Spring RTS Engine

The current suggested XP is as follows:

Unit gains XP as it deals out damages. Unit levels to it's cap somewhat quickly and sits there.

How about this, instead of capping it off at a low level, just make it exponentially harder to level a unit. I'll list some numbers even though I don't know what number's we'll be working with for XP.

Tier 1 ranks "Experienced"
1 - 100 XP
2 - 250 XP
3 - 500 XP
4 - 1000 XP
5 - 2000 XP

This tier should level somewhat fast

Tier 2 ranks "Veteran"
6 - 5000 XP
7 - 10000 XP
8 - 20000 XP
9 - 40000 XP
10 - 80000 XP

Tier 3 ranks "Legends"
11 - 160000 XP
and so on and so forth.
etc..

Using a system like this would give meaning to actually strategically saving your units. Sure they have unlimited levels. But for a unit to be Uber powerful it would have to be killing things non-stop for 12+ hours.

This way if I save a unit through the whole game (IE my commander) and strategically use him in certain spots he'll keep getting better. And I'll always have a reason to keep using him. 'Cause he can keep getting better. I'm just using the commander as my case in point. Obviously this would have strategic implications in long games. This would mean that towards the end of a long game you could have higher (obviously not real high, that would require insane kills) level squads. True veteran units. Would make people defend their units and defenses more. If you have a bertha that's been going for 2+ hours you can't just build one to replace it thats going to have the same accuracy and damage as a brand new n00b unit.

Ahahahhahahaha, my level 11 AK just owned your five hundred peewees, seven annihilators and a krogoth and...

Get stuffed, I want to not have to worry about specific units, I want to hurl huge army's at bases, and not have to worry about mming my units.

to you and the entire Lunar Corporation! I think NemisisOnes suggestion should be listened to although 'legends' may be taking it too far... can't we have a 3D TA game with TA balancing and all, a 'pure' SPring b4 people start modding it for more/less micro etc.

Look, there's no point in having hugely veteran units in TA, as no unit lives too long in TA. Therefore, the current system is good, units gain experience by dealing damage, not killing, and there is a maximum limit to experience at which several basic stats are boosted to 200%. Maybe some variants should be customizeable for individual unit types, but I found the general system to be quite good.

one word...NO ONE SMILEY !

hey its not sticking its tongue out!!!! sacrilege!

that's not exponential

that's vaguelly resembling 2^n, althogh closer to the winnings on Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

new proposal:

requires tags for knowing what 'level' a unit is on every unit, or could be based on price

lvls exp
1 2 - raw recruit
2 4
3 8
4 16
5 32 - Not-green (someone come up with something better)
6 64
7 128
8 256
9 512
10 1024 - Experienced
...etc... (carries on in the same 2^n fashion, next words are specialist, veteran, revered, legendary, mythological, destruction-on-legs)

you get more experience for what you kill (or injure) mostly based on what unit it is, but partially based on it's experience level compared to your units - a raw recruit AK taking out an experienced bulldog, for instance (there needs ot be a modifier to take into account the damage done by the AK to the bulldog in determining how much killing experience it gets, as well as the damage-dealing experience itself), would get a got of experience, a kroggy slaughtering peewees wouldn't get swaths of experience for each peewee.

In reference to not keeping units, although they is mostly true there are certain units that you actively try to keep once they're reasonably well experienced, buzzsaws, kroggies, warlords (possibly - depending on how many you build) and you should get something for doing that, although the bonuses for each level would be minimal and by about level 15 it will be flippin' hard to get any more levels, which should result in a fairer system that the present entirely kill-based one.


What ever happened to the each unit having experience against each other unit type thing that someone suggested a while back?
Could be be activatable for smaller games where you're less likely to be throwing loads of units around (and so will have less for the computer to keep track of)


-Gurkha

Doesnt spring already ahve a workign experience system and considering the mentions of most units not being around long enough anyways shouldnt we then eb askign the SY's for more details?

Gurkha:
You keep presenting new ways to define the leveling system but they are redundant without a connection to how much the units will become better with each level...

Also, i supose your leveling system seems to be based on kills... I think that based on damage would be better.

