The Complete Analysis Of 2.0's Fundamental Flaws
Forlorn
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 2634Banned
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 2634Banned
<div class="IPBDescription">To achieve proper balance, start here!</div> <span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>Disclaimer: Unless you really care about NS, I suggest hitting the back button on your browser right now. This thread is intended for hardcore NS players. The entire thread is nearly 7 pages long.</span>
Basically, it all comes down to the res model and upgrades.
<span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'>Problem #1: Alien Res Hoarding</span>
The main flaw lies in that 1 alien res is worth much much much more than 1 marine res, and how easily the alien’s higher form of res can be aquired.
Lets say you have 5 aliens on a team. How long does it take to get 3 res at just one node?
Since you have 5 aliens and res goes to one alien every 5 seconds, or a tick, this means it takes 5 ticks to get just one res on a five alien team. This is actually 25 seconds. This means it takes 75 seconds to get 3 res as just one alien at one node.
How much does the marine team get in 75 seconds in on just one node? Remember, it's 1 res every 5 seconds... so that means 15 res for the marines. On a five alien team, 3 res = 15 res for the marines.
If an alien kills a marine and gets 3 res, he effectivly got 15 res on just a 5v5 game. :/ On larger games, this number grows: 3 alien res is worth 30 marine res on a 10v10, and so on. This inprotional value of the res is made balanced by the fact that there are more marines to kill on larger servers. So while the res nodes themselves will not rake in much res, killing will, by a large and far amount.
This means that if a skulk kills a marine and the marine's teammate kills the skulk, the skulk gets a much better deal in the long run. The marines are left with up to 3 res, which to be blunt, is jack crap. It is nowhere near equal to what the skulk got.
However, marine's have a shared pool; it makes sense for them to aquire res slower when killing aliens.
If 6 marines kill 6 skulks, one thing happens: They get up to 18 addition res.
If 6 skulks kill 6 marines, two things can happen, one being bad, the other being really damn good:
a.) All the skulks each get up to 3 res. (Bad, but balanced. It's obvious to see that res for kills on aliens was made intentionally so that aliens could still tech up with even a slow res model.)
b.) One skulk aquires up to 18 res. If this skulk has 25 res to start with, he could be at 43 res, a short hop, jump, and skip away from a fade or a hive. This is overkill. This is where the imbalance lies.
However, to be practical, we can't assume they each get 3 res per kill. The average is obvsiously 2 res per kill, so lets say the marine team gets 12 res, and the lone skulk gets 12 res.
The marine team could buy a shotgun. Woohoo!
That skulk could get a second hive. He has 37 res. Again, fairly short distance from a hive.
Since each game has more than one fight in it, this basically puts a limit to how many 'lives' a marine team can lose before the alien team pwns them with abilities their tech was nowhere near ready to deal with. A "Super Skulk" who nabs the majority of the res imbalances this so much it's not even funny.
On the other hand, games where there are no “Super Skulks” you don’t see this type of fast domination; it is indeed a very balanced game of what I expected NS to be. However, this is extremely unlikely; certain skulks are more skilled than others, and some skulks could just get plain old lucky. This upgrade time is far faster than whatever the marines can muster.
What needs to be done to fix this is a system where skulks cannot horde res. This is simply the only real fix to a major problem.
In small games(say 4v4 or less), skulk hording is the norm, generally in a small game the more skilled skulk will eat more marines easily, and on larger games(8v8 or more) good skulks have plenty to feed off of resulting in a quick alien dominance if the aliens are efficient biters.
To fix skulk hording I propose a system where the skulk who made the kill gets the primary reward, but his teammates benefit also.
It goes like this:
When a skulk kills a marine, he randomly gets 1-3 res. However, only one of those res goes directly to him. The other res go to his teammates on a sequential order.
In these next examples, I made it so all skulks get 3 res per kill for demonstrations sake. Keep in mind that it would really be random in-game.
For example, say you have 5 skulks. Skulk5 gets a kill. The first res goes right to his own pool.
The next to res goes to skulk1, and skulk2.
Then, all of the sudden, skulk5 gets another kill. Skulk3 gets one res, and skulk4 does too.
Because skulk5 is owning, he gets yet another kill. This sequence restarts, skulk1 gets one res and skulk2 gets a res also.
