I think there should be questions related to stamina. Someone who does Ironman Triathalons for a hobby is certainly going to have more stamina than someone who pilots a desk.
 
Put in a 1-10 scale (like with "skill with a betleH") and maybe some questions about how regularly and strenuously the character works out. And modify for race and all that.
 
The only way to get players to grade themselves accurately is to require them to tpye in a bio to justify their grades. And to have the player's CO available to verify the accuracy of the material entered. (Not that every bio should be consulted with the character's CO, but that the option to do so should always be there. Knowing their CO could be looking over their shoulder should help keep people honest.)  
 
Of course, some bad apples are CO's, or higher ranks. *cough* last year *cough*. Those will require a firmer hand to deal with.
 
 
For the better fighter to give up the initiative to the weaker and thereby gain honor works just great for the first 40 honor points or so. But eventually, it becomes clear that doing so is a pointless excercise, and the better fighter shoudl just end it and spare the weaker fighter any embarrassment. Honor is served by allowing the other fighter their best shot. Once it is clear that their best isn't nearly good enough, the fight should end.
 
 
People should be able to choose some basic tactis. I was thinking:
- At one extreme, go all out to try for a quick victory - gives you an early edge in attacking, but tires you out quickly.
- At the other extreme, begin very cautiously, feeling out your opponent. Gives you an early edge to defense and lets you last longer, but you won't start seriously attacking until later in the match.
You can set up a linear scale between the two.
 
 
There must be some way to gain honor other than by giving up the initiative. If you look at some of the great bouts of the previous years, I remember the big Q'ol -Tapez bout where Q'ol gained honor by not quitting despite being badly wounded. Also, one of the students gained honor against K'rahl by doing his best and not being intimidated by a superior foe. And so on.
 
If the only way to gain honor is to give up initiative, weaker fighters will never score any honor against a markedly superior foe, because they will never have the initiative to give up.

Quote from Ing The Puny on Nov 16^th, 2005, 6:43am:

 
 
A mechanical system should and cannot ever replace the IC developement - i dont think that giving the text will nessesarily help others in regards to how the battle went.    
 
Ultimatly what you meantioned is open to interpretation.  For example the Qol vs Ta'pez fight 2 years ago was seen as Q'olavraH gaining honor apperently by continuing to fight.  This is certainly a risk - her foe asked her to submit - she refused - she could have been killed (as she was in the mirror universe of K'Hare) for a simple stuborness.  
 
If you go back and look at the test QolvaraH refused to acknoledge a superior foe - and almost lost her life - the almost makes it honorable - the mirror universe version got killed for that - a most folish thing to do.  
 
A mechanical system can never give us these variables - so we ll just have to do better. What the system can do however is highlight the fact who is doing what. I.e if 2 fighters fought dishonorably then their post cannot have that as fighting neutrally.  
 
The obvious inference would be - people being @ risk of being disqualified.  That would equal it out. I.e somebody who fights slightly dirty - loses honor.  
 
Then again i dont see whats wrong with using advantages of somebody being out of step.  Now kicking somebody while their down, that might be something different.

And the worst thing is I'm following everything Ing and K'Hare say, word for word and I've not even had my caffine intake for the day  
 
~Dan

So many comments to make...
 
I'll ignore Tappy's ideas of whether Q'ol is honourable or silly...  It just gets embarrassing the way he doesn't understand the concept.
 
So onto characters having statistics they make up themselves...  As if players would be realistic!!!  Some would but the vast majority would over exagerate their skills and their ability.  
 
Look at how many in BF speak a dozen or more languages fluently and are skilled in a HUGE array of specialities.  Not least the one's that create characters from other fictional works and sledgehammer them into Star Trek.
 
You would, in my opinion, need any statistics to DEFINATELY be backed by the CO and maybe the TFCO. and agreed by the comittee that run the competition.  Otherwise it will be full of Uberfeddies and Worf-wannabes.

Quote from Ing The Puny on Nov 16^th, 2005, 6:57pm:

 
 
I just looked... I thought this would be the biggest file.  Actually an earlier one with toran and hunter is 600K... for the one fight.  Oi!  I am going to have to delete the combats soon.
 
There have been plenty of matches with glory, you just haven't looked.  I think I said it before, when you spar, the glory is zeroed out and honor is reduced.  But simply put, glory is a measure of the number of hits and blocks in a fight.  In this case, even though you guys missed a lot, the fight went on for so long, that the audience got exhausted watching.  Imagine you two getting up on the stage in the Halls of Kor, pulling out weapons and swinging and blocking for 2 hours... the station would be talking about it and making bets and disbelieving how long it went on.  That is glory.   Look at the fights between two evenly matched fighters who are better combat machines.   The fight is shorter but has more action... so it gains glory too because of all the hitting and blocking.  
 
http://kdb.batlh.com/cgi-bin/db/db.cgi?shipname=challenge&crewman=challenge_ done_1132062586324
 
That match was shorter but had the same glory.
 
