View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0003783 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - Balance Tweaks | Aug 28, 2011 11:35 pm | May 12, 2013 5:08 pm | |
| Reporter | TechSY730 | Assigned To | |||
| Status | new | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 5.014 | ||||
| Summary | 0003783: Spirecraft Implosions and Mk Levels | ||||
| Description | I've noticed that Spirecraft implosion artilerry Mk. Is are near useless but Mk. IV and Mk. Vs are near overpowered, even when you consider the average strength of ships for their respective Mks. Then I realized something. Lets look at their damage. Mk. I: .25% of target's current HP Mk. II: .5% of target's current HP Mk. III: 1% of target's current HP Mk. IV: 2% of target's current HP Mk. V: 4% of target's current HP Notice something? Yep, its an exponential Mk. to damage relationship. One of the very reasons why these are avoided on all the other ship types is that it makes lower marks underpowered and higher marks overpowered. I think scaling the damage percentage linearlly will work out nicely to make their overall usefullness more even. The only problem is a good percentage for Mk. I ship. .25% would mean the implosions overall too weak, even at Mk. V (which would do a measly 1.25%), and .5% would make all the Mks stronger except for Mk. IV (which would remain at 2%), and Mk. V being weaker (2.5%), which may be too strong overall. If I had to choose however, I would say .5% for Mk. I and scale linearly from there would be good. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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So I don't clutter up the main post too much, here is what my proposed linear increase with .5% of target's current HP would look like. Mk. I: .5% of target's current HP Mk. II: 1% of target's current HP Mk. III: 1.5% of target's current HP Mk. IV: 2% of target's current HP Mk. V: 2.5% of target's current HP As you can see, it makes the lower marks much more useful but keeps MK. V from being quite so abusable. However, this may make the Spirecraft implosion ships too strong overall, as only the Mk. V gets nerfed by this change. |
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I think there's some merit to this, but one thing to consider is that the costs increase a lot more than linearly as you get into mkIV and mkV because those asteroids are a a _lot_ rarer. On average (in my tests), a galaxy holds enough Reptite to build 160 Implosion MkIs, but only enough Adamantite to build 7 Implosion MkVs. So you can actually afford to build 16 implosion mkIs more readily than you can afford to build a mkV. While it's intentional that across-the-board costs increase faster than capabilities as mk level goes up, when it comes to these kinds of non-replaceable resources I think it warrants more than a linear increase in power. So I think it's appropriate that any spirecraft made from adamantite or titanite be head-and-shoulders above the others. Not that that's the case with spirecraft currently, of course ;) But it's something I plan to keep in mind as we make some changes to those in the future. All that said, yea, the first two marks (and even the third) could use a bit of a boost. |
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Good point. I didn't think about the rarity of the higher level asteroids. OK, a super linear growth rate of power is OK then, but IMO, exponential is too much. Polynomial maybe? |
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I'm not sure I understand, isn't it already polynomial? In fact, it's less than quadratic. If I take a base of 25: Linear (Base*Mark) 25 50 75 100 125 Polynomial (Base*(Mark^2)) (that is, quadratic) 25 100 225 400 625 Exponential (Base^Mark) 25 625 15625 390625 9765625 So it's currently basically the second one, but with a lower degree than 2, and the points might not actually fit the curve. But unless I'm drastically misunderstanding the definition of an exponential function ( i.e. f(x) => a^x ), it certainly isn't exponential. |
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Try .25 * 2^(m-1), where m is the Mk. level of the unit and the result is a percentage damage. That gives you the current situation. |
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Oh, I see what you mean, because currently it's: Base*(2^(Mark-1)) Which does have mark in the exponent. What are you suggesting as an alternative? Switching the 2 and the mark actually increases the severity (because then you get the quadratic numbers above with mkI doing .25 and mkV doing 6.25). |
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And there is the challenge. Exponential may grow too fast, but what is a good replacement? As you noted, the naive way of making it polynomial will make things worse. Maybe N*(logN)^a (for some yet to be determined constant a and base b) or something? Maybe play around with the exponents or coefficients some in the polynomial form? I don't know. |
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Why not something simple like: 0.5% / 1% / 1.5% / 2% / 3% |
