Narrow Tier BB - 2012

[nufflehatesme]

Hi Nick_nameless,

So, which is the point of the thread...to increase variety of teams or to create some tweaks that bring some over powered and under powered stuff back in line?

Both, hopefully
My thinking is that something underpowered will not get played. And something overpowered will get played more - potentially squeezing out other tactics and teams if the situation is extreme enough. In my analysis, the propensity for going with CPOMB teams is that they universally apply a broken'ish combo, and are at the same time reasonably resistant to said broken'ish combo.

So if POMB against AV7 gets toned down, I think the meta-game will become more diverse.
IMO, POMB against AV8 is tolerable, and against AV9 it's fine. But against AV7 it is simply too effective. And Claw makes everything AV7.

So really, I'm just looking for a skill tweak that will make POMB less potent against AV7.
With that in place, I hope the rest of my tweaks will have much more of an effect.

Cheers
Martin

i've already said this somewhere on this forum, but what if mb did not work on a 7 or less when using piling on for the av roll? leaves pomb alone against av8 and 9, and tones down cpomb just a wee bit.
which is what u are looking for by the sound of things.

[DoubleSkulls]

There are plenty of reasons to play orcs and dwarfs (wall of guard comes to mind) - as long as you won't get torn to shreds by chaos. As long as your team isn't carted off the field in short order, then you have other tactical responses than just standing up and blocking back.

You are adjusting the relative balance between the bash teams even more in favour of the one that is most successful and most popular.

Rhyoth - Like DoubleSkulls, I think you are concentrating too much on the high-TV record of Orcs/Dwarves vs claw teams.

And the change I'm proposing is neatly targetted at that issue as well as a minor boost hybrid teams (because Av8 becomes better than Av7 vs Claw combos).

[plasmoid]

Hi Doubleskulls,

You are adjusting the relative balance between the bash teams even more in favour of the one that is most successful and most popular.

It seems you're hell bent on ignoring the main point I'm making, so I'm not sure this discussion is worth having.
I'll say it again - relative isn't everything.
If dwarfs were removing opponents on 1% of blocks, and Chaos on 3% of blocks, chaos would be 3 times better. But I wouldn't say they were in a dominating position, nor that coaches will be drawn to chaos for it's ability to inflict terrible damage.

Edit: Or to put it differently - remember back in the day when people thought that Orcs, Dwarfs (and Chaos) had other options besides standing up and blocking everything hoping for a CAS?

Cheers
Martin

[Darkson]

Edit: Or to put it differently - remember back in the day when people thought that Orcs, Dwarfs (and Chaos) had other options besides standing up and blocking everything hoping for a CAS?

C
Martin

Oh, you mean like they have in the current CRP?

[plasmoid]

Hi DS,
my point was, these tactical options rarely come into play if damage levels are so high that your players are removed from the pitch before they can do anything tactical.
If all damage levels come down, then orcs and dwarfs - even though not quite so proficient at inflicting damage as chaos - should be able to come up with a different gameplan than trading blocks for 16 turns.

Cheers
Martin

[DoubleSkulls]

Hi Doubleskulls,

You are adjusting the relative balance between the bash teams even more in favour of the one that is most successful and most popular.

It seems you're hell bent on ignoring the main point I'm making, so I'm not sure this discussion is worth having.
I'll say it again - relative isn't everything.
If dwarfs were removing opponents on 1% of blocks, and Chaos on 3% of blocks, chaos would be 3 times better. But I wouldn't say they were in a dominating position, nor that coaches will be drawn to chaos for it's ability to inflict terrible damage.

Edit: Or to put it differently - remember back in the day when people thought that Orcs, Dwarfs (and Chaos) had other options besides standing up and blocking everything hoping for a CAS?

Cheers
Martin

I do get it, I just don't agree with your analysis that the change to PO on its own is sufficient to encourage coaches away from all bash in significant numbers. I do think the drop off in casualty rates from Piling On alone will be enough to lead to a reduction in the number of Dwarves and Orcs. However Chaos aren't absolutely much worse at bashing (with PO to Av RR, CLPOMB still gets a casualty every 5th block instead of every 4th block) and relatively they have just got better than the other bashers. So ex-dwarf & Orc coaches will move to Chaos and keep on bashing, rather than switching to hybrid or agility teams. On top of which you've got specific nerfs to both Orcs and Dwarves.

In my mind a minor nerf to Claw brings all the bashers down at about the same pace, making it a much likelier proposition that the bash coaches will switch to one of the other styles, rather than just switching which bash team they play.

[adhansa]

Another idea: How about something in the line of adding "Choosing the Claw skill gives the player a permanent loss of 1 point of AV" or "AV-rolls against a player with Claw get a +1 modifier during Block-actions"?

[Rhyoth]

Rhyoth -
Like DoubleSkulls, I think you are concentrating too much on the high-TV record of Orcs/Dwarves vs claw teams. The change he proposes to PiOn is a relative nerf to AV7, as the math shows. I do agree that there will need to be mitigation in favour of the higher AV teams in some manner, though.

On the contrary, i try to keep the whole picture in mind, and for me, if you want to change the rule, you need to limit side effects to a minimum : there's no point in fixing one problem by creating another problem (or in this case aggravating an existing one).

You are adjusting the relative balance between the bash teams even more in favour of the one that is most successful and most popular.

