hello everyone,

triplea has a bug when deciding casualties for aaguns. the faq states

"Is anti-aircraft fire targeted against specific aircraft?
Yes. In practice, you can roll a handful of dice against all enemy fighters, then roll another handful against all enemy bombers. The reason for this rule is so that bombers will be forced to take hits from AA guns."

triplea rolls all aagun fire in one roll. if any ones are rolled triplea randomizes which aircraft get hit to allow the bombers to be hit by aagun fire.

an incorrect side effect of rolling all aagun shots at once and then randomizing is that the attacker is not able to select casualties. for example if an attacker has 1xfighter move one space and 1xfighter move three spaces into the same territory containing an aagun to conduct combat, and the defender scores 1 aa hit, the attacker should be able to remove the fighter that still has 3 movement spaces. triplea randomizes this instead.

in regular dice this is an easy fix. just replicate the steps in the board game.
step 1. roll all aagun dice for all fighters
step 2. roll all aagun dice for all bombers
step 3. attacker selects casualties for fighters
step 4. attacker selects casualties for bombers

however i would like to know how lowluck players would like to have this scenario corrected in lowluck games.

there are 3 options of how to handle this.
1. roll the aagun shot for all fighters seperatly from all bombers
2. roll the aagun shot for all air units together, then have another roll weighted to by the number of each unit which type of unit is lost
3.roll the aagun shot for all air units together, then have another roll weighted to by the number of each unit (above an even division of 6 per unit type) which type of unit is lost

option 1 has the most variance, and least congruent with lowluck but would simulate the steps of the regular game most closely.(i like this option least)

option 2 reduces variance as there is only one roll to decide if air uints are hit. this option allows for a situation where by 9 air units consisting of 7 fighters and 2 bombers to attack a territory containing an aagun, and the casualties could be any of the following.

aagun misses
1 fighter hit
or
1 bomber hit

aagun hits
2 fighters hit
or
1 fighter and 1 bomber hit
or
2 bombers hit


option 3 reduces variance as there is only one roll to decide if air units are hit. this option differs from option 2 as the 2nd roll to decide which type of units the attacker selects as a loss is only rolled for units above a division of 6 for a unit type. so in the example of 7 fighters and 2 bombers we would first exclude 6 fighters with one automatic hit against the fighters. then the roll to decide which unit type would only involve 1 fighter and 2 bomber. the casualties could be any of the following

aagun misses
1 fighter hit

aagun hits
2 fighters hit
or
1 fighter and 1 bomber hit

i like option 3 the best as it is most congruent with the concept of lowluck.

i am planning on posting a bug problem on the developers page, but would like to know how low luck players would like this bug to be resolved.

Hey awnil,

Have you actually reviewed the code for AA guns firing/casualties? From what Ive seen in the game, in dice, the AA gun rolls one dice for each plane, if it hits that die the plane dies, straightforward and as expected.

In LL since we are rolling for one hit, it makes the most sense - and this is what the game does right? - if its randomly selected to be fair to both players (so the attacker cant always kill off the plane with the fewest MPs left.)

That said, Im a bit confused about the "bug" in the game... although it could be because Ive been up all night gaming ;)

Bung

hi bung.

no, i have not read the code (i am tech stupid and do not know how to). but i do not need to be able to read the code as the bug is noticeable by just playing the game and not having the option of selecting which fighter to remove.

the bug is that in the rules the attacker gets to select casualties, but in triplea the casualties are done at random. you said in your post that you believe that triplea rolls dice separetly for each fighter, this is the bug as it is not an axis and alleis rule. the rules state that all aagun rolls for all fighters are rolled at the same time(see faq) then as with all combat casualties the owner selects which units to remove first.

the fix for regular dice is straight forward. the fix for lowluck is up to interpretation which is the same for all lowluck adaptations.

my original post was to decide how to deal with the lowluck adaptation, but i guess it is also a good that it highlights the bug in triplea, which i know has effected many of my games drastically.

i am glad to hear that you are getting lots of gaming in.

Very readable and sharp analysis, AWNIL. I agree completely, and also like your third LL solution best. I can only recommend posting your point comprehensively at the developers page - and if it is only to keep the collection of possible things to fix in the future complete.

Have 2 minor things to add though:
1. Selecting the casualty can - and should - still be done by TripleA. It never makes sense to take planes other then the ones with the least movement points as casualties, so TripleA can "choose" for us.
2. With Mods in mind (multiple types of air units), code should stay as universal as possible. So the weighted distribution of the hits across the different types of air units involved in the fly-over according to your third solution should be applied with the possibility of more then 2 types of air units in mind (which is not too complicated as long as it is not forgotten).

And while looking at the details, one last comment about LL play: It should be stated somewhere in the (yet to come) centralized FAQ, that flyover has to be performed with the whole stack - and not one-by-one, as it is also possible. This is a very minor issue though, since it only affects variance and not balance itself.

Regards,
EB

A good point to bring up, but as usual people overlook some of the details on this one...

"In practice, you can roll a handful of dice against all enemy fighters, then roll another handful against all enemy bombers."

Let's look at whether this is the way it MUST be done: "in practice" and "you CAN" imply that this is an acceptable way to do it...that it is within the philosophy of the game. But it does not mean that the rules as stated require it to be done this way. In fact, only LHTR specifically states this must be done. The box rules, as written and as the graphic example depict, suggest each group is rolled against as a whole (fighters and bombers being together in a group).

Now, let's look at whether AA guns are really allowed to randomly choose which units are lost and make you lose planes with more range left: "...roll a HANDFUL of dice against all..." means that the casualties will not be random. You're rolling ALL anti-fighter or anti-bomber (or in box rules, ALL anti-aircraft) dice at once, so the attacker is still choosing the casualties.

I submitted a patch a while ago that will enable the attacker to choose AA casualties in Fourth Edition games, and puts this option into the Revised game. If the dev site ever comes back with a new version of TripleA, that should be in there.

I had the same problem but I wonder if it's really a bug or not. are you sure that attacker must be able to select the plane to be killed? we can't know if the plane hitted is the one with 3 spaces left or the one with one space left!