Battle Reports

[Davin]

Davin, without the detailed accounting of the battle, do you find your users ever asking/complaining that the outcome of the battle did not match their expectations?

Actually, no, because of way this game is played.  Combat in Galac-Tac is strategic in nature and is not directly controlled by the players.  Most combats are very one-sided, with a large fleet snuffing out a small one without effort.  More evenly-matched battles are infrequent and even then one side usually has little damage while the other is often left in shreds.  The combat report for these mostly tells you which side you were on.  But that, in itself, is important.  By looking at the relative sizes and compositions of the fleets you can tell whether your personal ship designs were effective or not so that you can make any adjustments necessary in ship design and fleet composition to do a better job next time.

In many wargames, combat happens with various units each taking distinctive action, and it's that activity that's important in the combat report, hence step-by-step details are useful.  In Galac-Tac it's more about predefined configurations and the randomness of battle.  Each shot doesn't matter as much as the average of many random results, and the overall outcome reports on that average performance.

In a similar vein, assume two opposing units of sword-wielding infantry.  What's most important is their positioning/activity and which side is dying faster than the other, rather than where each foot is placed for balance or the sword strokes used and how they're blocked.  So even a detailed report isn't really detailed in that respect - it's just telling you what's important about that battle.  You might think of this as the short-term average result of many combatants behaving independently.  You'd want a whole different level of detail if the entire combat was just two heroes facing one another for the fate of the game.

So the detail level of reporting that's useful is mostly determined by the design of the game you're playing.

FYI - I do get occasional complaints about the outcome not being what was expected, but that's not due to any details of the combat, hence showing details isn't helpful.  The complaints run more along the lines of "I have a big fleet and he has a small one, why did I lose?"  The answers are more along the lines of "He's got massively advanced weapons that are doing five times as much damage as yours, as you'd see if you looked at your starting combat report."  And the response, "Oh!"