The balance formula thread

[smoth]

anyone arrogant enough to say that his shit is balanced or that he knows balance is wrong. Fang and I both used to talk about this and our conclusion was that balance is never achieved, we just get close. It is like an asymptote.

These threads always make me face palm as people parade around talking about how awesome they are at balance. FFS just do your shit test with players and shut up.

I promise you the next release of gundam will not be balanced, nor the one after that. should perfect balance ever be achieved in such a way that even a player is neutralized to an equal with the other player the game will halt at an indefinite stand still. Instead I suggest small pockets of imbalance here and there to break up the monotony. TAKE THAT IN YOUR PIPE AND SMOKE it.

balance never happens.

[Licho]

See also

This is just high school physics in Czech.

We also had this 2 part blackboards and I think I remember this lesson!

[Gota]

Stuff

Holy shit man.
What a colossal waste of time cause nobody is gona read it through.

I started reading it and just want to answer the first issue you brought up.
The janus getting a double range an hp reduction and a 25% to it's cost.
Why would it be oped?Because it can outrange an HLT?
Many such as yourself think a unit's balance is only confined by the situations you conveniently choose in your head while the trut hof the matter is that a unit's effectiveness is measured by its overall performance not just how a Janus interacts with an HLT but how a janus interacts wiht all other units.
So your Janus might be bale to kill an HLT if the game only consisted of an HLT standing in the middle of a map and a janus being able to freely move around it.

Fact is that while the Janus might kill an HLT in a ridicules theoretic duel ITS overall effectiveness will not be greater since the Janus will have to first be built and cost much more than flash or stumpy,than the player will have to overcome the fact his enemy built cheaper units and started using them earlier thus gaining and advantage on the battlefield earlier.
Than the player will have to get the Janus to the hlt without it dying since it has a low HP and than the player will have to make sure the Janus survives until the hlt is killed.

Of course Tired's equations are lacking and a simple geometrical relation is not enough but other different relations will have their disadvantages as well.

[Licho]

Gota, if you want to spit out huge texts yourself at least read their texts :)

I read it, its more readable than your stuff and speaks truth.

[aegis]

Stuff

What a colossal waste of time cause nobody is gona read it through.

thought is not wasted by not being experienced by others.

also, a HLT isn't exactly a cheap unit.
the other player might've built cheap units, but they also built a HLT.

[Gota]

Gota, if you want to spit out huge texts yourself at least read their texts :)

I read it, its more readable than your stuff and speaks truth.

No unfortunately not all of it is truth.

Also Any attempt at a balancing equation or equations must first start by eliminating unnecessary spectrums of values per each unit characteristic.
There is no point in making an equation that will balance a unit that has 500 speed if you are not going to create such a unit in your game,no matter if the equation is linear or not.

This first step will ease the creation of an equation because it will remove endless theoretic speculations about unnecessary values that are mostly irrelevant and just mislead.
The point is to create an equation or equations that are meant to balance a specific game.
To create equations to balance any game on the spring engine is extremely pretentious and,IMO such an attempt should be replaced by an attempt to find a system that includes IN IT,certain equations.

[Otherside]

BS Gota

Kingraptors post is the first wall of text ive properly read on spring forums. It made for a good read and speaks 100 percent in truth.

KR you win 1 internets for a good read

Sidenote: Gota if you read the post you would understand, tireds formula is entirely flawed (Oh noes SA) and KR has expressed clearly why (this is exactly how i think about balance).

[Gota]

Stuff

What a colossal waste of time cause nobody is gona read it through.

thought is not wasted by not being experienced by others.

also, a HLT isn't exactly a cheap unit.
the other player might've built cheap units, but they also built a HLT.

FFS why do feel you need to coment on my comment about the langth of his comment?
I only wrote it cause of the many forum readers that constantly show they have no interest in reading huge walls of text(and of course will now argue the exact opposite and prove their childish way of thinking) thus it will be more constructive to divide huge topics into several shorter massages(my intention was not to anger or diminish the value of the "essay" but to help).