<b>Remember, in this sequence, the skulk who made the kill is never counted.</b>
Keep in mind that it ended at skulk2. Now, because skulk3 was jealous of skulk5’s raw pwnage, he goes out and nabs a kill. Skulk<i>4</i> then gets one res, and skulk 5 does also.
Not to be outdone, skulk2 gets two kills in a row. Skulk1 is next on the sequence, and he gets a res, and then skulk3 does also, followed by skulk4 and skulk5.
Is this system understood now? The skulk who makes the kill automatically gets 1 res for every kill, and all the res extra from the kill spills over to the other teammates in a sequential order, however, this order will always skip the skulk who made the kill if he’s next in line.
As for coding this in, it would take a good set of flags to make sure it worked properly, but I’m sure it’s nothing Flay can’t handle based off of what I’ve seen him do.
Anyhow, what my system will do is keep aliens from hording res and stopping an uneven tech progression on the alien team.
Currently, on the average game of NS, the res distrubition on a team is like this(for both pub <b>and</b> clan matches :/):
Every row is an alien resource pool. The longer their line is, the more res the alien has. (For better detail of this diagram, check my attachment.)
2.0 Games without my system:
--------------------------------------------
---------------
-----------------------------
------------
-----------------------------------
2.0 Games with my system:
------------------------------------
----------------------
------------------------------
--------------------
---------------------------------
Notice how games in 2.0, you see the better skulks way ahead of the lesser ones, resulting in fragmented tech and generally unprepared marines, while in my system you see a pretty damn steady progression of alien resource pools, which means aliens would tech slower and more in pace with marines, yet they also would keep just as much res from the kills as in the old system.
Basically, with my system, one of the instinct reactions of marines should be when they see a fade:
“Okay, a fade, well, our lv. 2 weapons and lv. 1 armor should be enough to handle them, but be careful team, pretty soon their entire team will be able to go fade.”
As opposed to:
“****! A Fade already!?! Our two marines out on the field grabbing res can no way stand up to that force! We need to kill it or else it’s going to cost us!! Quick! Maybe we should rush some shotguns!”
In the old system, marines would generally be more unprepared. In the proposed system, marines would be right on par providing they had equal res nodes and weren’t getting totally owned in combat.
Still, even if my system was never used, one of the main problems of NS right now is alien res hoarding. It can really screw over a game. It absolutely needs to be addressed.
<span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'>The Arms Lab Unproportionality</span>(Is that even a word? Heh.)
This one is simple.
Lets say, for arguments sake, the most balanced size of an NS game is 6v6. This is clan standard.
Now the arms lab currently (as of 2.01b) is 20/30/40. This is all fine and dandy.
Lets say the game is now 12v12. Arms lab is still 20/30/40. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo--> Anyone here see the imbalance? It’s not hard to spot out.
On larger games(8v8 or more), the arms lab is <b>more</b> than worth it’s cost. You upgrade all of your marines for a fraction of the cost of what buying them all equipment would be, and it’s much more effective as there are more guns that get the upgrades. In smaller games(4v4 or less), the arms lab is <b>crap</b> compared to outfitting your 3-4 marines with some good equipment. Arms lab will still be important in small games, however, it comes second to equipment. And the opposite is true in large games.
The Arms Lab, believe it or not, is what causes a lot of unbalancing on large and small games right now, it’s either too good or too bad. On large games, you see stalemates quite often because aliens can’t hope to compete with marines that come out of spawn that shred them to pieces easily, even with an LMG, as there is such a high volume of it all. That is why large games almost never end early, as marines get their arms lab upgrades for too good of a cost, and they get them all very quickly, resulting in marines that generally cannot do well on attack, but pretty much own on defense, forcing aliens to get their third hive for some uber powerful abilities (or if the aliens chose sensory first so they can get Def or Move chambers).
So, the fix for the arms lab is to make it proportional to the amount of marines playing.
For 6 marines, the cost is 20/30/40.
For 12 marines, you have double the marines, and thus, the upgrades should cost 40/60/80.
For 3 marines, you have half the marines, and thus, the upgrades should cost 10/15/20.
However, just by looking at the numbers presented here I’m sure all the commanders must be dropping their Jaw’s onto the floor screaming: “NO WAY! 40 res for the first set of upgrades? TOO MUCH!” Or… “10 res on a 3 man server? It’s practically free ffs!” And, for the most part, they are right.
