No More Lane Rolling

@djensen Not having access to the game at the moment I need to ask:
What is “lane rolling”?

Yeah, can you elaborate a bit, @djensen?

Copy/Pasting this from another thread where I complained about it but was ignored:

tldr: Column Rolling is the way combat was resolved in Classic. You roll your "1"s first, then opponent assigns casualties. After casualties are assigned, you roll your "2"s, and so on. Normally, you’re supposed to roll all of your dice before your opponent assigns their casualties.

Longer Explanation including the reason why this should not be a thing:

As long as we’re talking about the combat phase, I just remembered a gripe I’ve been meaning to bring up for a while now:

Why is Column “Lane” Rolling ( where, during combat, you roll the dice for each column and assign hits in-sequence, rather than rolling all dice before assigning hits . Ex. If attacking with 3 INF/1 TANK, I would roll my INF dice for “1s”, then my opponent would take hits as needed, then I would roll for my TANK) in-place in this game? I thought Column Rolling literally only existed in Classic 2nd Edition (maybe 3rd too, I don’t remember completely).

I bring it up because, although it really hasn’t impacted any of my games yet due to the whole “asynchronous play” thing. I can see it being an issue when you’re attacking another territory and are squaring off against a large number of enemy units that have a diverse range of combat stats. Something like:

I attack with 2 SUBs, 1 DD, 1 CV, 2 FTR

Opponent defends with 3 SUBs, 1 CV, 1 FTR

I do my roles, blah blah.

Opponent rolls for the subs, miraculously gets 3 hits.

Because of the way AAO works (column rolling), I need to pick who dies to the subs before the opponent rolls for the CV and FTRs.

This creates a tough situation for me. Do I lose the SUBs and DD, hoping that the CV and FTR won’t kill my carrier, do I lose 1 SUB/1 DD/1 CV to try to keep my Submarine alive, assuming at least one more hit (which would be assigned to a FTR), or do I lose 2 SUB/1 CV to allow my FTRs to get off one more round of hits, ensuring that the enemy navy is sunk even if it means sacrificing the FTRs (assuming they can’t NCM to safety).

In a normal game, a conundrum like this would not occur, as the defender would roll all of their dice before I assign casualties. Column Rolling adds a level of strategic depth/risk-taking to the game for sure, but it’s not a 1:1 recreation of the rules of 42SE.

I see, thanks. I’ve asked the team. We wanted to keep the game simple and understandable when doing combat for new players. This is why it’s being rolled that way.

@JuliusBorisovBeamdog That’s not a fair explanation. Why can’t the dice all be rolled simultaneously or color-coded? If anything, having to select multiple casualties in a row can come across as confusing. Imagine someone with zero axis and allies experience being presented with a screen that just shows some dice and the message “assign 2 casualties”. I can easily imagine a beginner thinking that they only had to select two casualties, only to be surprised when, without any option to retreat/press attack, additional die rolls start occurring and suddenly they have more casualties to deal with.

That, and it blatantly contradicts the actual rules of the game, which has (admittedly situational) consequences on battles, as I explained above.

EDIT: A potential compromise I can see here is keep it column-based for custom games, but use the actual rules for ranked. This would make sense, sense ranked already forces you to play LHTR instead of OOB (for balance reasons). Sorry, posted before reading your response sense I was already typing.

I hear that, but that’s a digital adaptation of the game, and playing a digital version means certain things should go differently if compared to the RL experience, especially when we consider the wide variety of players who play A&A 1942 Online.

@JuliusBorisovBeamdog Please see the edit to my previous post for a potential compromise here. I understand the frustrations of adapting the rules 1:1 from a board game, however if ranked play is expected to be taken seriously the basic rules should still be enforced when possible. I can see things like pre-determined order-of-losses and not being able to land planes on Allied Carriers being necessary due to the programming constraints involved with asynchronous play, but loss calculation is something that only impacts the turn player, and no one else.

