| CA Balance |
Fri, 09 April 2004 12:20  |
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 mlaub |
 | Lieutenant |
Messages: 744
Registered: November 2003
Location: MN, USA | |
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Just thought of a way to balance CA's, at least more so than now (someone probably thought of this). Maybe this could be added to the list of future possibilities in Freestars...
Anyway, take away CA instaform, *and* the ability to terraform via Q (which isn't a possibility now). Only OA's could terraform their planets, and limit it. Say...2% per turn on a red world, and 4% a turn on a green world.
That would effectively cut *way* back on the late game molasses effect of a CA with TT +30.
-Matt
Global Warming - A climatic change eagerly awaited by most Minnesotans.
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| Re: CA Balance |
Fri, 09 April 2004 12:34  |
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Actually, I think the simple way to balance CA is just to remove the instant terraform. I do not see any problem with CA's being able to terraform with orbital adjusters as much as they please.
Terraforming for the CA should be 25% cheaper (just as starbases are cheaper for IT, mass drivers cheaper for PP and weaps cheaper for WM's). The resource point cost for CA can be adjusted to provide the negative aspect of being CA, or, something like smart bombs dropped on CA's could do more damage than if dropped on other races - (like the mass packet detriment to IT's). These options provide a balancing negative to being CA.
Additionally, the orbital adjuster module can be more expensive to build - this also helps balance the race better.
My  worth.
Ptolemy
A note for Freestars - A would like to see us at least remove the instant terraform for CA's in Freestars and simply make terraforming cheaper for CA's since this is the item that overbalances the CA the most. Though Freestrs is to be a clone of Stars! there is no reason we shouldn't make some improvements at the same time.
[Updated on: Fri, 09 April 2004 12:35]
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| Re: CA Balance |
Fri, 09 April 2004 13:17 |
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| Orca |
 | Chief Warrant Officer 1 |
Messages: 148
Registered: June 2003
Location: Orbiting tower at the L5 ... | |
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| Ptolemy wrote on Fri, 09 April 2004 12:34 |
Actually, I think the simple way to balance CA is just to remove the instant terraform. I do not see any problem with CA's being able to terraform with orbital adjusters as much as they please.
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Removing instaforming will be fairly easy using the racefile defs. I'd also want to increase the remote terraformer cost - given their abilities, they don't really cost enough early on.
But it's nothing that's going to require any coding change.
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| Re: CA Balance |
Fri, 09 April 2004 13:26 |
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Actually removing the instant terraform probably saves us some coding.. Adjusting the OA cost is simply changing the value of a constant. IMO. CA is the only race that really needs to be adjusted.
Ptolemy
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| Re: CA Balance |
Fri, 09 April 2004 14:23 |
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| Orca |
| Chief Warrant Officer 1 |
Messages: 148
Registered: June 2003
Location: Orbiting tower at the L5 ... | |
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The ability will be there, it's just a matter of turning it on/off in the race defs. Or giving it to other races. Or whatever you want...
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| Re: CA Balance |
Sat, 10 April 2004 07:45 |
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| Carn |
 | Officer Cadet 4th Year |
Messages: 284
Registered: May 2003 | |
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I have an idea to balance CA without changing rules or gameplay much and one, that can already be tested in current Stars!.
General opinion seems to be that CA is best in resource production and JOAT is second, though some way of. So by increasing max population
a PRT gets better and decreasing max pop make it worse.
Now here is my guess: If max pop of CA is reduced by 10%, meaning 900000 on 100% world, it is roughly equal to other PRTs, especially JOAT.
Big advantage of this idea is, that unlike removing instaforming it can be tested, because 1200000/900000=1.33 is nearly the same as 1320000/1000000=1.32.
The test would consist of making a useful CA race without OBRM and only a few points left(best 0) dedicated to defenses. Then create a useful
JOAT race of same style(HP,-f,HG,...) without OBRM and few(better 0) points left for defenses. Now switch OBRM on and don't use the points. The CA race is only
allowed to use mini miner hull and con2 elec1 miner(and alien miner).
Though both races will perform poorer than normal races, their relative performance to each other will roughly be the same as if
CA had the disadvantage of 10% less pop and no design restrictions.
So all you need, to find out whether my guess is correct, are some duel- and testbed-junkies/experts willing to try that.
Carn
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| Re: CA Balance |
Mon, 12 April 2004 11:12 |
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| mlaub |
| Lieutenant |
Messages: 744
Registered: November 2003
Location: MN, USA | |
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| Carn wrote on Sat, 10 April 2004 06:45 |
Now here is my guess: If max pop of CA is reduced by 10%, meaning 900000 on 100% world, it is roughly equal to other PRTs, especially JOAT.
