Ship Autobalancing

[MrL_JaKiri]

(Because I haven't really played since the beta, I'll use the r9 base for this)

Everyone knows there are some 'problems' with the sets of ships for each race. One ship becomes too powerful if numerous, or is underused because it isn't cost effective, because it does not fit into the overarching strategy.

In addition, races can run away with the game; Terrans and Xan especially, and leave noone who has chosen one of the other races a real chance.

Furthermore, what if a low level xan is much more powerful than a low level cath, but a high level cath dominates the xan? How can balance be maintained when there are such different usergroups to worry about?

My proposal is this.

At the end of every 24 tick period, the numbers of ships (in existance and in construction - to stop people beating the market change by buying ships to come in on the 25th tick, so they have another day of the cheaper ship class) of each race are counted, and compared with the others in the same race. If a ship has more than the average resource expenditure on it, then the cost goes up slightly. Less, it goes down. The larger the difference, the larger the change.

Obviously, this will have to be split between the four races.

But what of top players, who tend to focus on one or two kinds of ship to the exclusion of little else? How will those fleets affect the smaller players?

Hence, I propose the universe will be split into 12, with each race having 3 divisions. The 30% of the race with the most score will be one bracket, similarly the 30% with the least. The remaining 40% is the middle bracket. The top bracket will have the most expensive ships, the bottom bracket the least expensive.

For the change in ship costs, only the ships in that planet's bracket are changed.

Similar to the comparison within the divisions, the top, middle and lower segments of each race are then compared with the corresponding segment of the other races.

The race with the highest average score gets its ships increased in cost, the lowest decreased, and similar, with the changes being proportional to the distance of the score from the mean score of the races.

Score would be calculated in the same way, with the combined CURRENT costs of ships being totalled.

There are a few immediate upshots. First, it makes the races more balanced, without continuous tweaking required in betatesting or in the live round.

Secondly, it lowers the difficulty of the game for newbs, as they will get cheaper ships than most of the universe.

Thirdly, it means that players will have a better ratio, due to trying to keep within the middle or lower bands, rather than moving up and having ships increase in cost (this will have the alternate effect of increasing the score of the player, meaning they will have a much higher limit).

Fourthly, it adds to some new end of game tactics. Got a player in the top 10 you'd like to see number 1? Kill the ships that the #1 player has to decrease the value of his ships!

Fifthly, it adds to galactic cooperation; a small player is worth much less than a large one, but if you donate resources to him while still in the lower bracket, the cheap ships mean when he hits the next bracket his score will jump significantly.

There are still some odds and ends (I've worked out the mathematics, but haven't got it with me, and won't be posting it because I'm off), but nothing terribly flawed, as far as I can make out.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Appendum:

The server load wouldn't be that great, as the main calculations could be run in the 'low' time between ticks, or on a different machine entirely.

[edit]

And we might see some big xan ships!

[Tomkat]

Hmm. Good in theory...

Effectively a stock exchange with ships.

What of the people on the edge of the top/middle group?
Won't they find the ships dramatically increase in price overnight for them?

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Tomkat

What of the people on the edge of the top/middle group?
Won't they find the ships dramatically increase in price overnight for them?

The change wouldn't be that great, less than 10% at most imo, but people have always been adept at staying around a certain score.

[Helix]

I didn't even bother reading through that entire post...sort of stopped a little bit after "I haven't played much since beta"

As for balance between the races, this has been about the most balanced round of planetarion ever. The biggest thing to account for that I believe are the making of all ships combat ships, and the universal ETA. There are large ziks, large terran, large xan, large everyone basically.

No one race really has a clear cut advantage over the other one right now (in the overall scheme of things). The classes actually work very well against each other, with ziks being able to attack xans well with clays, or cathaar having the best ship to defend against terran cr....the key to victory for an alliance is a good mix of races because all ships are valuable now because you want to get the right class for defence that wont get targetted itself by the attackers.

I believe if they stick with the current combat system there is no need to make dynamic changes to ship costs...however going back to r9 they could think of it. But if PA stays with this system, which hopefully they will, I know people hate it but that is because it actually IS balanced (disturbance cna be annoying though and definitely needs some tweaking).

