Ok, so I posted this on the TripleA site, but just to get this idea out there to the largest number of players, here it is again.
Ok, to expound on this further…
LL is in place, and works to smooth out really wild random results, but it does nothing about the engine rolling exceptional numbers of 1’s and 2’s and throwing off the game quite a bit, by the sheer numbers of such rolls.
LL+MAD cannot address that happening, so all the annoying over rolling of 1’s and 2’s is still going to happen, and your still going to lose units that you really shouldn’t. That being said, the rationale for including {Mutually Assured Destruction} on top of LL, is to stop rolls of less that 1/6th probability from taking the game far away from where they ‘should be’ if probable result were the norm.
Take the example of the single bomber attacking the single transport. Transport hitting the bomber is a 1 in 6 chance, and that is fine and dandy. What isn’t fine and dandy, is where the attacking bomber misses the transport, because now we are talking about a 1:18 chance, and given such a situation, with a very low probability entering into the game, does not even address any further damage to the game that then occurs as a result of this low probability event.
As mentioned above, MAD cannot stop the overabundance of 1’s and 2’s being rolled, but what it can do is make the madness stop before it really gets out of hand. The mechanism for this is to apply LL, and then check for one forces remainder to be larger than the other. If both sides have the same remainder, then the disparity check fails, and MAD does not apply. If the disparity check succeeds, then MAD uses a single die, and this number is used for both sides.
In the above example, Bomber Vs Transport, we check for disparity of remainder after applying LL, and this confirms that MAD is in effect. On a roll of 5-6, both sides miss each other, on a 2-4, the bomber kills the transport and survives, and on a 1, they both kill each other! Thus, all the probable outcomes of at least 1:6 are not affected by this rule, rather, this rule prevents outcomes less likely than 1 in 6, and the game then become a step closer to strategy, and one step farther away from becoming a series of “Lucky Shots, Sir” moments.
Another example, a fighter and two infantry Vs one or two infantry, so 5:2(5:4) Without MAD, we could easily see the stronger force missing, while the weaker force ‘gets lucky’ and takes out part of the opposition. In the 5v2 battle, 1:6 chance the stronger force doesn’t get a kill, but reduce that by 50%, and we now have a 1:18 chance for the stronger force to be hit by the weaker force, while themselves not getting a hit of their own in. In the 5v4 battle, this comes in at 1:9 chance.
Looking at some real game, round one battles, Russia attacks Manchuria.
5@1 + 1@3 = 8
3@2 + 1@4 = 10
With LL, this is settled by a pair of dice rolls, 1-2 v 1-4, while MAD uses just one roll for both remainders, 1-2 both sides get second hit, 3-4 Japanese hit twice while the Russians hit just the once, and 5-6, both side miss their chance. Best case for the weaker force, is two mutual kills, as this leaves both sides evenly balanced, and with no remainder, so second round each side takes it’s third casualty, and in the third round, the Russian force is now the stronger force, and need not fear taking any greater casualties than they inflict.
Gosh! it’s late, bedtime for me…