Battle summary at end of report

[acrandal]

At the end of a combat report, it would be nice if there was a summary of the fight.  I have been doing this by hand lately for all of the notable fights I get reports for.  The key things that I include are:

A) Wounded nobles grouped by side (attacker vs defender, I don't break them down by realm) and sorted by importance.  For example, a wounded king is listed before a wounded lord, etc.  This lets everyone know (I send the results to the realm) how many nobles were wounded on each side without sifting through the whole report, as well as making it easy to see anyone of import that was struck down.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Attacking nobility casualties:

Drake Dragon Master (Knight of Leohampton, Minas Ithil) has been wounded by Elite Guard

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Defending nobility casualties:

<none reported>


B) The total number of casualties (peasants) on each side for each round and a sum total and loss ratio at the end.  Similar to this:

Casualties:
  Round 1 casualties: 9 attackers, 26 defenders
  Round 2 casualties: 3 attackers, 23 defenders
  Overall casualties: 12 attackers, 49 defenders (1:4)


These numbers have given us a much better sense of how well one side did over the other.  It has brought into sharp contrast the benefits of higher quality units during our extended wars, for example.

People have complimented me on having these summaries because they don't always have time to dig into each report.


1. What is the root problem I am trying to fix and/or What is the root benefit I am trying to achieve? (i.e. asking to increase the rate at which people lose positions from wounds is probably at root a request to increase turnover)

In this case, the root benefit (no real problems here) is to save everyone time and give them a simpler way to digest the big fights.  It's a relatively simple piece of code, assuming you have access to the fight data.


2. Is this the smallest/simplest/least disruptive change to the overall game I can think of to accomplish my goal? (i.e. changing the percentage that you lose your position is a lot easier than an entirely new system of Council positions that takes into account realm conditions to provide the maximum number of people with positions)

The smallest approach would be to add this summary at the end of the battle report, near the personal summary.  A more complex approach could include more statistics and/or something like an automated calculation of who earned the most battle honors (derived from how many enemies you wounded and a count of peasants killed)(perhaps allow the General/Marshals to bestow honors based on those numbers?)


3. Does this issue reflect a local (i.e. one realm/religion/island/region/whatever) problem or a game-wide state of affairs?

This reflects a game-wide state of affairs.  Mostly it is a means to bring the key elements of a large battle into focus for someone who isn't interested in sifting through the whole report.

Cons that I can think of include:

A) A longer battle report (they're often long already)
B) It would encourage people to not always dig into the details of the battle reports.  Is this a problem?  I'm not sure.

Thank you for your consideration and building such a great game.

[Bedwyr]

I like it!  I'd actually asked about overall casualties at one point earlier, but having the nobles as well would be handy.

[irishlad222]

A battle summary as such would make my life so much easier.  Sometimes, I really want to get a feel of how each side did in a major battle I was in, but I don't have the time to carefully sift through the report.  Great idea!

[De-Legro]

Most the time I'm more interested in a summary for my unit alone, you inflicted X hits over Y Turns. You suffered W hits resulting in Z injuries and so on. For the full battle I would prefer a link rather then have the whole thing in my messages when I log in. I guess the two summaries could be combined, a summary of the battle, a short summary of how your unit went and then a link to the full battle report.

[acrandal]

Most the time I'm more interested in a summary for my unit alone, you inflicted X hits over Y Turns. You suffered W hits resulting in Z injuries and so on. For the full battle I would prefer a link rather then have the whole thing in my messages when I log in. I guess the two summaries could be combined, a summary of the battle, a short summary of how your unit went and then a link to the full battle report.

A more detailed individual report was the other direction I considered.  There's a nearly infinite number of stats that could be derived from a battle report if we so desired, so I was hoping to keep the feature update suggestion to an incremental improvement.  Doing a more detailed individual unit (who indeed participated) would be in the same vein, though detecting who is viewing the report adds a bit of complexity to the code base as the report is loaded by 3rd parties.

If you really wanted to know, what I would love to see (but would be more work than a dev could do in short order) is a report with three parts, likely hiding behind tabs, ala a region scouting report.  The first part is the overall results from the battle, nobles wounded, total casualties, other stats and any damage to the region.  The second tab would be the current battle report with all of the action.  The optional third tab would only appear if the viewer's unit was part of the battle and could include numbers like what you suggested, such as total hits/casualties inflicted, those taken and even which nobles/units you fought with during the battle so you can throw insults and brag about your prowess more easily afterwards.  If the layout was akin to a region report, then there would be a header showing information about the battle, such as where it took place, who was involved (realms), who won and a couple other summary values I'm not thinking of just yet.

