

Checking my files ive found that Andrea has indeed created a points system which includes the effects of the crew and captain cards and the file lists the points values for the series 1, series 2 and special ships (VIC and CON?. Unfortunately he hasn't said what the system is in terms of how the points values are calculated, andthe file isn't fif open release.

But it does look like there will be an official version soon(ish)

[Gunner]

Checking my files ive found that Andrea has indeed created a points system which includes the effects of the crew and captain cards and the file lists the points values for the series 1, series 2 and special ships (VIC and CON?. Unfortunately he hasn't said what the system is in terms of how the points values are calculated, andthe file isn't fif open release.

But it does look like there will be an official version soon(ish)

Thanks Dave. That's good(ish)news.

[fredmiracle]

well this is silly, since I can't even playtest it, but for kicks here's a stab at a point system. then I can see how far away it is from the designers' when they announce it...

Courageuse 1778		28
Unite 1787		26
La Concorde		27
Junon			26
HMS Concorde		27
HMS Unite		27
Hermione 1779		26
L'Inconstante		26
Genereux		73
Aquilon			73
Fougueux		73
Redoubtable 1791	77
HMS Impetueux		76
HMS Spartiate		73
Commerce de Bordeaux	72
Duguay-Trouin		73
HMS Terpsichore		20
HMS Meleager		21
HMS Juno		20
HMS Castor		20
Embuscade		18
Le Succes		20
HMS Cleopatra		20
HMS Iphigenia		20
HMS Defense		70
HMS Vanguard		70
HMS Bellerophon		70
HMS Defiance		69
Le Berwick		70
Le Swiftsure		70
HMS Bellona		71
HMS Goliath		70
Fort 1 (9 fort/3 arcs)	36**
Fort 2 (9 fort/2 arcs)	35**
Fort 3 (7 fort/2 arcs)	18**
Fort 4 (7 fort/1 arc)	14**
Fort 5 (3 fort/1 arc)	5**

Gunners Lack Training	-(2 * Burden)      [NOTE: originally was (-3 * Burden)]
Sailors Lack Training	-(1 * Burden)      [NOTE: originally was (-2 * Burden)]

Charismatic Captain	+(1 * Burden)
Fast Thinking		+5
Intuitive Captain	+4
Iron Captain		+1
Lucky Captain		+2

Elite Marines		+3
Good Aim		+5
Hold Fast		+(1 * Burden)
Skillful Quartermaster	+(1 * Burden)
Well Trained Gunners	+(1 * Burden)


** Fort values are assuming the fort is unlikely to come into major action--i.e. it may constrict the opposition's movement or be used in tandem with friendly ships, but will often be avoided by the enemy. If the scenario enforces that the battery will come into effective, sustained contact with the enemy, then the cost could be doubled or tripled.

[Пилот]

Thanks for sharing! Could you give us the formula for calculating values?

I've noticed something - if frigate, HMS Terpsichore for example, would have untrained both crew and gunners, it would cost 10pts. So you could match 7 such ships against, for example, Le Berwick. Seven ships (even as weak as they can be by this rules) against one are huge advantage - considering veer and possibility to rake enemy.

Perhaps some mechanism, something like:

2 units = combined value +10 pts
3 units = combined value +20 pts
4 units = combined value +30 pts
etc.

would prevent this?

[fredmiracle]

Thanks for sharing! Could you give us the formula for calculating values?

Right off, I will admit that this is all just playing around with numbers, since I won't have the chance to actually try anything out myself until April or so. But it seems to make some logical sense to me. It's partially inspired by some of the stuff I saw on the WoG site.

I'd love to hear what people have to say, either to improve it, reflect game experiences, or simply kibbutz.


1. General Formula

Points = (Offensive Strength) * (Defensive Strength) * (Maneuverability) / 320

I felt like for ships (at least) a multiplicative formula would be better than an additive one:
- It reflects the fact that it's more than additive value to have a platform that is both heavy-hitting and can deal out a lot of damage.
- It reflects the fact that unlike planes, the combat power of ships degrades as they take damage. 10 damage points take out a significant portion of frigate's firepower, while not putting much of a dent in an SOLs
- It seems to make good sense of the "SOL much better than 2 frigates" consensus

320 is just a scaling factor chosen to result in ship values roughly in the range 1-100 (guessing on what the stats of a 1st rate might be...)


2. Offensive Strength

Offensive Strength = ((Average Gunnery Factor) * 4 + (Average Musketry Factor)) * 2.5

This formula assumes gunnery is a lot more important than musketry. It leaves off melee combat, but that basically tracks the others anyway. The average gunnery and musketry values I took from the spreadsheet I posted a couple of weeks ago.

