zerosum.balance.lanchester

Description

A handicap function based on Lanchester attrition; see this article for a brief overview. Handicaps represent unit costs, with each side having the same "budget", so a higher cost means a smaller force. The payoff magnitude is the proportion of the winning side remaining after the losing side has been eliminated, with the sign corresponding to the winning side, i.e. positive = row player. It thus takes values in the interval (-1, 1).

The Lanchester handicap function comes in both non-symmetric and symmetric versions.

Notes

For exponents above 1.0, the Lanchester handicap function unfortunately has a "kink" (vertical tangent) wherever both sides are evenly matched. This can occasionally make matters difficult for optimization algorithms.