Do 1/3 of Wesnoth players really want a non-random mode?
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The outcome of this poll only indicates what active forum users who bother to vote think. It does not tell what people playing Wesnoth but not participating forums think.
As we don't know their opinion, and even if we would know - devs make the choices. There are no 1/3 or 2/3 majority rules. If you want to have such rules start your own project and there you are free to have such bureaucratic rules.
When devs are unsure which path to choose... then we ask for the advice/opinion of players.
- Miyo
As we don't know their opinion, and even if we would know - devs make the choices. There are no 1/3 or 2/3 majority rules. If you want to have such rules start your own project and there you are free to have such bureaucratic rules.
When devs are unsure which path to choose... then we ask for the advice/opinion of players.
- Miyo
miyo wrote:The outcome of this poll only indicates what active forum users who bother to vote think. It does not tell what people playing Wesnoth but not participating forums think.
As we don't know their opinion, and even if we would know - devs make the choices. There are no 1/3 or 2/3 majority rules. If you want to have such rules start your own project and there you are free to have such bureaucratic rules.
When devs are unsure which path to choose... then we ask for the advice/opinion of players.
- Miyo
It is actually intended to get a certain someone to please drop it and/or move the discussion elsewhere
Hope springs eternal.
Wesnoth acronym guide.
Wesnoth acronym guide.
Funny. The best attack sequence can be calculated in both cases, only with randomness it's even more complicated than without it and you don't obtain a sequence but a decision tree. Otherwise nothing changes. Even the complexity is so high in both cases that the difference probably doesn't matter much. The main difference is the feel factor -- playing chess and playing Russian roulette are two very different kinds of fun...Viliam wrote:Imagine 10 your units and 7 enemy units close to each other, now how many combinations of attacks are there? And you want to use the best combination, don't you? If you do not calculate best combinations, and opponent does, it can be a big disadvantage. But calculating all possible 10 vs 7 unit attack orders, it too much, too boring. Without randomness, more (deeper) calculation means advantage, but removes fun. With randomness, too deep calculations become almost useless.
That said, I voted for ``I don't care as long as I can swtich it off''.
-std::string font_name = "Vera.ttf";
+std::string font_name = "Bepa-Roman.ttf";
+std::string font_name = "Bepa-Roman.ttf";
Try it out...
... in another game: ASC (Advanced Strategic Command, http://www.asc-hq.org/ for Linux and Windows, also free software).
They have other features I'm not too keen on (too many units to move every turn!), and it's tanks instead of elves, but they do have a totally deterministic combat system. I kind of like it. I think it teaches good habits too: you can't attack and hope, you know when you're going to succeed.
A really deterministic combat system would require a total rewrite of the combat code, and it would require a complete rebalancing of all the scenarios - have fun... giving people the choice is even worse, drastically increasing the maintenance load.
So while a deterministic combat system could work, I think replacing Wesnoth's current one would be a huge effort and not worth it. There are plenty of other places non-determinism can kill you (recruitment, AI, etc.) so actually getting rid of it would be a real challenge.
That said, I haven't played Wesnoth for very long, so don't take my word for what would improve the game.
They have other features I'm not too keen on (too many units to move every turn!), and it's tanks instead of elves, but they do have a totally deterministic combat system. I kind of like it. I think it teaches good habits too: you can't attack and hope, you know when you're going to succeed.
A really deterministic combat system would require a total rewrite of the combat code, and it would require a complete rebalancing of all the scenarios - have fun... giving people the choice is even worse, drastically increasing the maintenance load.
So while a deterministic combat system could work, I think replacing Wesnoth's current one would be a huge effort and not worth it. There are plenty of other places non-determinism can kill you (recruitment, AI, etc.) so actually getting rid of it would be a real challenge.
That said, I haven't played Wesnoth for very long, so don't take my word for what would improve the game.
I think it has basically been agreed there will be no deterministic combat mode. Dave (main dev) says randomness is an important part of the game.
For I am Turin Turambar - Master of Doom, by doom mastered. On permanent Wesbreak. Will not respond to private messages. Sorry!
And I hate stupid people.
The World of Orbivm
And I hate stupid people.
The World of Orbivm
Personally, I would prefer even "more" randomness.
The current rules are like playing chess with dice. In each swing, you either do lots of damage or none at all; moreover units typically have few swings. Damage is thus distributed in a very coarse way: 14-3 means either 0, 14, 28 or 42 damage per turn, and the defense percentage plays a role too. This table shows the probability of each of these amounts of total damage for each defense percentage:
DF% 00.0 14.0 28.0 42.0
20% .008 .096 .384 .512
30% .027 .189 .441 .343
40% .064 .288 .432 .216
50% .125 .375 .375 .125
60% .216 .432 .288 .064
70% .343 .441 .189 .027
It would be interesting to allow damage to have a smoother distribution. This could be achieved (to some extent) by having the typical unit have more swings with less damage per swing, so 14-3 becomes 7-6 or 6-7 or 3-14, or even 1-42, a la the Cuttle Fish. However, this is a binomial distribution so damage would tend to cluster in the middle of the range, close to 21 in this case, and the extremes are much less likely.
I was thinking more along the lines of each swing being uniformly distributed from 0 to n (instead of being either 0 or n). The sum of uniformly distributed damages from k swings is then less chunky. This is almost the standard "throw an n-sided die k times" calculation from AD&D and its ilk, with the die having n+1 faces including a face with 0.
However, this would be a different game, not Wesnoth. It would reward "average" behaviour, instead of rewarding risk taking like Wesnoth does. It would also mean a much easier game for beginners, with more predictability. And we don't want that, do we?
The current rules are like playing chess with dice. In each swing, you either do lots of damage or none at all; moreover units typically have few swings. Damage is thus distributed in a very coarse way: 14-3 means either 0, 14, 28 or 42 damage per turn, and the defense percentage plays a role too. This table shows the probability of each of these amounts of total damage for each defense percentage:
DF% 00.0 14.0 28.0 42.0
20% .008 .096 .384 .512
30% .027 .189 .441 .343
40% .064 .288 .432 .216
50% .125 .375 .375 .125
60% .216 .432 .288 .064
70% .343 .441 .189 .027
It would be interesting to allow damage to have a smoother distribution. This could be achieved (to some extent) by having the typical unit have more swings with less damage per swing, so 14-3 becomes 7-6 or 6-7 or 3-14, or even 1-42, a la the Cuttle Fish. However, this is a binomial distribution so damage would tend to cluster in the middle of the range, close to 21 in this case, and the extremes are much less likely.
I was thinking more along the lines of each swing being uniformly distributed from 0 to n (instead of being either 0 or n). The sum of uniformly distributed damages from k swings is then less chunky. This is almost the standard "throw an n-sided die k times" calculation from AD&D and its ilk, with the die having n+1 faces including a face with 0.
However, this would be a different game, not Wesnoth. It would reward "average" behaviour, instead of rewarding risk taking like Wesnoth does. It would also mean a much easier game for beginners, with more predictability. And we don't want that, do we?