So, a small modification to the above said proposal: Only add/subtract 50% additional cost for every 100% increase/decrease in marines.
12 marines: 30/45/60
3 marines: 15/23/30
This is a formula that needs to be calculated, one that figures out the cost of the arms labs upgrades based on how many marines there are.
An easy way to calculate the costs of these upgrades if you are without a calculator is:
For every 3 marines lost/gained over 6, add/subtract 5 res for the first upgrade, add/subtract 7 res for the second upgrade, and add/subtract 10 res for the third upgrade.
Very simple, and this would balance out the arms lab completely, no matter the teamsize.
Finally, one last thing.
<span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'> A Small Improvement to Make Small NS Games not Suck</span>
Small Game <= 4 people.
It goes like this: Any given team cannot have more active nodes than they do teammembers. You can still build nodes, they just won't take in any res. The nodes can be built just to deny the enemy of them.
By doing this, it won’t make small games too easy for the aliens as they can easily **** all the res on a map with impunity compared to a marine team who struggles to surrive.
This way, you have teams fighting each other head on sooner, making small games intense, fast, and fun.
This change really wouldn’t affect larger games though. Even on a clan match, getting more than 6 nodes means you are going to win anyhow, and I can rarely see this rule effect a 6v6 in any way possible.
However, if someone can spot a fault in this change, then by all means, please point it out!
In fact, this is the end of my post, where I ask everyone who has read this far to give me some feedback.
…
What are you waiting for? <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Basically, it all comes down to the res model and upgrades.
<span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'>Problem #1: Alien Res Hoarding</span>
The main flaw lies in that 1 alien res is worth much much much more than 1 marine res, and how easily the alien’s higher form of res can be aquired.
Lets say you have 5 aliens on a team. How long does it take to get 3 res at just one node?
Since you have 5 aliens and res goes to one alien every 5 seconds, or a tick, this means it takes 5 ticks to get just one res on a five alien team. This is actually 25 seconds. This means it takes 75 seconds to get 3 res as just one alien at one node.
How much does the marine team get in 75 seconds in on just one node? Remember, it's 1 res every 5 seconds... so that means 15 res for the marines. On a five alien team, 3 res = 15 res for the marines.
If an alien kills a marine and gets 3 res, he effectivly got 15 res on just a 5v5 game. :/ On larger games, this number grows: 3 alien res is worth 30 marine res on a 10v10, and so on. This inprotional value of the res is made balanced by the fact that there are more marines to kill on larger servers. So while the res nodes themselves will not rake in much res, killing will, by a large and far amount.
This means that if a skulk kills a marine and the marine's teammate kills the skulk, the skulk gets a much better deal in the long run. The marines are left with up to 3 res, which to be blunt, is jack crap. It is nowhere near equal to what the skulk got.
However, marine's have a shared pool; it makes sense for them to aquire res slower when killing aliens.
If 6 marines kill 6 skulks, one thing happens: They get up to 18 addition res.
If 6 skulks kill 6 marines, two things can happen, one being bad, the other being really damn good:
a.) All the skulks each get up to 3 res. (Bad, but balanced. It's obvious to see that res for kills on aliens was made intentionally so that aliens could still tech up with even a slow res model.)
b.) One skulk aquires up to 18 res. If this skulk has 25 res to start with, he could be at 43 res, a short hop, jump, and skip away from a fade or a hive. This is overkill. This is where the imbalance lies.
However, to be practical, we can't assume they each get 3 res per kill. The average is obvsiously 2 res per kill, so lets say the marine team gets 12 res, and the lone skulk gets 12 res.
The marine team could buy a shotgun. Woohoo!
That skulk could get a second hive. He has 37 res. Again, fairly short distance from a hive.
Since each game has more than one fight in it, this basically puts a limit to how many 'lives' a marine team can lose before the alien team pwns them with abilities their tech was nowhere near ready to deal with. A "Super Skulk" who nabs the majority of the res imbalances this so much it's not even funny.
On the other hand, games where there are no “Super Skulks” you don’t see this type of fast domination; it is indeed a very balanced game of what I expected NS to be. However, this is extremely unlikely; certain skulks are more skilled than others, and some skulks could just get plain old lucky. This upgrade time is far faster than whatever the marines can muster.
