Balance Complexity

[Draco18s]

Balance and diversity are inversely proportional.

Not necessarily; the key is contextual power. That is, abilities or units that are more powerful in some situations than others.

If you have enough "situations" with each unit shining in a different area, as long as each unit shines the same amount you have balance and diversity, yes.

The original phrase came from Sirlin who was talking about fighting games (mortal combat) primarily, although touched on RTS and MMORPG games as well.

He was also fond of saying that PvE balance and PvP balance don't have any relationship with each other.  That is, one ability is great in PvE, but useless in PvP (if using the same rules) or vice versa.

That algorithm is a good way to TEST balance. It does not give what needs to be tweaked to make an under-performing unit useful, or how to bring an overpowered unit reasonable. In other words, it tests, not finds (alternatively, solves for) balance.

True.

I have been unable to locate a way to make the alteration decisions for me (i.e. how to make a unit better/worse), but my project doesn't need that (it would help the process, but isn't required).  There are no "set" units like AI War (where an Electric Shuttle is always identical from one game to another), but instead units are generated procedurally for the campaign.

[TechSY730]

Exactly. Testing for balance is a problem that can be done in polynomial time (O(n^2) for straight up unit type vs unit type matchups, a higher exponent if you want to test how utility abilities (repair, attack buff, etc)  from other units can influence the battle, but that is still polynomial)

What I am saying is, AFAIK, finding a balanced solution for unit stats and abilities is fundamentally really hard, NP-Hard hard. As in "it would take years for the computer to give a good answer for a small scale RTS if you are very lucky" hard.

With some nifty hueristics and a good seed (such as an almost balanced game), I can see that a computer can help to tweak things to make balance better some, and even do it in a reasonable time frame. The hard part, the NP-Hard part, is getting that good seed in the first place.

[Draco18s]

Right.

Thing is, for my project I don't particularly care.

One suggested "fluff" for why the game is the way it is is that the player is turning junk and scrap into combat units, so the same "type" of unit won't always have identical stats.

It'll still be a "bomber" but maybe today it's slower and slugs shells farther.

[Red Spot]

Balance can basicly be put in a triangle, where each point represents: armor/health, attackpower, speed.
As long as things fit within how you have set your triangle, you have balance

If you can put your triangle in the form of a formula you can create all sorts of flavours within the same set of rules.
Kudos for getting it just right though, when you do

[Draco18s]

Balance can basicly be put in a triangle, where each point represents: armor/health, attackpower, speed.
As long as things fit within how you have set your triangle, you have balance

I've got more of a 8 dimensional hyperprism, but yes.