Helping in making a video game

Are required.

My last test was...
Linear to Factored/Linear

1.
I need to make sure my basic calculation shows something similar as the latest tests.
Linear to rooted.

2.
The alternate calculation should also be tested.
Linear to rooted, but the result squared.

3.Other alternatives.

***

I should make a little print of the 3d graphs and see the practical choices. This because so far, glass cannons are surely a stupid choice without proper defences.

Maybe I should also make a 2v2 test where the meat is targetted first. Just to see how severe the effect of this can be.

Are required.

My last test was...
Linear to Factored/Linear

1.
I need to make sure my basic calculation shows something similar as the latest tests.
Linear to rooted.

2.
The alternate calculation should also be tested.
Linear to rooted, but the result squared.

3.Other alternatives.

***

I should make a little print of the 3d graphs and see the practical choices. This because so far, glass cannons are surely a stupid choice without proper defences.

Maybe I should also make a 2v2 test where the meat is targetted first. Just to see how severe the effect of this can be.

Are required.

My last test was...
Linear to Factored/Linear

1.
I need to make sure my basic calculation shows something similar as the latest tests.
Linear to rooted.

2.
The alternate calculation should also be tested.
Linear to rooted, but the result squared.

3.Other alternatives.

***

I should make a little print of the 3d graphs and see the practical choices. This because so far, glass cannons are surely a stupid choice without proper defences.

Maybe I should also make a 2v2 test where the meat is targetted first. Just to see how severe the effect of this can be.

A reminder to myself.
This one shows in a 1 on 1 battle that normals are the underdog. So, in a sense, they are vital for multiple units. But in a one on one fight, you better pick a meat or support unit.

This is in contrary to the other test.

Perhaps I don't have to test the other systems. But I will still create them to make sure. Since I too make mistakes along the way like everyone else.

I changed the alternative calculation a bit.
I compare the 2 values body and weapon. And subtract the lowest, twice from the highest.
Then the remaining value is multiplied by a factor, to make this value lower. And the lowest value is added to it twice again.

With a factor 0.5, you get the same calculation as above. But it is a bit more understandable.

I discovered that a 50-200 unit will cost less than the root calculation for 100%. This means that these units would be stronger than normal units.
67% in the alternative calculation for the factor gives the exact same root cost.

Suffice to say, I do favour designs to be more effective than normal designs.
And the 1:3 design is most optimal here for 1 on 1 battles.
While the 1:2 design is most optimal for 2 on 2 battles.

I seek a difference in effectiveness in various situations. Purely on health and damage value only.

***

I also checked what would happen if I square these calculations. And a factor of 0.7 here results in almost the same effectiveness graph as 0.5 on the alternative graph.

50-100 units would cost
125 or 121.5
50-150 units would cost
150 or 144.5

Hardly a difference. And thus, squared here is of no concern?

50-450 unit would cost
275 or 288.8
And here things go the other way around...

This made me think.
A first step calculation gives graphs that go from good to bad or the other way around.
A second step calculation (squared) gives graphs that go from good-bad-good, or, bad-good-bad. With exception of glass cannons and alike of course.

So, perhaps I should see if I can find a third step calculation???
But how would it look like?

So.....
I got a list of numbers.
But am not sure what to do with it.
I got at least 9 numbers after the decimal. And the graph still shows some balance.
The walls and rogue projectiles are removed to make certain everything goes well.
As if I am observing the 1 on 1. Where the root is pervect balance... I am sure I can find a way to make 2 on 2 practically speaking, balanced.

It shows I need to have at least one division by 1 of the parameters. But that's it...

All me. I just wanted it to be done.
I had the 1 on 1 battle's to toy with on how I wanted to analyse the more complex battle's.

Normally the really smart RTS designers use matrix calculations. Let's just say... I am to stupid for that.

It is beyond me as well. Altough, I got a list of numbers and I learned from the proces as well.

It is kinda my own approach to the math. I could post the list of numbers here. We get this X and Y if you will...
Actually, we got body points, health points, for both meat and support. The story is that the support always dies first. But either way. To have a team tying with any other team is already like a dream come true to me.
The numbers for it show there is a system for sure.
It just.... goes beyond my comprehension atm.

