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Poll
Question: Do you feel like the cost values of ships must be re-calculated?
Definitely!
Most, yes.
Some, yes.
Too few.
No way!

Author Topic: Cost balancing project  (Read 23819 times)
AngusThermopyle
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Re: Cost balancing project
« Reply #90 on: June 29, 2007, 08:35:20 pm »

Well, I’ve been thinking about this a bit lately and came up with a list of what I feel the ship point values should be. This is based purely on my own experience playing net melee and how effective I feel each ship is. I’ve also been playing a lot of ‘reject’ ships lately to see just how useful they are against some of the better players. (Had I made this list a year ago, before net melee was available, I’m sure it would have been pretty different.)

So here is my list, presented in descending order of what my values are:

SHIP
Chmmr     
Kohr-Ah     
Ur-Quan 
Chenjesu   
Utwig   
Orz           
Yehat   
Melnorme     
Mmrnmhrm
Androsynth   
Pkunk       
Slylandro 
Druuge
Mycon       
Supox           
Arilou
Spathi       
Syreen     
Earthling   
VUX     
Ilwrath       
Thraddash   
Umgah
Zoq-Fot-Pik 
Shofixti
ORIGINAL VALUE
30
30
30   
28
22       
23   
23   
18
19
15 
20
17
17
21
16
16
18
13
11
12   
10
10
7
6
5
     ANGUS’ VALUE
34
33
28
27
24
23
20
20
20
18
18
17
17
17
16
15 
15
13
12
12
9
9
6
6
6
     NET CHANGE
+4
+3
-2
-1
+2
 0
-3
+2
+1
+3
-2
 0
 0
-4
 0
-1
-3
 0
+1
 0
-1
-1
-1
 0
+1


So why do this? Because I’m afraid that sooner or later any competitive online matches are going to be between two homogenous fleets, with only 1 or 2 different ships.

How boring. I miss playing with and against Mycons, Spathis, Yehats, etc. I think they’re interesting ships and they’re consistently MIA unless I’m in a “I don’t give a hoot if I lose” kinda mood and pick them anyways.

As you can see, there are some pretty drastic changes there. But then again, I think there are some pretty drastic discrepancies.

I’ve stated above that we’ll probably never get everyone to agree on a modified point system, and that’s still probably true. Nevertheless, this is my list (and I’m sure they’ll be some disagreement). Maybe I’ll get around to modding it one day to test it out…

« Last Edit: June 29, 2007, 08:58:54 pm by AngusThermopyle » Logged
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Re: Cost balancing project
« Reply #91 on: June 29, 2007, 10:59:01 pm »

I've recently tried a new approach, with Cedric6014 and Elvish as victims volunteers.
Each player got a number of points, and every ship was auctioned off to the person bidding the most points.

We did this manually, which takes a lot of time, and is a lot of work for the auction master, but it could be built into the game.

It adds a whole new level of strategy; each player must make sure he/she has appropriate counters available, and a player may choose to buy a ship he/she doesn't want just to make sure the opponent doesn't get it.

The advantage is that the value is determined automatically; there are no artificial predefined values. It also gives you original matches, as every ship (if it isn't excluded from the auction) is used once, and the usual counters may not be available. You also won't have any mirror-matches, which usually are little fun.

The prices that the ships go for could be collected, and the results could be used to determine a new list price for the ships.

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Re: Cost balancing project
« Reply #92 on: June 29, 2007, 11:46:54 pm »

Sounds very cool. I always though the Supermelee netplay has endless gamemode/ruleset gamedevelopment possibilities.

--Eino
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Cedric6014
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Re: Cost balancing project
« Reply #93 on: June 30, 2007, 12:06:29 am »



So why do this? Because I’m afraid that sooner or later any competitive online matches are going to be between two homogenous fleets, with only 1 or 2 different ships.

How boring. I miss playing with and against Mycons, Spathis, Yehats, etc. I think they’re interesting ships and they’re consistently MIA unless I’m in a “I don’t give a hoot if I lose” kinda mood and pick them anyways.