What needs to be done to fix this is a system where skulks cannot horde res. This is simply the only real fix to a major problem.
In small games(say 4v4 or less), skulk hording is the norm, generally in a small game the more skilled skulk will eat more marines easily, and on larger games(8v8 or more) good skulks have plenty to feed off of resulting in a quick alien dominance if the aliens are efficient biters.
To fix skulk hording I propose a system where the skulk who made the kill gets the primary reward, but his teammates benefit also.
It goes like this:
When a skulk kills a marine, he randomly gets 1-3 res. However, only one of those res goes directly to him. The other res go to his teammates on a sequential order.
In these next examples, I made it so all skulks get 3 res per kill for demonstrations sake. Keep in mind that it would really be random in-game.
For example, say you have 5 skulks. Skulk5 gets a kill. The first res goes right to his own pool.
The next to res goes to skulk1, and skulk2.
Then, all of the sudden, skulk5 gets another kill. Skulk3 gets one res, and skulk4 does too.
Because skulk5 is owning, he gets yet another kill. This sequence restarts, skulk1 gets one res and skulk2 gets a res also.
<b>Remember, in this sequence, the skulk who made the kill is never counted.</b>
Keep in mind that it ended at skulk2. Now, because skulk3 was jealous of skulk5’s raw pwnage, he goes out and nabs a kill. Skulk<i>4</i> then gets one res, and skulk 5 does also.
Not to be outdone, skulk2 gets two kills in a row. Skulk1 is next on the sequence, and he gets a res, and then skulk3 does also, followed by skulk4 and skulk5.
Is this system understood now? The skulk who makes the kill automatically gets 1 res for every kill, and all the res extra from the kill spills over to the other teammates in a sequential order, however, this order will always skip the skulk who made the kill if he’s next in line.
As for coding this in, it would take a good set of flags to make sure it worked properly, but I’m sure it’s nothing Flay can’t handle based off of what I’ve seen him do.
Anyhow, what my system will do is keep aliens from hording res and stopping an uneven tech progression on the alien team.
Currently, on the average game of NS, the res distrubition on a team is like this(for both pub <b>and</b> clan matches :/):
Every row is an alien resource pool. The longer their line is, the more res the alien has. (For better detail of this diagram, check my attachment.)
2.0 Games without my system:
--------------------------------------------
---------------
-----------------------------
------------
-----------------------------------
2.0 Games with my system:
------------------------------------
----------------------
------------------------------
--------------------
---------------------------------
Notice how games in 2.0, you see the better skulks way ahead of the lesser ones, resulting in fragmented tech and generally unprepared marines, while in my system you see a pretty damn steady progression of alien resource pools, which means aliens would tech slower and more in pace with marines, yet they also would keep just as much res from the kills as in the old system.
Basically, with my system, one of the instinct reactions of marines should be when they see a fade:
“Okay, a fade, well, our lv. 2 weapons and lv. 1 armor should be enough to handle them, but be careful team, pretty soon their entire team will be able to go fade.”
As opposed to:
“****! A Fade already!?! Our two marines out on the field grabbing res can no way stand up to that force! We need to kill it or else it’s going to cost us!! Quick! Maybe we should rush some shotguns!”
In the old system, marines would generally be more unprepared. In the proposed system, marines would be right on par providing they had equal res nodes and weren’t getting totally owned in combat.
Still, even if my system was never used, one of the main problems of NS right now is alien res hoarding. It can really screw over a game. It absolutely needs to be addressed.
<span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'>The Arms Lab Unproportionality</span>(Is that even a word? Heh.)
This one is simple.
Lets say, for arguments sake, the most balanced size of an NS game is 6v6. This is clan standard.
Now the arms lab currently (as of 2.01b) is 20/30/40. This is all fine and dandy.
Lets say the game is now 12v12. Arms lab is still 20/30/40. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo--> Anyone here see the imbalance? It’s not hard to spot out.
On larger games(8v8 or more), the arms lab is <b>more</b> than worth it’s cost. You upgrade all of your marines for a fraction of the cost of what buying them all equipment would be, and it’s much more effective as there are more guns that get the upgrades. In smaller games(4v4 or less), the arms lab is <b>crap</b> compared to outfitting your 3-4 marines with some good equipment. Arms lab will still be important in small games, however, it comes second to equipment. And the opposite is true in large games.
