FUMBBL :: Online Blood Bowl League

thoralf

Joined: Mar 06, 2008

Posted: Dec 01, 2016 - 05:55

licker wrote:

I'm saying that as many if not more which work against your hypothetical exist.

The situation where the underdog can profit from his inducements by adding some change from the Treasury seems to happen quite often. I mean, come on: how many times haven't you wished for that extra 10K to get something good? All these situations need to be taken into account, and compared to all the degenerate ones we could fantiscally build.

licker wrote:

I don't presume that there are any particular number of them, merely that they exist, and that this new system will only exacerbate them.

There are two claims here.

Claiming that a situation exist does not suffice to argue that there are more situations that favor the favorite.

The second claim rests on the idea that a coach who needs to spend money will prefer to waste it on a game he's probably already won instead of building his team. It also presumes that this preference is caused by the obligation to burn cash.

I don't think this is plausible at all. My own intuition is that this coach will minmax whatever the inducement system around. If he minmaxes one way, he'll minmax the other. If he's a builder, he'll build in both cases.

licker wrote:

CRP was not designed to fix min/maxing was it? So neither is 2016, but 2016 introduces at least this rule which makes it seemingly more attractive.

I don't think any system of rules can fix min/maxing. Only community norms can do that. We can exclude all cases where a coach has loners. If he can spend on inducements, surely he can buy linos. He's thus breaking a site rule.

If the coach does not have 300K, then he's playing with fire. He could burn all his change to buy something, but then he'd have to wait a few games. Meanwhile, he needs to keep his 11 guys crew intact, or else he'll have to invest. It's hard to keep 11 guys healthy with, no RR, no apo, a 300K in Treasury. It may be even harder now that every team will be able to build threats more quickly than before.

Also bear in mind that the next time the two same opponents meet, then the rookie coach *may* have money in his treasury to call payback time...

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mrt1212

Joined: Feb 26, 2013

Posted: Dec 01, 2016 - 06:20

I wouldn't count on the rookie having money if they're not competent enough to hold on to it.

licker

Joined: Jul 10, 2009

Posted: Dec 01, 2016 - 06:51

thoralf wrote:

licker wrote:

I'm saying that as many if not more which work against your hypothetical exist.

The situation where the underdog can profit from his inducements by adding some change from the Treasury seems to happen quite often. I mean, come on: how many times haven't you wished for that extra 10K to get something good? All these situations need to be taken into account, and compared to all the degenerate ones we could fantiscally build.

The degenerate ones where teams with more games likely have more cash? Or where teams which sweet spot/minmax have more cash? Or just where the kinds of teams which always have lots of cash have more cash? You're really reaching to try to make a point which doesn't matter much. Wishing for an extra 10k to get what though? It's not as though if you are sitting at 140k you can't get anything of value, and besides, there is no wizard anymore, so whatever value you get is nominally at 100k now and the difference between a bribe or a babe just isn't that big of a deal.

thoralf wrote:

licker wrote:

I don't presume that there are any particular number of them, merely that they exist, and that this new system will only exacerbate them.

There are two claims here.

Claiming that a situation exist does not suffice to argue that there are more situations that favor the favorite.

I never made the latter claim, that's the claim you are trying to make about underdogs throwing in 10k because they are always off by 10k.

thoralf wrote:

The second claim rests on the idea that a coach who needs to spend money will prefer to waste it on a game he's probably already won instead of building his team. It also presumes that this preference is caused by the obligation to burn cash.

No. Sigh, you are either really ignorant or just wasting everyones time for whatever reason you have. A min/max team *by definition* is not trying to build itself, it's already built! They don't need cash for anything, they only care about winning the game in front of them, so yes, they will and should spend that cash to improve their odds of winning from 75% to 80% or whatever the %s are you want to pick. You're stuck assuming that everyone is trying to play the way you think they should play.

They are not, and once you add in even more ways for people to game the inducements guess what they will do? Because of the Expensive Mistakes mechanism they will have no reason to keep cash over a certain point, so when they get to that point, or close to it, they will just spend their 50-200k in the matches, because they will recoup the cash in a couple more games anyway.

