So far possible names include "smashing", "overruning", "walkover",
"overwhelming", "critical hits" and "ouch experience" (not really, but I
thought just in case a few feminists were listening to this list, they
shouldn't feel left out).
> 1) Too sensitive to attack order. The dragon only had 1 chance in 'n' of
> being chosen. If it's first he'll wipe the peasants, if it's last he's in
> trouble.
In your message you seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that
Olympian combat is "round" based. It is not. A fighter are chosen at
random. Next another fighter is chosen at random. This may even be the
same fighter. Typically in a battle some fighters will get several blows
during the same period that others get none. If we talk about rounds then
only because statistically this system has an effect similar to a system of
rounds and it is sometimes easier to make arguments about rounds.
So to answer your comment, sure smasher depends on the order in which
attacks are made. A dragon may strike first, second or not at all. One
dragon can kill 500 peasants in a row under the current system without any
of the peasants ever being allowed to strike. Statistically all these
chances work out in the end to give the reasonable result.
> 2) If the 'big' unit heavily outclasses the lesser units,
> it might overrun too many. Someone said a noble could thus kill a
> limitless horde of rats. Not good.
That's not true. Rich thought so once, but since then I've clarified what
I meant and this just doesn't happen. Under smasher-10 a noble wins about
half the time against 10 rats compared to the current system where a noble
wins about half the time against 7 rats.
> Fixes:
> A) Chance of overrun/smash attack = some fn. of attack vs defence.
> Fine. If overrun is achieved, the overrunning unit does _not_
> attack again immediately; it just doesn't 'use up' its attack
> chance, and must wait for its turn to be randomly selected. This is
> the big change.
That just wouldn't work in the current system. There is no such thing as
an "attack chance" in it. Either a unit gets to attack again immediately,
or it has to wait until it is selected again randomly which is just what
happens after a normal hit in the current system.
> So, the dragon/noble can't instantly kill all the peasants/rats when it
> gets going. Good. But now it will hardly ever _have_ its extra attacks
> until right at the end of the round!
As I said, there are no rounds.
> C) That's fair - he's the meanest, after all! But consider this:
>
> After each successful overrun, we decrement the attacker's effective
> strength - perhaps by the value of the defense of what was overrun.
> This would mean the overrun won't go on too long, and will mean that
> the later, feeble, attacks go off later in the turn (on average).
Sure, you can do that. It will just have no effect. Statistics alone
indicates that a rampage will stop on average after killing
attack factor/10 defense factors (under smasher-10). This will stop a
rampage long before the attack factor itself is noticeably decreased.
Carl Edman