The Arms Lab, believe it or not, is what causes a lot of unbalancing on large and small games right now, it’s either too good or too bad. On large games, you see stalemates quite often because aliens can’t hope to compete with marines that come out of spawn that shred them to pieces easily, even with an LMG, as there is such a high volume of it all. That is why large games almost never end early, as marines get their arms lab upgrades for too good of a cost, and they get them all very quickly, resulting in marines that generally cannot do well on attack, but pretty much own on defense, forcing aliens to get their third hive for some uber powerful abilities (or if the aliens chose sensory first so they can get Def or Move chambers).
So, the fix for the arms lab is to make it proportional to the amount of marines playing.
For 6 marines, the cost is 20/30/40.
For 12 marines, you have double the marines, and thus, the upgrades should cost 40/60/80.
For 3 marines, you have half the marines, and thus, the upgrades should cost 10/15/20.
However, just by looking at the numbers presented here I’m sure all the commanders must be dropping their Jaw’s onto the floor screaming: “NO WAY! 40 res for the first set of upgrades? TOO MUCH!” Or… “10 res on a 3 man server? It’s practically free ffs!” And, for the most part, they are right.
So, a small modification to the above said proposal: Only add/subtract 50% additional cost for every 100% increase/decrease in marines.
12 marines: 30/45/60
3 marines: 15/23/30
This is a formula that needs to be calculated, one that figures out the cost of the arms labs upgrades based on how many marines there are.
An easy way to calculate the costs of these upgrades if you are without a calculator is:
For every 3 marines lost/gained over 6, add/subtract 5 res for the first upgrade, add/subtract 7 res for the second upgrade, and add/subtract 10 res for the third upgrade.
Very simple, and this would balance out the arms lab completely, no matter the teamsize.
Finally, one last thing.
<span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'> A Small Improvement to Make Small NS Games not Suck</span>
Small Game <= 4 people.
It goes like this: Any given team cannot have more active nodes than they do teammembers. You can still build nodes, they just won't take in any res. The nodes can be built just to deny the enemy of them.
By doing this, it won’t make small games too easy for the aliens as they can easily **** all the res on a map with impunity compared to a marine team who struggles to surrive.
This way, you have teams fighting each other head on sooner, making small games intense, fast, and fun.
This change really wouldn’t affect larger games though. Even on a clan match, getting more than 6 nodes means you are going to win anyhow, and I can rarely see this rule effect a 6v6 in any way possible.
However, if someone can spot a fault in this change, then by all means, please point it out!
In fact, this is the end of my post, where I ask everyone who has read this far to give me some feedback.
…
What are you waiting for? <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
Comments
More so than that, it screws over the game's balance.
Even if you have a perfectly balanced resource model, individual costs and effects of units, upgrades, etc. must be (re-)balanced within this new frame of reference in order for the balance of your resource model to be meaningful. It makes no difference if the aliens are building things at the same rate as the marines, if one side's new toys are more effective than the other's.
Actually, this part of what's wrong with 2.0; Flayra had the game balanced after all those months of playtesting, but it wasn't much fun. So he went Crazy Go Nuts and switched some stuff around at the last minute to make the game more fun and intense. Unfortunately, these drastic changes effectively <i>negated</i> the months of playtesting. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> He tried to re-balance it, of course, but he only had a couple of weeks left to work with, at that point.
Know that the only way to know for sure if your elaborate changes are any good or not, would be for Flayra to implement your suggestions so people could play it and see what happens. Until then, all your charts and numbers and suggestions are merely that: <i>suggestions.</i>
That said, it's cool that you took this much time and effort thinking about what's wrong with 2.0. You might wanna install a second copy of NS on your hard drive and see if you can get in on that <a href='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?act=SF&f=31' target='_blank'>2.01 public beta.</a> That way you could be evaluating the new beta builds as they come out, and maybe even see some of your ideas succeed and fail.
You know how much of a problem it is to get people to go gorge on pubs?
Of course one side will win in a perfect game, and as you pointed out, if you work as a team its unfair... its supposed to be.
