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PostPosted: Thu Feb 12, 2015 11:50 am 
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As part of a protracted project I've given myself to develop a combat simulator for dragon warriors, I've been doing some work in trusty old Excel VBA to get my coding thoughts in order. I'm sharing one of my works in progress for anybody who is interested.

FIGHT! is a little spreadsheet where you can plug in a force of (identical) agressors on one side and a single defender on the other, then run through as many battles as you want to to get some idea of routine outcomes of the matchup. The spreadsheet is the spiritual successor to one I devised a few years ago with a similar goal, but which could only deal with duels.

Attached is a graph showing information from one of my first tests on the nearly-completed tool.

The scenario is this: A master knight, 12th Rank, with expert parry but otherwise stock-standard, and armed with +1 plate armour and a +1 sword plus a regular shield, is facing off against skeletons. These are normal skeletons per the bestiary, wielding halberds and unarmoured.

There were a total of 90 types of encounter (with 1 to 30 skeletons, and either six-on-one, three-on-one, or one at a time versus the knight to represent the three classic tactical scenarios from the rulebook) and each encounter simulated 10,000 individual battles. Each battle was finished once either all the skeletons were destroyed or the knight was killed. The curves are a bit bumpy because even at 10,000 battles per encounter, there's still quite a bit of variability in battle outcomes.

The chart shows one of the stats that the tool is capable of returning, specifically the Knight's average likelihood of being killed in the encounter. We can see that for up to 4 skeletons, the knight pretty much always wins, even if he is surrounded. After that though, things change rapidly. For the six-on-one fights, the knight's unprotected rear gives us a terrifying hockey stick of defeat, culminating in total skeleton victory (TSV. I've trademarked it now, nobody may use that term without my permission) at 11-to-one. For three-on-one the curve is much gentler, and even with 30 skeletons piling in on the knight, he still wins through in a tiny percentage of battles. The knight's best outlook is to be found when fighting the skeletons one at a time. Even when he's outnumbered 30-to-one he still survives over 60% of the battles.

For my next simulation, I'll be looking at endless mobs of naked unarmed halflings attacking the mightiest warrior in history. In the meantime, I'm happy to take requests for scenarios to run through the tool.

Cheers,

-Kyle


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simulation 1.png
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 12, 2015 12:02 pm 
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Well, can you take into account spacing? I mean, how many people with two handed swords can fight effectively against a Knight? What if the Knight uses a two handed sword?

Hm, orcs make perfect lab rats. They breed so quickly, easy maintenance, and I doubt there will be many orc sympathizers out there that care about their welfare....

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PostPosted: Thu Feb 12, 2015 11:39 pm 
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Alas the tool only processes simulations according to the combat rules exactly as written, and there's nothing in the rulebook about weapon reach.

Maybe I could modify it in future to test house rules though.

Cheers,

-Kyle


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PostPosted: Fri Feb 13, 2015 12:11 pm 
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Not so much reach, as whether you can get 6 skeletons with two handed swords facing off against the one knight.

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https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/dwp ... ssages/640


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 4:38 am 
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Well they're using Halberds, so it seems plausible to me. Anyway, this is pretty much the exact scenario (tactically speaking) that was depicted on page 192 of Book 1 in the 80s edition of Dragon Warriors.

Cheers,

-Kyle


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 14, 2015 7:04 am 
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WodenKrait wrote:
Well they're using Halberds, so it seems plausible to me. Anyway, this is pretty much the exact scenario (tactically speaking) that was depicted on page 192 of Book 1 in the 80s edition of Dragon Warriors.


I'm going to be interested in the results of any scenarios you run. This type of number crunching intrigues me.

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PostPosted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 5:12 am 
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Slight delay while I write put in some code to cover initiative; at the moment everybody acts simultaneously in each round, which is an inlikely situation and makes it impossible to accurately simulate, say, zombies versus anything remotely quicker than zombies. I'm not a programmer so this takes a little longer than in would for somebody who actually knows what they're doing...

Cheers,

-Kyle


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PostPosted: Mon Feb 16, 2015 11:07 pm 
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Come on, VBA pretty much writes itself!

This looks like a great tool for checking proposed new rules, you can get a really good idea of how a change would effect the odds. I'd be interested (for example) to see how removing expert parry would change the outcomes. Good stuff!!


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