Zpock: That is statitics and opinion polls, in short it's an empirical process, not the mathematicaly true formula that can be applied to kown how to perfectly balance a mod once and for all.
Beside, your method has some flaw. You assume that humans will naturally use the best units. This is taking humans for machine, and ignoring the whole human aspect. Player won't use the best units. They'll use the units which they think are the best. (And not even, a proportion of players significant enough to screw your stats are influenced by the looks, the fun using the unit provide, the ease of use, ...)
To know what units to use, player won't re-analyse the mod with a fresh eye each time. They'll go with what they used to use. So for instance if you buffed a previously underpowered unit, people will still avoid it, and so not notice until very long it has actually become a good unit. They'll do with what other player do, so you can have not-so-good units overused because it's trendy, while better units see no use because if no one use them, everybody think they must suck since no one use them.
If you look for instance at the TA scene, you'll see that despite having loads of player, and not any change ever in the unit properties, it took years and years for nowadays way of playing to settle.
Your process would work better if you used emotionless AI instead of humans, save that AI don't enough play like humans, they are more stupid, and can't invent trick like humans, they have such ubermicro not even a Korean can rival, etc...
So, in short, while I agree that you process is about the only way to balance a mod:
- It takes very long, if not an infinite time, to reach the balance.
- It's of no help to know how to balance beforehand new unit
- It's not a formula, but a procedure based on the polling of humans people opinion.
- It's not simple nor easy if it requires the use of a hundreds of player over years and years!
- Like pointed in the post above, even if that process actually reach a stable equilibrium (and does end up toggling between two if not more state, or has some units properties tending for infinity), you would have only reached balance for a particular set of condition. Change the nationality of your players, release new maps, have computer hardware improves, and the conditions change enough that your mod is imbalanced again. Tis not a view of spirit, in TA the brawler owned when their EMG had lag-attack, but stopped being used when peple started having faster CPU. Or in Core Contingency, urban maps makes mexx irrelevant but builder micro and metal storage all important.
Anyway lurker, balance is easy easy easy to achieve, as I've pointed out here and in other threads. All it does is force all units through their common characteristics into a common formula where you can achieve a zero-sum. You could pull this formula out of a hat, and have a very dull game with perfect balance.
Tired here refer to a common formula where you output unit stat sheet on one head and it gives you perfect balance on the other end! (or rather, I guess his formula would take all the characteristic about a unit, and outputs a single value out of it, and that mod is balanced when that value is the same for all unit.)
Tired wrote:Argh's a case in point of this, but he's a flat out moron. Watch him defend his contention that NanoBlobs was anything other than complete ass, or that he's not a moron, in a post soon to follow this one if you have doubt.
Yet Argh said many times already he agrees Nanoblobs was a balancing & gameplay failure, yet Argh's following post addresses none of these two points.
Tired wrote:Argh: *Responds, as predicted.*
WTF???? Theorically, at this point, I should stop talking to you, as are you clearly impervious to simple obvious facts.
Tired wrote:Flow Chart #2:
Tired: "Argh's a moron, so he'll respond to what I'm typing here even though I've made it pretty clear that I won't give him the time of day. In responding to this statement, he falls for a troll feint and proves himself a moron!"
No, you never made it clear that your line of defense against Argh was to let it him write overlong posts and ignore him (which wouldn't work anwyay, since when ignoring valid points make you appears more clever?). You pulled that after his second reply. However, you are an arrogant idiot for pretending to have flow-charted the human people you talk with. And I hate that breed of idiots, that writes correctly and pretends to know better than anyone while they're full of shit, because they're the most dangerous ones.
Tired wrote:I should note that in this one response I was every bit as polite as Argh has even been on these forums, and probably a fair bit moreso.
Because calling people flat out moron, and their work complete ass, is every bit polite?
Or maybe "that one response" refers to post out of this thread, but my point still stands, one post you all out insults, the other you pretend to be a polite person
Edit: Hmm, I see now you actually posted half-assed attempt at actual formulas. Each one is dead wrong:
I could say that speed was worth 10x as much as Health
Then buildings must have infinite health.
I could say that rage was worth only 2% as much as dps, and redesign a Flea that could fire from one corner of a 16x16 map to an opposing corner and cost 200 metal without changing any other basic unit stats.
I'll suppose you mean "range" not rage. This is not true, because if a turret unit has a range R, and another a range R+epsilon (where epsilon is very small compared to R), then they would be about equal, while in reality the turret with range R+epsilon is incomparably better than the turret with range R, as it outrange it and so win against it everytime, without the enemy able to retaliate, when properly placed.
I could say that airplanes should cost 57x as much as comparable ground units.
Assuming a map with lots of flat free room (so collision issues are negligible), and a plane that move and turn as slowly as a ground unit, the plane worth would be equal to a ground unit worth. You fail again.
I guess your exemple weren't supposed to be taken litteraly, yet I still showed you that no matter what your formula is, it can always be proved wrong.
Tired wrote:You're all idiots.
You're the only idiot.