I'm guessing that behind the scenes, all the res values are kept as floating point values anyway. Why not just divide res from kills equally among the aliens (which is the same way the marines have it, after all)? Wouldn't that be a simpler way of achieving basically the same goal you're trying to get to?
<edit>Oops, I forgot to say: this is in reference to your "Problem #1".</edit>
These are my initial thoughts. More later when I've thought about it more.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> another thing I noticed... how can you scale prices when people join and leave the server at random?<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You would just base the prices on the size of the <i>other</i> team to prevent people from f4ing to lower costs.
A much simpler way to reduce the disparity in alien res would be to make the reward 1 per kill and increase the rate from RTs.
The only reason why aliens get loads of res from kills is because the marines are ramboing.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Exactly... its a team affair, and the rines arnt pulling their weight. Yesterday I comm'd a turret farming rine team against onos and came out on top. Even when they had secured both hives and we only had 1 resource tower. Its all about teamwork, the problems we are seeing is on pubs.
Where most newbies prefer marines over aliens.
I've always thought the res for kills belong to the team (and try to gorge on early game if I have more than 70 and go fade later)
Not a problem at all, actually.
You don't see the imbalances yet but already most of the clanners are, it's just a matter of time before the pub feels the imbalance.
It may not seem like it, but aliens really do tech faster than marines providing you have a couple good skulks to kill them off.
Tonzak:
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->It is often possible to achieve results very similar to precise desired results via a combination of "cleverly chosen" "simpler" rules. Adjusting the scale of the numbers may also be necessary to avoid fractions. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Fractions? <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo--> What the hell are you talking about?
Glide:
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->another thing I noticed... how can you scale prices when people join and leave the server at random? <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is easy. The prices change as the marines enter/leave.
One thing you would not do is:
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->You would just base the prices on the size of the other team to prevent people from f4ing to lower costs.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The reason being, people won't f4 in the middle of the game when they are locking down a hive, or doing and equally important task. Most times the research of the arms lab is not when all the marines are sitting at the base. Marines are almost always doing something.
Moultano:
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->A much simpler way to reduce the disparity in alien res would be to make the reward 1 per kill and increase the rate from RTs.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is actually the most complicated thing you could do. Avoid situations such as these, for the love of god.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->There is a problem with your arms lab analysis. Primarily, the exact same analysis could be applied to hives (and to a lesser degree, upgrade chambers and phase gates.) There are more techs in the game that increase in usefulness the greater the number of players than there are techs that don't.
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Wrong. Hives are such are scaled in smaller and larger games properly, because res towers have more res to give out to on the team. On the other hand, on large games, the marine's team pool easily collects it's cash which is able to be spent very quickly, not to mention the res the marines will get from lots of kills. Conversly, it's the res for kills system which makes aliens get hives too fast again in large games; a skulk grabs the 2nd hive too fast because he killed around 12 marines.
Res for kills needs to stay in for aliens, otherwise they would get dominated res wise, yet, as it remains right now it's too strong as I pointed out in my post.
Warpzone:
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Even if you have a perfectly balanced resource model, individual costs and effects of units, upgrades, etc. must be (re-)balanced within this new frame of reference in order for the balance of your resource model to be meaningful. It makes no difference if the aliens are building things at the same rate as the marines, if one side's new toys are more effective than the other's.
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Actually, the idea is to get both side's rate of growth the same, and then work out their toys from there. From my experience, both aliens and marines are nearly balanced in terms of 'toys', but aliens grow to fast due to res for kills.
Also, I know there is a public beta. <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Well im glad you took the time to find out the facts, but unfortunetly your post is fulled with "if this" and "if that" and "assuming this".. its all theoretical..<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This isn't theory. The fixes themselves really aren't too theory involved, because they are only based on hardcore facts and experience.
Besides, some of my assumptions, such as 6v6 being most balanced, wasn't just any abnormal theory; this is widely accepted by the NS community as true.
Also, where I say, "Lets say you have 5 aliens..." This isn't theory either. I'm just explaning some numbers.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->I'm guessing that behind the scenes, all the res values are kept as floating point values anyway. Why not just divide res from kills equally among the aliens (which is the same way the marines have it, after all)? Wouldn't that be a simpler way of achieving basically the same goal you're trying to get to?
