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LetswaveaBook

Balancing Advisors
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Posts posted by LetswaveaBook

  1. Resistance calculations

    in Game Development & Technical Discussion

    Posted · Edited by LetswaveaBook
    Changed image.

    On 08/05/2022 at 7:42 PM, wraitii said:

    There are three approaches for resistance, broadly:

    • Raw numbers (AoE 2) -> has the drawback of being very prone to unexpected big changes from small deltas (e.g. a +1 tech can be anywhere from 0% to -50% damage in practice)
    • Percentage points -> Add 10 percentage points of resistance. So if you had 80%, you now have 90%. The problem is likewise that a tech can have very different effects, but you sort of avoid the thresholding problem. AoM used a system like that IIRC.
    • An exponential system like 0 A.D. uses, where + 1 armour is always +10% armour, no matter what the base armour level is. This is easy to reason about for techs, and easy to reason about for users. But it means you technically cannot have 100% resistance to some damage, though in practice the difference is limited.
      The main drawback is that the math is kind of unintuitive & raw points don't tell the whole picture.

    Any of these suggestions has math that might be intuitive in some situations.

    Any sentence used to describe the system does not provide a good intuitive way to judge statistics. When it is impossible to explain the entire story in one sentence, the best might be to use a few extra ones.

    What I would suggest is that if you look is to give more information in the structure tree when selecting the armor upgrades. Example:

     

    Screenshot_2022-05-10_18-21-45.png

    • Thanks 1

  2. AI will destroy the world, we are all fuced.

    in Introductions & Off-Topic Discussion

    Posted

    6 hours ago, Sevda said:

    That's because misogynistic data was fed into the system. As hard as we try to deny it, many countries ( especially the ones researcing AIs) have misogynistic societies and gender inequality, and this will be reflected in the customer information of shopping websites. The AI will subsequently learn male superiority and become misogynistic.

    I might not be entirely up to date about the woke movement, but calling data misogynistic seems on the woke side of things IMHO. Women make different decisions as men. That is reflected in some data. I would say it is a difficult philosophical question such a recruitment engine should be considered misogynistic.

  5. Thread for posting suggestions for Alpha 27.

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    2 hours ago, Philip the Swaggerless said:
    On 20/04/2022 at 4:54 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

     

    What if ships had no firepower other than their turreted ranged units and an anti-ship ram for some ram ships and a catapult for quineremes?

    What if there was a "board enemy ship" feature for ships when adjacent?

    What if ships had capture points and could be boarded and captured?

    Feature request: When you select a number of boats and soldiers, click a button to have all soldiers evenly divide themselves and garrison (or turret) onto the boats. Also a button to have the soldiers evenly repair all the boats. 

    I would like ships to have 3 ways to combat other ships:

    -having turreted soldiers/catapults/balisatas

    -ramming

    -capturing/boarding.

    But this can probably not be achieved by a simple changes in parameters.

    • Like 1
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  6. Target Specific Unit Types

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    15 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

    Such an option would help with the meatshield targeting issue where all archers target the closest couple of spears while ignoring all the jav inf standing behind the meatshield. It seems like it would also create better symmetry in what you can select with your units vs what you can select of your enemy units. 

    I think such an option does not solve the problem.

    If it is easy focus your attacks on melee infantry, I doubt if melee infantry would still have any use.

    I don´t think we should keep a bad system because it provides challenges. I just mean to say that if we do so, we need to rethink the role of melee infantry.

    • Like 3

  8. Teamwork Team Bonus Concept

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    2 hours ago, Philip the Swaggerless said:

    *added Seleucid idea to original post

    I think it suits Seleucid history to create a bonus centered about marital alliances. However I must admit that I also like the cheaper colonies.

    So I would be in favor of keeping the current team bonus and allowing Seleucids to produce a princess. What exactly should be the bonus that a princess would provide, is something I would leave open for discussion.

