[Jayzone]

Jason,

This is the same debate as to whether using a more detailed rating is realistic or not. Well, I am not going to go into that argument as it is not the real point of this thread. The real point of this thread is to discuss how to make computer GM more competent.

However, I would still offer some counter arguments as some food for thought. You see, real-world does have access to performance projection system, although they may be not dead-on accurate. Real world GMs has access to PECOTA, ZIPS, or even in-house proprietary projection system, and others. Combing with in-house scouting report, it is not impossible to be able to predict a player's performance up to a certain accuracy (providing that the player is not hurted). So, using a more detailed rating is not without its basis of the real-world. Another thing is that rating itself is never everything. Players perform over/under ratings all the time. It's just that players are more *likely* to put up stats on the level of his ratings. You were worrying that the projection maybe to accurate that OOTP will just become a mindless excercise. Well, I happen to agree that pinpoint accuracy info should probably not be made available to human players, but this still should not prevent being able to be used by computer AI - if just to be used to make up the shortcoming in intelligence as compare to human GM. I just want to clearify that I, myself, switch between various rating scales depending on whether I want to play a fast or slow league. So I am *not* propsing more detailed rating all the way here.

The point here is that, IMO, the easiest way to make computer AI more competent is to let the AI have the abilility of more-or-less accurately predicting performance, or cheating - if you may. The way that I see it is that this is the easier solution than trying to make computer AI into a Deep Blue clone. Plus, a handicap (eg. scouting ability) could also be coded so that computer AI won't always have the the most accurate projection.