Have I ever mentioned my support for Decimal Time here on the blog? It's basically the Metric system, but for time. There are only 10 hours in the day, 100 minutes in the hour, and 100 seconds in the minute. The second actually ends up being pretty close to the length of a second now, but the other units would take some getting used to.
There are several benefits: the math involving time would be infinitely easier, (most people don't bother doing any math that requires converting from one unit to another, it's too hard), there'd be no ambiguities about time, (No AM and PM, just 00.00-09.99). The objections are basically the same objections America gives for changing to the regular metric system, plus the problem that the rest of the world doesn't do this one.
Sometimes I wonder how much of our time is lost because of easily fixable problems. Both the metric system and Decimal Time would require an initial investment of manpower, but would make everyone's life easier for the rest of time. I think it would make a good return on investment within ten years. The government needs to spend money on things to prop up the economy right now anyway, so it may as well be something that increases future efficiency.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
House
Does anyone watch House? I'm not a big fan, but I'll sometimes watch it when it's on. Hugh Laurie is a great actor, and does a good job of selling the absolute nonsense that happens in an average episode. The most common nonsense to happen is the classic, "It could be [disease I've never heard of], start a drastic treatment, then check if that's what the patient has." This system has a 95% chance of making the patient go into seizures or suffer a heart attack, since the initial evaluation is always wrong.
If I got to magically edit the show, I'd cut out all the bits where they're treating the patient of the week. The interaction between the doctors and the patients seems particularly silly, even for house. It seems like every patient is more interesting in judging their doctors than their near-fatal illness.
If I got to magically edit the show, I'd cut out all the bits where they're treating the patient of the week. The interaction between the doctors and the patients seems particularly silly, even for house. It seems like every patient is more interesting in judging their doctors than their near-fatal illness.
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
Game Tactics: Focus: Stick Together
Yesterday I posted my general principle of Tactics: "Focus on destroying the weakest target at any given time." I realize now that that could be shortened to "Focus on destroying the weakest target", and it essentially means the same thing, so let's pretend I said that instead.
Let's look at the first part: Focus.
The marketing campaign for Dungeons and Dragon 4th edition is good advice: "Don't split the party". Someone on their own cannot respond to as many situations as a group, since each player generally only has 2-5 skills, and a character on his own essentially loses if incapacitated in some way. In addition to these obvious benefits of sticking together, there's also today's topic: it allows you to focus damage. If one PC fights one comparable NPC, the result is a crapshoot, barring specific advantages/vulnerabilities. If one PC fights four comparable NPC's, the PC will generally lose. The reverse is also true. So why does a group of PC's generally defeat a group of comparable NPC's? The NPC's are usually bound to attack whichever opponent is nearest, or something along those lines, while the PC's are free to target one specific enemy until it dies*.
Let's have a fight with no luck and few variables. 5 fighters on both sides have 10HP each, and automatically hit for one damage each time they attack. Team Focus has decided to target one opponent until dead, and Team Random is going to attack anyone nearby.
The first round, Team Random and Team Focus do the same amount of damage, and all seems equal. Each fighter in Team Focus has 9 HP, and only one person in Team Random has been damaged, but he's down to 5HP. Round two, the same amount of damage is dealt, but Team Random loses a fighter. At this point, it's obvious Team Focus will win; they're now doing 5 damage for Team Random's 4.
This example is very simple, and the decision making logic is clear, but this same logic is often ignored in the context of situations with more variables. Right now I'm thinking of TF2 and L4D2. In both games, the idea of staying together and focusing damage are very important, and in both games, people will just run off on their own.
In L4D2, running off is generally suicide for Infected or Survivors, although sometimes the Survivors will get past all the Infected and do an end-run through the entire map for the win. I think the fact that it's technically possible to win while alone like that is what encourages people to run off on their own. Survivors remember that time they holed up in a corner and killed all those zombies, so they run off into a corner, ignoring the fact that their fellows are so far away that they can't come to help in time.
