According to the battle simulator 10 heavy artillery against 10 heavy tanks should result in 1 or 2 against 7 or 8 (ie. a serious mistake to make such an attack). In a real encounter in one of my games, though, it went 10-8 in favour of the heavy artillery. How did that happen? Or am I missing something? Terrain was green, so no advantage there, yet my opponent's heavy artillery didn't lose a single unit!

range: tanks can only attack at a range of 1

This was heavy artillery doing the attacking.

it doesn't matter.  in an attack, both units will attack each other.  if the tank was more than one hex away then it can't attack the artillery back

Then am I using the simulator wrongly?

no, you are just interpreting it incorrectly

Er, how? It quite explicitly predicted a big loss for the heavy artillery - how can that be interpreted incorrectly?

The simulator cannot tell whether a unit can actually attack back. Only artillery have ranged land attacks. If an artillery attacks at range, the tank cannot move up to the artillery to attack and then move back. That's the point of artillery. They attack at a distance without receiving retaliatory damage unless the unit attacked can attack back at that range.

i.e. the simulator does not account for the different ranges of different units. you have to figure that out yourself.

So the simulator isn't much use then, is it? If it can't tell whether a unit can actually attack back, why isn't there a prominent disclaimer somewhere to warn that it's predictions in relation to artillery are pretty worthless?

They leave that to you to figure out on your own.  I'm not trying to be harsh here, but it isn't that difficult to figure out if you have one whit of intelligence.  The simulator will give you a dmg output vs defense reading ONLY.  It doesn't take things like range into effect.  That's your job.  Why are you punching in the numbers for a heavy artillery vs a heavy tank stack when ONLY ONE OF THEM CAN ACTUALLY DO DAMAGE?

It's up to you to realize that some things are pointless.  Don't be an idiot.  If you've played more than five games of Weewar than you should realize that DFA vs anything is only handy for the DFA if the target is 2 spaces or farther away.  Or, in this case, the heavy artillery is 3 or 4 spaces away from the unit you're attacking.

So yes.  The simulator is very useful.  You are, as stated before, USING IT WRONG.

hey everyone... ease up. 

I have only so far completed 2 games. I am not an idiot. The simulator nowhere explains what you have just explained. If it is pointless "punching in the numbers for a heavy artillery vs a heavy tank" why does the simulator not only allow you to do that (and, even worse, display misleading information about the outcome)?

Because the designer, who is not a weewar developer, but a player, assumes that you will take range into consideration on your own.

Po, that was quite harsh. It does take some time to learn the rules of the game and such.

What it calculates assumes that they're able to attack. The results you get will be what would be left if the artillery attacked the tank OR the tank attacked the artillery, the attacker in each case actually being unharmed.

I suppose it's not beyond the wit of man to change it so that it considers these things, but then it would produce different results depending on which way around you put the 2 units (which is blue, which is red). I think the reversibility is more valuable than the compensation for range.

ok... imo, it should be as easy as adding another variable.  a yes/no one actually - the hexes that the units that are attacking each are either touching (immediately next to each other) or not.

having said that, i'm fine with pluto not adding that, if he doesn't want to, for whatever reason.

also, i don't think color matters, but rather attacker or defender.  however, in the sim, attacker is red, and defender is blue.

thanks for helping explain guys.

what it comes down to is I make things that I want to use, and if I think other people will like them, then I share.  This range issue is not that complicated and makes sense once you understand the game.  It has come up in other threads on tangler as well as in comments on my sim page, and once it's explained then people usually get it.

RedLenin, I would recommend that you keep playing some more games and you will eventually understand

Its not so much that the colour matters to me, as being able to easily carry forward results for one unit attacking, then being attacked on the other person's turn

e.g. I go to the simulator and set up a battle, my artillery being attacked by a tank, which knocks a load of points off its health. I then hit the handy "set to most likely outcome" button and then want to find out how much damage my weakened arty could do to a trooper.

Currently I can swap the tank for a trooper and all is well. If we considered range then it would read the artillery as being attacked by the trooper and say the trooper takes no damage.

...it's not a big thing, but I like it the way it is.

adding range is unnecessary. "Common sense", Ladies and Gentlemen, common sense is what needs to be considered. I can easily predict that if a man gets shot by an M60 he will most likely get injured at least, however if the guy with the M60 is standing in Brazil and the target is standing Hong Kong then that prediction does not help you much does it? At least thats what common sense should tell you.

i'd love to see a function where you could set the total numbers on each side to think ahead more than a turn, but i don't think there needs to be a range function. you can easily figure it out... assuming you know that battleships can shoot up to 5 spaces away rather than 4

http://www.plutosforge.com/blog/projects/weewar-battle-simulator that satisfies me

Pluto said: "This range issue is not that complicated and makes sense once you understand the game.  It has come up in other threads on tangler as well as in comments on my sim page, and once it's explained then people usually get it."

I *do* get this now but my point is that the simulator itself should explain the range issue, otherwise how else are beginners going to understand the misleading information the simulator gives. All it would take is a couple of lines of text somewhere.

I'm curious why if i hit battle a number of times with the same setup the percentages are slightly different each time. i understand there’s randomness figured in, but that’s what the percentages are supposed to show, right?

This simulator uses many simulations of random "dice rolls" and such to get the %s. Another one out there or in development, uses math and probability to find out the actual chances, but the first one does well enough and varies only sometimes and insignificantly so.

I never saw that "set" button on the plutos online simulator. A button like that could be useful indeed in the gm script as well. Its not necessary though. I can click a number just as well, just more convenient.

Pluto: http://www.plutosforge.com/blog/weewar-battle-simulator-test-server seems to be a 404 for me.  I'd like to use your test-server version?

oops, i messed up the link.  here it is http://www.plutosforge.com/blog/projects/weewar-battle-simulator/weewar-battle-simulator-test-server

there's one problem with it though.  the jet's and heavy trooper's stats are not correct because i misread the specifications the first time around... and unfortunately i just moved and my computer that has flash installed on it is still packed up in the uhaul.  so, it may be a while before I can fix it

How incorrect are they?  Can we just make a mental adjustment?

basically, the heavy trooper is still 8 vs. air instead of 6

common sense solves the first problem.

the second one - we have the solution here.