What are the most important balance issues in the core?

Icky · Post by **Icky** » Fri Jan 28, 2011 2:28 pm

SpaceJunk wrote:QUOTE (SpaceJunk @ Jan 28 2011, 09:12 AM) Yeah, thanks for reading me.

If you are ok with the most popular tech path being about flying two ships the whole game, then I have nothing else to say.

You aren't making any sense, still.

Do you somehow get to fly 15 ships as tac or sup and I have missed it the past 5 years?

I'm happy to hear you have nothing else to say, though!

Jersy · Post by **Jersy** » Fri Jan 28, 2011 3:20 pm

Also, there is one thing about the whole balancing thing, I would like to ask - it concernes the fundamental theory of balancing...

So far, it seems like the current approach is to balance everything against everything, and to base individual "balancements" on empiric data (the rants of people complaining how stuff is over/underpowered).

I was wondering, if it wasn't better to choose something as a "standart" instead, and balance everything in comparison to that standart.

While this cannot work where something has some advantages over something else (say "Faction A" beats "Faction B", "Faction B" beats "Faction C", "Faction C" beats "Faction A"), it can work when all the elements are supposed to be "equal" to each other.

Let's just say that our standart would be "IC Exp". We can then compare everything to "IC Exp", rather than comparing everything to everything. If we found out, that - say - Belt Tac is 1.1 times better than IC Exp, while Bios Sup is 1.3 times better, then not only does this provide us with a comparison between "IC Exp vs. Belt Tac" and "IC Exp vs. Bios Sup", but also comparisons between Belt Tac and Bios Sup. Theoretically, there should be no need to compare specifically Belt Tac and Bios Sup.

While this model might work on paper, I'm curious whether or not would it work in reality. Any thoughts?

notjarvis · Post by **notjarvis** » Fri Jan 28, 2011 3:36 pm

Jersy wrote:QUOTE (Jersy @ Jan 28 2011, 03:20 PM) While this model might work on paper, I'm curious whether or not would it work in reality. Any thoughts?

The problem with "Paper balancing" theories IMO is the huge profusion of things which may effect one factions effectiveness against another.

lets consider just comparing two ints.

You have their basic performance stats (speed/ accel / mass/ hitpoints / turn rates /weaponry damage values / fuel/ faction advantages etc.) which I suppose you can compare on a level-ish playing field, although determining what affect each has relative to the other may be difficult.

Then you have a large number or less tangibles e.g.
hit-boxes affect a ships performance in combat hugely.
Problems with High Accel. ships and lag,
Whether the advantages one ship has can be utilised to best effect by the average player with average ping (e.g. how much does Rix turn rates affect their performance?).

And this is just for one ship in one faction, if you extend it to compare the whole techpath - you have to consider the impact of tech-prices, mining speeds, con speeds, faction specialities etc. It becomes a huge open ended question with no definitively correct answers as to whether one techpath is better than another.

Also if you consider that there is relatively sparse actual data on which techpath's win more games than others for which faction in Allegiance, compared to other games due to the relative paucity of game results (most other games out there have more than one main game).

Anecdotal evidence and approximate guesswork is all anyone has to go one

Hey jersy - have you seen TEKby the way - it's a very handy tool for comparing ships etc.

Jersy · Post by **Jersy** » Fri Jan 28, 2011 4:36 pm

Of TEK I do know, I remember running some calculations on whether it is more effective to bring miner shields down with dis and then switch to gatt to take out the hull, or go gat only.

As for balancig, I didn't mean balancing on paper - I meant the concept of comparing each faction/tech combination against only one chosen faction/tech, rather than comparing everything against everything else. That's because the results should be the same, provided we want that individual factions are supposed to be equal in terms of chances of winning the game.

If you were to compare everything to everything, it's much more combinations, then if you just compare everything to one "standart".