About the Janus...you cannot say it will be clearly oped just cause in some theoretical sterile conditions the janus will kill an hlt.
It's like saying that a gator is Clearly oped cause it can micro around a flash forever since it outranges it.

The most realistic way of finding a working equation or a working set would be to allow the server to take statistics from games and than testing equations on th same mod and than checking how accurate the balance is statistically.Certain results WILL be satisfactory and than the mod could be called balanced.
There is a certain point after which the time spent on making the mod even more balanced is not worth the increase in balance.
There is no need for a perfectly balanced mod only a need for a satisfactory balance from the standpoint of a tester with statistical results of big amounts of games of the best players over a long period that has proven to be long enough,years.

[Otherside]

Gota your clearly a moron (you prove this constantly)

did you expect KR to give every other scenario involving the janus and its interaction with every other unit in the mod O_o. If you couldn't grasp the concept i feel sorry for you .

[BrainDamage]

See also

This is just high school physics in Czech.

We also had this 2 part blackboards and I think I remember this lesson!

the top blackboard looks like derivate calculation by direct comparison, so high school math

in the bottom I do see incremental fraction [ f ( x+h ) - f(x) ] / h, as well as general derivate notation and tangent interpolation to local function portions so again it looks like derivate theory.

and I think most of forum users had already this lesson too

[Gota]

Gota your clearly a moron (you prove this constantly)

did you expect KR to give every other scenario involving the janus and its interaction with every other unit in the mod O_o. If you coudlnt grasp the concept i feel sorry for you .

Nice trolling.I was saying that his example was incorrect and holds no merit in light of actual situations and flow in real games-his judgment of the disadvantages of Tired's equations is false and any judgment must be much less assertive since It is very hard ot say what is actually balanced and what isnt.
Thus i made an assertion he does not fully grasp whats going on.
and this is the last time i respond to any of your posts.
I hope you do the same in regards to mine.

[aegis]

Gota your clearly a moron (you prove this constantly)

did you expect KR to give every other scenario involving the janus and its interaction with every other unit in the mod O_o. If you coudlnt grasp the concept i feel sorry for you .

Nice trolling.I was saying that his example was incorrect and holds no merit in light of actual situations and flow in real games.
Thus i made an assertion he does not fully grasp whats going on.
and this is the last time i respond to any of your posts.
I hope you do the same in regards to mine.

let me reiterate my rebuttal of your rebuttal of kingraptor's example.

you said a janus wouldn't work to kill a HLT early-game because a janus isn't cheap, so your enemy would just kill the janus with cheap units.
this logic is incorrect, because the enemy would greatly reduce their resources by building the HLT, thus eliminating their flow of cheap units.

edit: and the janus costs half as much as the HLT, so you could either build a janus and cheap units, or two janus
another alternative would be to just go around the HLT. can you factor *that* into your quest for perfect balance?

[Gota]

Gota your clearly a moron (you prove this constantly)

did you expect KR to give every other scenario involving the janus and its interaction with every other unit in the mod O_o. If you coudlnt grasp the concept i feel sorry for you .

Nice trolling.I was saying that his example was incorrect and holds no merit in light of actual situations and flow in real games.
Thus i made an assertion he does not fully grasp whats going on.
and this is the last time i respond to any of your posts.
I hope you do the same in regards to mine.

let me reiterate my rebuttal of your rebuttal of kingraptor's example.

you said a janus wouldn't work to kill a HLT early-game because a janus isn't cheap, so your enemy would just kill the janus with cheap units.
this logic is incorrect, because the enemy would greatly reduce their resources by building the HLT, thus eliminating their flow of cheap units.