I'm telling you this not from pure theory either, this is how things work in BB2, though it's a 150k bank rather than the mistakes, but teams that get to 150 will just buy a babe, or bribe, or wizard because there is really no down side to it. Money is trivial to accumulate up to that amount anyway.

thoralf wrote:

I don't think this is plausible at all. My own intuition is that this coach will minmax whatever the inducement system around. If he minmaxes one way, he'll minmax the other. If he's a builder, he'll build in both cases.

Your speculation is already disproven by the the BB2 system. And I'm not talking about builders, but even builders will spend their money at some point because they are either built as far as they need money for, or they will run into Expensive Mistake territory. So now they are sweet spotters, or they are just trying to grow their team to whatever they want to grow to, but come on, after you reach a certain critical mass of spp on your team money becomes nearly irrelevant, other than for the handful of squishy AV7 teams.

thoralf wrote:

licker wrote:

CRP was not designed to fix min/maxing was it? So neither is 2016, but 2016 introduces at least this rule which makes it seemingly more attractive.

I don't think any system of rules can fix min/maxing. Only community norms can do that. We can exclude all cases where a coach has loners. If he can spend on inducements, surely he can buy linos. He's thus breaking a site rule.

You might want to check that site rule again, but loners is not min/maxing anyway. Loners is just stupid and has no relevance to the discussion.

thoralf wrote:

If the coach does not have 300K, then he's playing with fire. He could burn all his change to buy something, but then he'd have to wait a few games. Meanwhile, he needs to keep his 11 guys crew intact, or else he'll have to invest. It's hard to keep 11 guys healthy with, no RR, no apo, a 300K in Treasury. It may be even harder now that every team will be able to build threats more quickly than before.

Why would he EVER have a 300k treasury? You really don't understand this concept. The MVP rule helps the min/maxer probably more than it helps anyone else because he never has to waste an MVP outside of whatever 3 players he chooses to build as his core. It also lets him reboot more quickly when he does lose one of his stars.

He also might minmax at 1100, or 1200, I just cited the 1000 case because it's a fairly notorious example from this site. Indeed minmaxing at a higher TV is possibly better, because he still gets to play the rookie teams (at a lower frequency, but the pairings are still likely), and he still gets to jack up his inducements along with having a reroll or just a few extra skills.

thoralf wrote:

Also bear in mind that the next time the two same opponents meet, then the rookie coach *may* have money in his treasury to call payback time...

Um great, I guess. Still doesn't change anything though does it?

Because while I brought up the min/max aspect, it's just the most obvious place for abuse. After some point in treasury building ALL teams are going to behave the same way and buy their extra inducements.

That applies equally to underdogs and overdogs, but the point is that allowing the overdogs to do this simply throws away any illusion that the rules are concerned with creating 'fair' matches. If you don't like 'fair' substitute some other term. Of course we understand that inducements were not designed to move win rates to 50%, but they were designed to help the underdogs to whatever degree that value of the inducements actually provides.

This system just tells underdogs to go screw themselves. If that's what you want or you think is good, then that's cool, but to deny that this is the actuality of the system is simply incorrect. Go look at BB2 if you don't believe me.

thoralf

Joined: Mar 06, 2008

Posted: Dec 01, 2016 - 07:53

mrt1212 wrote:

I wouldn't count on the rookie having money if they're not competent enough to hold on to it.

Licker was referring to a rookie team, not a rookie coach.

One way to protect rookies from spending money is to forbid everyone from spending money on inducements. Even then minmaxers can profit from their low TVs without spending anything. Just imagine if we allowed them to spend some change as an underdog to get an edge for a game!

Ergo it's easy to appeal to minmaxing to destroy just about any system. Gaming systems is what they do best. Minmaxers are both individualist and hyperrational. Perhaps the most annoying Munchkins there is. The only way to deal with them is to remind them that they're not alone in the world.

As if the objective of spending side money on a game for bribes or saws was supposed to be fairness, somehow.

