Author Topic: Nebula battles balancing  (Read 10233 times)

Offline Cinth

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Re: Nebula battles balancing
« Reply #75 on: April 13, 2013, 12:52:48 am »
Something ain't right, that's for sure.  How many small bases did your allies lose?  If I don't split my forces and take on both at once, I end up losing.
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Opened your save. My computer wept. Switched to the ST planet and ship icons filled my screen, so I zoomed out. Game told me that it _was_ totally zoomed out. You could seriously walk from one end of the inner grav well to the other without getting your feet cold.

Offline Toranth

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Re: Nebula battles balancing
« Reply #76 on: April 13, 2013, 01:31:23 am »
Something ain't right, that's for sure.  How many small bases did your allies lose?  If I don't split my forces and take on both at once, I end up losing.
Allies had a total of 1 small starbase, and it died, so I suppose it wasn't quite as one-sided as it seemed.  Basically, I'd won the Epsilon Eridani scenario, but lost the 3-way and Gatling scenarios, so only the human Miners has a small starbase.

I replayed the scenario, and it repeated with the same results.  I lost my autosave from before it began, but I have a save from a few minutes into the scenario.  Here, take a look and see the power of passivity!

Offline Cinth

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Re: Nebula battles balancing
« Reply #77 on: April 13, 2013, 01:38:02 am »
So you started the scenario in an imbalanced state.  That would explain why your allies hand the upper hand.  To me that seems like it could be fixed with a start state conditional.  TBH, in all the scenario testing I did in AS beta, I never thought to test the secondary start state for that 3v2.

I'll check it out your save when I get a chance though :)
Quote from: keith.lamothe
Opened your save. My computer wept. Switched to the ST planet and ship icons filled my screen, so I zoomed out. Game told me that it _was_ totally zoomed out. You could seriously walk from one end of the inner grav well to the other without getting your feet cold.

Offline Toranth

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Re: Nebula battles balancing
« Reply #78 on: April 13, 2013, 11:53:13 am »
So you started the scenario in an imbalanced state.  That would explain why your allies hand the upper hand.  To me that seems like it could be fixed with a start state conditional.  TBH, in all the scenario testing I did in AS beta, I never thought to test the secondary start state for that 3v2.
No need to look at the game, it doesn't actually matter.
Just reached that scenario on my serious playthrough, where I won every scenario before it.  Once again, it was scenario #6.  Again, just to see what happened, I just sat off to the side.  Again, the allies crushed the two Enemy factions, without my participation.  It only took 9 minutes.

It IS 3v2, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.  With hard scenarios like the Ravenous Shadow or the Malfunctioning Gatlings out there, I guess some easier ones should compensate.
But I really feel like I shouldn't be able to do NOTHING and still win.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Nebula battles balancing
« Reply #79 on: April 13, 2013, 03:38:52 pm »
Just tried an alternative approach to balancing the "base vs base" nebula scenarios:

1) Took out all ongoing bonuses from destroyed small bases (for both ally and enemy)
2) As suggested earlier (iirc) in this thread, caused the death of a small base to provide an immediate boost to the same-side large base's production.

The idea being that the anti-snowballing isn't a straight-up rubberbanding anymore but just a burst of opposition that, if overcome, leaves the aggressor in a clearly superior position.  But not an invincible position, most likely.

The result was a bit of a ping pong back and forth between the EEr and SF in the scenario I tested.  I led the EEr to an early small base kill but my champ died during the second SF reprisal-for-dead base and I didn't try to jump back in.  Basically the battle kept swinging back and forth until the SF won with just its damaged large base and about 10 Intimidators left (which then proceeded to wipe my HW since it just had a space dock on loop build and my champ).

That was just with having the small base death give 20,000 points to the corresponding large base.  That basically lets the large base buy 5 whole "large base spawns" all at once.  It felt more or less right (at least I think y'all will enjoy it more than the current form of rubberbanding) but I'm wondering:

- Should the amount given go up for later bases killed on the same side?  So the first miner base dying should give 20k, the second miner base dying should give the miner large base 25k, etc.  Instead of just 20k for each.
-- For that matter, should the amount given go down?
- In the bigger-scale scenarios later on, should each small base give more than 20k?
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Offline chemical_art

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Re: Nebula battles balancing
« Reply #80 on: April 13, 2013, 07:18:21 pm »
Your idea sounds great Keith.

As to your questions, I think the bumps can increase, gradually, per nebula, but just how much I find hard to say until I try it myself.
Life is short. Have fun.

Offline Histidine

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Re: Nebula battles balancing
« Reply #81 on: April 13, 2013, 10:12:37 pm »
Five large spawns x_x

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Nebula battles balancing
« Reply #82 on: April 13, 2013, 10:17:46 pm »
Five large spawns x_x
Well I can't let you get bored now can I? ;)

Do you have a different scale to suggest?
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Offline LordSloth

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Re: Nebula battles balancing
« Reply #83 on: April 13, 2013, 10:19:49 pm »
Five large spawns x_x
Well I can't let you get bored now can I? ;)

Do you have a different scale to suggest?

10 Large Spawns.



...

On 10/10.

Offline Histidine

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Re: Nebula battles balancing
« Reply #84 on: April 13, 2013, 10:26:09 pm »
Five large spawns x_x
Well I can't let you get bored now can I? ;)

Do you have a different scale to suggest?
Well, to come up with something good I'd need to know what controls spawn size and frequency. But the simplest equation that comes to mind is (0 or 1) + (champion hull size) extra spawns (so 2 to 3 on a DD scenario).

Offline Aquohn

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Re: Nebula battles balancing
« Reply #85 on: April 13, 2013, 11:04:28 pm »
Cocnept sounds good, but I think 5 large base spawns might be too punishing on lower champion hull sizes. Histidine's scaling sounds decent, really.
« Last Edit: April 13, 2013, 11:10:20 pm by Aquohn »
Arcen in Summary:
thank you so much, RNG
It aims to please!

Or is that "to kill"?  Hmm.

Offline Faulty Logic

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Re: Nebula battles balancing
« Reply #86 on: April 14, 2013, 04:10:35 am »
A gentler scaling sounds better, because otherwise losing small bases (and thus some potential rewards) becomes almost inevitable.
If warheads can't solve it, use more warheads.

Offline Aquohn

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Re: Nebula battles balancing
« Reply #87 on: April 15, 2013, 10:33:49 am »
Will this be in 6.019?
Arcen in Summary:
thank you so much, RNG
It aims to please!

Or is that "to kill"?  Hmm.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Nebula battles balancing
« Reply #88 on: April 15, 2013, 10:36:16 am »
Will this be in 6.019?
Yep, working on it right now :)
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games? Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline Aquohn

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Re: Nebula battles balancing
« Reply #89 on: April 15, 2013, 10:38:23 am »
Awesome!

...

Great, there go my grades again.
Arcen in Summary:
thank you so much, RNG
It aims to please!

Or is that "to kill"?  Hmm.