Best units in any mod? Use simple math!

[Neddie]

This is about as useful as SA.

Fact:SA is the most balanced OTA mod.

Fact: There Is No Universal Standard Of Balance Under Which This Assertion Can Be Made

Best is a quality judgment. The best is always what is "thought" to be the best.

[KDR_11k]

Balance is:
let A be the set of possible actions, V (subset of A) the set of viable (according to the game design) actions, g(a) the gain and p(a) the probability of success for a (element of A).

A mod is balanced when:
For all a in V: p(v) * g(v) = 1
For all a in A but not in V: p(v) * g(v) < 1

There.

[Licho]

Thats a bit sucky definition.

That leaves you free to define "viable" whatever you want..
For example attack/do nothing.

Also action "success" and "gain" are not provided. And gain must be normalized somehow.

[lurker]

That leaves you free to define "viable" whatever you want..
For example attack/do nothing.

It says right there viable is part of the game design. The game creator is supposed to define it.

Also action "success" and "gain" are not provided. And gain must be normalized somehow.

True, they need to better handle degrees of success and gain.

[Gota]

This is about as useful as SA.

Fact:SA is the most balanced OTA mod.

The best is always what is "thought" to be the best.

what your statement says is "there can be no conclusive example of an unbalanced stats set compared to another.
example: 2 turrets of the same size with the same stats except one does more DPS.
second stats set is definitely better than first.
this means units can be unbalanced thus they can also be balanced.

If we take the above example and add another stats set which is the same as the oped one but does a little less DPS than this stats set is more balanced while the other is less balanced.

[KDR_11k]

Thats a bit sucky definition.

That was kinda the point, that it's not feasible to formally decide whether a given game is balanced.

this means units can be unbalanced thus they can also be balanced.

I can algorithmically detect that a while(1) loop without any statements inside that would exit it will not terminate, does that mean I can algorithmically decide for any algorithm whether it will terminate?

[TheFatController]

while not balanced
{
Change a random stat on a random unit to a random value
}

It would run forever!

[TradeMark]

while not balanced
{
Change a random stat on a random unit to a random value
}

that pretty much defines life

[Licho]

You die when you achieve balance and do random things until then? :)

[TradeMark]

Well i didnt really mean that, but yeah, what happens when you finish a game? you quit.

What i meant was, we exist because random changes creates something stable and balanced via evolution. (if it wasnt balanced, we might die any time because of some imbalance in some part of your body, brains explode because there goes too much blood etc.).

So, yeah. You can create balance from random changes.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

it worked for cadyr :p

[KDR_11k]

while not balanced
{
Change a random stat on a random unit to a random value
}

that pretty much defines life

No, evolution also requires natural selection. You could probably make a system that creates random "mutations" in your mod, then discards those that are less balanced until the iteration limit is hit but to do that you need a good way to automatically assess the balance.

[adin_panther]

Real evolution would suck, cause we'd end up with all the uberunits in the end ... survival of the strongest

[TradeMark]

Real evolution would suck, cause we'd end up with all the uberunits in the end ... survival of the strongest

true lol

then after few years you start seeing apes in the game.. then humans... after a while, you see the humans play Spring inside Spring :D

[lurker]

Not if you get pack behavior from the lighter units.

[adin_panther]

Not if you get pack behavior from the lighter units.

Yeah like all the flies and moskitos in the world could technicly wipe us out if they only worked together xD

... this idea is so wrong

[TradeMark]

Hmm, i never thought about that... They could kill us all omg. cool...

[SwiftSpear]

There's a massive number of catagories that are very poorly represented. Air is statistically OP in BA, because it has a whole class of ridiculously statistically OP units that counter it, but can't shoot at ground units at all.

All units on equal combat grounds in statistics with all other units.

[Forboding Angel]

Having units target air and ground isa a statistically bad idea in the spring engine. THere are a lot of reasons that EE, then funta, then evorts, gundam, etc changed it to air only or ground only. ALl these mods originally started out with air being targetable by both.

Also, remember that springs targeting system only targets the most expensive. Air units typically are less expensive than t2 ground stuffage, but if air were mroe expensive than ground stuff, then the units would all try to shoot the air instead of the massive army 5 feet from them.

It introduces far to much which is open for exploitation.

In EE, the most annoyingly excellent tactic was to rush in the little light gunship guys right before you charged with your army. Considering that most of the tanks couldn't hit the fast little buggers it meant that your opponent got slaughtered in the process. THe only you could realistically pull it off would be if you were using insta hit weapons on all ground units. Personally I'm rather amused at the thought of raiders shooting at scouts and killing themselves with their own fire. Guys, sometimes you just gotta think these things out.

And before someone mentions bad target category, so you fly in a fast gunship, give your army a move order, and dance around microing the gunship while your army decimates your opponents defenses.

Try it. Pick a random mod and remove the targeting categories. Epic lulz to follow.

[Gota]

Turrets targeting air and land can work out fine...the only issue is the fact that AA turrets need to have good range which results in tons of turrets shooting at land radar blips most of the time or have huge los which is IMO shit.

If you can micro as you have said to fool the enemy defenses you deserve to have an advantage and,also,your enemy can be microing his defensive units as well.