Mini Campaign XI Observations

[albpilot]

admin said:

albpilot said:

If that is the case then, how did you all manage to get 2 single gun tripes in the air if one of them was destroyed, and one of them was Kevin? Was Stephen flying one that was rolled up prior to the mission? I'm a bit confused now.

That's okay... its a good question.

Stephen Dale's standard Tripe was destroyed in Gm 1 and he had a replacement roll coming for a new plane. However, we didn't bother rolling up another fighter for Gm 2 because SD volunteered to fly the N.12 in Gm 2 (and would fly it again in Gm 3).

When Gm 3 came, SD rolled up another fighter (turned out to be a standard Tripe). I mistakenly noted that fighter as being assigned to Kevin, who needed a plane for Gm 3. But in reality Kevin had flown Dory's Tripe, and the newly rolled Tripe was a replacement for SD's Gm 1 loss. Make sense?

My bad for mistakenly assigning the new Tripe to Kevin... but in the end it makes no difference. We needed a new fighter and we rolled for one. Only the name on it changed.

Cool, thanks. I get confused easily.

[Stephen]

Kevin, the Germans sure need your son and brothers in the next game! If you, me and Dory make it, but Scott and Ken don't, they're gonna be in a big hurt.

[albpilot]

Germans had a better game this time out, but not enough to really gain significant ground....see Stephen Dale's details as soon as he can post it!!!!

[albpilot]

albpilot said:

Germans had a better game this time out, but not enough to really gain significant ground....see Stephen Dale's details as soon as he can post it!!!!

By the way, thanks Al...although I didn't play it as well as I could have, it was a well designed envelope.

[Stephen]

I was on the receiving end of the punishment but yes, thanks Al, it made the mission a lot more fun. This mission was enjoyable and did what it was supposed to do... give the trailing team a shot at getting back in it. I don't think was enough, but it played out well and the Germans did make up some ground.

[albpilot]

I'll tell ya, one of the interesting things about this campaign from the 'mirrors reality' aspect is that if you look at it so far, the way it has played out has been eerily like how a real war plays out. The first two games were touch and go, with one side building up a slim lead, but nothing that was decisive...then boom, one side just collapses (either through bad luck or bad decision making) for a moment which results in a massive gain for the other side, then the side that is down struggles to try to make up that lost ground but ultimately fails. So you could call game 3 the the "Waterloo" of the German side if you really wanted to. If for no other reason I think this is why this thing is a success, because to be able to model abstract things like this within the framework the game has given is pretty cool. And I'd say this illustrates some of what happened to Germany in WWI, they had better planes/equipment usually but ultimately bad decision making and bad luck were more to blame for their loss because they just fell behind the Allies and couldn't make up their deficit.

[Stephen]

I got to wondering about our past mini-campaigns and spent some time this afternoon logging all available information on them going back to 1990.

Check the ARCHIVES PAGE for the HISTORY OF MINI CAMPAIGNS. Makes for some interesting number crunching... all of it is in chart form to hopefully make easier reading.

Useless observations include...

Final-game come from behind wins have been made in M-C III and M-C X, and neither exceeded 44 points.

However, single game winning margins as high as 185 pts have been done before... however, that's not enough for the Germans in M-C XI. You guys would have to set a record of 201 pts to win it now.

80-150 pt wins do occur regularly, but the average win seems to be in the 20-50 point range.

Regarding balance in M-C's... the margin after Game 2 was as follows in the following M-C's:

MCI - 25 pts, which in retrospect looks very good
MC III - 90 pts
MC IV - 147 pts
MC V - 58 pts, not too bad at all
MC VI - 311 pts... eek
MC VII - 200+ pts
MC VIII - 176 pts
MC X - 44 pts, second closest ever to date, and
MC XI - 49 pts, third closest ever

4 of 9 known scores were over 100 pts, two of them were over 200 pts.

[albpilot]

Hey Stephen, one other question on this about scoring. When we played game 3 I think it was, you made the comment that even if the Allies didn't complete their mission the Germans wouldn't get the 100 pts for completion. However, in game 4, you made the comment that if the Germans didn't stop the troop advance the Allies would score 100 pts. I find this to be a bit contradictory but it's worth asking about, because in the latter case, the Germans could very well come close to or possibly overtake the Allies by shooting down all their planes and stopping the mission, but if it's the former case the campaign is already done scoring wise.

So, explain to me what the correct interpretation is since I missed the first game when the scoring was explained if you would please.

[albpilot]

Oh, and I have another campaign designed if anyone wants to start one when this is over.

[Stephen]

The team with an assigned mission gets points for completing it; the opposition gets points preventing the mission. That's been the case every game.

Missions are worth 100 total points:

Game 1: Germans assigned to knock out four artillery guns @ 25 pts each. They get only one. Germans 25 pts, Brits 75.

Game 2: Brits assigned to knock out 5 MG positions at 20 pts each. Brits got all of them for 100 pts, Germans 0.

Game 3: Brits assigned to get 2 recon photos at 50 pts each. Get them both for 100 pts, Germans 0.

Game 4: Germans assigned to prevent British troop column from reaching bridge. They succeed and score 100 pts, Brits 0.

I did consider suggesting that the Allies could not score points in the last game even if they did stop the mission (to help even the odds), but I don't remember if I actually said anything on it or not. In the end it didn't matter since the Germans swept the mission.

The Germans have scored 125 mission points while the Brits have scored 275. That means 75% of the current 201 point deficit was lost in mission points.

And I'm ready for the new mini campaign as soon as this one's over.