Not sure if anyone else is working on a form for sumbitting stats for Tactics. If not, I will set one up. However, I think I need a lot of help on what info should be submitted. If anyone has any ideas, please help.
EDIT: Here is the current form.
I think the best we could capture would be dice roll results from specific abilities, but that would not be interesting.
So maybe results from the scenarios would be the best use of stats.
As a player who has read a lot but not played anything, heres what I think it should include, but there is probably more. Skirmish vs Scenario. If it is a scenario, which one. Number of characters per side. Which characters. Map? Turn order? If you use the environment rules.
I've been working on a spreadsheet to track Tactics data, but I'm in the same boat you are; having not played the game, I have no idea what information would be useful.
I am thinking that it might look something like this. Right now, this is a generic form, and nothing about Tactics is given away.
Which characters were incapped, and how many times.
And by whom.
I may have been a tad bit overzealous to see what all of the questions were and accidentally submitted a wonderfully made-up game. Sorry 'bout that! 
Should the name of the scenario be in the list of scenarios, or is that too much of a spoiler?
I may have as well…
I don't mind. It actually a bit. Making the form is one thing, analyzing the data is another. I would rather have the form easier to fill out, even though it would create some more complex formulas later on. The submitted games let me see how the data is being sorted intially. So, thanks!
Oh, well, then naturally I totally did it on purpose in order to assist you! I could tell as I was maniacally clicking through questions that it would be of great use to the community!
Which do people prefer for selecting the teams for a skirmish game: Check boxes or drop boxes.
Check boxes, personally. It's only half as many clicks, and much easier if you're on a tablet or phone.
Depends. For 4 choices, check boxes work great. But for hero select, it may get really crowded
I know. I made that up real quick, but will make a more realistic one in a bit.
Here is how it would look with all of the characters.
RIght now, I have them in alphabetical order based on the set they are in (core game then expansion). I could just put them in alphabetical order if that would be easier.
As someone who will rarely input stats on a phone, instead using a tablet or comp, I think the pull downs are better
I prefer the drop boxes since it let's you see hero order.
Just trying to find out the best way to do this without overwhelming people. This needs a lot of cleaning up, but here is what I have so far.
Ok, I reworked it and made it a little easier to read. I think it can still use some work, and I need to finish the character page, but what do people think. Also, if you see a mistake, or if you think something should be rearranged or reworded, please say so.
EDIT: I created a detailed section for each character. Rght now all the info is the same, but if anybody has any suggestions for character specific info, please say so.
Do you still want us submitting dummy games? I would submit real games, but FEDEX has thus far ignored me
Ons of the issues I ran into on the original statistics is that multiple check boxes were horribly hard to parse for data collection… Of course, the areson9 came along and he probably would have been much happier with multiple checkboxes because he is much better at such things than I!
Good luck guys with this and I’ll be around if you have any questions
I know, it makes things so much harder. For the GSF stats, I have a query function pulling out of the info from those multiple cells. Not sure if that was the best way, but it works.
My biggest problem right now is the openness of skirmish games. Someone said they wanted to know how many times each character was incapped and by whom. Google Forms is so limited, there isn't a good way to represent it. Here was my first idea, and you can see how clunky the advance stats are. Here is my current idea. It might not be less clunky, but I think it is a bit easier to read. The big problem though is getting all the names of the characters that did the incapping. It would be so horrible to move around if there were 5 drop down boxes under each name (and that assumes you only play until 5 incaps). If someone has a better idea, great, but right now I am forced to use an import box that is difficult to parse and can cause a lot of problems if people don't spells the names right.
Edit: if people prefer the checkboxes, I will do what I can. Right now, there were two votes for drop boxes and 1 vote for checkboxes.
I think the number of in caps on and by a particular character is more useful than trying to match them up. Seeing who is squishy is useful and interesting. Seeing that Ra blasts everything is useful. If it slows the data down, saying both is a waste.
Right now I have it so that you put down under each character who incapped them. I can easily reverse it and ask who did they incap. And here is where the issue of the question comes in. If you list who incapped each character each time, you will get all the info you need, however, not everyone will remember that data, and will only remember how many times, so you needs to ask more question, even if they seem redundant.