I could show you the 3d graphs from top. In discord. From start to end. What I came up with. How it is tested. Then what I had to do to get a list of numbers...."Manually!!" And now to seek out by engineering backwards.

Fun fact, asked some wizkids from a 4d gaming platform. So far...the problem is my explanation I guess.

Either way, once I find the formula. I can link it to my 1 on 1 formula. And probably to a linear system too.
My goal is to have RPS, through only body and weapon points.

I have 5 formula's that give either a balance or boost certain designs that suffer the most after applying a mix of formula's.

1.
The sum of the body and weapon.
Is used to keep base destruction balanced.
The normals are the strongest here.

2.
Two times the root of the factor body times weapon.
Is used to have a perfect balance in 1 on 1 battles.
Once a 0 is introduced, this formula breaks.

3.
Is used to have a perfect balance in 2 on 2 battles.
Here the meat unit is targetted first.
Surprisingly, it is not a real opposite of the next one.
(And I now ponder if I shouldn't make another type of graph for these)

4.
Is again used to have a perfect balance in 2 on 2 battles.
This time the support unit is targetted first.

5.
Four times the body times Weapon.
Then divided by the sum of the body and weapon.
Is used to boost units like glass cannons to a consideradeble level.

***

The current system is an average of 1 and 2.
I consider having a new system that is an average of all 5.
The value of units decrease on the far edges by a small margin.
If we consider something to be more important in the game. Then we can increase its weight.

But ehm.... it all gets too complicated. And the graphs all kinda blend together into something that is close to one of them. Which makes me also ponder if I even should continue with this research. It is kinda wasting my time that I spend on helping with the game and doesn't give progress.

If the end result is that my original formula is balanced. It is up to the players to design with a little bit of intelligence.

This mean that if they make support units. The weaponry should have a bigger attack range then the so called meat units in that team. Etc.

Nothing!!!
But I am happy I did some more testing.
This is what I compared and thought was good:

Old system:
50% Normal calculation; body+weapon
50% Root calculation; 2*sqrt(body*weapon)

New system:
33% Root calculation; 2*sqrt(body*weapon)
33% Factored calculation; 4*body*weapon/(body+weapon)
33% Altered calculation; if body is lower than the weapon; 2*body+0.5*(weapon-body); 2*weapon+0.5*(body-weapon)

The cost of a wall goes from "1/2" to "1/6".

This means that if you have a rifleman costing 100.
And you take away its weapon.
The cost went down to 25.
But now even down to 8.3.

A wall costing 100 had its health being 4 times that of the rifleman.
But now even up to 12 times that of the rifleman.
It all makes logical sense. Since in RTS, a wall would only be able to block movement.

***

Some actual group vs group testing happened. With a continues beam dealing the damage if you will. So it would be purely dps, no other effects like a cooldown, charching etc.

Ratio's (of infantry) and their costs according to the various systems.

1:1
100.0 normal
100.0 old
100.0 new

1:4
250.0 normal
225.0 old
178.3 new

1:9
500.0 normal
400.0 old
260.0 new

1:16
850.0 normal
625.0 old
354.4 new

1:25
1300.0 normal
900.0 old
464.1 new

***

With a 100% dps per 10 seconds.
It would take a normal infantry to take out any other in 10 seconds.
The last ratio mentioned here would be killed in 2.15 seconds with an equal cost opponent.
While itself is able to deal damage enough to kill 5.38 normal infantry in that time frame.
Which is higher than the 4.64 normal infantry being present.
In a sense, this support unit is a way better choice in one on one battle's.
And I didn't even include the triangular effect.

I am thinking practically now. And I am considering the meat/support team test to be rather....invalid. Since players would choose solely the better unit.

The old system shows 1.11 seconds against the normals. While in that time frame the unit would only be able to kill 2.78 normal infantry. Whilest 9.00 normal infantry are present.

The 1 vs 1 battles seems expandable to X vs X battles. And the root calculation is still the most balanced choice there.

Still more testing is needed.
But so far, the portion of the calculation needed to get glass cannons being more valid is still too strong.