Furthermore, you’ve already added a beginner-friendly option to combat resolution. There’s a button in the bottom-left of the combat screen that lets me just use my defense profile to assign casualties if I want. Inexperienced players are already accomodated to with that, I’d imagine.

I understand that retooling the combat screen would be time-consuming work, so I’m not requesting that this be done immediately. Just something to consider for the next “major release”.

@JuliusBorisovBeamdog said in No More Lane Rolling:

I hear that, but that’s a digital adaptation of the game, and playing a digital version means certain things should go differently if compared to the RL experience, especially when we consider the wide variety of players who play A&A 1942 Online.

Why that? Didn’t the project originally aim for being as rules compliant as possible?

How about that? It’s now in the preview build. ;) https://steamcommunity.com/games/898920/announcements/detail/5761771209960330408

@djensen I don’t follow why you perceive that there’s lane rolling. The online implementation is equivalent to rolling all dice at once since the defender’s defense profile is set as soon as the defender clicks to complete their turn. A click pause between each level of rolling is simply a game flourish to build suspense.

Ah, I can see what you mean with how the attacker gets to choose the losses at each loss stage. It’s not the same as Triplea or the board game, but I honestly haven’t noticed a difference in my games. 99.9% of the time the order of loss is aa -> inf -> bomber -> art -> tank -> fig. Navy is sub -> dest -> car -> cru -> fig. There are some caveats, but I perceive the difference between selecting losses by lane vs knowing the entire round hits to be a minor effect. It has the effect of slightly disadvantaging the attacker since the attacker must make decisions prior to knowing the full hit information. On the balancing side, the defender has to select a defensive profile prior to the subsequent round of battles.

It isn’t about perception. There’s a real mathematical difference.

Also it isn’t “balanced”.

You get a pizza and it’s a slice short. You say “oh no”, the delivery person says “don’t worry!” and eats the rest of the pizza. Now you have a perfectly balanced empty box.

@aardvarkpepper Agreed, there’s a real mathematical difference. Beamdog made a game design choice that asynchronous play is an essential product feature of the online version. Defense profiles and lane rolling are aspects that are motivated from this product decision.

Whoops, I just realized that I replied to a thread that’s 2 years old. sorry about that!

Lane rolling isn’t necessary to asynchronous play.

DoManMacgee isn’t really trying to say 1942 Online should play like Classic. He knows 1942 Online isn’t even based on Classic, it’s based on 1942 Second Edition. I expect he simply expects others to understand.

J1 Pearl Light. 1 sub, 1 cruiser, 2 fighters, 1 bomber vs 1 sub, 1 destroyer, 1 carrier, 1 fighter.

US submarine submerges, Japan gets 1 hit taken on US destroyer, US gets 1 hit taken on Japanese cruiser.

Next round of fire Japan gets 2 hits (all remaining defenders destroyed). US rolls a hit on carrier defense roll (say Japan didn’t get a submarine hit).

Under 1942 Second Edition, US rolls fighter. The attacker then knows the total casualties inflicted by the defender for the combat.

Under 1942 Online, US does not roll fighter. The casualty must immediately be assigned.

If Japan takes the US carrier hit on submarine, 2/3 chance US fighter rolls a hit taken on Japanese fighter from Japan. Japan then does not need to commit its carrier to where US can easily destroy it. But then there’s also a 1/3 chance the US fighter misses. Then Japanese carrier must commit, and Japanese carrier and fighter both die to US counter.

If Japan takes the US carrier hit on fighter, 2/3 chance US fighter rolls a hit. The US fighter cannot hit the Japanese submarine as there is no longer a defending US destroyer (remember it’s been removed on a previous round). A second valuable Japanese air unit must be destroyed. 1/3 chance the US fighter misses.

You see the difference. It isn’t just limited to Hawaiian Islands. Counting the opponent, I expect 1942 Online’s changed implementation just with regards to “lane rolling” to be a problem at least once a game, if not more.

Yup, apparently not; think you were right on this point.
I read through Julius’s post and see that they are fixing lane rolling. Drag and drop units should also be nice!