However, the bigger issue is just presentation of the survey. Google Forms isn't dynamic enough. You can't pick your team and have the form only ask about those characters. So, you either need to keep referring to the characters as "character #1" which is hard to read, or you have to put all of the info next to each. That is what I did with the first attempt. However, now we are dealing with a very clunky form, and not everyone wants to put in that info. So, I had to create a basic form that is easier to read, but it makes my life much harder since the same info comes from two different forms (although I can get around it).
My current attempt was to have one form that starts off with basic/essential questions that everyone should answer, and gives the option of answering more questions. Since Google Forms isn't dynamic enough, I needed to put all of the characters down for every game, or refer to each character as #1, #2, etc.
This is essentially my dilemma.
EDIT: I don't mind looking up how to deal with more complicated formulas to deal with the data, but it has to come at the cost of having a very easy to use form. Right now, it is kind of hard to get to that point.
Now that I think about it, I will only ask the number of incaps on one sheet, then make another, very complicated one, for anybody who wants to submit the matchups.
Also, one reason why I like the detailed character sheet is that I can make some question character specific each game. One idea I had was which power/card was used the most? However, I am not sure the best way to ask the question: Should it be which card (or ability) was used the most? Or should it be which card (or ability) was the most important? Or both questions. It will take me awhile to type up all the cards, but if people find this useful, I will give it a shot.
EDIT: Also, is the number of incaps as important as the total damage done? I think this would be a big pain to keep track of, but could be much more important. I guess this begs the question: is it worth having so many detailed questions? Or would simply subjective questions be better, For example, instead of asking how many much damage each target did to a specific character, a simply questions of "In this game, which character caused X the most problem?" Might be better. Similarly, you can ask what th role of each character was, instead of asking for the specific details, e.g., Primary damage dealer, secondary damage dealer, etc.
I would add this:
Did someone play Omnitron-V?
Was Omnitron-V awesome?
Then leave a drop box with only Yes as an answer.
Because Omnitron-V is awesome.
Last page the name input has the Case sensitive warning three times in each paragraph.
You could go a less precise, subjective route, and have them choose what characters were in the game, then have a sort of "MVP" list where they have to put all the characters in order of best-worst for that particular match.
Instead of having to figure out how much damage everyone did, or how many incaps there were you're given info on how well that character did in general when compared to the others. And isn't that generally what you're after anyways?
Going this route, if you want a little more accuracy, you can have a paragraph before the list telling them to keep in mind (if at all possible) how many times someone was incapped, and how many incaps they doled out, as well as how often that character had just the right ability at just the right moment, or how versatile that character was in the game (having the abilities necessary to handle any given situation).
In the end it'd be up to the submitter to say who did better, and it'd be more subjective than objective, of course.
It all depends on if you want cold hard facts that not everyone may be able to give you, thus potentially skewing the data; or subjective, anecdotal "evidence" that you will more reliably recieve.
Hey, check out this post on BGG. Anyone wanna chime in over there and join forces?
I was going to wait a little after GenCon to see if there were any more opinions on what to put in before I finalize it. Otherwise, I am going to start off with a smaller form that has the essential stuff, then add in what people want later.
I thought there would be a little more discussion about what should go into the form. Oh well, time to take the initiative (I rolled higher). There has already been a bit of confusion, since people have been submitting games to both forms. That's fine, but I think it's time to eliminate that confusion. In a little bit, I am going to put up a simple form regarding skirmish games. The goal of that form will be to keep track of stats in order to balance the game for skirmishes and tournaments.
While more information is always better, things can get out of hand with keeping track of the number of incaps and damage. On the other hand, subjective information is, well, subjective. To that end, I am going to keep the form intially very small with only a few essential questions. This should hopefully encourage as many people as possible to use the form, and get as much info as possible. I will also create the initial formulas so that we can actually see some of the results of that data.
The new form should be up later today, so I am going to ask everyone not to submit any more games with the old forms. If you did already, you can just resubmit them with the new forms. If that is a problem, just PM me, and I will take a look at your old games.