EDIT:

Simply put: Would "Let's make every faction/tech combination as strong as IC/Exp" be a possible approach to balancing? (Rather than "Lets make every faction/tech combination as strong as ANY other faction/tech combination")

cashto · Post by **cashto** » Fri Jan 28, 2011 4:44 pm

While Jersy's question is interesting, and I agree to some extent that Allegiance lacks diversity and wouldn't it be cool if the factions were just utterly unlike each other -- I think the discussion is taking us far afield of Spunk's original, and more pressing question ... what are the most important balance issues, so that CC can address them?

Botzman · Post by **Botzman** » Fri Jan 28, 2011 5:08 pm

Can we make CC closer to "rock-paper-scissor" model?
Like:
1. EXP beats TAC: Perk PP and add special CM for an ints that are better vs LRM missles.
2. TAC beats SUP: Perk LRM Hunter CM resistance so figs would be $#@!ed.
3. SUP beats EXP: Add missle (or a gun) that hurts ints and is worhless vs sfs (like buring all fuel in an int).

Once small ships are "balanced" change med/cap ships.

Icky · Post by **Icky** » Fri Jan 28, 2011 5:12 pm

Botzman wrote:QUOTE (Botzman @ Jan 28 2011, 12:08 PM) Can we make CC closer to "rock-paper-scissor" model?
Like:
1. EXP beats TAC: Perk PP and add special CM for an ints that are better vs LRM missles.
2. TAC beats SUP: Perk LRM Hunter CM resistance so figs would be $#@!ed.
3. SUP beats EXP: Add missle (or a gun) that hurts ints and is worhless vs sfs (like buring all fuel in an int).

Once small ships are "balanced" change med/cap ships.

Isn't there already an RPS core?

Botzman · Post by **Botzman** » Fri Jan 28, 2011 5:23 pm

Icky wrote:QUOTE (Icky @ Jan 28 2011, 01:12 PM) Isn't there already an RPS core?

RPS is not "RPS" enougth. If you win economy race you just get uber tech. It's just bigger scaled "rock - bigger rock - the biggest rock" model. But you are right CC is not the place for radical changes.

guitarism · Post by **guitarism** » Fri Jan 28, 2011 5:33 pm

If you win the economy race in any game, you should win. Because you had enough teamwork to kill their econ. Which is what this game is about. Econ. Not tech path superiority. If that is what you want, go play rock paper scissors. Literally.

Spunkmeyer · Post by **Spunkmeyer** » Fri Jan 28, 2011 5:57 pm

Jersy wrote:QUOTE (Jersy @ Jan 28 2011, 10:36 AM) Simply put: Would "Let's make every faction/tech combination as strong as IC/Exp" be a possible approach to balancing? (Rather than "Lets make every faction/tech combination as strong as ANY other faction/tech combination")

It will not achieve a playable result as factions have weaknesses/strengths against specific tech paths, but it will get you into a ballpark range. I would go with a more balanced faction like Belters, and you may not need to bring the tech into it.. considering 9 balance scenarios is not that overwhelming, and 3 of those (same tech paths) could be done pretty quickly. To re-do all factions is still a big project though and probably more appropriate for a new core. It maybe a good exercise to see how "off" the actual numbers in the CC are and brainstorm on whether the deviations are justified.

I have plans for a core tool that will do something very similar - identify faction differences and generate a report, including relative magnitudes and comparisons, across multiple cores too. I think after years of DN changes and subsequent CC releases, we have moved so far away from the MS release that there is a need to quantify where we are, what we changed and why we did it. It'll be a while though, I won't have time to start on it at least till June (somebody feel free to steal the idea

)

Botzman wrote:QUOTE (Botzman @ Jan 28 2011, 11:08 AM) Can we make CC closer to "rock-paper-scissor" model?
Like:
1. EXP beats TAC: Perk PP and add special CM for an ints that are better vs LRM missles.

KG's blog post deals with this and I agree with it. He muddles it a bit, but in essence what he is saying is this: you can't have RPS with tech paths because you can't "swtich" between tech paths as easily as you can switch between ships. If ship A cannot beat ship B, then you need to jump into ship C which can beat ship B. So all techs need to have the three ships that can fight each other in an RPS fashion. The RPS idea with techs would only work if everyone could easily develop all three tech paths every game.