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Last edited by thoralf on %b %01, %2016 - %19:%Dec; edited 4 times in total

mrt1212

Joined: Feb 26, 2013

Posted: Dec 01, 2016 - 07:55

thoralf wrote:

Minmaxers are both individualist and hyperrational. Perhaps the most annoying Munchkin there is. The only way to deal with them is to remind them that they're not alone in the world.

Yeah, by putting a boot on their throat. Repeatedly.

thoralf

Joined: Mar 06, 2008

Posted: Dec 01, 2016 - 08:01

mrt1212 wrote:

Yeah, by putting a boot on their throat. Repeatedly.

The new rules would allow you spend more money on more bribes, more saws, and more DPs.

What's not to like, then?

Don't go out and spend everything, though - Fumbblers may think you're not competent enough.

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mrt1212

Joined: Feb 26, 2013

Posted: Dec 01, 2016 - 08:12

thoralf wrote:

mrt1212 wrote:

Yeah, by putting a boot on their throat. Repeatedly.

The new rules would allow you spend more money on more bribes, more saws, and more DPs.

What's not to like, then?

Don't go out and spend everything, though - Fumbblers may think you're not competent enough.

I mean, essentially that is exactly what I would do if I was getting close to Expensive Mistakes with a high TV team. Bribes. Every time. Loner Saws...mugs game.

But in a way this is an unintentional revelation that no, there won't be run away TV absent some aging mechanism like seasons. We'll be buying the tools of attrition to protect ourselves from Expensive Mistakes. I love when an idea falls ass backwards into greatness.

thoralf

Joined: Mar 06, 2008

Posted: Dec 01, 2016 - 08:42

Speaking of unintentional revelation, here's what could solve the league pickle (DZ1, p. 19):

Quote:

During a season, each team must play two competition games against each other team in their division. They can play as many friendlies as they like against teams from their own division, from another division, or even (at the Commissioner's discretion) against teams that aren't part of the league.

This implies a few things, the most important being that:

- The seasons (please don't cringe and bear with me) aren't based on a specific number of games, but on time.

- The teams can play "friendlies" with teams that are not in their division or even their league!

Transpose this into R or B. What do you get?

ARRR! The Human League. SPRINTS.

Meta-leagues.

It thus seems that the simplest way to implement the new rulz in B & R would be to create meta-leagues. The playoffs could then be R or B tournaments for the league members, I suppose. I have no idea of the technical side of this, but I think we have everything to start tomorrow if we so please.

The most beautiful aspect is that a meta-league would gather its own data points at the expense of nobody. Only those who join the meta-league would be subject to the seasonal effects of that meta-league.

Go tell Mr. J.

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mrt1212

Joined: Feb 26, 2013

Posted: Dec 01, 2016 - 08:56

Flesh it out more.

What constitutes a meta-league?
What is a friendly and what are the outcomes for a team from them?
Does this mean there are two classification of tourneys both friendlies and meta league playoffs and what are the differences in outcomes for teams?
Would new meta leagues need to be created to give a home to teams not represented and is this an admin directed thing or user directed?

MOAR!

Oh and maybe reply to this in the other thread. Don't need to crap up this thread with such a specific thing.

licker

Joined: Jul 10, 2009

Posted: Dec 01, 2016 - 16:47

thoralf wrote:

Speaking of unintentional revelation, here's what could solve the league pickle (DZ1, p. 19):

Quote:

During a season, each team must play two competition games against each other team in their division. They can play as many friendlies as they like against teams from their own division, from another division, or even (at the Commissioner's discretion) against teams that aren't part of the league.

This implies a few things, the most important being that:

- The seasons (please don't cringe and bear with me) aren't based on a specific number of games, but on time.

- The teams can play "friendlies" with teams that are not in their division or even their league!

Transpose this into R or B. What do you get?

ARRR! The Human League. SPRINTS.

Meta-leagues.

It thus seems that the simplest way to implement the new rulz in B & R would be to create meta-leagues. The playoffs could then be R or B tournaments for the league members, I suppose. I have no idea of the technical side of this, but I think we have everything to start tomorrow if we so please.

