Author
|
Topic: Adjusted Ship Price Mod - Get it while it's hot! (Read 17834 times)
|
Cedric6014
Enlightened
 Offline
Gender: 
Posts: 701
|
My tournaments and leagues will also be Vanilla for the time being. At the moment not everyone can play the mod (due to it not being available for all operating systems yet)
I think everyone should play with the mod where possible in casual play so we can refine it. Once it's perfected (or close enough to) I would like to use it for competition.
After a few weeks we could do a survey of folks to see which their top fleets are. If you survey around six good people and all 25 ships make it onto someone's fleet you know that you've improved the values. likewise if you see that a particular ship makes it onto everyone's team, perhaps it is overvalued. We'll give it time so people can remember how the f*** an ur-quan actually works.
I still feel quite strongly that the values should be revised upwards slightly to get the total as close as possible to 437. currently 200 pts buys you a couple extra ships. So with the current values, to keep the same kinds of fleets, tournament play would have fleets capped at 182 pts - which it not a very nice number. I like nice numbers! And new results would be out of sinc with old results.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
guesst
Enlightened
Offline
Gender:
Posts: 692
Ancient Shofixti Warrior
|
Heh, this prompts an interesting idea. What if ship prices were based on some free market model, ie the ships price is based on it's popularity? My ideas on implimentation of the actucal mechanics of the system I won't go into since for the most part i's purely hypothetical, perhaps requiring a reworking of the entire game's paradgm.
But still, I think a free market pricing system is an intriguing idea. I wonder how that would affect pricing?
And don't tell me that's what this is. This is what a few expert players think, not the "average" player.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
AngusThermopyle
*Smell* controller
Offline
Gender:
Posts: 304
A paranoid android.
|
guesst, the problem with the free market approach is you introduce the possibility of artificial inflation.
I’ll illustrate my point with an example:
Let’s say Cedric is really nasty with the Zoq-Fot and routinely annihilates half of my fleet with it. Since I know the Zoq-Fot is particularly nasty in his hands, I’ll choose a Zoq-Fot every chance I get (regardless of whether or not I’m any good with it) to raise its popularity (ie demand) and spike the price. Now whenever Cedric goes to pick a Zoq-Fot, he’s going to have to pay more for it because of my meddling.
I think the method of consensus is sound. However, its going to take some rigorous playtesting to settle on some of the values.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
chenjesummrnmhrm
Zebranky food
Offline
Posts: 30
|
Maybe it should be something like the free-market model, but instead, it should be how often someone destroys another ship with said ship, not how often the ship is picked.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
Shiver
Guest
|
Philosopher King Update:
Altered ship costs alone aren't enough to get Super Melee balanced the right way. For instance, high level player-versus-player games still favor Kohr-Ah as the best ship and Utwig as the only reliable counter to it. If you ratchet up the price of one, the other becomes stronger. If you heavily penalize both simultaneously, you may as well just remove both ships from the game. Instead of doing this, our resident modder is attempting to tweak Yehat so that it functions as a sort of "soft counter" to Kohr-Ah in the same way Druuge is a threat to Chmmr, but not an end-all solution. This would weaken Kohr-Ah and allows players to not lean so heavily on Utwig if they want to stand up to it. Some interesting changes are being applied to Ilwrath and Ur-Quan to make them effective as well.
|
|
|
|
« Last Edit: August 16, 2007, 03:15:44 am by Shiver »
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
Cedric6014
Enlightened
Offline
Gender:
Posts: 701
|
While you';re at it you might consider modding the thraddash so that the afterburner doesn't shoot it across the screen, it just leaves a trail of fire. It would just travel at its normal speed. That's my cunning plan to make the thraddash more fun to play against
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
Amiga_Nut
*Many bubbles*
Offline
Gender:
Posts: 208
|
(-) On that idea.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
AngusThermopyle
*Smell* controller
Offline
Gender:
Posts: 304
A paranoid android.
|
I, for one, am NOT in favor of any sort of tactical changes to any of the 25 ships.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
AngusThermopyle
*Smell* controller
Offline
Gender:
Posts: 304
A paranoid android.
|
Elvish, what I mean is I do not want to see any combat abilities changed. This includes, but not limited to:
- Damage
- Crew
- Top speed
- Acceleration
- Turning
- Battery size
- Battery regeneration
- Special abilities
Call me a purist, but I think that any tactical change is too great of a fundamental change. These sort of changes, IMO, are best suited for a more novel modification, such as your Crazy Mod.
I’m all for tweaking ship prices for the sake of balance. I think this will eventually lead to a better and more interesting online melee experience. However, I also think it will take a good deal of time to iron things out (weeks, if not months).
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
Cedric6014
Enlightened
Offline
Gender:
Posts: 701
|
I agree with Angus
I'm not in favour of using modified ships in any formal or semi-formal capacity. MAYBE the thraddash with my suggetion below - nothing else. I say this because effectively Thraddash aren't used anyway at present (at least not by reasonable people). I think adjusting costs is worth while though and mroe can be done to refine that.
I think all the ships are sweet apart from the dreaded Thraddash. And I guess some some particular match-ups are a pain in the ass too but theres not much you cando about that.
Otherwise, mods are fun - more power to them
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
Elvish Pillager
Enlightened
Offline
Posts: 625
|
Our problem, as stated by Shiver above, is that it's not really possible to create a balanced set of costs for the ships through cost changing alone. With balanced costs, all ships would be pretty similar in desirability for your team (although there'd certainly be teams that are better than others) - There wouldn't be any "must pick" or "must not pick" ships.
However, with the current costs, Utwig is a must pick - otherwise your team can be decimated by Kohr-Ah. If we raise Kohr-Ah to a price worthy of the damage it does to an Utwig-less fleet, then Utwig is no longer a must pick, but Kohr-Ah is a must not pick because it will be dominated if the opponent happens to bring an Utwig. If we then increase the price of Utwig to where it would be less than overpowered against Kohr-Ah, then Kohr-Ah is a decent pick again but Utwig isn't, since it would then be underpowered against everything but Kohr-Ah.
It's like we're trying to balance Rock, Paper, Scissors. Utwig > Kohr-Ah > everything else > Utwig.
Another ship that it's impossible to balance for is the Pkunk. Do we cost it as if it never revives, or as if it revives 10 times? Jeez! I would very much like to fly a Pkunk that doesn't vary in worth between about 12 and about 24.
|
|
|
|
« Last Edit: August 16, 2007, 10:34:40 pm by Elvish Pillager »
|
Logged
|
My team of four Androsynth and three Chmmr is the most unfair team ever! My mod |
|
|
|
