Enaris

Oh, it certainly isn't what I look for in leadership, which is why I put him as Yellow. I consider Yellow to be "mixed bag, but competent moments are more than balanced out by mistakes." *shrugs*

There's no doubting Marshall's importance in winning the Second World War, but frankly, as he never actually commanded troops in combat as a general during any war, you can't really rate him against other combat commanders. No implication on my part. A simple statement. Lee was likely the most talented tactician of the war, and one of the better generals of the war on the operational level. On the other hand, his grasp of the larger strategic aspects of the war were rather more limited. No, he wasn't the CSA Commander (that was Davis himself), but the Antietam and Gettysburg campaigns both showed that he didn't fully understand Washington's lesson of "An Army in Being", and he was as parochial as any other General in protecting his turf (the ANV as opposed to the rest of the splintering CSA.) He was good to be sure, but I absolutely put Grant better and likely Sherman among ACW generals. He was a better battlefield commander than either (especially Sherman) but the others both had better understandings of the overall realities of the war. McClellan is a very interesting discussion. He had his limits to be sure, but frankly, he wasn't nearly as bad as saying he would be "black". He was beyond cautious to a fault absolutely (he may not have invented camping, but he certainly perfected it.) At the Seven Days he left too much to his subordinates, and you can even make a decent argument for Treason at 2nd Bull Run. Yet, for all that, the plan for the Peninsula was well formed, he moved fairly effectively pinning down Lee at Antietam. Sure, he got the break of the lost orders, but he still made somewhat good use of them. The generals I put below him? They are the very definition of militantly bad to my mind. Actual drags on their armies. Earl Van Dorn. Confederate Commander in Arkansas early in the ACW. Attempted to attack the Union at Pea Ridge, divided his command on two sides of a mountain and tried to attack on both sides. The side he wasn't with had no effective leadership and just sort of meandered. His side pushed but not enough to win the battle. However, to gain even that position, he'd entirely cut himself off from his ammo train (while driving Curtis back onto his own.) When day 2 of the battle began, the Confederates found themselves forced to retreat very quickly from lack of ammo. Then, he abandoned his position in Arkansas, effectively abandoning the entire state to the Union to go fight in Mississippi. Beat his head into the wall against Rosecrans at Corinth. Eventually killed by a jealous husband. (Doesn't directly relate to his generalship, but humorous.) James Wilkinson: Where does one begin? A traitor in the pay of Spain. Then, in the War of 1812, refused to cooperate with another nearby US force because he and the commander had a long standing feud. Spent the entire Chrysler's Farm campaign strung out on opiates, and ended up having to drag back to his base. As red as red can be.

American Generals (heh) Purple: Winfield Scott Blue: Ulysses Grant Green: Douglas MacArthur Yellow: George B McClellan Orange: Earl Van Dorn Red: James Wilkenson

I've always thought that "Decent" might fit into that spot.

Being part of a Training Clan, I'm well aware of the fact that people outside the 10% are well aware of their numbers, and their place in the "pecking order". Now, you may well argue that M-I-T tends to attract a certain subset of lower end players (the upwardly mobile), but I've seen any number of times the excitement that people get when they manage to pass some number which causes their color to change. It becomes something of a intermediate goal as they go along in the process. I do think that's valuable, and why I think that a system which recognizes differences in the bottom 75% is of overall value to the entire WOT community.

An analogy I've used before in regards to player levels is to parallel it with one's educational level. I think that keeps us from getting the idea that it's "all or nothing" "unicum or red" or the like. Red= Elementary School Orange= Jr High Yellow= High School Diploma Green= College Degree Blue=Masters Purple= PhD Dark Purple=Post Doc Fellowship Now, of course, a major issue is that not everyone wants to go on to college or grad school (heh), and some are happy dropping out after 6th grade. However, while a PhD in any field can look at those below him and say "they don't truly understand the field", that doesn't mean that there isn't real differences between the groups below.

Pork, something to remember is the "Compression of Perspective". A player who is in the top 5% of the server sees little "real" difference between the play of anyone yellow and below. Yet, think about what Max said before. While you may consider a 47% to be a "bad" player, the truth is that he's only slightly negative on your team compared to a 44%. He'll cost his team around 1.5 of 100 games, as opposed to the 4.5 or so (assuming 48.5 average winrate) that the truly bad player costs his team. That's as much as a difference as the one between a 53% and a 56% on the "positive" side. That's a real difference, even if the compression of viewpoint makes them all appear "the same".

The 500 point "noise" that you mention. Is that "across the board" or "in the higher levels"? What I mean is this, does this 500 points of noise only really manifest when you're in the upper extremes of the rating (2200+ or the like), or is that rule of thumb equally true when looking down around the 1000 level also? It strikes me that a rating having 500 points of "noise" when well over 90% of the playerbase has a rating lower than 1500 (thus, "noise x 3") is more than a bit problematic.

I guess the ongoing question that remains in my mind is "Who is the color system intended to give information to?" Is it a system that's really meant to only give relevant information to the 10%? Or is it meant to have information that is useful to everyone? High Blue+ players look at those who are yellow and below and can easily say "I don't really see much difference between them." That becomes a reason not to give any kind of fine gradation to those who are below green. Well, it's certainly true enough that from the perspective of a Blue+ player, there's honestly going to be little discernible difference between a red, orange and even yellow. On the other hand, the exact same effect is true in the other direction. Even a Yellow player who looks at a match and sees a Blue+ player..it really makes little difference if that person is Blue, light purple, dark purple, silver or whatever. The reaction is "omgimgonnadie!", and generally that's going to be accurate. However, from the perspective of that yellow player, the difference between an orange and red may actually be meaningful in how they look at a given game (since their perspective doesn't have the extreme compression that comes from looking at things in the extremes.) Frankly, for myself, I'm a bit undecided on that front. There's something that feels a bit "off" about setting the scale up in a way that it supplies information that is "tuned" to be most meaningful to the top 10%. On the other hand, it's that exact 10% who is most likely to be able to make use of that information and understand that information, so maybe it is best to set the scale up in that way.

All righty, who knew that he was getting enough fame (or something) to get interviewed by an actual print magazine with noticeable circulation. http://www.armchairgeneral.com/the-mighty-jingles-an-interview.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ArmchairGeneralMagazineMilitaryHistory+%28Armchair+General+Magazine%29

While my play is evidently no better than Stalker's, I dislike the growth of corridor maps, simply because I look at tanks as having something of a triangle of values: Firepower, Protection, Mobility. (Obviously, it's more complex than that, but that's a workable backhand approach.) Corridors reduce the value of mobility, which happens to be the most interesting of the assets to leverage.