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Yea, perhaps nlogn. But to back up a moment: On average the raw resources exist in a galaxy to make: 162 MkIs 246 MkIIs (Pysite is significantly more common than Reptite) 173 MkIIIs (Xampite too, on average, though individual galaxies vary _widely_ on this) 50 MkIVs 7 MkVs So really the mkI, II, and IIIs can stand to be linear within that group, but a MkIV should probably be at least 2 (if not 3) times as useful as a mkIII, and a MkV could stand to be *5* times as useful as a MkIV, considering that Adamantite (and Titanite, but that's even rarer and doesn't make implosion spirecraft) should really be "trump cards" if you're playing with Spirecraft on. I'm pretty tempted to make the MkV even more powerful than it is for that reason ;) |
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I think Hearteater has a good point. Instead of finding an equation, which would be quite difficult to get right, maybe each mark should have a its own power not necessarily with any relation to the previous or Mk. I power. So I guess a good approach would be Mk. I-III linear, and then from then on up, scale up by however much rarer the current Mk is compared to the last mark. There would be no easy equation to describe this, but that is okay, because the rarities have no easy equation to describe their values. EDIT: Which is pretty much what you suggested Keith. ;) |
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Revised based on Keith's info: 0.5% / 1% / 1.5% / 3% / 10% |
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@Hearteater Yeah i think that be correct. 1.25 / 1.46 / 2.92 / 5.05 / 36.1 this multiplier :P base on rarity from keith, i think if u times mark with how many u get u should get something like this 202.5 / 359.16 / 505.16 / 252.5 / 252.7 u get something like totall power level. |
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I was thinking. I don't think the other spire-craft have been balanced with the proper rarities in mind. All of the spire-craft may need a balance check. |
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" I was thinking. I don't think the other spire-craft have been balanced with the proper rarities in mind. All of the spire-craft may need a balance check. " Yea, like I said, "So I think it's appropriate that any spirecraft made from adamantite or titanite be head-and-shoulders above the others. Not that that's the case with spirecraft currently, of course ;) But it's something I plan to keep in mind as we make some changes to those in the future." And in response to soMe_RandoM, yes, those numbers are useful, but I'm not looking for extra rarity to provide a linearly greater "bonus", somewhat less than that. Having MkV Implosions be able to 3-shot _anything_ would be a bit much ;) |
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Oops, it wouldn't 3 shot due to it being a percent of current health, but it would be pretty severe ;) |
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Have you considered changing asteroid rarity so it is easier to make a linear progression? If you are re-balancing the spire ships anyway (after AVWW comes out) it might make things easier if the resource is linearly increasing to start with. |
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I rather like the rarities the way they are right now, actually. Not everything in the game has to be linearly scaled. |
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I found that i never get any more than 2 mark 5 spire craft. and crap load roughly 300 tier 1-2. maximine i found in game 120 planets is 5 (mk4) and 5(mrk5) this largest deposit i ever found @keith .25 / .32 / .57 / 3.2 / 10 40 / 80 / 100 / 160 / 70 0% / 128% / 178.125% / 182.4% / 312.5% X percentage of increase last mark power 0% / 128% / 50.125% / 4.275% / 130.1% N percentage increase between each mark Liner would be 62% N last mark .25 / .40 / .65 / 1.04 / 1.69 40.5 / 98.4 / 112.45 / 48.07 / 4.14 Linear makes mark 2-3 Strongest compared to rest mark as latency strength |
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Mk1 Implosion artillery are by no means underpowered. If you have a full cap of them, they are doing (roughly) as much damage as a single mark 4 implosion artillery. How often have people actually used these? Because even with just a handful of Mk1s, anything with massive amounts of hitpoints is absolute *cake* to destroy. I vehemently disagree with the proposition that Mk1 Implosion Artillery are underpowered, and would submit that they are possibly, in fact, overpowered. |
