No more stupid and 100% safe needlejet raids against formers for mere purpose of free promotions. Now needlejet may just DIE.
QuoteNo more stupid and 100% safe needlejet raids against formers for mere purpose of free promotions. Now needlejet may just DIE.
But that is not a good goal. It's completely nonsensical. A Former should just die when attacked by a Needlejet.
If you don't like that players can destroy Formers with Needlejets, I have to ask why. Going after enemy infrastructure is very basic to warfare. If you think a Needlejet promotes too easily when going after a weak unit, then you should change the promotion formula somehow. Personally I think that is a non-problem, I do not see the big deal.
I really hate game designers who implement "It is always possible to fail, and it is always possible to succeed". I just got done lambasting the designer of King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages because of that. It introduces nonsensicality and gaslighting into a game. You never know what reality actually is. Did you win because you applied a skillful insight, or because you got lucky? Ditto why did you lose? Especially when the game doesn't even tell you how anything works, when it is formula opaque, it's severely annoying. So annoying I'm not playing those 2 games now.
As for other things... who is "combat balance" for? Is it for multiple human players trying to kill each other? Is it for a single human player trying to beat AIs? Those are really different requirements. Much depends on what the AI is capable of doing, and how capable you are of tweaking the AI's behavior. You wonder why buggy formulas didn't get changed. But for all you know, you could fall down a rabbit hole where the AI suddenly doesn't work very well anymore, if you change it.
AI does actually mass units against me all the time. I rely on splash damage to deal with it. Don't assume your personal play style is the only way people fight in SMAC.
Some games, I do actually use artillery on targets. If you don't, that's your bias of play style. Sometimes artillery is the best option available. Sometimes options are limited.
Winning, but getting badly wounded, isn't necessarily victory. You could lose everything on a counterattack. Sending units back to be healed somewhere is also not a completely free lunch. You are losing time and momentum. There's a big difference between taking a base and not quite taking a base.
I don't know how your Scouts are surviving Psi combat without taking wounds, unless they've leveled to Elite or something. I find that Psi combat usually chews up the participants. If you think it's too easy for a unit to be good at Psi combat, you can't fix that by changing your effectiveness odds around. It doesn't take any weapons to do Psi combat. That's the point, that's a basic part of the game design of SMAC. The only production decision is whether someone is going to make another Scout, which costs nothing.
In the past I recall conversations where you were really against Planet Pearl collection. You went to some length to change combat odds around, in ways that I proved didn't work. It just changed the best way to game the fungus fights. Defense became better than offense. Consequently after several rounds of experimentation, I gave up on your proposed changes for that. If you really hate Planet Pearls, I suggest you change the amount of wealth they produce, and not how the combat works with mindworms.
What is wrong with it?
It is still possible for needlejet to die attacking former in vanilla.
In vanilla needlejet change to die is about 0.0001%. In my version it'll be ~10%.
I don't care about promotion in this particular topic. I care about impunity. That adds mouse clicks without much thinking. Why just not have a special button in vanilla "automatically destroy all enemy formers in the 10 square radius around your bases"?
How can I not assume it? I am playing it myself, you know.
I am completely aware my changes may be disgusted by some part of humankind. Do you think I should stop doing this then?
Never said I don't. Quite the opposite.
Yes, yes, any change in mechanics change the strategy and the play stile to some extent. I am aware of it. I do want to change it. The question is how and to what extent.
Yep. I did. Then I cooled down about this topic. Partially due to your arguments and testing as well. Thank you for contribution! I appreciate it.
Example, weapon 4 against base defenders with armor 2. Without PD defenders have intrinsic base defense of 50% resulting in 4/3 attackers odds = ~90% winning chance. With such odds they take base almost without losses. Now we build sensor and PD for combined bonus of 100% + 25% turning attackers odds to 4/5 = ~10% winning chance. Boom!