[Churchil5]

The thing with no specific race - advantages (i.e. cloak/amp/steal) is that there is that balance. For example, in another similar game (which shalt not be named, but is similar to round 5 PA) everyone wnet Xan equivelent and now everybody is cloaked - why? because it has an obvious tactical analysis. this has been eliminated from PA (my verdict: thumbs up)


And jesus - MrL_Jakiri - how much free time do you have!!!???

[Maddix]

If I understand your suggestion properly you want everyone to basically 'balanced' fleets.

Silly idea imo, attacking is hard enough as it is atm, without forcing those silly enough not to build a balanced one to actually do so.

[Tactitus]

Changing ship prices only has an impact on future ship purchases. It's balancing only to the extent that new ships replace old ships. That means is has relatively little impact in the late round (as players are buying relatively few ships compared to their total fleet sizes), modest impact in the mid-round, and a huge impact in the early round (a period when balance and fleet stagnation isn't really an issue imho).

If you're going to go down the path of autobalancing, I'd do it by adjusting (ever so slightly, of course) the ship stats. This would effect all ships--existing as well as future.

[mist]

i like the stock market idea, although i think it should change every tick rather than every 24 hours. as you said, the calculation wouldn't be that tricky.

i don't like the 12 divisions tho, it'll be like when your overal score affected who you could attack - people will try and "fix" which group they're in. you're trying to punish people for being big again, and as soon as you do that then trying to win becomes stupid

-mist

[Helix]

pfft...this autobalancing is just stupid...

When the United States builds a tank, and then china builds a tank, does the US tank all of a sudden corrode because other people built tanks as well? NO. So why are we trying to do that here...if anything the more there is of a ship the cheaper and more effective it should, a la mass production and a familiarity with the design.

There is no need to do anything like this, part of the game is finding those fleet combinations that work well, and in the current state every race has at least 2 strategies that can work well, with 1 dominant strategy, and no race really out balances any other right now.

[Scoot951]

Sorry, but this idea sucks. Really sucks.

[Chax]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

The race with the highest average score gets its ships increased in cost, the lowest decreased,
Score would be calculated in the same way, with the combined CURRENT costs of ships being totalled.

There are still some odds and ends (I've worked out the mathematics, but haven't got it with me, and won't be posting it because I'm off), but nothing terribly flawed, as far as I can make out.

So if xandathrii have the highest average score today, their ship costs go up, thus they'll have an even higher average tomorrow and costs will go up again. Repeat ad nauseam

This sounds rather bad to me. Even if xandathrii will have trouble buying any ships at all after a few weeks of this their score will be terribly high for the little firepower they have.

Sure, eventually they'll be killed by the low score huge fleet zikonians, terrans or cathaar, but is there really a point to this artificial dynamic handicapping?

[Killerbij]

I like the idea of having a universal stock exchange. I am not too sure wether or not it should be built around ships though. Would be nice if you could invest metal crystal and eonium in say 12 universally available commodities though. And be able to make some profit via this.

Problem is it actually promotes blocking if prices are indeed generated by demand instead of more randomly. A combination would be nice. But it would need to be a random event generator; nothing controlled by creators. A few alliances could otherwise make deals buying certain amounts of ships/commodities ruining certain markets at certain points in time when it suits them the most. Like buying all anti bs in 1 tick after all having bought bs in 1 tick.

[mist]

Originally Posted by Chax

So if xandathrii have the highest average score today, their ship costs go up, thus they'll have an even higher average tomorrow and costs will go up again. Repeat ad nauseam

This sounds rather bad to me. Even if xandathrii will have trouble buying any ships at all after a few weeks of this their score will be terribly high for the little firepower they have.

Sure, eventually they'll be killed by the low score huge fleet zikonians, terrans or cathaar, but is there really a point to this artificial dynamic handicapping?

a good point

however, you could delink the cost/score of ships. give them a score impact that's resources/10 for the origonal cost, so that the score stays the same while the cost changes. however i think it'd need to be done on a ship by ship basis, rather than a race by race basis. also, you'd have to be pretty sure that the starting costs were balanced, as any big variations would make things complicated

tbh, the more i think about it, the more it seems more complicated than it's worth

-mist

[Helix]

of course it is more complicated than it is worth, it isn't worth anything to begin with, not to bash, but the game is balanced, this would just make people annoyed...

