I can see the purpose of experience in games. Almost any modern RTS has experience (under whatever name). A couple of exceptions, like Universe At War, Dawn of War, possibly other RTS games with 'war' in the name...
Anyway, the purpose is this:
Experience (of unit or player sort) rewards the player for engaging the enemy. Depending on the game, it rewards you for doing well against an opponent. Some games include a mechanic for rewarding the engagement itself (in Red Alert 3, you get additional player experience if you lose lots of units), although most don't.
Experience can be called any number of things, although experience is probably the most popular one. An example of something that is the 'experience' mechanic that isn't called that is the "Tactical Aid" mechanic from World in Conflict, a sort of player experience.
Unit experience is experience that a unit acquires to improve itself, and only gets it from units it kills directly (or, by supporting other units, ala lieutenants from Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts). Unit experience does not benefit all of a player's units typically.
Player experience is experience that is gained from any of the owning player's units. It typically results in benefits for all or some of that player's forces, or the player's pools of resources.
I have decided to change around my unit experience mechanic. The goal of this is to make the experience bonuses curve more graded. Currently, units simply get 120% attack range for getting up to rank 3.
However, I have planned to change the unit experience as thus:
At Rank 0: A unit has 100% rate of fire and range
At Rank 1: A unit has 110% rate of fire and range
At Rank 2: A unit has 120% rate of fire and range
At Rank 3: A unit has 130% rate of fire and range
If you remember from before, a unit goes up one rank by killing twice its own value.
There are several reasons for this:
Firstly, it is more intuitive. You now know, 1 rank up means +10% rate of fire and range, across the board.
Secondly, it means that the benefits of experience gain are much more immediate. A rank 1 will beat a rank 0 of the same unit in a head on fight. A rank 2 will beat a rank 1 and so on.
Finally, the benefits don't really show themselves in a short battle, but only in longer battles. So, experience doesn't really help for ambushes (range notwithstanding), but serves much better for battles that last longer than one volley. Artillery reloads faster, snipers can shoot marginally faster, HATs turn enemy tanks into paste faster, and so on.
There is a possibility that infantry ranges may be a little more tightened than they currently are, but we shall see.
Anyway, right now, I'm fairly happy the mod has survived the worst of my emotional pits, and has gotten to the point where I can show people progress that isn't pure code stuff.
Hopefully, I shall have a decent playtest session on friday, and do some balance updates then (and also get some proper reaction, maybe even written up!). Currently, Stealth is still a little underpowered (so, perhaps a price drop on advanced infantry and vehicles), but not enough games have been played. Turtle may be a little too powerful at the moment.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
Special Ability balancing
I thought I'd take this opportunity to talk about balancing special abilities.
Turtle:
As it stands, the Turtle tree is fairly balanced. Well, the scout side of tree is a little more useful, as bases are less important for two of the teams, and the speed penalty on the Heavy aircraft is quite high.
The latest changes I have made for this makes the heavy side of the tree recharge its abilities 30 seconds faster, so it much more useful against fortified positions (by virtue of higher damage). Also, the heavy side gets damaging ability 1 rank ($4000) earlier.
Rush:
Rush abilities are a bit harder balance, since a lot of them are situational. When playing against Turtle, the AF upgrade for Rush Anti-Tank Infantry is still quite popular. Beyond that, the Light Tank Assault Gun seems like a fairly popular choice.
I tend to choose the medium tank sonic barrage also.
Unsure how to balance this, probably associate a money cost with the upgrades.
Stealth:
During the course of a match, stealth has access to every unit available. However, some units should probably not be available at the onset, which have a cost of 3 (which require 1 rank).
Turtle:
As it stands, the Turtle tree is fairly balanced. Well, the scout side of tree is a little more useful, as bases are less important for two of the teams, and the speed penalty on the Heavy aircraft is quite high.
The latest changes I have made for this makes the heavy side of the tree recharge its abilities 30 seconds faster, so it much more useful against fortified positions (by virtue of higher damage). Also, the heavy side gets damaging ability 1 rank ($4000) earlier.
Rush:
Rush abilities are a bit harder balance, since a lot of them are situational. When playing against Turtle, the AF upgrade for Rush Anti-Tank Infantry is still quite popular. Beyond that, the Light Tank Assault Gun seems like a fairly popular choice.
I tend to choose the medium tank sonic barrage also.
Unsure how to balance this, probably associate a money cost with the upgrades.
Stealth:
During the course of a match, stealth has access to every unit available. However, some units should probably not be available at the onset, which have a cost of 3 (which require 1 rank).
Saturday, September 5, 2009
More balance stuff
Alright
Last Friday (4/09/2009) marks the finalising of all the mechanics, so only balance changes and bug fixes from here on out. Woo. The last one to be completed was the stealth Hammer Space weapon.
Monday (31/08/2009) marks the last of all vehicles, buildings, and aircraft other than Stealth MCVs to be modelled.
The smattering of playtesting resulted in the following:
The Turtle Unarmed Scout ability is now very useful against stealth for hunting down MCVs, although it is still good to have a presence around the map. Stealth players would be advised to avoid the middle of the map.
The Rush ASV also got used a decent amount, although not enough games were played to determine balance issues.
It was discovered that Stealth recovered too easily from losing an MCV. The cost of MCVs was increased to $3000, and their build time increased to 30 seconds.
It was also discovered that Stealth does not build units fast enough, especially since they can only have one of each production structure. Build times for Stealth units reduced to 7.5 seconds for basic infantry, 12.5 seconds for advanced infantry and vehicles, and 15 seconds for drones.
Stealth MCV abilities have been buffed slightly.
Turtle building commandsets have been standardised such that the first six icons are always the garrison icons, for future interface where a specific part of the interface will be cordoned off for garrisons (turtle or otherwise).
There were several bugs fixed as well.
Last Friday (4/09/2009) marks the finalising of all the mechanics, so only balance changes and bug fixes from here on out. Woo. The last one to be completed was the stealth Hammer Space weapon.
Monday (31/08/2009) marks the last of all vehicles, buildings, and aircraft other than Stealth MCVs to be modelled.
The smattering of playtesting resulted in the following:
The Turtle Unarmed Scout ability is now very useful against stealth for hunting down MCVs, although it is still good to have a presence around the map. Stealth players would be advised to avoid the middle of the map.
The Rush ASV also got used a decent amount, although not enough games were played to determine balance issues.
It was discovered that Stealth recovered too easily from losing an MCV. The cost of MCVs was increased to $3000, and their build time increased to 30 seconds.
It was also discovered that Stealth does not build units fast enough, especially since they can only have one of each production structure. Build times for Stealth units reduced to 7.5 seconds for basic infantry, 12.5 seconds for advanced infantry and vehicles, and 15 seconds for drones.
Stealth MCV abilities have been buffed slightly.
Turtle building commandsets have been standardised such that the first six icons are always the garrison icons, for future interface where a specific part of the interface will be cordoned off for garrisons (turtle or otherwise).
There were several bugs fixed as well.
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