Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => Mods => Modding => Topic started by: hairrorist on April 23, 2012, 12:33:15 PM

Title: A plea for balance
Post by: hairrorist on April 23, 2012, 12:33:15 PM: Modders,

All the sweat and time you've put into this game are commendable--it's great to see such a prolific modding community already developing before the game is even released. This kind of community generated content is what keeps a game on hard drives for years after release. I salute you all!

I've been poking around with the Mish-mash mod lately and there is but one small problem. Almost universally, modded ships are far more powerful than vanilla ships. This is fine if you are planning a self-contained universe with multiple factions, but if the intent is to extend vanilla play, creating unbalanced ships will actually make the game less fun in the long run. Not only is player ship choice narrowed, but there may be more unforeseen gameplay ramifications once multiple star systems and faction warfare become more prevalent. Feel free to ignore this advice, but the mods that succeed and have long and successful lives, the ones that keep people playing for years, pay careful attention to balancing the content they add with the vanilla content of the game. I realize that most of these mods are still in alpha or beta and are not considered finished products yet, but keep this in mind while you hone them into perfection. It's more fun to design superships than it is to play with them!

Happy modding everyone!
Hairrorist
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: Upgradecap on April 23, 2012, 12:36:00 PM: Remember, some mods which are aiming for TCs (Such as Thieis acendency, ironclads, TimCORP) Will not require vanlilla balance as they balance against themselves. :)
Though i intend to keep the vanilla factions in my TC ;)
Go figure.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: K-64 on April 23, 2012, 12:46:40 PM: I can't speak for the rest of the modders, but with Trade Scavengers, I am attempting to keep it balanced with vanilla stuff. A large part of getting mod elements balanced is listening to the feedback that you are given. Quite often people will say "XYZ is waaayyy overpowered, FIX IT!!!" without giving indication as to how it's overpowered. I'm not saying everyone does, far from it, it's just that it's incredibly difficult to fix things if the problem isn't described.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: Upgradecap on April 23, 2012, 12:47:57 PM: Quote from: K-64 on April 23, 2012, 12:46:40 PM
I can't speak for the rest of the modders, but with Trade Scavengers, I am attempting to keep it balanced with vanilla stuff. A large part of getting mod elements balanced is listening to the feedback that you are given. Quite often people will say "XYZ is waaayyy overpowered, FIX IT!!!" without giving indication as to how it's overpowered. I'm not saying everyone does, far from it, it's just that it's incredibly difficult to fix things if the problem isn't described.

So you're supposed to listen to them and not increase it? Aha........
(JOKING ;D ;D)
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: hairrorist on April 23, 2012, 01:04:07 PM: Yeah, I realize balance is one of those somewhat ethereal qualities that no one will ever be in complete agreement on--I'm just suggesting that modders keep it in mind, unless, as mentioned, they're aiming for a self-contained TC.

Frigates with double or more the hull and armor of vanilla with high speed and high point totals, fighters with stats similar to vanilla frigates, or medium weapon mounts, etc. These are the things that should be tweaked.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: K-64 on April 23, 2012, 01:09:14 PM: I'm not so opposed to a single medium mount on heavy fighters. So long as they have quite a penalty for having such a weapon. And it'd have to be a rather weak one. fighters touting assault chainguns would be rather iffy for me
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: BillyRueben on April 23, 2012, 01:12:23 PM: Aw, come on. Who wouldn't want to see six wasps mounted with tachyon lances?
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: Sunfire on April 23, 2012, 01:17:38 PM: Quote from: K-64 on April 23, 2012, 01:09:14 PM
I'm not so opposed to a single medium mount on heavy fighters. So long as they have quite a penalty for having such a weapon. And it'd have to be a rather weak one. fighters touting assault chainguns would be rather iffy for me

Um, what if a mini-mod that I might or might not have been a huge part of has a bomber which uses assault chaingun, but the only carrier the faction has is only in their largest fleets and on top of that the bomber is rare, is that ok?
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: Dante80 on April 23, 2012, 01:19:19 PM: The best way to make mods more balanced is to provide feedback to the mod creators. Many do not have the time to extensively test a ship they release, or test how the AI utilizes it. Thus, specific user feedback, especially about balance issues is both welcome and highly sought after. ;)
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: K-64 on April 23, 2012, 01:20:47 PM: Quote from: Sunfire on April 23, 2012, 01:17:38 PM
Quote from: K-64 on April 23, 2012, 01:09:14 PM
I'm not so opposed to a single medium mount on heavy fighters. So long as they have quite a penalty for having such a weapon. And it'd have to be a rather weak one. fighters touting assault chainguns would be rather iffy for me

Um, what if a mini-mod that I might or might not have been a huge part of has a bomber which uses assault chaingun, but the only carrier the faction has is only in their largest fleets and on top of that the bomber is rare, is that ok?