Angus, your values are very similar to the ones I suggested a while back on this thread
http://uqm.stack.nl/forum/index.php?topic=3355.15

And you reasons for change are the same too. So I like your thinking!

The only thing is Thraddash - it should probably be increased by 5 points if only to discourage people choosing it. Currently there's a gentlemen's agreement between Elvish and any one who cares to play him that it doesn't get picked.

Meep-Eep's auction thing is great fun. Every ship gets picked in the end. The labourious thing will be actually getting folks to report back auction results. I will do so for any that I am involved with..
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Re: Cost balancing project
« Reply #94 on: June 30, 2007, 12:43:52 am »

After some more thought, I think that the auction result will not be very useful to determine a new price list. Because in the auction the price is not just determined by how much you want to use the ship, but also by how much you don't want the opponent to use it. For matches where having a ship doesn't prevent the opponent from having it too, some ships will be worth less.

Still, the auction in itself can be used to avoid the fixed prices altogether.
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Re: Cost balancing project
« Reply #95 on: June 30, 2007, 12:53:57 am »

I did an auction with Shiver, I'll just say what the prices came out to:
Androsynth: 20
Arilou: 13
Chenjesu: 24
Chmmr: 36
Druuge: 19
Earthling: 12
Ilwrath: 7
Kohr-Ah: 36
Mmrnmhrm: 24
Mycon: 15
Orz: 24
Pkunk: 12
Shofixti: 6
Spathi: 8
Supox: 10
Syreen: 13
Ur-Quan: 26
Utwig, VUX, Yehat, ZFP: No reading (they were at the end of the auction where it gets screwy.)
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Re: Cost balancing project
« Reply #96 on: July 06, 2007, 05:36:39 am »

The stock market  type approach (adjusting the prices for the most and least used ships) some have mentioned would be the best way to balance the values.  Assuming of course you have good and experienced players doing it, you wouldn't want me doing it for instance since I'm terrible at multiplayer.   

The idea of using the AI to test it, doesn't work at all.  I actually did that a couple of years ago.  Using the AI, I had each ship fight one each of all the other ships in as big of groups as the ship could handle.   I then calculated what the ship "should be" valued at.  (Repeat experiments proved the results to be more consientant than I was expecting.)   

For instance the shofixti ship is a 5, which if it were perfectly valued for the setup I used, would mean that it would take 437/5 = 87.4 shofixti ships to defeat one ship of every type.   Here's the results I got (which actually tells you about the AI more than the ships):     

ship - real value - calculated value - change

Androsynth   15    18.3   +22%
Arilou           16    10.1    -37%
Chenjesi       28    25.1    -10%
Chmmr         30    48.5    +62%
Druuge         17    11.3    -34%
Ilwrath         10    10.6    +6%
Kohr-Ah       30    30.0     ----
Melnorme    18     9.9     -45%
Mmrnmhrm 19     8.8     -54%
Mycon         21     9.3     -56%
Orz              23    10.1     -56%
Shofixti        5       7.7    +54%
Ur-Quan      30    26.6    -11%
Utwig          22    55.3    +151%
Vux             12    10.0    -17%
Yehat          23    32.6    +42%


These ships couldn't be valued because they had at least one ship (which is listed after it) which the AI couldn't beat even with 14-1 ship numbers against it.   


Earthling - Chmmr
Pkunk - Syreen
Slylandro - Chmmr
Spathi - Chmmr
Supox - Chmmr
Syreen - Chmmr
Thraddash - Chmmr
Umgah - Spathi
Zoq-Fot-Pik - Chmmr
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Re: Cost balancing project
« Reply #97 on: July 06, 2007, 05:42:47 am »

Also, from what I read I guess everyone is in agreement with the drop in value the Mycon had from SC1 to SC2.

What about the change for the Earthling, Chenjesu, and Syreen ships. 
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Re: Cost balancing project
« Reply #98 on: July 06, 2007, 05:39:57 pm »

Mycon and Syreen were more expensive in SC1 because of their powerful strategic mode abilities. Also, the Mycon is decent to good against most SC1 ships and bad against most new SC2 ships. THe Mycon's cost should be reduced another couple points, though.
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