[hyfe]

Originally Posted by Helix

of course it is more complicated than it is worth, it isn't worth anything to begin with, not to bash, but the game is balanced, this would just make people annoyed...

The implentation might get complicated yeah(if they choose a complicated model atleast),. As far as the player would be concerned he would have two values to concern about (both should be listed on prod screen):
Original Cost and Current Cost.

I think people would cope.

Either way; better maths imo:
I'd split the modifier into three parts though. One for only planet, one for galaxy, and one for the entire uni. That would lead to a balance between being manipulatable and being balancing.

To have the pricing varying in a cumulative fashion would be silly imo though. Its very easily unbalancing, and harder to predict how it will change. Better to keep it simple. For example:

(15% of all the resources in uni has been spent on pegasi, thus pegasi will get a 1.5% raise in price throughout the uni. Do the same for galaxy and planet, and you'd get bonuses that'd be large enough to matter, and small enough not to be unbalancing... and predictable enough for people to specualte in it..)

[Razorback]

The easiest idea to balance races would be to take a mathematical approach, like in an RPG.
You design a race with "total points" and every gun and every % of wsps etc needs a certain amount of points from this stock. Same would go with the shipclasses itself to prevent the advantage of haveing only one class for each race.

With abit thinking and some proper workout you could generate unique but balanced races.
History in other games showed that this model ofc needs some beta testing to shift the points in one race around abit if you see one ship is getting too strong and haveing "superstats" while its compensated by a bigger amount of useless ships.

[mist]

Originally Posted by Razorback

The easiest idea to balance races would be to take a mathematical approach, like in an RPG.
You design a race with "total points" and every gun and every % of wsps etc needs a certain amount of points from this stock. Same would go with the shipclasses itself to prevent the advantage of haveing only one class for each race.

With abit thinking and some proper workout you could generate unique but balanced races.
History in other games showed that this model ofc needs some beta testing to shift the points in one race around abit if you see one ship is getting too strong and haveing "superstats" while its compensated by a bigger amount of useless ships.

as you said, this only works if the points are handed out to ships within races in a balanced fashion. as far as i can tell that'd still be decided pretty much arbitrerillay, so it'd be back to arbitrary balancing really.

at the end of the day, the best way to produce balanced ship stats, imo is to get a group of knowledgable people together, present some stats and ask them to come back in a week with what's wrong with them

-mist

[Helix]

I still dont get what you people are trying to do? What about the current setup is not balanced? Not much. Some people concentrate on certain classes, and obviously will concentrate on their races strongest class. But there is not one race that dominates any other...as I have said before the races are very balanced against each other, there is no need for all of this...

[Castigated]

I see one big problem with it: Damage is resource based.
If you were to increase the cost of a ship, you'd also increase the damage it does, and it would still be unbalanced, as all it does is making that ship a bit more expensive, but also a big more powerful. This way, people would find it worth it to build a ship even if the cost was a bit higher, and we'd be back to the starting point.

[mist]

how is damage resource based?

[Hector]

Lads, lads, lads.

In all honesty, whether the idea has merit or not, there are about 20 other things the creators should fix first.

The numerous bugs, the cheating, the fact that I'm not top 100 this rnd, etc.

Mind you, it's a good theoretical idea......

[Ultimate Newbie]

I dont see why there is a desire for a balanced fleet tbh. In all of my experience (and the various columns that i have written), the balanced fleet performs the worst in all instanced.

'A Balanced fleet has some capability in all areas, but is good in none.'

Could somone explain to me what is wrong with having an unbalanced fleet? why is it desireable to have a balanced fleet?

[Petru]

I'd like more replies saying how balanced and well done this rounds ships are....

[Killerbij]

Originally Posted by Petru

I'd like more replies saying how balanced and well done this rounds ships are....

Just for you

This round's ships are balanced. They are boring however; no steal, cloak or emp. And reintroducing these makes it a lot harder to balance compared to balancing just 'damage stats'