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Sunshine makes a good point. If you buff the lower Mk's damage then you might have to hit their ship cap. Each higher Mk. is two fold stonger than its predecessor. Mind you, if you have a group of them shooting at an armoured golem or Mk.3 fortress (or even a super fortress) they'd make swift work of it regardless, and surely that's their jobs? Shredding health off of a high helth target? Also, only having one of any of the implosion units would be foolish, you'd want as many of each, and don't the asteroids allow you to spawn 2 of some, depending on the rarity? Right now: 8 Mk.1 = 4 Mk.2 = 2 Mk.3 = 1 Mk.4 = 1/2 Mk.5 What was proposed in the first resonse would make the lower Mk.s stronger and the Mk.5 redundant. I would have to go against that because Mk.5s are meant to be awesome. The pinnacle of badassery... which 4% is if you think about it. The balancing of the rarity of the asteroids I have no clue about and thus no input for that. |
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I think Game dev should create tool that tells you average asteroid count in most games, then balance it so that latency strength is about 1.5 last mark. this could include reduce cap for lower marks to only 2 at time. or something. |
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If the power of the Spirecrafts is going to be adjusted to reflect asteroid rarity, make sure to update exo-wave costs too. Having AI spamming something 15x (or whatever) times as powerful for only 5x the cost would just be completely unfair. |
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I don't think a full cap of mark Is should be equivalent to mark Vs in the case of spirecraft, as also based on rarity. The current spawning logics seems to be that most planets obtain Rep/Pys/Xam, in varying numbers. This means that you don't usually have to factor that into account when taking a planet. However, a planet on or near Adamantites or Titanites is always worth taking. Ebonite supplies are more of a fabricator-level decision. I usually take a full cap of mk. I (8, 2% total) and mk. IIs (6, 3% total) after a while, which adds a lot of use to mark IIIs (4, 4% total). The total reduction is useful enough as is. I think changes will need to take into account percentage-based damage as a whole, versus other spire-craft. A 10% mark-V could outshine every other ship for that asteroid. |
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I actually like it that some Spirecraft are more useful at the lower marks, others at the higher marks. I like Rams and Martyrs at low marks (avoid overkill); Implosion Artillery at high marks (non-linear scaling); Jumpships at either Mark I (expendable) or Mark V (immortal); Ion Blasters at AI tech level or above. This is a far more interesting dynamic than just having every Spirecraft's utility correlated with its mark level in some straightforward way, IMHO. |
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How about what the current now buffed implosion guardian has? 1%/2%/3%/4%/5%. Gives a good buff to the lower tiers, without making the high tiers too stupidly overpowered. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 28, 2011 11:35 pm | TechSY730 | New Issue | |
| Aug 28, 2011 11:41 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0013033 | |
| Aug 28, 2011 11:41 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0013033 | |
| Aug 28, 2011 11:48 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0013033 | |
| Aug 29, 2011 8:45 am | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0013034 | |
| Aug 29, 2011 12:08 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0013035 | |
| Aug 29, 2011 12:30 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0013036 | |
| Aug 29, 2011 12:37 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0013037 | |
| Aug 29, 2011 12:38 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0013038 | |
| Aug 29, 2011 1:26 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0013039 | |
| Aug 29, 2011 1:26 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0013039 | |
| Aug 29, 2011 1:35 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0013040 | |
| Aug 29, 2011 1:37 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0013041 | |
| Aug 29, 2011 1:58 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0013042 | |
| Aug 29, 2011 2:06 pm | TechSY730 | Note Edited: 0013042 | |
| Aug 29, 2011 4:07 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0013043 | |
| Sep 1, 2011 10:42 pm | soMe_RandoM | Note Added: 0013087 | |
| Sep 2, 2011 12:08 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0013100 | |
| Sep 2, 2011 12:25 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0013101 | |
| Sep 2, 2011 12:27 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0013102 | |
| Sep 2, 2011 12:51 pm | Hearteater | Note Added: 0013104 | |
| Sep 2, 2011 1:05 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0013106 | |
| Sep 2, 2011 7:51 pm | soMe_RandoM | Note Added: 0013113 | |
| Sep 7, 2011 11:58 pm | Sunshine | Note Added: 0013177 | |
| Sep 8, 2011 2:27 am | GeneReyva | Note Added: 0013180 | |
| Sep 8, 2011 4:12 am | soMe_RandoM | Note Added: 0013181 | |
| Nov 4, 2011 11:04 am | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0017418 | |
| Jan 31, 2012 8:09 am | zharmad | Note Added: 0018438 | |
| Jan 31, 2012 8:11 am | zharmad | Note Edited: 0018438 | |
| Feb 26, 2013 9:37 am | Bognor | Note Added: 0030925 | |
| May 12, 2013 5:08 pm | TechSY730 | Note Added: 0032169 |