Example, weapon 4 against base defenders with armor 2. Without PD defenders have intrinsic base defense of 50% resulting in 4/3 attackers odds = ~90% winning chance. With such odds they take base almost without losses. Now we build sensor and PD for combined bonus of 100% + 25% turning attackers odds to 4/5 = ~10% winning chance. Boom!
I've never actually do the math, if it's this bad, then you have a point, something should be done with it.
For starters I'd make units in a base with command center/naval yard/aerospace complex heal at double rate, not to 100% in a single turn.
That, combined with no splash damage from loosing a unit, should assure looses on both sides during prolonged combat situation involving constant streams of reinforcements.
I assume we do not care about internal combat mechanics as long as we get desired outcome: one unit gets destroyed with certain probability/odds, another gets damaged to some extent. Let me know if you think otherwise and definitely want to preserve current mechanics.
Cons: we probably lose this cool fshooh-fshooh-fshooh sound and animation of multi round combat.
QuoteCons: we probably lose this cool fshooh-fshooh-fshooh sound and animation of multi round combat.
That might not be a trivial consideration. Terminated combat noise, is the cue for disengagement of fast units, or standoff for land vs. sea artillery.
Weaker victor gets random damage around 100%.
QuoteWeaker victor gets random damage around 100%.
I don't recall what the game actually does.
Saying Attacker is dead, Defender is all but dead, is a policy in favor of attrition. Nearly equal odds means no combat advantage can be gained. Strategically, whoever can produce more combat value in their units, will invariably win by attrition.
Saying Attacker is dead, but Defender survives with 25% or even 50% HP intact, is a policy in favor of combat is risky. This would encourage players to build up large forces rather than commit small numbers of them, for fear that the luck of war could go against them.
I won't be surprised if the original game actually implements a broad range of outcomes.
It does this exactly. I plan to mimic vanilla in every way where it is not critical for me.
It doesn't implement anything specifically beyond combat rounds exactly as they are described in wiki. The "broad range of outcomes" comes from random distribution.
I don't think any random outcome in 1:1 combat encourages any kind of strategy.
If you don't kill damaged survivor with second unit pretty soon it'll heal up regardless of how damaged it is.
So a defender can never hope to survive the attack of a stronger attacker without getting completely chewed up? I find that a bit hard to believe, but maybe I've been very good at avoiding being on defense lately.
The probability shape of the breadth is still a design. It can emphasize different outcomes.
Even more besides, who cares about weaker unit HP left?
That table has to be wrong somehow. a/d=0.1 describes 1:10 odds in favor of the defender. With odds that grossly favorable, the defender should be left with 10 HP. Otherwise we'd always attack with Scouts for the massive amount of damage they'd do as they committed suicide. Game doesn't work that way.
I assumed the right column is the defender surviving, because that's what we've been talking about. If it's the attacker surviving... reanalyzing, BRB.
What are columns 1 through 10? Some kind of ongoing per round survival but it's not clear what's being measured.
How are you generating all these numbers? Have you hooked into the game's combat routines somehow to run a bunch of trials and log the output?
Quoteevanweaver 17 hours ago [-]
There have been talks at GDC and elsewhere about this...my memory is that humans don’t like being surprised by a smart AI that silently builds up resources and suddenly and mercilessly betrays and annihilates them, which is the obvious winning strategy. Humans don’t even like the random battle results to be truly random but expect them to hew very closely to the outcome of the odds as presented. The AI is grindy and unsophisticated on purpose.
jcrites 4 hours ago [-]
I believe you're thinking of Sid Meier's GDC 2010 keynote "Everything You Know Is Wrong" [1]. The entire talk is interesting, but section on player perception of probability is about 20 minutes in.
One takeaway is to be careful about how strength numbers translate into odds. If your strength is 100 and mine is 1, does that mean I have a 1% chance to out-and-out beat you? Your armored tank shouldn't have an even 1% chance of being completely annihilated by my club-wielding warrior (that's somehow still around by then).
