Right, well I've been looking at the start positions.
First off, I played them all. Including the results already posted a couple of days ago, the results are given below. (I was tired for the second session, and not playing quite so well.) As before everybody had bizons and it was hit the dirt time. Easy/Medium/Hard refers to the state of things before the changes.
Old Base - Easy
1) Killed - bizon (1 casualty before I went down)
2) no casualties
3) no casualties
4) 1 loon injured
5) 1 casualty
6) 1 casualty
Slighty increased loon probs in the 90% group and improved waypoints of the two 75% groups
Field Hospital - Easy
1) 1 casualty
2) 2 casualties
3) Killed - M16 (sixth casualty)
4) no attacks
Increased left attack group from 75% to 80% and reduced individual probs. Reduced placement radii of other two groups, which means they don't start on top of you, but do get there quicker. The original result surprised me - I thought it was medium.
Edit: also reduced radius of left attack group
Truck - Medium
1) 3 casualties
2) 2 casualties
3) 5 casualties
4) no casualties
No changes. The only one where everything panned out as I expected.
Edit: put one group back slightly
Ammo & UAZ - Easy
1) Killed - M16 (I was first casualty)
2) no casualties
3) no casualties
4) no casualties (but this is the third time in a row the rear attack group (70%) has not appeared)
5) no casualties (ditto)
6) no casualties (ditto)
7) 2 casualties (attacked from the rear at last)
Increased group probs from 70% to 75% and increased all 33% loons to 50%. This start position was clearly missed out on at least two rounds of general difficulty-increasing.
Edit: put 3 in each group back to 33%
Main Junction - Hard
1) Killed - M16 (first casualty)
2) no attacks
3) Killed - M16
4) Killed - M16
Reduced loon probs in all 3 groups, particularly the two jeep groups. Changed attack angles slightly. The problem here is that the player is in the open and on point. Tougher than I thought it was.
Bikes - Easy
1) 2 casualties
2) 2 casualties
3) Killed - M16 (first casualty)
4) no casualties
Rearranged probs and angles slightly.
BMP Ambulance & BRDM - Medium
1) Killed - G36 (first casualty)
2) 4 casualties. never saw the enemy myself
3) Killed (third casualty)
4) no casualties
5) 7 casualties
Moved rear attack groups back slightly. Another surprise - I had this one down as hard.
Ammo & motorbikes - Hard
1) Killed (bizon)
2) 5 casualties
3) 3 dead + 1 injured. Never saw the enemy myself.
4) 3 dead + 1 injured
Changed tank waypoint, reduced probs of infantry attack group and changed start position of infantry group to make it easier.
Edit: adjusted waypoints to make it slighter harder again
Using THobson's most excellent little programme, I was able to spot a number of mistakes in my probabilities and also see that difficulty and number of loons were not closely correlated. This is exactly what you would expect given the different start positions and attacks. I also used it to check the new probs: in general it smoothed things out in the 10-20 loon range, making it less random. Tended also to reduce the tails, which has the same effect.
I was happy with the start positions till THobson pointed out the problems .... these changes make me fairly happy again, or at least it will till I test them .....
There is probably a tiny increase in overall difficulty because you can no longer get the easy-peasy start at the UAZ. For the other start positions I would say the overall difficulty is roughly unchanged.
Thoughts?
Edit: that was 38 attempts. In 10 I was killed (twice by my own men), in 21 there were acceptable casualties (<2) and in 7 I survived with heavy casualties. It's true that I know what do to, but I'm not a particularly strong player and still managed a decent start more than half the time.
Second edit: I've been testing the new starts. Early indications are that the changes have been too big.
Third edit: I now added small placement radii to most of the attack groups' first waypoints which are usually very close to the player's group. This just mixes up the angles a little on retries. Latest results - these were being tweaked as I went along. As you can see it's more even now. The "optimum" result would be 1 killed and 6 dead over four tests.
Old Base
1) 1 dead
2) 1 dead
3) Killed through a wall
4) 1 dead
Field Hospital
1) 2 dead, 1 injured
2) 4 dead
3) 3 dead
4) 2 dead
Truck
1) 2 dead
2) no casualties
3) 3 dead
4) Killed - hand grenade
Ammo & UAZ
1) Killed - M21
2) Killed - G36
3) Killed - M16
4) 1 dead
5) Killed - M16
6) Killed while reloading - G36
7) 1 dead
3 dead
9) Killed - M16
10) 3 dead
11) 1 dead
12) 2 dead
Main Junction
1) 2 dead
2) 2 dead
3) Killed - jeep/mg
4) Killed - jeep/mg
5) 2 dead
Bikes
1) 2 dead
2) no casualties
3) no casualties
4) no casualties - but two of these three n/c were hard
BMP Ambulance & BRDM
1) 1 dead
2) 1 dead
3) Killed
4) 2 dead
Ammo & motorbikes
1) 1 dead
2) 1 dead
3) 4 dead
4) 1 dead
Topic: (Review Completed) [SP] Un-Impossible Mission (Read 69759 times)