Ugh, I don't know where to put this one. It is a mechanic of some sort. But it is also part of the design to begin with. Eventually this problem comes forth from play testing.
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Any way. In my war game, you earn experience points by finishing of enemies. The value of the enemy is the XP you get.
You may put all these points on 1 particular unit in the squad that just had fought. So beating a big army can get a lot of XP for your little rifle infantry.
This unit is now able to upgrade one of the 4 upgradable statistics;
Health, Damage, Speed or Range.
- These upgrades however have different costs.
- And each unit has its own list of XP prices.
According to my calculations. Every thing would be balanced out. How ever...
Damage upgrades are the cheapest. They often equal the value of the weapon that your unit carries.
But 6 levels have the same XP costs and effect as 3 levels for Health upgrades.
Thus on the chart, Health appears to be twice as expensive on average. Even though the effects are also twice as big.
Speed is cheap when Range is low to start with.
And Range is cheap when Speed is low to start with.
However, both are based on a default unit. Thus having 1 level as "default" level. And that level equals the costs for 6 levels damage and 3 levels health.
Speed and Range appear to be even 6 times as big as the damage upgrade. And only for the basic units.
The long range units and fast speedy units have higher costs for these XP. This can become very extreme.
While one unit has a Speed XP cost of 300, another might have 5600 (well, it is a gooood unit). Average XP by killing an average unit is 600.
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The first effect is that I see my friends buy more damage upgrades at first before even attending to health and the other.
In a logical (brain dead) next step, my friends spend XP on Health.
After that, they might add a little bit of speed and range. But notching more.
I do know that health and damage upgrades eventually become so expensive that they beat speed and range at a certain point. And this happens more often than I thought.
So eventually, everything will be upgraded at a certain point.
However, I wonder if it is possible to balance things more out? In a way that (beginning) players would have a clearer choice. But without harming the balance of the XP spending.
Let's just say, the XP spending is a bit to much deterministic.
The current path most players follow, for upgrading their units, is:
first Damage
then Health
then Speed or Range
I rather see
Damage or Health or Speed or Range