The most beautiful aspect is that a meta-league would gather its own data points at the expense of nobody. Only those who join the meta-league would be subject to the seasonal effects of that meta-league.

Go tell Mr. J.

Sounds like a good solution to me. If you only play friendly you never play a season and can safely ignore the stupidity inherent in them for your style of play.

If you want to play with a season then you join 'something'.

Of course the devil is actually in the details of how difficult it is to get this logic built into the site. But that's not our problem. Wink

Yet...

Matthueycamo

Joined: May 16, 2014

Posted: Dec 01, 2016 - 17:30

Yeah, that seems like a decent solution and interpritation that takes in the different aspects of why people play R and B.

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ArrestedDevelopment

Joined: Sep 14, 2015

Posted: Dec 01, 2016 - 17:35

thoralf wrote:

- The seasons (please don't cringe and bear with me) aren't based on a specific number of games, but on time.

How do resolve that statement with what you quoted?

Specifically:

RULZ wrote:

During a season, each team must play two competition games against each other team in their division".

Time ain't got much to do with that.

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thoralf

Joined: Mar 06, 2008

Posted: Dec 01, 2016 - 19:14

mrt1212 wrote:

Flesh it out more.

I'd rather stand firm in my mythological endeavour:

DZ1, p. 18 wrote:

The league rules are designed to recreate this slightly anarchic system, keeping the structure light and (for the most part) putting coaches in charge or setting up their own matches.

***

I'll see what I can do on the other thread.

AD wrote:

Time ain't got much to do with that [playing two games with the players of your division].

It does:

DZ1, p. 19 wrote:

Any competition games that have not been played by the end of the time limit counts as a loss for both teams.

I think the two games per division falls into "just one example to run the league" more than the principle according to which BB leagues should run in an anarchic manner, whereby teams can play any other team, including friendlies against teams outside the league if the Commissioner vetoes it.

The overall point is that it makes sense to see the R, L, and B pools as friendlies pools. Leagues could emerge from this anarchic structure. The book does not say how to run friendlies, so I guess anything goes.

On the technical side, it's easy to create matches in L and in R. It may be a bit more difficult to implement that in B. That's for the Mr. J's of the site to test this.

I really like the idea that my teams could belong to a league without being attached to it. Not sure if it's technically possible, though.

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Last edited by thoralf on %b %01, %2016 - %19:%Dec; edited 2 times in total

mrt1212

Joined: Feb 26, 2013

Posted: Dec 01, 2016 - 19:20

thoralf, I seriously don't understand how any of what you suggest works if you aren't going to define what the terms you're using mean.

Meta-leagues? Friendlies? What are the implications for teams in friendly matches and how are meta-leagues formed?

It also seems that the digital and paper versions of bb2016 and DZS1 have different page numbers BTW. Page 19 of DZS1 Digital is a skill page.

thoralf

Joined: Mar 06, 2008

Posted: Dec 01, 2016 - 19:37

What I'm doing is more a conceptual analysis than a formal specification, mrt. It's not even a real conceptual analysis. That's why I speak of mythology.

The rules offer us a conceptual scheme. It tells us from the start that it's up to commissioners to do whatever they please with the rules. The best way to deal with that liberty is to explore all the possibilities that allow the vague constraints we can read in a half-baked book. In that book, there's a mention of friendlies against teams that are not in the league. One way this transposes into Fumbbl's universe is to interpret a Death Zone league as a Fumbbl meta-league.

In a way, this validates how things run in Fumbbl.

I don't want to suggest we should establish an isomorphic relationship between the Book and Fumbbl. So far, the only hard constraints I see in the Book is that the only evolutive games (SPPs, MVPs, skills, etc) are played within leagues, and that Commisionners rule over their leagues. The League is one of the basic entities that make the BB mythology work. This ontological commitment is quite small if we keep in mind that Commissioners can do whatever they please.

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Last edited by thoralf on %b %02, %2016 - %07:%Dec; edited 1 time in total