  9. Why mercenary cavalry is OP?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    21 hours ago, Nobbi said:

    When people abuse your topic for other content it looks like they did not understand you.

    I could understand if you were disappointed by the fact that this topic does not discuss mercenary cavalry.

    You have made a few valid points that merc cav would deserve a cost of 95 metal. Though the essential question is: how much advantage merc cav deserve to get to compensate that they require phase 2?

    I think increasing the cost to 90 metal is a step in the right direction and with 95 metal you might hurt them to much.

    • Like 2

  10. Why mercenary cavalry is OP?

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted · Edited by LetswaveaBook

    1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

    @LetswaveaBook said a new one would be made with those changes, but I haven't seen it yet.

    *could be made

    If the multiplier for CS spear cav is boosted to 2, should that also happen for the champion spear cavalry? Furthermore I think the hack armor could be nice as I deem spear cavalry to weak against infantry swordsmen.

    • Like 2

  12. Wow's new unit countering ideas

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    On 20/04/2022 at 12:42 AM, Outis said:

    do not have a hard counter vs cavalry archer, but make archer attacks against them more accurate. Justification: a rider with horse is a bigger target than an infantryman and easier to hit.

    This is all ready the case. If you open the scenario editor and let the cavalry archer and infantry archer fight one on one,You will see that the infantry archer hits the cavalry archer more often. Both units have the same accuracy.

    • Thanks 1

  13. Looking back on the balancing strategy

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    To be honest, I think the call to for a design document isn´t rooted in practical purposes. I would consider the hope that a design document provides misleading. You might think that things get done once it is clearly put in a design document, but issues don´t magically solve itself when there is a design document.

    I expect any design document to quickly get stale. So rather than saying this is the design document, It would be probably better to set goals for the next 3 alphas and count how much has been achieved to reach these goals.

    There was some talk about faction differentiation, but what have the discussion since A24 delivered? Hoplite tradition and moving possibly kush pyramids to p1. You can´t say we should achieve this goal and just wait until it is achieved.

    • Like 2
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  15. Thread for posting suggestions for Alpha 27.

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    17 minutes ago, thephilosopher said:

    But for team games, esp. 4v4, it would do a lot more to show that a player who kills 400 units and loses 350 did a lot worse than a player who kills 375 units and loses 100. Whereas now the worse player gets the higher military score.

    I think the player killing the 400 enemies performs better. Strength is how much trouble your opponents can throw while they are still unable to take you out.

    • Like 3

    Interesting unit discrepancies for cav and infantry.

    in Balancing Discussions

    Posted

    20 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

    I would suggest removing the extra pierce damage and adding +1 pierce and -1 hack armor.

    Without upgrades, a javelin cavalry does 18 damage and needs 3 hits to do 48 damage to ranged infantry and only the 4th hit will eliminate. If the javelin cavalry loses 2 damage, then it can still kill the ranged infantry in 4 hits. In return it gets some durability, which means that all in all javelin cavalry get better against ranged infantry.

    Also, javelin cavalry only are a suitable replacement if you can afford the +50 food. I must admit that some players regularly get in the situation where they have surplus food and for them replacing javelin infantry with javelin cavalry is a logical option. If the javelin cavalry loses 2 pierce attack, then this pattern is still there as the javelin cavalry can escape easier due to their speed. Their speed also helps them chasing down escaping infantry. So reducing the pierce attack by 2 won´t change that much from my perspective.

    However I would be in favor of trying adjusted statistics, even if they are controversial.

    • Like 1

    Trader bonuses: International vs Land/Sea Traders.

    in Balancing Discussions

    Posted

    IMHO, fixing trade needs some major changes and I don´t know if everybody would be happy with that. So I would like to get some input from the community. However changes tends not to be happening if you wait for community input. So it is better to be bold and just try something.

    First I need to look at the code and see what works. but first I would like to discuss some trade gain logics.

