[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Artillery and sea units (PR#1476)

[Thanasis Kinias <tkinias@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

scripsit Brandon Craig Rhodes:
> "Ross W. Wetmore" <rwetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> 
> > Having destroyers stand up to a sub attack sounds interesting, and this
> > might make them the preferred defender. I like the scissors/paper/rock 
> > combat strategies that simple attack/defense modifiers really doesn't 
> > handle well.
> 
> I have been thinking about this very hard.  The idea of having RPS
> (rock paper scissors, the order I learned them in) relationships among
> various groups of units is intriguing, but can it be made to have any
> historical basis?  

RPS doesn't map neatly onto real relationship, but the principle of a
system which isn't clearly min-maxable is appealing and realistic.

There's a story about a kung fu instructor who asked his student
whether a knife, a handgun, or a hand grenade was the best weapon.  The
student said, "the hand grenade, of course," to which the instructor
replied "what if you are attacked in a telephone booth?"  The student
then said, "a knife," and the instructor asked "what if your enemy is
across a room with an axe?," etc.

Applying a richer combat model, which accounts for the complex
interaction among terrain, firepower, and mobility would go a long way
toward giving the game RPS-like choices which must be made.  For
example, if you send Armor to attack Alpine Troops in Mountains, you'll
get creamed, but if those same Alpine Troops are defending in Desert,
they're panzer fodder.

I adapted Dupuy's QJM to handle similar scale combats over the period
AD 1000 to 2000 for another wargame project, and I'm working on how it
might be used for Freeciv, if we can get stacking.

There's a lot of math involved in the system, which makes it hard to
min-max, but it's all basic plug-and-chug arithmetic so it shouldn't take
long for the server to crunch the numbers, particularly because a combat 
would be resolved in one iteration, or two if there were a pursuit
battle.

> (Ignore for the moment that we cannot model them.)

Ignored ;)

-- 
Thanasis Kinias
Web Developer, Information Technology
Graduate Student, Department of History
Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona, U.S.A.

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