The 2.5 is simply a normalizing factor that results in 3rd rates having an Offensive Strength of about 40, and 5th rates an OS of about 20.


3. Defensive Strength

Defensive Strength = ((# Hull Boxes) - 1) * (Burden) + 1

This leaves off the issues of crew boxes, etc. in favor of a straightforward calculation of the minimal number of damage points needed to cover all the hull boxes.

This does differ a bit from the spreadsheet I posted, since, as was recently pointed out on the board, the ship surrenders when the last hull box takes even one damage.


4. Maneuverability

Maneuverability =
. . . Deck C [Amazon frigates]: 20
. . . Deck A [Concorde frigates: 19
. . . Deck D [Bellona SOLs]: 15
. . . Deck B [Temeriere SOLs]: 14

This is an arbitrary value assigned on a scale of 1-20, to reflect the Maneuver Deck, Veer, and the angles on the Base Card. I'm open to suggestions. The right spread between frigates and SOLs seems pretty hard to determine.

Not knowing what to do with the Forts, I simply assigned them a maneuver value of 5 with the random justification that that's 1/3 of a SOL, and maybe they get into the action 1/3 of the time...


Finally, HMS Meleager was rounding to the same value as the other Amazons, but it was clearly the best, so I added one point :)


Next post I will put some thoughts on the modifiers...

[fredmiracle]

OK, here were my thoughts on the modifiers (oh, and I don't have access to the cards, I'm just going off the list of names and my swiss-cheese memory, so I may have screwed something up):


Gunners Lacking Training
The worst case here is that your gunnery is going to be 2/3 as effective. Of course the actual result should be something better than that--hopefully you can find some cycles to reload, and at a minimum you always have that big first broadside to bring up your average. Anyway, plugging this adjustment into the formula for an "average frigate," the value of the ship declines by about 7, and for an "average Ship of the Line" it declines about 20. Seeking a burden-multiplier type adjustment, and eyeballing the downgrade as somewhere between (2.5 * burden) and (4 * burden), I settled on (3 * burden). This does potentially advantage the frigate, which at the time seemed OK, but maybe it's too much. It may be that a simple linear computation based on burden doesn't work perfectly.

Sailors Lacking Training
Who knows what this is worth. In principle, 1/8 of your orders won't be carried out. In practice, especially toward the beginning of the game, you may have extra orders anyway. But in a critical moment or when your crew is reduced it could be crucial. The (2 * burden) represents a diminishment of about 1/6 of fighting capabilities. Maybe that rates the detriment too highly. If it was (1 * burden), then it would reflect a 1/12 diminishment of fighting capacity.

Good Aim
This seemed like it should be a constant value, since it gives any ship an additional gun factor on two shots, regardless of the ship's size. I tried to model this by assuming that the average game is decided by no more than five critical broadsides. So if you add .4 (i.e. 2 chits / 5 broadsides) to the gunnery metrics in the formula, the "average frigate" gains 5 points and the "average SOL" 7. I went with (5).

Elite Marines
This is one is even tricker, since it's unclear how often crew elimination is going to determine the game, and how often ships will be in musket range. I handled this one like Good Aim, but assuming that there will be three critical musket exchanges. If you add 2/3 of a musket factor into the formula, the "average frigate" and the "average SOL" both gain about (3) points.

Hold Fast
Charismatic Captain
Not clear how often this will be really useful. If you are down to one crew box, you aren't up to very much fighting anyway. Presumably if you enemy is mobile and in the fight at all, they should be able to pound out a win. On the other hand, if you are grappled and in melee, this could put you over the top. In that case, you really want to be an SOL that is still dealing 5 chits of damage despite being almost dead. So a (1 * burden) factor eyeballed as reasonable.

Skillful Quartermaster
Well, my hunch is that increasing veer is more useful to an SOL than an already maneuverable frigate. But I don't know. Then I tried plugging a one higher Maneuverability score into the formulas. The "average frigate" gained 2 and the "average SOL" gained 5. So (1 * burden) looked about right.

Well Trained Gunners
In principle this should gain you 1/2 extra shot over the course of the game (most likely by getting a full shot when otherwise you would have had to continuous fire). My thought was, again if you assume 5 broadsides per game, then 1/2 a broadside effectively increases the average gunnery strength by 10%. If you plug that into the formula, the "average frigate" gains 3 points, and the "average SOL" gains 6 points. (1 * burden) looked ok.

Fast Thinking
My thinking was that this should not be a burden multiplier. Why? Well, presumably frigates have a much better repertoire of maneuvers to drop in than an SOL. It seemed powerful, and it seemed reasonable to rate it at the high end cost of the cards, as well as the high-end value of the Skilled Quartermaster. So I chose 5.