Right now, the only things I am considering as essential are the characters of each side, and the final score. WIth only this info, we should be able to see a characters win rate in a 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, etc., as well as the win rate depending on how many incaps are needed to win. We should also begin to see which characters win the most, and by how much (do they always win by one point, or always demolish the competition).
If anybody can think of essential information that should go into the form, please say so.
I still think that which characters got incapped (and how many times) is important.
So maybe character X wins a lot, but is also very squishy, or something.
I agree, but I think I am going to hold off on that for a bit. Only because I can get a lot of information with only asking 4 questions. ASking about apecific characters will make the form a bit more complicated, which is fine, but I want to get this really basic stuff out first.
That being said, here is the current and active form. It is really basic and quick (used checkboxes for less clicks), so hopefully we will get a lot of info soon.
Fair enough. I'll add in my game from yesterday!
Or rather I won't, since it was a scenario. My bad.
I've got an issue with the new form. It doesn't allow me to enter a score of 0, so I put 0.1 instead.
Let me double check it. I thought I set the winning team for at least 1, while the losing team could be zero. Well, that was what I intended.
EDIT: Woohoo! Found my mistake easily! Thanks Ronway! I set it for greater than 0 instead of greater than or equal to 0. I also changed it from 0.1 to 0.
Baron Blade Scenario 2 doesn't really have a winner. . . how should we report that scenario?
Also the Omni-Reape isn't an option, and I use it a decent bit.
For Skirmishes can we add a line of text so if we ae using a variant SKirmish mode we can report it?
Regarding Scenarios:
At first, I had every intention of having a huge list of scenarios, and specific reports for each of them. I decided to first focus on skirmishes, so that is all there is right now. Adding in the Skirmishes will be a lot of wor implementing all 12 scenarios. I have no problem with doing the work, if it will mean something. From what I was reading on the forums, most people start with the scenarios, then move on to skirmishes. If that is true, and multiple play groups don't repeatedly play the same scenarios, then it might not be worth the effort. The data won't really mean anything unless there are a lot of games. If people only play them once or twice, then the data will never really be meaningful. Keep in mind that a group that plays 3 skirmish games can add three games to the list. If taht same group plays through a scenario, we now have 3 games for 3 different lists. Essentially, I will add scenarios if people keep playing them.
Regarding Unofficial Skirmish Characters:
The main goal of the stats isn't just for curiosity sake, but actually to help GtG keep the game in balance for the tournaments (I already talked to them a bit about what info they want). If that is the case, having unofficial characters in the skirmish games might mess up the data (at least for a simple analysis). First, I would somehow have to have aevery game marked if there were only official characters or not, then adjust every analystic formula so that it only counts those game instead of all the games (not a huge deal, but it can be annoying). Not to mention that if you want the data on the unofficial characters, I would need to create two different analysis based on all the data or only official.
This also gets into the other issue of how many people will be using that character (more so for fan-created cahracters than Omni-Reaper). If only a few games come in for each character, because only their group uses it, the data won't be so helpful, and worth the effort.
Origianlly, I planned on having a blank spot to put in other characters, and I might go back to that eventually.
Regarding other types skirmishes:
My understanding is that tournaments will use a standard skirmish mode, which is what I want to focus on right now. However, I do want to implement these, I just have to figure out the best way. The games score the same way, so it might be a lot better to have separate forms for each type of game, than adding a line (not to mention the analysis is a bit easier).
Right now I only have a few formulas up, because there aren't so many games in. Once more games come in, I will put up some more stuff. Also, if anybody wants to help with the analysis, just PM me your email address.
I'm hoping tournaments go beyond just skirmishes, because that is going to grow old quickly.
I like the base skirmishes, but outside of a few tricks the strategy to a skirmish is to roll well.
Well, the fact of the matter is its a tournament. And a tournament is to say 'I have a better team an better tactics'
Anyways, I had the same issue Pydro, with people putting in custom villains (ie, improved Gloomweaver, even had someone in the comments saying 'Didnt use Legacy, used so and so Cauldren Hero'
So i just remove those entries when I find them. its always in the comments section. Personally, I think for Tactics just what you have is perfectly awesome.