Which stats to derive, how much to include and all the other details are up in the air, but the goal of this more complex change would be to shrink the footprint of the report in the messages stream to a summary, while allowing people to go to the scribe notes and really dig into what happened.  I consider this a much bigger change to how battles are reported, though.  For the moment I would be most interested in a couple summary bits to give a quicker understanding of what just happened in big battles.

[Velax]

I fully support this idea. A three-part report would be fantastic, but even just a summary of casualties/wounded nobles as suggested in the original post would be a great addition.

[Silverfire]

I really, really like this idea. I've almost always tried to mentally calculate how well each side is doing at each point in the fight, and it is hard to do so without putting in a lot of time.

One improvement I'd like to have that goes along with this idea is:

Also indicate how many of each type of unit were lost by a side at the end of each round:

Round 1: Side A lost 22 archers, 7 cavalry, 20 Mixed Infantry, and 50 infantry, Side B lost 10 archers, 20 infantry.

etc...

[bluexmas]

I think this 3-point battle report idea is genius. It would allow more (and easier) interaction with the narrative side of battles, which I think is a good thing.

[Anaris]

I have made a note of this, and will see what I can do.  I'm not sure exactly what form it will come in, but I will try (at some point) to get something of this nature implemented.

[Stue (DC)]

Existing battle report show all drama and magnitude of event, gives feeling of many noble's presence.

Browsing is possible in matter of seconds, while looking at your own troop's results, wounded and imprisoned, battle outcome is distinguished by different font style, and does need minimal effort.

Hiding much or that "for player's convenience" just encourages one kind of asocial behavior like "i'm interested only in my buttons, my two friends and my troop and nothing else" instead of working against it.

isn't it social game where most of good thing comes from in-game interactions? making some "consoles" similar to other games, that will help "solitude" approach works against major values of bm.

that is my opinion only, of course.

[egamma]

Existing battle report show all drama and magnitude of event, gives feeling of many noble's presence.

Browsing is possible in matter of seconds, while looking at your own troop's results, wounded and imprisoned, battle outcome is distinguished by different font style, and does need minimal effort.

Hiding much or that "for player's convenience" just encourages one kind of asocial behavior like "i'm interested only in my buttons, my two friends and my troop and nothing else" instead of working against it.

isn't it social game where most of good thing comes from in-game interactions? making some "consoles" similar to other games, that will help "solitude" approach works against major values of bm.

that is my opinion only, of course.

BattleMaster is a light-weight game that can be played alongside your other activities. Although you can delve deeply into it and spend more time on it, about 15 minutes per day are enough for regular play, and 5 will do if you are in a hurry.

But battle reports should list the total numbers of casualties on both sides--that's a very basic piece of information, very standard military report for pretty much the entirety of recorded history. We already see how many men joined the battle--we just need to know how many didn't walk away. And providing that in a quick view would help make BM a light-weight game--which I think should be a design goal. Those who want the detail, can certainly look at the full report. But it currently can take 30 minutes or more to put together a complete report with the number of infantry killed, cavalry killed, hits made by archers, hits taken from archers, etc.

And also, my scribe should record in detail how my unit did. Again, that's very standard information, and knowing that would help the player determine if he should try and purchase more armor, or more training, or weapons. Again, with the goal of making the game closer to the advertised 15 minutes a day.

[Indirik]

I think those details also may help to bring some excitement back to battles. People like to see how they personally did. It kind of helps them feel that they actually contributed to the battle, rather than just being another faceless travelbot. Anything that helps increase personal involvement is good. Double good if it also helps make things more lightweight.

[Ramiel]

I would leave a detailed summary of Combatants Killed broken down into Allied/Enemy and further broken down into Realms, Armies and then further broken down into Units, which ie:

Causlties:

Friendly: 1500

Realm A : 1000

Army B : 500
Unit C : 200
Unit D : 300

Army E : 500
Unit F : 500

Real G : 500
Army H : 500
Unit I : 300
Unit J : 200

Enemy: 3000

Realm K : 1000
Army L : 1000
Unit M : 500
Unit N : 500

Realm O : 2000
Army P : 1500
Unit Q: 1500

Army R: 500
Unit S: 500


but obviously in a different format but same principle.

And naturally that would be after Notable Characters Killed (IE Nobles) which would be more divided into Realms.

Friendly: 2
Realm A :
Sir Gankalot
Queen Roflmao

Enemy: 3
Realm K :
Sir Megadeathkillyou

Realm O:
Pontiff Godlol
Baroness Damn




maybe have it optional?

[squishymaster]

Battle Summary = Epic