This time, I have been rewriting the salvo calculation mechanics.

What did I do?

Well, I use a worksheet in order to quickly calculate how much a design should be worth.

I used several colums, called a block. I used a block for 1 projectile, there are 4 columns per block. And for each projectile, I used a negation block too. Again... 4 columns. I allowed a maximum of 4 blocks per salvo. Thus 32 columns.
If I wanted to have more projectiles, I simply needed to add more blocks.

I replaced these by calculating differently. Yet I get the same outcome. I want to thank my 23 year old Texas Instrument 92+ for helping me with this.

Now I don't need multiple blocks. This time, I have only 4 columns for any negation effect and 12 columns for any size of salvo.
That's right, I don't need to add more columns/blocks for more projectiles.

My todo list has 2 things:

1. The design needs to be able to choose the best weapon by itself. Meaning I need to add 2 calculations and compare them for 2 weapons. If this is 3 weapons, I need to add 6 calculations and compare them. This is complicated for sure. Since the RPS not only has armor tiers. It also has.... armor levels. So, while I say a calculation. We actually get several columns...

2.Attributes... Yeah, better add these before I do number 1.
Organic/Mechanical, Unit/Structure, No Shield/Shield.

Most weapons deal damage to everything for 100%. Except Shields.
So we get this 1,1,1,1,1,0 in the columns by default??? Well, that sucks. Not sure why the big guy wants it like that. But I don't like it like that....

I need to ponder on how to do this correctly.
Well, not saying he wants it exactly like how I put it in this example. But lets say, if we want the first 2 twins to be depending on themselves. The third twin would work like the following:

***

Each weapon does 100% damage against any attribute.
When it is effective against shields. It will do more % damage. Let's say 150% damage against the shields. This automatically means that it would do only 50% damage against the No Shields.

If we want weapons that can't penetrate a shield. It would mean they do more damage on the normal units and structures....organics and mechanics.

Well, if we want normal damage by default. But have them all having trouble against a certain type of shield. Then we could say that this attribute takes 0%. And while the other attributes have 200% to share within a twin. All the weapons have only 100% to share on the "no shield/shield" twin.
Yeah, I should have a different weight to this... But that is ok.

So, perhaps, I should have 150% to share on the S-twins. In that regard, by default, we have 100% on No Shields. and 50% on Shields.
This means, special anti shield weapons deal 150% instead of special whatever attribute being 200%.

Thus if we want a weapon to have no effect on Shields. This weapon is 50% stronger than all other weapons....

THIS, is the only way how I can make the Shield/NoShield twin valid in expansions.

All that remains is the "choice" of weapons.

The game calculates which weapon is the best. I leave this to the programmers.

As for balance, I simply need to have each weapon attack each possible target that the other weapons are optimal to.

As I am typing here. I realized that this will be a matrix of X * X proportions with X being the number of weapons to test.

Each result will be a number. And the highest number wins.
Not sure yet how to get from here. Because 3 different weapons that are balanced, will each have their own highest number. So, which one of them will be the true primairy weapon? And then which one will truly be the secondairy weapon?

Then, the secondairy will have its highest number reduced by subtracting the number the primairy offers.
And the same is done with the tertiairy weapon.
The secondairy "bonus" is then multiplied by 50%. And thus also divided by the highest by the primairy.
This value will be a factor between 0 and 0.5. And multiplied with its weight value. Which gives us a choice value.
With the third weapon, we need to do the same. Of course compared to the primairy weapon.

I need to test if mistakes are possible with this. If they are. I need to rethink on my calculations.

It would be a bit of relieving my heart by explaining the stuff. Almost ranting...So i try to keep it short. In fact, I think I figured it out already and am on the right track?

Here is a short and clean explanation of The Test...

The test I do is based on:

the piercing ability (factor)
weapon tiers (factor)
weapon true salvo damage (basis)
attack range (sorting)
accuracy depending on the situation (factor)

The accuracy, I determined per situation:

nobody moves
attacker moves
target moves
attacker and target moves

So, i prepared a set of 3x3.
W1 vs W1
W1 vs W2
W1 vs W3
W2 vs W1
W2 vs W2
W2 vs W3
W3 vs W1
W3 vs W2
W3 vs W3

The testrun is for 3 weapons. 0 damage simply removes itself.
The same test is used for a second test with the lowest attack range removed. These damages are simply set to 0.
The highest attack range will not need a test.