What other downsides does the bomber have? Because that is quite a powerful weapon for such a craft
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: Sunfire on April 23, 2012, 01:21:51 PM: Um, there will only be one or two a fleet and they aren't very maneuverable, plus they have a low flux capacity
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: Uomoz on April 23, 2012, 01:24:41 PM: Uomoz's Corvus requirement is mostly: "vanilla balance".
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: keptin on April 23, 2012, 01:25:51 PM: Do you remember when you were 13 years old and when it came to choosing a weapon or superpower for pretend sword/gun battles or super soakers or whatever, everyone always went for the biggest and most badass ones? It takes time to grow out of that mentality and realize having strengths AND weaknesses make for more dynamic play than simply being all powerful.

With gaming communities comprised of such a large percentage of kids, its no surprise to find user mods unbalanced in favor of their own creations.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: hairrorist on April 23, 2012, 01:26:45 PM: The thing about balancing by cost or by rarity is that the player will always get the optimal crafts for a role. Its just the nature of the game.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: Vandala on April 23, 2012, 02:21:37 PM: Quote from: keptin on April 23, 2012, 01:25:51 PM
Do you remember when you were 13 years old and when it came to choosing a weapon or superpower for pretend sword/gun battles or super soakers or whatever, everyone always went for the biggest and most badass ones? It takes time to grow out of that mentality and realize having strengths AND weaknesses make for more dynamic play than simply being all powerful.

With gaming communities comprised of such a large percentage of kids, its no surprise to find user mods unbalanced in favor of their own creations.
I would make an exception with the IDF, the feeling of those ships is just right, the sounds, the graphics. I don't care how overpowered those things are, its just crazy fun to play like that once in a while.

Quote from: BillyRueben on April 23, 2012, 01:12:23 PM
Aw, come on. Who wouldn't want to see six wasps mounted with tachyon lances?
Oh god yes! Only use those at 4 fleet points a wing. RUN COWARDS!!
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: Psiyon on April 23, 2012, 02:31:59 PM: Quote from: Vandala on April 23, 2012, 02:21:37 PM
Quote from: BillyRueben on April 23, 2012, 01:12:23 PM
Aw, come on. Who wouldn't want to see six wasps mounted with tachyon lances?
Oh god yes! Only use those at 4 fleet points a wing. RUN COWARDS!!
While that would be hilariously awesome at first, you'd better not deploy any other ships on the field because the friendly-fire will be horrendous. I swear to God, my artillery ships with tachyon lances seem to target me more than the enemy... the last thing I need is a whole squadron of team-killers :P

In relating to the idea of balance: Starfarer is actually a pretty easy game to balance. Unlike RTS games, Starfarer's balance is set on more of a ship-to-ship basis, rather than a faction-to-faction basis. That means instead of trying to balance a massive set of ships as a whole versus another mass of ships as a whole, you're only balancing one ship (or a smaller set of ships) against a mass of ships, which is significantly easier.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: Vandala on April 23, 2012, 02:54:34 PM: Quote from: Psiyon on April 23, 2012, 02:31:59 PM
While that would be hilariously awesome at first, you'd better not deploy any other ships on the field because the friendly-fire will be horrendous. I swear to God, my artillery ships with tachyon lances seem to target me more than the enemy... the last thing I need is a whole squadron of team-killers :P

That's the thing, fighter wings don't have friendly fire (I think), at least not against other non-fighter wings. It's the same the other way around, that's why fielding a paragon combined with only fighter wings is just plain scary, no more friendly fire. Throw in a astral or odyssey and just sit back in horror of how fast you win everything and how safe that build is.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: The Counter on April 24, 2012, 06:32:35 AM: One thing I'd like to see is a nice list of the min and max values you find for every type of ship, to make balancing a bit easier. Like for example the range of health a vanilla Fighter would have is 100-500(or whatever, I didn't actually check), and if you wanted to create a balanced fighter, you would want it somewhere near that range, same for armour, shields, and etc. for all stats, would allow the quick rough balancing stage to go a lot quicker, after which, it just comes down to fine tuning. I considered doing this myself, but I'm half-way through a mod of my own, and getting close to something releasable so I wouldn't have the time for something like that for another couple weeks at least.

