This game has had so many ups and downs over the years. It was first requested four years ago, and I did get to a concept stage at the time, which failed to differentiate the teams.
Over the years since I've had people request it again or ask for updates, and I've even had people collect data for me, which I was grateful for.
So I apologise to all that have asked and expected this game to happen that it hasn't to date, and especially those who took the time to either help with information or even go and take time out of their life to collect statistics in a spreadsheet.
However, I have had a breakthrough. In the past few days, my mind has gone back to trying to get a team-based game out, using one roll for serves and one for rallies, as I had switched to following the first method failed, and now I've finally found a way of using basic stats to generate rally wins/losses.
By removing serving aces and errors, the receptions statistic can tell you how many points each team served on, and by using a generic percentage of win-loss from rallies (set at 40% for the serving team), you can then calculate an estimated win-loss ratio.
That sounds confusing I suppose, so here is a small sample from my test worksheet for the 2022 Women's World Championship.
You can see the five basic statistics here - serve aces/errors, receptions/errors, and then in the sixth column, total points won (the fifth column is the total of estimated serves, the seventh column is the points won - not including serves - which would allow for points to be assigned to players (optional of course)).
Then, the two bolded columns on the right are the estimated rally win-loss statistics for each team using the figures in the four columns to the left. The second column from the right is the tally of total points won using these estimated rally wins (which shows how mostly they are 100% the same), and the final column is the percentage of rally wins.
Unfortunately, sometimes the statistics don't balance (one is out by ten extra points to actual total points), but most of the time the statistics do tally. But we have to make do with what we have.
Each point will require two sets of dice rolls - one for the serve, and if no result, a second for the rally.
This should be a way to differentiate between teams. But this is very early days and is not something that is going to appear any time soon.
The next thing is whether a quick score version is required. The two options both require splitting the average set score into a certain number of parts (probably four) and then using the same method as the handball quick score module to resolve each part and then tally them up. Then the two options would be switching to the full version to complete the set, or using an 'up-scoring both teams equally' method to immediately find a score.
Anyway, this is just a quick first look to say that I'm back to thinking about this game, and it is possible it will see the light of day some day. I'm sure you won't after four years already have gone by, but don't get your hopes up too high just yet.
Thanks for reading, and any thoughts are as always welcome.