Costs are 100 percent on primairy weapons per range segment.
33 percent of the bonus for the secondairy and tertiary weapons.

Why 33%? Because we also apply 33% to the weapons that can hit both ground and air (most of them)

If done correctly, I should be able to reproduce the same cost for a normal weapon and one that attacks ground only, but has AA as an option.
That would be the test, to see, if my test is good.

Ahhhhh, !#!$@%@$!$

Yesterday I re-added weapon attributes that tell my program if a weapon can hit ground, air, and there are 5 possible targets. Maybe even a 6th one in the future.

(We can have less effectivness against targets that are in a different spot)

For now, this results in 5 attributes to check as well. And at first, it would sound easy enough to add them to the bigger picture for choice in weapons.

But as a whole, it is confusing.
What happens is that the program needs to check if both weapons can hit the same targets. If not, it would automatically be a complete choice regardless.

But here comes the problem:
If a weapon can hit both ground and air. And the choice only air. Then it needs to check for only the air portion. And to check if this is an option. It needs to check the ground too.

So, whatever test I make, it has to be for multiple attributes.

I already have 3 weapons, which asks for 9 columns.
I already have 4 situations with different accuracies, which asks for (9*)4.
And now I get 5 attributes that are separate, which asks for (9*4)*5 columns per block test.

180...

I need multiple blocks to keep things easy enough to track.
But that 180 is a hint. I am doing it wrong.
On paper, it is so easy. But trying to get it working in a worksheet is even harder than a simple program that checks every combination.

When trying to compute something for my boardgame, years ago. I said that the same projectile, being able to hit any dimension. Would gain 50% more costs.

And having the bonus for damage would be the extra costs in case of ground works. So, at most, this could be an extra 50% costs as well.

I wanted the same for the video game. But prioritising the weapon is a NoGo. This is impossible with so many factors that depend on the gameplay.

And for the calculation, you NEED to get that priority.

You automatically get the discard of a weapon that is too weak too.

***

I need to reconsider the calculations.
I need to look at older RTS.

What did they do there?
Well, C&C for example took a look at all possible damages and simply added them up. We are talking theory here, not the practise.

If you would have 2 weapons. You simply picked the best results for the table.
Just giving a simple example here:
For a rifle, we have 4-3-2-1-0 And this costs "20"
For a cannon, we have 2-6-5-4-3 And this costs "60"
For having them both, we have 6-9-7-5-3 And this costs "80"
And finally, having the unit choose the best weapon...
We get, 4-6-5-4-3.
Thus the rifle is only used against infantry. And we end up with "62".

I can't dooooooo thiiiiiis!!!!
My list is "infinite" long.

But should I use still try something similar?
For my boardgame, I simply made a table as long as the best possible targets.

MY finest example has always been the machine gun being worth 250 and a light cannon being worth 250.
The damages are 5-5 and 1-25

That 25 is a result of 5^2. Since I intergrated RPS into the damages and health.
We use the same for our RTS.

***

Options that I am toying with. But no decent results yet:
- Still looking at the bonusses. But another way to recalculate this without a priority. No results yet.
- Looking at the "total" damage and then what is missing. Ridiculous expensive versions... It tells me to get priorities again?
- Not looking at the damages. Just toying with the costs instead...

I also test these with a anti ground only weapon compared with a weapon that either hits ground OR air AND a weapon that can hit ground AND air.

No results...no real pointers...NOTHING!!!
And I do want to add. It has to be automated. Not simply given.

Period.

:)

Only 1 thing remains.
Anti ground and anti air attributes through choice.

By the set up I currently have, I can already tell that the choice by choosing a weapon, will make the unit heavier than simply have the projectile choose the path by itself.

This means that there is a difference in cost, and some other stats.
It is ok. Since it is very logical if you think about it.

***

Another thing that I need to think about.
The usage of Production Points.
Do I really have to use them?
They make things akward at the lower costing units for certain.