Of course, ultimately balance is up to the discretion of the modder though(No one would expect you to balance your watermelon), as they tend to create the stuff for themselves first, and if they want something overpowered then they're free to do so, and if they're feeling generous, will then release it to everyone else. But despite that, I'm sure there's a number of people, myself included, who would like to do a better job of balancing, and just don't have the time, or manpower to do a proper job themselves, in which case, testing, or basic guidelines like I suggested above would be perfect.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: WKOB on April 24, 2012, 06:42:31 AM: Well Trylobot's ship maker does show charts for CSV editing, rather handy feature, I thought.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: The Counter on April 24, 2012, 06:52:42 AM: That much is true, I forgot that, still would be nice to have a more easily accessible list, I tend to stick to the online ship maker, just because I like it's UI, more clicking buttons, and less pressing random, seemingly arbitrarily chosen keys to switch what I am editing, I end up only using Trylobot's for figuring out the bounds, because his can do symmetry, and the online one doesn't, as far as I know.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: hairrorist on April 24, 2012, 06:55:08 AM: Hmmm, perhaps this is something I will work on then.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: WKOB on April 24, 2012, 06:57:39 AM: Not sure about random or arbitrary, unless you're unfamiliar with the first letters of things.

B for Bounds, G for weapon Groups, W for Weapon slot. That's how most of them work, and how hot keys work in 90% of games.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: The Counter on April 24, 2012, 07:01:41 AM: I suppose that's true, I guess I just like clicking on tabs, and getting menu's over a minimal interface, where I'm doing almost everything on a keyboard, either way, my preferences definitely lie with the online editor for the majority of things.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: keptin on April 24, 2012, 08:31:30 AM: Not sure what you guys are going on about; all the ship stats are in the ship_data.csv file. It's easier to edit this in Excel than mess with an editor. While editors are nice, they make people lazy.

Take a look:
Spoiler
(http://i.imgur.com/3nlxw.jpg)
[close]
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: The Counter on April 24, 2012, 11:46:01 AM: Quote from: keptin on April 24, 2012, 08:31:30 AM
Not sure what you guys are going on about; all the ship stats are in the ship_data.csv file. It's easier to edit this in Excel than mess with an editor. While editors are nice, they make people lazy.

Take a look:
Spoiler
(http://i.imgur.com/3nlxw.jpg)
[close]
I think we were going on about making the .ship files, in which case an editor is a huge help, guessing the exact coordinates that each hardpoint, engine etc. is a real pain, especially when you can simply click on the part of the sprite you want it go in.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: keptin on April 25, 2012, 12:41:01 PM: Quote from: The Counter on April 24, 2012, 06:32:35 AM
One thing I'd like to see is a nice list of the min and max values you find for every type of ship, to make balancing a bit easier. Like for example the range of health a vanilla Fighter would have is 100-500(or whatever, I didn't actually check), and if you wanted to create a balanced fighter, you would want it somewhere near that range, same for armour, shields, and etc. for all stats, would allow the quick rough balancing stage to go a lot quicker, after which, it just comes down to fine tuning.

Seems to me you were looking for the ship_data.csv file.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: The Counter on April 25, 2012, 01:10:15 PM: Quote from: keptin on April 25, 2012, 12:41:01 PM
Seems to me you were looking for the ship_data.csv file.

That was me looking for all of the ship_data.csv info averaged for each ship type, for each variable, so that one could easily see what a conventional value for each stat would be, for basic balancing, which requires more than simply opening the file, and would actually take a decent amount of work, everything after that was about the .ship editors though. I wasn't sure which post you were referring to, but if it was that one, then yes, but I was looking for more than just the file.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: keptin on April 25, 2012, 01:23:30 PM: I think it's important to see all the ships in a certain class and fleet point cost because each have strengths and weaknesses that you wouldn't otherwise see with an amalgamate of stats. If for example, for a frigate of 5 points, your chose generally higher stats in a ranged chart and ended up with 300 armor and 3300 max flux, it would be unbalanced since vanilla ships with high armor have low max flux and vice versa.