It seems you're hell bent on ignoring the main point I'm making, so I'm not sure this discussion is worth having.
I'll say it again - relative isn't everything.
If dwarfs were removing opponents on 1% of blocks, and Chaos on 3% of blocks, chaos would be 3 times better. But I wouldn't say they were in a dominating position, nor that coaches will be drawn to chaos for it's ability to inflict terrible damage.

The question is : Is this relative nerf really needed ? Since Orcs/Dwarves are already at a disadvantage against chaos, i'd say hell no !

So, you want to mitigate CAS inflicted to AV 7, it's totally fine with me, but you can do so without messing with Orcs/Dwarves vs claw matchups :
for example, if you were to nerf Mighty Blow instead of PiOn, you would nerf Orcs, Dwarves AND Chaos roughly the same way.

That being said, while i do think limiting the number of Casualties at high TV is a necessity, it won't solve everything : even if C PO MB were completely erased, Dwarves would still be better and more popular on the long run than Norse, for example.

Actually I think you need to keep the cas count high to prevent unfettered develpment: players are meant to die, and it is supposed to happen more at high TV. Teams will never be equal in popularity, but they can be more even.

Just to be clear, i don't want to remove any damaging skills from the game, and as far as i'm concerned, just preventing those skill to stack is enough.
If you still think AV 7 will suffer too much on the long run, then it will probably be better to have a team by team approach, otherwise, you'll end up buffing some teams (like woodiees) more than necessary, while others (like 'Zons) would still be buitchered.

[Chris]

Actually I think you need to keep the cas count high to prevent unfettered develpment: players are meant to die, and it is supposed to happen more at high TV. Teams will never be equal in popularity, but they can be more even.

Yes. I am concerned with dropping the blood levels. I mean how else will you keep agility teams in their place and not suffer persistent loses to them?
The aim should be long term sustainable leagues. Journeymen are great, deaths and career ending injuries essential, but a method of getting new players up to speed is also needed. With that you could push up casualties even more (as you know I like some way of linking this with how dveloped a player is) - as long as they were being suffered at the right rate by teams and not the seemingly disproportionate rate currently (which is aiding claw progression I feel at the expense of others).

[DoubleSkulls]

I agree we need to be careful to keep the amount of blood spilled at the right level. I think that's too high for high TV teams right now, and we need to bring them down a bit - but that change needs to be consistent between claw and non-claw teams.

[dode74]

If the blood level is too high for high TV teams then won't reducing it just ensure that they just reach higher TVs? Is that the desired effect?

[dode74]

Actually I think you need to keep the cas count high to prevent unfettered develpment: players are meant to die, and it is supposed to happen more at high TV. Teams will never be equal in popularity, but they can be more even.

Yes. I am concerned with dropping the blood levels. I mean how else will you keep agility teams in their place and not suffer persistent loses to them?
The aim should be long term sustainable leagues. Journeymen are great, deaths and career ending injuries essential, but a method of getting new players up to speed is also needed. With that you could push up casualties even more (as you know I like some way of linking this with how dveloped a player is) - as long as they were being suffered at the right rate by teams and not the seemingly disproportionate rate currently (which is aiding claw progression I feel at the expense of others).

Totally agree. As I discussed with mattgslater (I think) before, MVP allocation is an easily tweaked mechanic, and one that is mentioned specifically in the house rules section of CRP.

[dode74]

@ Rhyoth - yes, everything needs to be taken into account. The thing is that the attrition mechanic is so pervasive that altering it will have a lot of consequences, many of them unintended. That was one of my reasons for mentioning horns as a salient feature of Chaos.
Your suggestion to prevent skills stacking, for example, will lead to a change in the attrition balance between high and low AV teams in favour of the high AV teams. Given that the aim is to do exactly the opposite of that, I don't understand why it is supported.

[nick_nameless]

dode, I think what would be interesting would be to see how often PiOn is used to break armor as opposed to how often it is used to reroll injury. I assume (mainly because it is much more tactically appropriate) that the use of the skill is greatly slanted towards the injury roll.

With this in mind I take issue with your premise that the non-stacking idea is bad for AV7 by comparison. AV7 is supposed to be less survivable.

Considering Claw with no stacking: breaking armor of av8+ requires a roll of 8 or better on the die. That is 5/12 chance to break armor. Mighty Blow is still available for use, so a KO will happen on 7/12 (unless the player has Thick Skull). A Casualty will happen 5/18. That tells me that on a successful knockdown a player that is AV 8 or better getting hit with a claw/MB player will be KO'd 35/144 times and become a casualty 25/216 times.

Considering MB only on AV7: A roll of seven is needed to break armor. That's a 7/12 chance to break armor. Since Mighty Blow is figured in to the armor break, a roll of 8 is needed to knock out, which is a 5/12 chance, and a roll of 10 is needed to casualty which is 1/6 times. That tells me that an av 7 player is getting knocked out 35/144 times and becomes a casualty 7/72 times (21/216).

Now, honestly my statistics analysis skills are not great and I understand that the flexibility if Mighty Blow if the AV is broken on the first roll will skew these changes slightly, but overall I think it's close enough for government work. And so long as no mods are usable with Piling On then the skill is pretty even across the spectrum (again working on the assumption that coaches are going to choose to pile on much less often to break armor, because it's not all that tactically sound).

The stats on the use of PiOn would really help, but I am not sure how that could be collected.

[DoubleSkulls]

Back on page 16 I posted up some stats which I think accurate for various different combos.

I tend to agree that it is quite likely that rerolling Av using Piling On is to some extent dependent on the Av of the target. Others disagree since they think people tend to always use PO if needed because they are trying to maximise casualties.