I was just saying a unit's effectiveness is judged by more than its relation to another single unit when and if those 2 meet on the batlefield.
The fact we can each time add new nuances to the arguments in favor or against this theoretical Janus
just shows how hard it is to judge what is balanced and King's single argument cannot be taken seriously.
Here is another:
You can assert that the HLT Will prove much more useful in general before the Janus arrives to kill it than this janus will be in it's entire existance...
If you assert the player starts building a Janus after he sees the enemy has an HLT than that means the HLT owner has a lot of time to put the HLT in good use thus gaining more metal from reclaim or from captured territory.
If a Janus is constructed BEFORE the HLT it might prove detrimental to it's owner due to the janus's weakness versus direct attacks..
If I already used my HLT to gain territory and dealing damage the Janus that might come to kill it might face impossible conditions for it's use(another point against a strong RPS system in OTA based mods).

[Gota]

Gota your clearly a moron (you prove this constantly)

did you expect KR to give every other scenario involving the janus and its interaction with every other unit in the mod O_o. If you coudlnt grasp the concept i feel sorry for you .

Nice trolling.I was saying that his example was incorrect and holds no merit in light of actual situations and flow in real games.
Thus i made an assertion he does not fully grasp whats going on.
and this is the last time i respond to any of your posts.
I hope you do the same in regards to mine.

let me reiterate my rebuttal of your rebuttal of kingraptor's example.

you said a janus wouldn't work to kill a HLT early-game because a janus isn't cheap, so your enemy would just kill the janus with cheap units.
this logic is incorrect, because the enemy would greatly reduce their resources by building the HLT, thus eliminating their flow of cheap units.

edit: and the janus costs half as much as the HLT, so you could either build a janus and cheap units, or two janus
another alternative would be to just go around the HLT. can you factor *that* into your quest for perfect balance?

Well i think SA's equations do a good job at making a good assessment at how BA should be balanced based on tired's gameplay experience along with the unbiased judgment math offers and from there on the best thing would be to just let it be and try to explore all the possibilities it offers.

[KingRaptor]

Yan, I wasn't talking specifically about the HLT in that example. But thanks for proving my point about situational dynamics.

[Otherside]

So tired fanboi is added to the SA equation also ?

Also a big flaw with math balancing to calculate a cost or at least in tireds calculation. If you want to nerf or buff a particular stat or a unit this will also result in a unwanted/needed cost increase/decrease which is kind of stupid

[Gota]

Don't mention it.

[Licho]

the top blackboard looks like derivate calculation by direct comparison, so high school math

in the bottom I do see incremental fraction [ f ( x+h ) - f(x) ] / h, as well as general derivate notation and tangent interpolation to local function portions so again it looks like derivate theory.

and I think most of forum users had already this lesson too

Ah yeah, its about physical (top part)- as in physics and geometric meaning of derivation - so you were right its just math and not physics, and most of us had this lesson already! :)

[SpliFF]

There's an alternate balance method I've been thinking about which I call obsfucated balance.

In this method you throw initial balancing out the window completely by designing a game with 10's of thousands, or even millions of potential unit configurations (think Warzone2100 on steroids). You then allow players to purchase whatever they want within a largely random economic system (a system where you can't determine the effectiveness of a unit solely based on its price). The cost of a given configuration also goes up a fraction any time any player builds it in any game (tracked by a persistent server). In addition all games are ladder games (it can't be played solo or spectated).

The challenge of the game would then be to discover, through pure trial and error, and watching your opponents, the most effective (ie, underpriced) units and related tactics without anyone else realising what you've found.

The fun part of this "balance" system would be that it quickly becomes a game of politics. If you discover an effective combination then the only thing that will effectively counter it would be if everyone else KNEW it was effective. This would encourage you to try and use your new uber-units in sneaky ways (by mixing it with other units, through stealth, and not over-using it). A good player would have a range of uber-units on standby for when they were needed rather than risk losing them by using them all the time.

The political part would also come into play on forums because the best players would know to actively mislead new players (using fake tutorials etc..) about which units to build. You'd be torn between exposing a unit (to piss off your enemy) or keeping the secret and building them yourself (taking advantage of its cheap cost).

[smoth]

You guys are missing the point of the picture, that man's beard to hair ratio is awesome. Someone give us a zoom in on that!