scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/2v8qsv.md

[BST]How did the Battle Room work, anyway?

• Author: u/None *

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2v8qsv/bsthow_did_the_battle_room_work_anyway/

• Score: 9

• Created: 2015-02-08T23:44:07

Post:

So I'm reading this guy's read-through of Ender's Game when I start remembering how friggin awesome the Battle Room and not how lame and boring it is in the movies. So how do battles work, anyway?

Here are some problems I've been thinking about:

How do you force teams to advance? A situation where neither army sees a reason to risk itself and attack the other side seems like it could happen a lot. Is there a time limit forcing a team to make a move? Is it a tie when the time runs out? That means the losing team could start stalling, as if real battles have a one-hour time limit (could be realistic in the case of holding out for reinforcements or something, I suppose).

How are the stars distributed? Symmetric sounds like it would lead to more stalling, but asymmetric has fairness issues.

What's up with formations, anyway? Is the point to organize your team in such a way as to have guns pointed at the most likely and important points lanes for the enemy army to advance through? But that should be very dependent on the distribution of stars, so unless the commanders know what the map will look like ahead of time, their practices will have to be about learning to quickly recognize the salient features of different kinds of star distributions and how to react optimally, not just set formations.

If the entire enemy team has to be frozen or disabled to win, as happened after Ender did the most obvious thing came up with the brilliant strategy of going for the goal, then if the rooms are big and dark, and there's plenty of stars to hide behind, and it's hard to tell a damaged enemy from a disabled one, hunting down the last couple of stragglers could be an ordeal. Some kids might specialize in become hunters who slowly pick away at the enemy after the battle is essentially over, saving their team from defeat. Is that a problem? How would armies or the rules adjust to deal with that?

What stops disabled soldiers from being total jerks and flying around blocking shots with their arms and legs kept up in front of their body so as not to be frozen completely? Or why not just grab a frozen soldier and use him as a shield?

What other questions can you think of about how the Battle Room would have actually worked? What kind of strategies would need to be dealt with, what kind of rules seem sensible to promote a strategic, tactical, and fun game? Why did the movie have to suck so bad?

hnng want to write me some battle school fanfic

Comments:

u/eaglejarl [+8] (4 hours later)

How do you force teams to advance?

Winning battles got you points on the Battle School ('School') leader board. Highest ranked people on the leader board got the command positions that everyone wanted. At the game level it might not make sense to attack but at the metagame level it was essential.

How are the stars distributed? Symmetric sounds like it would lead to more stalling, but asymmetric has fairness issues.

It's training for real warfare, so School doesn't care if it's unfair. In the game they sometimes appeared to allocate things randomly and other times they allocated them very precisely to screw with Ender.

What's up with formations, anyway? [...T]hat should be very dependent on the distribution of stars, so [...] their practices will have to be about learning to quickly recognize the salient features of different kinds of star distributions and how to react optimally, not just set formations. [...] Or why not just grab a frozen soldier and use him as a shield?

Training to recognize situations and adapt to them quickly is exactly what School wants.

As to how formations were used in the book: at least once, Ender had his people grab on and freeze parts of themselves so they were locked together into a big tortoise; the people on the outside had their guns pointed out if anyone got in front of them, the people on the inside were protected by the bodies on the outside.

Grabbing a frozen soldier and using him as a shield was something that Ender did -- he froze one of his soldiers bent over, had an unfrozen soldier get inside the resulting 'spaceship' and threw both of them into the room where they could shoot the enemies gathered around Ender's gate.

If the entire enemy team has to be frozen or disabled [...s]ome kids might specialize in become hunters who slowly pick away at the enemy after the battle is essentially over, saving their team from defeat. Is that a problem? How would armies or the rules adjust to deal with that?

Not a problem, no. It's training for real combat. The rules wouldn't be changed; the armies would have to adapt and use scouting / patrol methods to locate and destroy the insurgents surviving snipers.

What stops disabled soldiers from being total jerks and flying around blocking shots with their arms and legs kept up in front of their body so as not to be frozen completely?

Nothing. That was a standard tactic; it was what "the enemy's gate is down" was all about -- you go feet- or knees-first to present minimal profile and to block shots from hitting your torso.