Yeah, I think so too, because the 'kills=exp' system is kinda like what Gimli and Legolas did in the Return of The King movie - "That counts as one!!" Why the hell killing a peewee or a mex should reap the same exp as killing a Krogoth?

Maybe, an extended exp system could be introduced, with the unit receiving less and less exp as it gains more and more of it. When the unit reaches a certain threshold this way, its stats are instantly increased, and the exp reset to 0. It will continue to gain exp at a reduced rate.

This kind of passive levelups is what I think is essential to any good RTS/RPG, not the kind of system Warcraft introduces. Veteran units shouldn't be much different from surrounding units, but in a one-on-one battle, a more experienced would win.
It would actually be better to NOT see the experience a unit gains - now, really, how would you instantly know what is the experience of a given soldier, except see him in battle?

Maybe, an extended exp system could be introduced, with the unit receiving less and less exp as it gains more and more of it. When the unit reaches a certain threshold this way, its stats are instantly increased, and the exp reset to 0. It will continue to gain exp at a reduced rate.

I really like this. It would put strategic importance on pulling units back and repairing them. That IMHO is what the whole XP system is for.

Doesnt spring already ahve a workign experience system and considering the mentions of most units not being around long enough anyways shouldnt we then eb askign the SY's for more details?

Excellent point. I never knew there was already an established system. Maybe a SY could jump in here and put some light on this?

Experiance should be a server option.

This feature would also be really great if the SY's develope the one PC commander and many PC players under him with the ability to join anytime gametype, which also should be an option.

to you and the entire Lunar Corporation!

Now that is something I will stand for only slightly more than XP playing a large part in gameplay.

But because it seems to be supported and not supported by violently excited groups then perhaps we could have a tag with a mod "base file" that is a multiplier for the effects of experience, and possible have an option in the lobby to set it.

nemesisone: I'll explain again.
The current system works as follows:

- The unit gains experience from damaging its enemies.
- The experience has a certain cap (1, actually, and exp is added in some indistinguishable fractions).
- Some of the unit's basic parameters increase as it gains exp.
- At the exp cap, these parameters are double their normal value.


I suggested an enhancement to the system, so that:

- The unit's parameters don't increase until a threshold is reached.
- When the threshold is reached, the parameters are instantly increased (multiplied by 1.1, for example), and the xp is reset at 0.
- The actual experience gained for dealing damage to the enemy is dependant on the current 'level' of the unit, so that the more experienced the unit is, the harder it is to advance even further.
- There should probably be some sort of level cap, at which the units parameters are maybe five times their normal values, to prevent system and engine instability.

As long as it can be switched off, why not, maybe it will attract all those WC3-kiddies to Spring and create a new (larger) fanbase.

I think a max of round 2/3 times what the unit normally is would be fine if guardians/ big berthas would be able to turn faster and fire more accurately

I *really* like that xp system. This would kind of add a different level of strategy to the game. Rather than "mass click attack", you'd have to specify what to attack and add a bit more micro.

Yes, yet if you didnt want to micro you could still win as units would not get to powerfull

And if any survived they would prob be verterans even if you didn't mean them to be.

This would be quite nice if it could be balanced just right...
IMO a top lvl unit should prob be able to take on 2 of it that are basic but not 3

aGorm

*Glares in a malicious, you better not make it compulsory sort of glare at jouninkomiko*

What about something like:
stat = basestat * ( maxmultiplier - maxmultiplier / (damagedealed / somenumbertobalanceit) )
Where stat is something like armor, damage, health etc.
Hmm, was that correct? I just woke up so I'm not really clear in the head.

jouninkomiko wrote:Rather than "mass click attack", you'd have to specify what to attack and add a bit more micro.

That «add a bit more micro», sounds really bad...

What you're saying sounds like «rather than having to click alot, you'll have to click alot».

In the OTA, we didn't had to click alot in battles because one of the main objectives of Chris Taylor (all hail the lorde) for TA, was to avoid micro-managment.

My opinion (and i expect many other's), is that one of the great things about TA is the fact that you don't have to do much micromanagment in battles (or in any other place). That is the only reason why we can have such big battles in TA (and so much everything else).