HOLF Players' Guild Forum

In response to a question I received some time ago, but wasn't able to address until now, I have looked at the NWOL code and discovered a fairly serious error in the scoring system. The problem is technical, but has to do with the way that units with batteries are handled in calculating laurel point awards. The program undercalculated the sizes of units with batteries, meaning that not enough laurel points were awarded for defeating them in battles.

Since this bug ran all the way through NWOL-2, it affected the outcome fairly substantially. Fortunately, we have archives of the master reports of each turn. The master reports show all units involved in each battle and their strengths, so it was a relatively straightforward matter to recalculate the laurel point awards that should have been made. It's a lot of calculations, but it was not difficult to write a small computer program to do it and work out the new totals.

Unfortunately, the changes are sufficient to alter the final standings. Among the frags, the winner of Pomerania didn't change, but the Wuerttembergers were able to increase their score to +122%, pulling them ahead of Hannover for second place which ended up with a corrected +104%. Among the minors, Portugal fell dramatically (I am not sure why this bug affected them so much, but it clearly did) and their score dropped to +31%. Denmark's rose to +33%, permitting them to take the minor nation crown. And last, and perhaps most surprisingly of all, among the majors, Austria's modified score rose to +26%, putting them all the way into first place, narrowly beating out Britain's adjusted +25% (France's modified score fell to +19%).

We will make suitable corrections to HOLF's records, and issue new victory medals appropriately.

Congratulations to the newly recognized winners, especially those intrepid Danes, and also, Happy April Fools Day!