Why did the movie have to suck so bad?

They crammed in all the most awesome, most seminal bits so the pacing was too fast. They should either have made it be two movies, or they should have chopped off everything after Ender won the big battle and used the gained time to fix the pacing in the first half.

u/None [+3] (an hour later)

asymmetric has fairness issues.

i thought unfairness was the whole point

that, good questions, carry on, I'm monitoring this thread and reading A War of Gifts because you just reminded me of that, thank you

u/None [+5] (an hour later)

Also, apparently Card was going to write another parallel story in Battle School from Petra's perspective. Screw that, let's write it ourselves. WHAT'S THE PLAN, GENTS?

u/helltank1 [+2] Unfriendly AI (7 hours later)

The way I see it:

How do you force teams to advance?

Like eaglejarl pointed out, armies were eager to defeat their opponents and gain points on the ranking board. In the case where an army was losing and wished to stall, I'm guessing that the winning team would just group up and methodically sweep out the entire Battle Room, launching assaults on stars that the losing team was taking cover behind.

How are the stars distributed?

One of the teachers mentioned that it the arrangement of stars was either symmetrical or random, which seems fair to me, especially given that in real combat, terrain is much more complex and less balanced.

What's up with formations, anyway?

Before Ender and his bright ideas came along, formations were considered crucial to maintain disciplined fire. Because it's actually pretty hard to aim a laser beam in zero gravity while your enemy ducks and weaves behind stars, armies tended to clump together and focus-fire on targets they wanted to assault.

Pre-arranged patterns also meant that the armies could adjust their strategies(ie. the commander makes a hand signal for switching into "attack formation", then later on signals to switch to "flanking formation") on the fly, and it also allowed the toons to coordinate and maneuver more effectively.

Finally, brute force was basically the only way they knew how to storm a star. Since orientation switching to assault enemy stars from unexpected angles didn't come around until Ender's era, the main tactic used was to get a bunch of kids together and swarm all over the target star, firing lasers in focused bursts at defenders.

hunting down the last couple of stragglers could be an ordeal

Re-read the scene where Ender receives his gun for the first time. It's mentioned that it has a flashlight, presumably to allow kids to sweep the room and clean up stragglers. Also note that stragglers that try to specialize in hunting would run into some difficulties, mainly that they would be firing laser beams leading in a straight line back to them. They'd knock out one guy and then receive a barrage of lasers in their own direction.

Although Ender DID manage to use this unexpected strategy to win a key game when he was attached to Salamander, and it's mentioned that this was a completely novel tactic to the other armies.

What stops disabled soldiers from being total jerks and flying around blocking shots with their arms and legs kept up in front of their body

Since arms and legs are used for pushing off walls for maneuvers and movement, they would essentially becoming floating stars that occasionally fired off lasers in random directions. Ender used a modified version of this(freezing their knees tucked in front of their chests as a shield) to some success.

why not just grab a frozen soldier and use him as a shield?

This was a legitimate tactic and pushing off or shielding behind frozen soldiers from either team was done quite often, even before Ender's days.

What kind of strategies would need to be dealt with

Frankly, I think that "the enemy's gate is down" is actually a shit way of explaining zero-g orientation. A better line would be "the enemy's gate is wherever you want it to be". Once the kids get used to the idea that there is no such thing as down and that they are basically free floating, ideas like pincer tactics(enemies from two/three sides falling down on you with frozen knee-shields and firing madly between their legs) and angle-switching on stars("slingshotting" around stars to come at the enemy from a different angle, which is what Bean tried using although he resorted to a trick with string) to attack from unexpected angles would become quite common.

I also thought of a cool trick with kids who could wrap their arms and legs around a star, curl up to minimize their target size then freeze their arms and legs so that the star/frozen limbs block the enemy's line of fire. This basically allows them to peep out behind their shield, slip their gun barrels through a crack in their knees and act as sentry turrets or stationary gattling-guns. Ender's idea with the frozen knee-shields was good but they could be attacked from behind by wall-sliders, this way the star blocks their back so they're covered in all directions. The only way to take them out would be to score a miraculous hit on their eyes while they leisurely targeted you and took you out.

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