Combat Statistics

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

So, the official team remove most attack bonuses from official mod.Thise was because having hack, crush, pierce attack, plus hack, crush, pierce armor, plus attack bonuses and penalties was too much to balance. Maybe this is so.

 

But instead of the official way (remove all bonuses except spear vs. cav), has anyone consider this?

 

Remove all distinction in attack and armor type. Just have 1 attack value and 1 armor value, and then use bonuses and penalties for distinction. No more hack/pierce/crush anything. Just attack, health, armor, and bonus/penalty. Was this ever discuss? I give a example:

Current Spear Infantry (values are just for example):

100 health

10 hack attack
5 pierce attack
0 crush attack

3x bonus attack vs. cavalry

4 hack armor
2 pierce armor
5 crush armor

New idea:

100 health

10 attack

3 x bonus vs. cavalry

5 armor

 

\Much simpler? Easier to balance? Just adjust bonuses and penalties instead of 3 potential attack types and 3 potential armor types. Just some thoughts I have while working this week.

Edited September 11, 2016 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[fatherbushido]

It's indeed the two ways:

- using hard counters

- differentiate units by stats (the more you have, the more you can differentiate units).

Currently, the 2nd way is choosen for the main game. But a modder can use the first way.

(addendum : My personal option is also to prefer the 2nd way. Imo there should be stats that describe some (simple) physics like "this weapon hack, this one pierce..." and if you a unit is hit, it is damaged. There should not be rules telling the player that certain units can't hit another because the game designer decides to disallow it.)

[av93]

Others game handle different types of attacks, but usually they have only one kind of attack and armour.
-For example, Warcraft III have: Normal/Pierce/Siege/Magic/Hero/Chaos (very rare), and unarmoured/light/medium/heavy/hero/fortified(buildings). Source and a little more deep explanation

Having 1 attack and 1 armour would be easier to balance. And it could be used the AOE (specially mythology)  formula: Melee, Ranged, Siege. I prefer hard counter BTW.

[fatherbushido]

Sure it's just different ways to perceive it. (And I can't say that one is better than another).

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

15 hours ago, fatherbushido said:

Sure it's just different ways to perceive it. (And I can't say that one is better than another).

I think it would be even easier for player to perceive unit roles this way. The other huge benefit is balancing. Just removing the 3 different armors and 3 different attacks along would be huge effect on balancing difficulty. To add roles, then give hard counters (bonuses and penalties) and all you have to do is tweak those to balance (along with cost, but cost will always and forever be a factor).

 

Quote

(addendum : My personal option is also to prefer the 2nd way. Imo there should be stats that describe some (simple) physics like "this weapon hack, this one pierce..." and if you a unit is hit, it is damaged. There should not be rules telling the player that certain units can't hit another because the game designer decides to disallow it.)

No where do I say that, anywhere. And that would not be the effect of removing the types. I do not understand where you get this notion.

 

Quote

- differentiate units by stats (the more you have, the more you can differentiate units).

The differentiate is what kills the balance. You can also (and more easily) differentiate with the counters.

Edited September 12, 2016 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[FeXoR]

"Balancing" the game with 3 damage and 3 armor types (and health) means you need to fiddle arround with 7 values per unit type - or short 7*nUnitTypes (Not considering unrelated values).

Using Warcraft III's way means you have 36+5*nUnitTypes (the 6x6 = 32 values in the unit independednt attack type/Armor type matrix , attack type, damage value, armor type, armor value and health per unit). So it's not that much of a difference and much less easy to communicate to the player what this or that attack or armor types actualy mean for the game (The mechanism is not explained ingame in WC3 but only on the webside).

Using hard counters mean you have nUnitTypes*nUnitTypes values to at least consider. That's much more - with e.g. 30 combat unit types it would be 900(!) values to balance. So IMO it's not to be uses usually - the 3 armor/attack values should be used in the common case - but only as exceptions where units are clearly meant (not 0 A.D. concept wise but in the real world back then) to counter one specific kind of unit type (Like pike vs cavalery - but that's about it, though pili where to counter shields but a shield is not a unit type ;p).

Most unit types did not have very specific roles and thus should not have it enforced uppon them, the game and the player IMO.

(Siege strong vs buildings allready is covered with the crush damage and armor)
(Arrows weak vs siege engines/buildings covered with piercing damage and armor)
(Cavalery strong vs archers can be balance with speed, low archer life and archer damage/time*[time the cavalery needs to cover the archers range] < cavalery life - basically: Cavalery is faster and have more life. Mass archers are still hard to balance but changing the attack/armor types won't change that)

Replacing damage/armor to only use 1 type and balance the rest with hitpoints would be easier for the player to understand. But it will also reduce the ability of the modders to balance their mod (same for the main branch ofc) so I'm not sure about this either.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Look at it this way:

Spear Infantry

100 health
2 armor
10 attack
2x bonus vs. Cavalry*

 

Sword Infantry

100 health
10 attack
2 armor
1.5x bonus vs. Infantry*

*These are the only thing you really need to balance. You also have to balance less armor and attack tech effects.

[FeXoR]

AFAIK a fight shielded sword infantry vs sword infantry lasted much longer on average than e.g. archer vs archer.
If you only have one damage and armor value you would need the archer to deal bonus damage vs archer (I wonder why only the damage gets bonus BTW, not something like "half damage by archers", but that doesn't realy matter).
As is you'd just need that hack damage and shielded units have more hack armor (and a bit more piercing) so the fight needs longer (sword vs self) while archers have little armor at all so that fight will be over soon.

You'd also make all units but archers (and maybe javelins) have bonus damage vs siege engine.

...and and and... you will wind up with "bonus damage vs [unit type]" being needed basically for any unit type and sometimes even several of those per unit type.

EDIT: And yes, 2x2 (2 unit types in your example) is less than 3x3 (as is damage/armor types). But we don't have only 2 unit types and not all units of all civs of a similar "type" are - and IMO should't be - exaclty the same.