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No offense, but what the hell do you mean by "just divide res from kills equally amoung the aliens..."? This is exactly what my system does. Perhaps you should reread how my system works.
Forlorn, the way you explained it was... <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo--> ...confusing to a vanilla marine grunt such as myself. I had to have my comm sort it out for me.
One thing you would not do is:
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->You would just base the prices on the size of the other team to prevent people from f4ing to lower costs.
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The reason being, people won't f4 in the middle of the game when they are locking down a hive, or doing and equally important task. Most times the research of the arms lab is not when all the marines are sitting at the base. Marines are almost always doing something.
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Dynamically altering arms lab costs based on the number of marines has been discussed before. I assure you people <b>will</b> F4.
Example: 10 vs. 10 game.
Comm: Will 3 people please F4 so we get lower arms lab costs ?
3 people F4.
Arms lab cost drops.
Comm starts research.
3 people go marine.
Repeat every time the comm does research. It's too easily exploited. Sorry <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
I don't think there's ever going to a way of getting everything perfectly balanced for all situations, so it makes sense to settle for a reasonable compromise instead.
Example: 10 vs. 10 game.
Comm: Will 3 people please F4 so we get lower arms lab costs ?
3 people F4.
Arms lab cost drops.
Comm starts research.
3 people go marine.
Repeat every time the comm does research. It's too easily exploited. Sorry <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo--><!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
To prevent that, the resource cost of the upgrade could <i>slowly</i> adjust if someone joins or leaves, perhaps by 1 resource point per 30 seconds. This would mean that F4ing to decrease the cost would be unviable because the people would have to be out of the game for a <b>long</b> time.
Bingo. If skulks can't get the kills, then you're preventing them from getting res. One rambo, however, can repeatedly run into a skulk nest, die, respawn, and repeat, giving all the aliens tons of res. The kill res boost is to encourage aliens to attack rather than dig in at the RTs and let marines try to push them out.
The rather unfortunate part is that there's nothing a comm can do. He can't equip the rambo, because that only encourages him to rambo more. You can't ignore him, because the faster he dies the more res appears on the enemy side.
On the other end, its a common sight in alien games for people to rush to onos, even at first hive. The aliens don't have it any easier unless they've a competent gorge. IMHO the balance is made so that the Aliens have the run of the ship, and its the marines job to clear them out. That, as I understand it, is the game background of NS. Its not about "two teams suddenly appear in no mans land". The aliens are meant to get tech faster, its part of the background, and the marines get tech slower but it (should) be superior tech. Now, considering at endgame I've seen marines hold ONE rt for over 20 minutes, then IMHO the game works, its just marines aren't adapting to the system.
A second hive is a basic necessity for aliens, thats why they're easy to get early. The competent comm must try and capture one hive in order to prevent the aliens dominating. Capping one hive is an easy enough act, I've seen it worked on many servers and the ONLY time it fails is when someone goes to take the 2nd hive without due preparation.
Small games - tend to be all about rushes, from what I've seen. With little opportunity for holding res, what *should* be happening is the rush from res to res, capping it and moving on. In a 4 - 4 game you can't hold all those res, nor can you afford to go for three hives and dig in. Noooo. The problem IMHO is that people aren't adapting to the small game tactic.
By saying you can ONLY get rt res equivalent to your time size, you prevent one side from getting a res horde and stomping the other base. As you've pointed out, aliens get res faster with constant attacks. If both sides hold 4 rts, the aliens will come out on top. Second, if you're only getting res from 4 towers, you don't even need to cap the others. You just need to go on "denial". Which means the teams will horde up their res for going onos or HA/HMG which will make for a very dull tech rush game (which usually will be won by aliens as they'll have Onos up in a matter of minutes, since there's no point to going for 2-3 hives as you will NEVER have enough res to build or defend them adequately).
Watching an onos rush bounce off my base does not make for a fun game.
IMHO the problems I see here are mostly down to inadequate player tactics and a fundamental lack of the game concept. Marines are spawning in and acting like its Team Fortress, where everyone is on an even footing. This is not the case. Once better strategies become more widespread, the problems will go. Right now everyone is being forced to use their brains and/or wipe away their old strategies. Once we get to grips with the new system, things will change.
edit - also have to say the idea of changing stats and costs depending on no. players is fundamentally messed up. What you end up with is the same game at all levels. If a tf is cheaper in a small game with less res, then there is ZERO encouragement to the player to adapt his tactics. The prices stay the same, the player realises "hey, I better change my strat" and instantly the small game becomes different to the big game. And rightly so.