I would have expected you to crack the basics of the combat system by now, especially with my comments.  But essentually, what is going on is this:
 
A and B fight.  A tries to hit B first.  Is that dishonorable?  No.
 
Fight continues and A is injured.  B tried to take advantage of that and presses the attack.  Is it dishonorable?  Well, maybe.  What the thing does is decide who gets initiative.  If A is injured but has initiative, and B tries to steal it, that's dishonorable.  Of course, its not implemented that way... its implemented as A has initiative and is more injured, since B is dishonorable he tries to take initiative.
 
The Honor rule is simular.  If A has the advantage in the combat so far, and also has initiative, then given first chance to hit gains an honor point.  Basically, I am winning, so I am going to give you the advantage.
 
Does that make sense?  Does the combat follow now?   What happens much of the time is A gets a good hit so B is at a disadvantage.  So A gets the chance to gain honor or dishonor.  This continues for a while.  Eventually B loses and only A got honor points, or the match evens out.  Sometimes, B gets lucky and gets the advantage.  Once B gets the advantage he has the chance to earn honor or not.  
 
Now that it is implemented I see it highly favors the best fighter.    Look at a lot of the K'Hare matches with the weakest fighters.  They go quick.  The weaker fighter never gets a chance to have the advantage so they have no chance to earn honor points.   I have asked this a few times.  Abstractly, how can the losing fighter gain honor?  What could I put in the code?   It did just occur to me that a weaker fighter could gain honor simply because he makes the challenge.  I kinda like this idea because it might give me a way to hint at who is better without making it so someone can work out the value of each question.  I.e... Ing fights Hunter and at the start, the judges give Hunter an honor point because Ing is such a better fighter.  I could award glory seperately based on the relative scores of the fighters too... so the weaker fighter gets more glory for the fight.
 
And finally, Disarm is supposed to be shorter but what happened here, was, both fighters are so bad that once they started getting tired they could only hit with criticals.
 
All this has made me think about adding something where each fighter can choose to pull his punches.   So I could answer Ing's challenge by fighting at "-5" (with my eyes closed or one handed).  If I did that, I could inplement it so that it wasn't obvious.  So a player could hide his superior skill in every fight.
 
I could also put in something that would let a fighter choose some sort of fighting posture.  (Ing suggested this already).  But I could let someone choose to fight to gain honor, or defensively.  Of coruse, if I did that, there would be a lot of:  A gets initiative, B gives it back because he is winning and gains honor, A gives it back to gain the honor.
 

nother option would be this  
 
 
assign a player x number of points  
 
mang = 0  
 
mangHom = 20 points
 
 
ne' = 30  
 
etc...
 
 
then go for the number of tournaments  
 
 
etc all the other questions  
 
 
so basicly have them choose - have a draw back  
 
 
i think the dishonor part must be also evaluated from a sense of the judges interveneing =  
 
 
fighting dirty = 10 % of being disqualified  
 
fighting very dirty = 20  
 
fighting like a romulan = 50% of being disqualified

Quote from Ing The Puny on Nov 16^th, 2005, 8:08pm:

 
Yes, and I expect my crew to be 'the elite'.  Mostly.  K'Hare certainly is compared to NPCs.  Most of my characters speak 20+ languages... mainly because I am so bad at it.  Yes, the simming environment doesn't need the kind of game balance that D&D or GURPS uses.
 
Of course, I would restate your comment as:  
Quote:

Because, really, everyone who wants to play a Klingon wants to be Martok.
 
Quote from Ing The Puny on Nov 16^th, 2005, 8:08pm:

Welcome to my world.  Everyone wants to think they are the best.  Its the genre.  So, I just try to make it so the Worf clones have an equal chance against each other but they will beat the Quarks, most of the time.
 
This is why I say that the combat award is not the real award of the tourney.
 
[quote author=Ing The Puny link=1131786825/60#68 date=1132171703]
 
Quote from Ing The Puny on Nov 16^th, 2005, 8:08pm:

 
I agree, mostly.  But how many matches last year went unwritten... and how many were written well?  Assuming this program gets used for the tourney for the combats, the players will always have the option of rewriting thier match.  Last year, by hand, I sent out an email to each winner that said something like:
 
A beats B.  A's skill and random chance were overcom by B fighting dirty.
 
I did that by hand.  So this year, there could be this text instead or I could summurize it.   I do concede your point.  I do intend to add something that counts hits, blocks and misses and include that on the summary.  I think I might also put in something that reduces the effects of exhaustion so fights end faster and have fewer misses.
 
The whole point of using the thing now is to beta test is and make it that much better before the tourney.  It also means that there can be a sparring room at the tourney in addition to the combats.  I'd love it if every match was a long drawn out set of posts, but the reality is that is a lot of work.  The drama and winning and losing can still be posted after the fight.  The honor and dishonor scores can be used as guides for the crowd of what they saw.  (Should I hide the honor choice of each fighter in case nothing was gained?)