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Nice idea. However, I'm sure it would only trim them back at the start of a game. In the endgame, their power would be near what it is now. The problem is not resources. The problem is instant resources/minerals through *instaforming*.
Even a single-immune TT non-CA race takes forever to terraform a yellow planet to max green. We are talking about 10+ years for most planets, vs a CA which gets it instantly. Reducing the resources won't change this. The one time I played a CA (Last year) my resource count was just silly. IIRC, I hit +300K@ Y2500... I couldn't use all my resources, because of the fleet limits, as it was. Very doubtful that 10% less would have made the slightest difference, and I was running a HG with 12/9/10 for factory settings!
-Matt
[Updated on: Mon, 12 April 2004 11:13]
Global Warming - A climatic change eagerly awaited by most Minnesotans.
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| Re: CA Balance |
Tue, 13 April 2004 15:42 |
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Well Leit,
We can use a simple 'count' approach. Sit with the race wizard and play with it for several hours recording all possible changes of LRT's with each PRT and record the results. It is time consuming but it is certainly doable. I do not think that the original Stars! used an algorithm for this - I think it simply assigned dynamically modified values from constants.
Ptolemy
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| Re: CA Balance |
Tue, 13 April 2004 20:20 |
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| Orca |
| Chief Warrant Officer 1 |
Messages: 148
Registered: June 2003
Location: Orbiting tower at the L5 ... | |
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| Ptolemy wrote on Tue, 13 April 2004 15:42 |
Well Leit,
We can use a simple 'count' approach. Sit with the race wizard and play with it for several hours recording all possible changes of LRT's with each PRT and record the results. It is time consuming but it is certainly doable. I do not think that the original Stars! used an algorithm for this - I think it simply assigned dynamically modified values from constants.
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The entire Stars! race wizard (in particular hab!) looks like a series of lookup tables. And there are interactions between hab, certain LRTs (TT in particular), and growth - at minimum. Quite frankly, duplicating it completely would be an enormous PITA unless we could get those race point totals...anybody willing to volunteer for this rather mind-numbing work? I remember trying to map even single hab variables onto some kind of a formula and seeing all *kinds* of weird discontinuities and weirdness.
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| Re: CA Balance |
Tue, 13 April 2004 21:33 |
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I've been playing a bit with the race wizard...
I think there is some underlying formula to much of it, could be simulated with an excel spreadsheet, including some IF functions (if TEST use A otherwise B, '?:' in c++).
Original race differences in points seems fixed which could be a vlookup() function in excel.
IMO we make an excel spreadsheet, post it in a public place and let everyone poke around with improvements to get the numbers closer.
[Updated on: Tue, 13 April 2004 21:57] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: CA Balance |
Wed, 14 April 2004 02:02 |
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I wonder if Jeff might be coaxed into helping with this specific piece of information (unfortunatly he's probably not legally permitted to do this though, but it's got to be worth asking.)
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| Re: CA Balance |
Thu, 15 April 2004 11:10 |
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| Orca |
| Chief Warrant Officer 1 |
Messages: 148
Registered: June 2003
Location: Orbiting tower at the L5 ... | |
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| Ozone wrote on Thu, 15 April 2004 01:12 |
How about instead of trying to remove CAs strength (which is a pretty cool feature) they are instead given a corresponding weakness. Like how about all CA hulls cost 40% more to build.
Ozone
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No balance changes are planned for version 1, though it'd be cake to alter the PRT's (mixing and matching abilities) without code changes. Having hulls cost 40% more would be a simple change to the Racial Traits definition file.
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| Re: CA Balance |
Fri, 16 April 2004 02:25 |
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Why not just remove instaforming altogether? They can just build lots of OA's and use them for themselves.
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| Re: CA Balance |
Tue, 08 March 2005 13:12 |
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I agree that getting rid of instaforming would have a dramatic effect on CA. If tests were to show that just the instaforming removal didn't quite slow down CA enough then the next step is to modify the OA. First, the OA tech levels could be made higher - then, the module cost can be adjusted. I'm sure that the combination of these factors would be sufficent to balance CA.
Ptolemy
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| Re: CA Balance |
Fri, 18 March 2005 22:41 |
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| PricklyPea |
| Lieutenant |
Messages: 534
Registered: February 2005 | |
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| Ptolemy wrote on Tue, 08 March 2005 13:12 |
I agree that getting rid of instaforming would have a dramatic effect on CA. If tests were to show that just the instaforming removal didn't quite slow down CA enough then the next step is to modify the OA. First, the OA tech levels could be made higher - then, the module cost can be adjusted. I'm sure that the combination of these factors would be sufficent to balance CA.
Ptolemy
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My first stab at this has been completed. Check out the VML forum and look at my mod. Hopefully once people have played it a bit, some of the flaws will show and will give some idea of where to go next.
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