Modding/Game Balance

posted on October 20th, 2010, 2:40 pm

Actually, try increasing the swordman's speed to 2 or their sword damage to 2 and see what happens.  Also, some units are going to be more powerful than others obviously, and that's where cost limits their numbers compared to something else.  Generally in a swordman vs archer battle, each side has a bunch of weak archers and a few expensive tanks that tank for them and keep them alive.  I'm thinking of a few internet flash games that work like that.

posted on October 20th, 2010, 2:42 pm

Indeed, was going to mention that Dircome  :sweatdrop: . Though that also brings in an aspect of micromanagement and overkill too - as if all the archers fire on one target, they are wasting a lot of firepower. Also, the time it takes to ready a shot is important. If archer's take 1 second to reload, but no time to fire, you can time it such that you need stop merely for a moment to fire, then keep moving. That's not applicable in the turn based strategy, but it will be for many RTS games  :blush:

Another layer you'll probably want to move to later on are what units your opposing faction(s) will have at the tech levels (that's partly how costs are calculated in FO for instance). So you'll need to assign a tech level to each unit, a cost leveling, and figure out the efficiency of those units.

Nice to see this developing  :thumbsup:

[RedEyedRaven]

posted on October 20th, 2010, 3:45 pm

Last edited by RedEyedRaven on October 20th, 2010, 3:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I am eventually trying to move to a point where i can use my equation to help balance FO-like ships.

well
a good idea is to start with an odf that has similar size to your ship.

For my Command Cruiser-tier (which is one of five tiers I am working on) I took the basic FO-Excelsior and edited the stats slightly. I added (because I want this to be a command vessel that's absolutely unique) two new cap-files and removed the warpin-cap (capfiles are easily done). I increased hull strength, shield strength and replaced the long-ranged light phaser with a medium ranged phaser based on the adapting disruptor from the romulan-borg-mixed-tech Leahval; which makes my vessel a good non-Borg counter.
I copied and pasted and adjusted until I had the stats till veteran rank and since I didn't feel like editing all the weapon odfs by hand I used the old #include-command which was used in stock A2 to not write too much of the same stuff in several odfs.

Doing this means; My Excelsior-command cruiser takes the same damage reductions and evading chances as the normal warpin-Excelsior, but since I adjusted anything else- it only gets the Excelsior's passives in addition, but has it's own stats overall as well as own shipnames (wordgames with the standard-Excelsior names, like "Violet Star" being "Red Sun" and such).

The costs however still seem not right to me; I think I made it too expensive as for the fact my ship is only slightly stronger than the normal Excelsior in defense and a much different fighter. However I felt a command vessel, specially brought to field for me as a player should have its price...



Comparison: The most crucial part
Standard Excelsior from warpin:

Code: Select all

crewcost = 110
tritancost = 0
worthxp = 50
xplevel = 1
nextrankclass = "fed_excelsiorr2"
nextrankxp = 27
recycledilithium = 0
recycletritanium = 0
recyclesupply = 0
recycletime = 48
maxhealth = 122
curhealth = 122
healthrate = 0.310
maxshields = 408
curshields = 408
shieldrate = 0.907
shieldgeneratorhitpoints = 33
engineshitpoints = 33
weaponshitpoints = 33
lifesupporthitpoints = 33
sensorshitpoints = 33
maxspecialenergy = 140
specialenergyrate = 1.164
attackpower = 1.000
intrinsicvalue = 1.000
giveisallowed = 0
physicsfile = "smooth_physics_90.odf"
trekphysicsfile = "smooth_physics_90.odf"
fleetcapfile = "all_cap_warpin.odf"


And my Command vessel

Code: Select all

#include "fed_excelsior.odf"
unitname = "Excelsior Class"
tooltip = "Excelsior Class"
verbosetooltip = "AUTOTOOLTIP-fed_excelsior.odf"
race = "unitedfederation"
buildtime = 87
crewcost = 200
dilithiumcost = 1000
tritancost = 500
worthxp = 100
xplevel = 1
nextrankclass = "fed_excelsior2r2"
nextrankxp = 200
recycledilithium = 0
recycletritanium = 0
recyclesupply = 0
recycletime = 48
maxhealth = 150
curhealth = 150
healthrate = 0.5
maxshields = 500
curshields = 500
shieldrate = 1.0
shieldgeneratorhitpoints = 42
engineshitpoints = 42
weaponshitpoints = 42
lifesupporthitpoints = 42
sensorshitpoints = 42
maxspecialenergy = 160
specialenergyrate = 1.6
attackpower = 1.000
intrinsicvalue = 1.000
giveisallowed = 0
physicsfile = "smooth_physics_100.odf"
trekphysicsfile = "smooth_physics_100.odf"
fleetcapfile = "all_cap_cc.odf"
fleetcapfile = "all_cap_command.odf"

I didn't edit the tooltips yet because I am still thinking of a secondary weapon, only the phaser is done so far.