From: Mikko Kurki-Suonio <maxxon@s...>
Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 10:45:43 +0300 (EEST)
Subject: The dreaded parity thing (again)
OPIONION ALERT: If you can't agree to disagree on matters of opinion, please don't read this. Ãrjan: > On a floating-edge table, any ship with a single Class-4 or bigger Erm. How many ships in FB1 carry class-4's? Off the top of my head, I recall ONE. Bigger ones? None, was it? If you know what the other guy is bringing while he gets no such warning, it is not too hard to devise a custom countermove. However, I wouldn't call that a fair setup either. (I get this vision of a really stupid competition where the winner keeps his fleet (maybe we might even allow repair) and the loser gets to do a complete redesign -- almost guaranteed to go back-and-forth...) Remember my point about two different kinds of point systems? Well, I have a similar one about design systems: There's countermove balancing. This is saying A is balanced because there exists some B that counters it (which is countered by C which is...) This can get very GW-esque very quickly. To counter the gimmick of the week, you need the countergimmick of the week (figures sold separately) and if you don't have it, bang, game over. If you don't "follow" the game for a little while, you don't know the current gimmicks and, bang, you're dead again. In the very extreme it leads to what I call the "Oracle situation": Assume there is the "Oracle" you could buy. He costs 99% of your points, but if you have him, you automatically win. Unless the other guy also has one, in which case they cancel out and the rest of your troops actually fight. The net effect is that both sides end up spending a portion of their resources in compulsory countermeasures, which don't really affect the play in any way after that. Hmmm... sounds a lot like ballistic nuclear missiles, doesn't it? OTOH, there's zero-average balancing. That means to take advantage A, you must take disadvantage B. An average combatant, while outclassed in A has a perfect opportunity to exploit B (i.e. you don't need a specialized B-exploitation design). How does this apply to FT? Benchmarking. Lacking anything else, we might call the "official" FB designs the benchmark. (Sorry, ship registry -- electronic only doesn't count) Thus, any kustom killa design should have a reasonable counter in the published official designs. If there isn't, soon all you see is everyone flying kustom killa's of their own and one begins to wonder what's the use of the "official" designs? Examples of bad designs? A way to spank newbies? (Car Wars used to have this problem. You just couldn't compete with a sheet car. I could also mention a previous edition of a certain space combat game, but shall leave it unnamed...) P.S. Am I just getting old, but why doesn't the idea of rolling damage for 40 fighter groups sound appealing to me? Maybe I should do an opinion piece on megalomania... P.P.S. No fjords in either of our countries. And it's FENNOscandia if you include Finland.