    The current code reads: distanceSq = firstMarketPosition.distanceToSquared(secondMarketPosition);
                                                                  // We calculate gain as square of distance to encourage trading between remote markets

    (from simulation/helpers/TraderGain.js)

    I have a problem with the square. It means that trade income per second goes increases proportionally with distance (to the power 1). That way there is a significant difference between trading over 300 meter (about the diameter of the p2 CC radius) and being able to trade with an ally over 600 meters.  Over a distance of 900 meters, the trader is 3 times as efficient. This makes that if a value is balanced for 1v1, then due to this increase proportionally to distance it will be OP for TGs.

    So I would change this formula to distanceSq = 40*firstMarketPosition.distanceTo(secondMarketPosition)^1.5;. The first formula speaks for itself as it mean that the gain per second increases proportional to sqrt(distance). By adjusting the constant and the exponent we can get the values that we like.

     If you want to trade with you ally, then you currently are dependent on them building a market, or building two of your own. So I would like to trade between markets and civic centers. This can be done by adding to the CC template the following element:

      <Market>
        <TradeType>land </TradeType>
        <InternationalBonus>0.1</InternationalBonus>

    I chose a value of International Bonus of 0.1, which is lower than that of a market/dock, meaning it is preferable to trade with real markets/docks than with CCs.

    Getting everything to work takes some time which I currently not spending on the project.

    So are there any further thoughts on the matter?

    • Like 2

  21. AoE 2 Expansion: Indian Dynasties similarities to 0ad

    in Introductions & Off-Topic Discussion

    Posted

    11 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

    What is your least favorite balance thing in Aoe2? I saw a video from Spirit of the Law where he talked about how attack-move might be a bit op. He said it gives so much extra speed to archers while they move and shoot that it makes it too hard for them to be targeted by melee pathfinding.

    In The Conquors expansion for AoE , most civilizations had a tech tree that gave both options and liabilities. But with the balance changes, the liabilities were softened. This makes that the different tech trees become less unique and the game becomes age of eco bonuses.

    • Like 1
    • Haha 1

  23. Double Clicking on Captured Enemy Houses Should Select Your Own Houses

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    16 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

    It is a balancing issue.  There's expectations of how the user interface should work.  Once those expectations are not met and they force resignations it is a balancing issue.  Going from 200 pop limit to 0 in a matter of seconds with no adversarial action by your enemy forcing a self-inflicted loss is a balancing problem. 

    Unless you use shift-delete, there is a warning before you delete something. You might expect that the warning is just something you need to click away, but actually it should be used as a moment to think if you really want to delete it.

    You can´t blame the system for not checking what you were deleting before you deleted it.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1

  24. "Arson" attacks should be added to cavalry and infantry.

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    6 hours ago, faction02 said:

    Citizen-Soldiers makes many of the existing features of other games not suited for 0ad. Sieges needs to be able to destroy buildings relatively fast. Whereas in other game keeping some military units idle to protect your sieges is perfectly fine,

    6 hours ago, faction02 said:

    For the same reason, having sieges units being effective is quite important in 0ad.

    I disagree with @BreakfastBurrito_007 and @faction02 that the CS system makes siege units more important. In most RTS games, an idle army is wasted time and is a serious limitation to your chances to win. In 0ad an attack does not need siege units to be effective.

     

    2 hours ago, davidsrsb said:

    Why is it a problem? It is historically correct. The real world penalties were cost, training time and that they were slow, vulnerable to attack from behind

    Pikemen weren´t well protected so the high armor values doesn´t seems historically correct IMHO. The main protection of a group of pikeman was that undisciplined soldiers don´t want to walk towards a wall of pikes.

     

    Personally, I am no fan of adding arson to the game and I prefer the capture mechanic. The capture-delete mechanic is not a great design choice. Maybe instead of deleting buildings, a player should be able to set his own buildings on fire to slowly destroy it instead of instantly deleting them.

    • Like 2
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