Subject: Re: MN: Year 2, Week 23: Proposals

From: "Dunx (Duncan Ellis)" <DELLIS@U...>
Date: 30 Sep 98 22:53:19 +0100

This Week's Proposals included: 
> Proposal 508 - So They All Manoeuvred Over and One Fell Out [Multiple] 

I agree with others who have commented on this one - I think we want to 
keep the ability to add Gambits to the ruleset through game play. This 
shouldn't stop new Manoeuvres being Proposed, of course, but still. 

> Proposal 509 - Instrument of the Devil [Multiple] 
Yes - very nice. Possibly a little out of keeping with the rest of the 
game, but then eclecticism is our middle name. 

> Proposal 514 - Charge Card [Multiple] 
I'll claim ownership of this one in order to defend it. 

First of all, the Proposal includes a definition of how to calculate 
Currents. Unfortunately this makes it look complicated, but it shouldn't 
be in practice since a Player would usually just look up the Current 
value for the relevant Stations and never have to actually do the maths 
at all. I've pre-published my preliminary Currents document - see the end 
of this note. 

Secondly, the actual Charge calculation isn't difficult - it should 
involve only three numbers: the Current of the Station at the start of the 
Move; the Current of the Station at the end of the Move; and the Charge 
of the Piece before the Move. What you're doing is working out the 
change in Current which the Piece has been subjected to, and adding that 
on to the Piece's Charge. I don't think that is any more time consuming 
or fiddly than the Token adjustments and LV calculations we do already. 

Thirdly, all I've done with Charge so far is to try to allow Players to 
Move to MC without the three Gold Tokens. Trying to get precisely the 
right charge to play MC may not be easy, but it will be different from 
Token Running and hopefully we'll end up visiting some Stations (and 
Straddling away from them, probably) which we wouldn't otherwise get to. 

There are, as I suggest in the Proposal, other things we can do with 
Charge but I thought I'd best leave those out in the first instance just 
to keep things down to a more or less manageable size. 

I think a slightly more detailed explanation of how Currents are 
calculated is needed, though. 

Apologies for some of the over-technical language. By 'radial distance' 
I mean just 'distance' - I got carried away because I wanted to avoid 
any implication that a Station South of the Meridian would have a 
negative distance. Calculating the distance between the Meridian and a 
particular Station is either a matter of taking a ruler and measuring 
it, or taking the coordinates and using Pythagoras' theorem to work out 
the length of the long side of a right-angled triangle. 

Here's a little map to help explain things, with some coordinates (this 
will only make sense on a fixed width font, I'm afraid): 

+5 
+4 
+3 b 
+2 | 
+1 | 
0 0-----a 
-1 / | 
-2 / d 
-3 c 
-4 
8 6 4 2 0 2 4 6 8 
-ve +ve 

'0' is the Meridian of the diagram at coordinates (0,0), that is the 
origin for the coordinates. 'a', 'b', 'c', and 'd' are the Stations at 
coordinates as follows: a=(6,0); b=(0,3); c=(-3,-3); d=(3,-2). 

So, using Pythagoras we can work out the following distances from the 
Meridian (although a and b should be obvious): a=6; b=3; c=4.24; d=3.6. 

These distances are in the coordinate system (characters in this case), 
which was what Current values were going to be in originally, but that 
isn't very sensible because different people using different coordinate 
systems will get wildly different results. 

So, Current is instead defined as being a fraction of the greatest 
distance from the Meridian to a Station. On the LU map the farthest any 
Station lies from the Meridian is Amersham; on our example map it's 
Station 'a'. To obtain the Current of a Station, divide the Station's 
distance from the Meridian by the distance of the farthest point. Doing 
this with our example Stations, we get the following fractional 
Currents: a=1; b=0.5; c=0.7; d=0.6. 

I thought Currents should be written as percentages because I generally 
find it easier to do arithmetic with integers rather than with fractions. 

All the Currents for the LU map are are derived from a SQL database I have 
(on my web site - http://www.lazarus.demon.co.uk/mn/mapdata/mapdata.html) 
of all the Stations on the Map, the results being reported automatically 
and formatted to produce a list of Currents ordered alphabetically by 
Station name. 

Anyway, the Currents document is on my web site, just so you can see 
what the numbers look like (sorry for jumping the gun, Kevan). The URL 
is http://www.lazarus.demon.co.uk/mn/currents.htm. 

The Current for MC is 18. 

-- 
Dunx 
IRL: Duncan Ellis, Senior Software Engineer, Business Modelers, Oracle 
<I work for Oracle, I don't speak for them>

---

From: kenningd@w... (I am the Water Boatman)
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1998 10:31:41 +0100

>I'll claim ownership of this one in order to defend it. 

Sorry if I sounded like I was ranting -- I actually think it's an interesting
idea, but despite your defence making your intended method of calculating a lot
clearer, I still don't think it's workable.

>I don't think that is any more time consuming 

It may not be time consuming for you.... and anyway it might just be the straw
that breaks the camel's back -- I mean, however simple and straightforward it
may be in practise, it's yet another thing to think about when making a move. I
don't think we can just go on adding to the move considerations, we need to
stop somewhere.

You also have to keep everyone else's charge in mind as well as your own --
when someone has three gold tokens and is charging towards MC, it's easy for
everyone else to spot that, but unless I keep a close eye on your charge and
calculate the possible destinations for your next move, I'll have no idea
what's going on. I'm unhappy enough with the idea of having to calculate my own
charge, but having to calculate everyone else's too is just a bit much.

dave