Intuitive Captain
This seemed very similar to Fast Thinking. Better because it can be used twice per game, but limited because you have to be close to your enemy to use it. Overall it seemed a shade less valuable, so I assigned it a shade less points. (4)

Iron Captain
This seemed worth not much more than zero, so that's what I gave it. (1)

Lucky Captain
This one seems hard to value. As far as I can tell, it's mostly useful in grappling and entangling situations. Not too valuable, but better than Iron Captain I suppose, so that's where I slotted it in. (2)


That's the logic, such as it is. Involves a lot of handwaving obviously, so let me know what you think...

[fredmiracle]

I've noticed something - if frigate, HMS Terpsichore for example, would have untrained both crew and gunners, it would cost 10pts. So you could match 7 such ships against, for example, Le Berwick. Seven ships (even as weak as they can be by this rules) against one are huge advantage - considering veer and possibility to rake enemy.

Perhaps some mechanism, something like:

2 units = combined value +10 pts
3 units = combined value +20 pts
4 units = combined value +30 pts
etc.

would prevent this?

That's a very good edge case.

- The first question, I think, is are you right? I believe you probably are, but it would be interesting to see how lopsided it really turned out to be.

- the second question, I think, is whether the problem is more with the basic ship values, or with the adjustments. For example, would Le Berwick have a small but significant edge over three Terpsichores normally, as the numbers would suggest? This would be interesting to play out several times and get a sense. The Amazons have a nice initial broadside, but it degrades quickly. Even with A chits, 1/3 of each chit drawn will completely fill a box on Terpsichore, not to mention the one damage chits. It probably plays to Berwicks advantage to try to soften them up from range.

- if the basic scores are ok, does that instead suggest that the adjustments are to blame, i.e. they give too much of a discount? I think maybe Untrained Sailors should be -(1 * Burden) instead. It's highly unpredictable, but in many cases will not prove pivotal until the point where you are losing anyway and your crew is diminished. Untrained Gunners was hard because it didn't necessarily seem to follow burden linearly to begin with. Also maybe it's too aggressive of an assumption that your gunnery will be reduced to 2/3, since you may find ways to avoid the enemy while you reload, etc.

So, my first impression is that maybe the adjustments should be knocked down to -(2 * Burden) for Untrained Gunners and -(1 * Burden) for Untrained Sailors. If so, then you could only buy 5 Terpsichores. Would 5 crummy Terpsichores be an even fight for Le Berwick? Certainly a lot closer.

I do like your suggestion too. Intuitively there does seem to be some intrinsic value to simply having another hull in the fight, and I'm not sure my formula captures that. That is essentially your proposal--add X points to every ship across the board.

In the end I'm not sure if that would be better or not. Effectively it would reduce the separation between frigates and SOLs. It would suggest, for example, that three standard Terpsichores should be favored, not the underdog, vs Le Berwick. My best guess is that that's probably not the case, but I haven't played enough to know.

Another possibility which is suggested by your post is that the effects of adding many ships are not additive, but multiplicative. Perhaps there is simply a point at which the swarm of gnats cannot help but overwhelm the ogre. If so, you couldn't do a flat adjustment, but instead would need a modifier more like this:
1 ship: +0
2 ships: +2
3 ships: +4
4 ships: +8
5 ships: +16
6 ships: +32
7 ships: +64

What do other people think?

Thanks for the test case and dialogue!

[Пилот]

You are welcome! And thanks a lot for good ideas. I believe you set a fine starting point to calculate point values. And true answer we will find in playing. It will be interesting to playtest Not-That-Magnificent 7.

[AlyssaFaden]

I'd be interested in crunching the numbers on that edge case. While 7 v 1 is certainly quite daunting, what if those 7 were effectively useless?

[Пилот]

I'm pretty sure they are not, at least at first 6 - 7 turns. They have better maneuvearbility, and can relatively easy out-maneuver Big Ship. Also, they have 7 first volleys, which can make enemy bleed, specialy with some raking involved. Problem occures after 3 or 4 received volleys when Little Ones start to suffer, as there is certain possibility that crew will panic and obey orders poorly. Rate of fire is something you can calculate and count on, but extinguish fire (for example) isn't - at least 1 in 8 orders, as Fred counted.

In theory, Gang of Seven would prevail, realtively easy. So, it would be nice to see what would happen in reality. But, if I would have to put a bet now, I'd put it on Little Ones.

[fredmiracle]

I tend to agree. Most should get off a 4 chit initial broadside at least. That's going to add up to a lot of damage from the get-go. Now would they be fun to play with their limitations? Maybe not so much...

Anyway, if I had my ships here, I'd try it (well, I only have 6 Amazons, so I guess it would have to be, let see... Terpsichore, Meleager, Juno, Castor, Embuscade, Cleopatra, and flagship Hermione against Le Berwick)