The main flaw lies in that 1 alien res is worth much much much more than 1 marine res, and how easily the alien’s higher form of res can be aquired.
<span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'>The Arms Lab Unproportionality</span>(Is that even a word? Heh.)
Now the arms lab currently (as of 2.01b) is 20/30/40. This is all fine and dandy.
Lets say the game is now 12v12. Arms lab is still 20/30/40. <!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo--> Anyone here see the imbalance? It’s not hard to spot out.
<span style='font-size:21pt;line-height:100%'> A Small Improvement to Make Small NS Games not Suck</span>
It goes like this: Any given team cannot have more active nodes than they do teammembers. You can still build nodes, they just won't take in any res. The nodes can be built just to deny the enemy of them. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Problems with the problems:
Problem #1: So, you're saying that aliens getting less res is an imbalance... in the *aliens* favour? Besides, balance isn't just a matter of both getting equal amounts; in all probability, the two teams are not equally res-dependant.
Problem #2: Umm, couldn't the same also be said about the costs of Hives, DCs, MCs and SCs? Or do the costs of these chambers and their upgrades increase?
Problem #3: The problem is that this is a little... counter-intuative. Seeing as we're talking about a both-team change anyway, I don't see any point to adding that.
But nonetheless, well done for a thoughtful post, you obviously put a lot into those ideas rather than just 'OMG, ALIENS SHUD HAV MOOR RES!!!!11', so kudos to you!
Problem #2: Umm, couldn't the same also be said about the costs of Hives, DCs, MCs and SCs? Or do the costs of these chambers and their upgrades increase?
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Well, aliens really do pay more for upgrades in a bigger game, as each time they die it costs them some res to get the upgrades back. Aliens don't have permanent upgrades like the marines, the alien upgrades are more like dropped items. Also, while most marine items focus on increasing weapons power, the only weapons upgrade the aliens can get is adrenaline. the rest are various abilities. The upgrade structure is quite different.
And those upgrades are pretty expensive for the alien team. Suppose you have 6 aliens, and each gets an upgrade once, that's 12 res. Not counting the chamber cost, 30 res some gorge has to pay. If they each die 5 times and get the upgrade back, that's 60 res, plus 30 for the chambers (but the chamber cost isn't that bad as you'd need the chambers near the frontline for other reasons as well). Multiply by three to get 3-hive full upgrades cost, and those alien upgrades start to look pretty expensive, depending on how often they die.
That skulk could get a second hive. He has 37 res. Again, fairly short distance from a hive.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
There's a tiny flaw in your system...
Firstly you are basing your point on a week of play, when people learn to work as a team, Skulks will have a harder job of getting res-per-kill. Secondly you forgot to take away 10 res for evolving to Gorge. So when you are Gorge, you have slow res because you are not getting res-per-kill and have no resource towers.
---Alien Res Hoarding
--The main flaw lies in that 1 alien res is worth much much much more than 1 marine res...
one marine RT costs 22 res. one alien rt costs 15 res. -> ns imballanced?<!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
res for kills is the same on both teams -> a dead marine is worth more than a death alien... why not?<!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
marines just NEVER should rambo ANYWERE alone.
This is where rines suck!
<b>most marines deserve a shield on them : "look at me im ramboing alone, free res"</b>
---2.0 Games with my system:
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bah aliens are supposed to be more "alone" and more different from each other.
your system is pointless.
On the other side I could affort a tf and lots of turrets just by killing a few aliens that come to my troops one after another!
---The Arms Lab Unproportionality
in fact on larger games general upgrades are nicer. on smaller games weapon drops are nicer.
in fact its really hard making a game ballanced from 6-18 players on one team.
The solution is a 2-way strat, one that works better with less players (drop weapons) and another that works better with many players (overall upgrades). Aliens have simular with their chambers.
<b>"overall upgrades" also are in EVERY RTS and they upgrade every unit no matter how many you have. And it NEVER leads to imballance.</b>
and your system of variable costs sucks like hell when one marine leaves or joins the game...