The later Civ games have taken odds out of the equation, and I think it's for the better. Instead, the amount of damage each unit takes per combat depends on the difference in their strength deterministically. From my own perspective, this is overall more fun than 'randomly' having really strong units lose against weak units occasionally.
[1]
Randomness should be a tool, not a gratuitous end. Phalanx vs. Tank battles are annoying to some of us. It isn't about having an exploit. Even putting both those units in the same game at the same time is annoying. Granted, the Italians did actually fight the Ethiopians in WW I and lose. But it wasn't due to random die rolls.
I like this approach in principle, but designers didn't thought it through. It plays horribly with stack wipes and one turn healing in a base.
These two forces you to either resolve the whole battle in a single turn, or don't even try. This is why defensive structures give only parity with attacking units in vanilla.
And AI can't into this kind of planning and even if it could it would become extremely frustrating, it's "fun" mostly because AI can't do it to you.
Just get rid of stack wiping and one turn healing in bases and simple attrition strategies AI is capable of will work.
Regarding the direction you want to take it, which I don't agree with, the best solution would be to increase the chance of winning a round, if previous one was won.
This way the first round would be the most important and you would have more random outcomes, without screwing HP granurality regarding artillery and disengagement.
And the idea that artillery is weak is a nonsense, it's weak in the early game, once you start dealing with stacks it's extremely powerfull as it is, especially for a base assault.
The only reason, people perceive it that way is because normal combat splash damage and low armor ratings in vanilla.
Which makes just attacking a stack in the open even more effective than arty, get rid of stack wipes and increase armor and arty will become essential.
Sorry didn't get what direction you don't agree with?
Your increase round chance idea is brilliant. [...] Assuming I'll pass through this how do you envision such chance change?
Just get rid of stack wiping
and one turn healing in bases
And then increasing defense ratings wouldn't break the game,
Regarding the direction you want to take it, which I don't agree with, the best solution would be to increase the chance of winning a round, if previous one was won.
And the idea that artillery is weak is a nonsense, it's weak in the early game, once you start dealing with stacks it's extremely powerfull as it is, especially for a base assault.
The only reason, people perceive it that way is because normal combat splash damage and low armor ratings in vanilla.
Well that's just it though. If you weaken defense by one method, and strengthen defense by another, it's likely a wash and you've likely achieved nothing.
No healing in the field at all.
Two equal 1:1 strength units fighting each other in plain field resulting in 1:1 winning odds - that is normal. Now one of them step on a forest getting not that big 50% defense bonus. Now their strength ratio is 2:3 and attacker winning odds suddenly drop into abyss from 1:1 to 1:14 turning forest into an impenetrable fortress with 10 yard high stone walls or something. THAT is not normal.
What AI does is just give a unit a goto order to enemy base and thats's it,
With these changes the ability to outproduce enemy will be more important, than who will catch who in the open, or who can concentarte just enough units to take down a base in a single turn.
Two equal 1:1 strength units fighting each other in plain field resulting in 1:1 winning odds - that is normal. Now one of them step on a forest getting not that big 50% defense bonus. Now their strength ratio is 2:3 and attacker winning odds suddenly drop into abyss from 1:1 to 1:14 turning forest into an impenetrable fortress with 10 yard high stone walls or something. THAT is not normal.
If terrain is the major problem, an alternative to redesigning how the combat system works, is to change the bonus that terrain gives. I'm surprised to find out it's not moddable in alphax.txt. Some other things are moddable like the bonus a Sensor Array gives. I simply adjusted it upwards until it did what I wanted. It wasn't a theoretical, formula driven, or complicated exercise, my tweak was strictly empirical. The game design effect is you're strongly incentivized to destroy Sensor Arrays when attacking, as otherwise you're likely to die on the enemy's walls. And if you're placing your Sensor Arrays defensively, it's best to think about putting them inland and away from enemy artillery routes, because the AI loves to shell Sensor Arrays.