There's a similar effect in TF2. A player will remember the time they fragged 4 guys as a Demo, so they'll try to solo a Medic, two Soldiers, and a Scout. This does not work. In fact, if a Demo all on his own even sees those people, he's doomed if he does anything other than run for his life. This is something I need to work on: I know the "Correct" way a team should go, and if they're not going that way, I'll go there anyway. This leads to me trying to solo entire teams quite a bit, which generally doesn't work. I've been thinking about imposing a personal rule: Don't go anywhere alone. If you have to go a bad way, it's better than dying alone. This rule would probably result in me "suggesting" that players go the correct way, which would be to the general benefit, if I could be polite about it.
I'm at the end of this post, and I didn't even get to the "Focus" part of the word "Focus". The part about "sticking together" is only the first prerequisite to "Focus", and there's still a lot to talk about. The Team Focus and Team Random is a simple example of how it works, but I'll cover some more examples in the next post.
*There are obviously other reasons why PC's tend to win. Let's ignore them.
Let's look at the first part: Focus.
The marketing campaign for Dungeons and Dragon 4th edition is good advice: "Don't split the party". Someone on their own cannot respond to as many situations as a group, since each player generally only has 2-5 skills, and a character on his own essentially loses if incapacitated in some way. In addition to these obvious benefits of sticking together, there's also today's topic: it allows you to focus damage. If one PC fights one comparable NPC, the result is a crapshoot, barring specific advantages/vulnerabilities. If one PC fights four comparable NPC's, the PC will generally lose. The reverse is also true. So why does a group of PC's generally defeat a group of comparable NPC's? The NPC's are usually bound to attack whichever opponent is nearest, or something along those lines, while the PC's are free to target one specific enemy until it dies*.
Let's have a fight with no luck and few variables. 5 fighters on both sides have 10HP each, and automatically hit for one damage each time they attack. Team Focus has decided to target one opponent until dead, and Team Random is going to attack anyone nearby.
The first round, Team Random and Team Focus do the same amount of damage, and all seems equal. Each fighter in Team Focus has 9 HP, and only one person in Team Random has been damaged, but he's down to 5HP. Round two, the same amount of damage is dealt, but Team Random loses a fighter. At this point, it's obvious Team Focus will win; they're now doing 5 damage for Team Random's 4.
This example is very simple, and the decision making logic is clear, but this same logic is often ignored in the context of situations with more variables. Right now I'm thinking of TF2 and L4D2. In both games, the idea of staying together and focusing damage are very important, and in both games, people will just run off on their own.
In L4D2, running off is generally suicide for Infected or Survivors, although sometimes the Survivors will get past all the Infected and do an end-run through the entire map for the win. I think the fact that it's technically possible to win while alone like that is what encourages people to run off on their own. Survivors remember that time they holed up in a corner and killed all those zombies, so they run off into a corner, ignoring the fact that their fellows are so far away that they can't come to help in time.
There's a similar effect in TF2. A player will remember the time they fragged 4 guys as a Demo, so they'll try to solo a Medic, two Soldiers, and a Scout. This does not work. In fact, if a Demo all on his own even sees those people, he's doomed if he does anything other than run for his life. This is something I need to work on: I know the "Correct" way a team should go, and if they're not going that way, I'll go there anyway. This leads to me trying to solo entire teams quite a bit, which generally doesn't work. I've been thinking about imposing a personal rule: Don't go anywhere alone. If you have to go a bad way, it's better than dying alone. This rule would probably result in me "suggesting" that players go the correct way, which would be to the general benefit, if I could be polite about it.
I'm at the end of this post, and I didn't even get to the "Focus" part of the word "Focus". The part about "sticking together" is only the first prerequisite to "Focus", and there's still a lot to talk about. The Team Focus and Team Random is a simple example of how it works, but I'll cover some more examples in the next post.
*There are obviously other reasons why PC's tend to win. Let's ignore them.
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