SCORING

[mosborne]

I'll toss in my opinion.

Scoring is like providing feedback to the players to help them improve where they are weak. A raw number really doesn't say much and a qualitative rating says even less. (We use qualitative ratings to avoid getting sued because they are easy to defend in court.) So I suggest that any new system should first establish what its purpose is. If it is just high score, then maybe what we have is good enough. I don't think any winner would mind giving the loser some points as long as the points he gets is commensurable with his win. However if you want informative feedback to both players then one would have to establish what metrics to use. I can throw out some, but others may have some betters. My metric list would be:

Hit ratio - ratio of shots on target to misses
Kill ratio - (basically excludes VH points)
Stealth rating - (several def possible)
Artillery Effectiveness
Aircraft Effectiveness
Leadership

Maybe there should also be two scoring systems. The basic scenario type games (including pvp) really only have one objective which is to win regardless of cost. Be it marginal or decisive, a win is a win. The other type of game are the campaigns. What distinguishes these is that you get to carry your forces onto the next battle. So playing one vs the other requires a different mine set if you intend to fair well in the game. This last statement I say with caution since I haven't played a campaign to end yet, so I don't know how the game scoring and battle to battle force replenishment works. But I will venture to say that maybe a different way of scoring is worth considering. One could use the existing system (maybe modified for score to loser) for the basic game types. For campaigns, maybe accumulative score reflecting performance throughout the campaign could considered.

Unfortunately, not all of these are readily implementable in this game system. Although, I think if the scoring file is dumped to disk instead of just screen display a lot more options become available. Alternative, screen capture the page and then OCR is another option. So we may be stuck with either a score for just the winner or giving the loser some points too.

Thanks