Looking at the charts, one can see the two extremes, glass cannons and armored pea shooters. Seeing the raw stats gives a much better idea of the overall picture than looking at a min-mean-max range for each stat.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: The Counter on April 25, 2012, 01:47:58 PM: Which is true, it would be something meant for just a basic guideline, hopefully the person creating the ship would realize that you wouldn't take the max of each stat for frigates, and be able to consider it a balanced frigate, but it could at least give you a better idea of how high you should push any given stat, before that stat starts to get overpowered, or how low you should, before you might start to cripple your ship, if you want to make a destroyer with good shields, try giving it one similar to the best of any destroyer, and then give it the worst of another stat, etc..

But it is still good to have that info available, since you probably already have an idea of what role you want the ship to fill, then it just becomes a matter of picking numbers that make sense, which isn't always obvious, in which case, more resources to help figure that are always good. There is of course the method of just picking a pre-existing ship that fills a similar role to the one you want yours to, then just copying it's stats, and tweaking them slightly to fit what you want too, I personally feel that I would benefit from a combination of both. But then again, the sort of ships I'm creating tend to be a bit more unique, just because I think that's a good idea. to add more variety, Fighter Wings with mining drills being a good example, AI was surprisingly good about using them, but I'd want to look at fighters as a whole to figure out those stats, since there isn't really any one fighter wing I could base mine off of, obviously it would be most similar to a bomber, doing passes over large ships with it's point blank ranged weapon, but still it's different enough that I wouldn't want to completely base it off that.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: mendonca on April 25, 2012, 02:04:35 PM: Key figures for reference:

(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/starfarer/fp.png)(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/starfarer/hitpoints.png)(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/starfarer/armor.png)(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/starfarer/maxflux.png)(http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/starfarer/maxspeed.png)

Is this helpful? I'll be keeping a copy on hand, but if it just messes up the thread I can remove ...
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: icepick37 on April 25, 2012, 02:05:37 PM: Nice! How did you make these?
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: mendonca on April 25, 2012, 02:08:28 PM: Quote from: icepick37 on April 25, 2012, 02:05:37 PM
Nice! How did you make these?
Just openoffice! It just then occured to me how simple it would be to throw all the figures together in a nice chart ...

www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/starfarer/ship_data.ods (http://www.zen102301.zen.co.uk/starfarer/ship_data.ods)
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: keptin on April 25, 2012, 02:11:26 PM: It's an interesting start. I think adding an x-axis statistic would be more useful for comparing them. e.g., armor & max flux or armor & flux disp. For weapons, damage/minute, flux/minute and range need to be taken into consideration.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: The Counter on April 25, 2012, 02:13:08 PM: That is quite pretty, certainly the sort of thing I was asking for, thanks for that.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: mendonca on April 25, 2012, 02:22:50 PM: Quote from: keptin on April 25, 2012, 02:11:26 PM
It's an interesting start. I think adding an x-axis statistic would be more useful for comparing them. e.g., armor & max flux or armor & flux disp. For weapons, damage/minute, flux/minute and range need to be taken into consideration.

I like your thinking. It never even occured to me.

It shouldn't be too hard to create a tool to parse the file(s) and enable you to show these sorts of things selectively (should it?). I'm not man enough to do it very quickly though, personally, although the thought of giving it a go intrigues me.

On the other hand, if there are some key metrics that people think we should be investigating (armor vs. max flux is an interesting one) I don't mind pulling them together with similar charts as above.

The danger I can see is that without a dynamic sort of tool, if you are not selective, you end up creating too much information from too many iterations and it all becomes difficult to comprehend, let alone create.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: Archduke Astro on April 25, 2012, 03:04:22 PM: Quote from: mendonca on April 25, 2012, 02:04:35 PM
Key figures for reference:

Is this helpful? I'll be keeping a copy on hand, but if it just messes up the thread I can remove ...

That is fan-F#$%ing-tastic! Very helpful, actually. Implementing keptin's suggestions will make it even more helpful. Thanks - you da man!

(http://i1098.photobucket.com/albums/g372/mentor_of_arisia/1308168258549.gif)
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: Uomoz on April 25, 2012, 04:31:48 PM: There's a tool that already do this for us player in-game.

The Autoresolve Battle Tool that the engine uses to simulate non played battles. It considers many parameters to compare 2 ships and decide, in the end, which is better.

I'd like to see a tool that uses similar parameters, off game ;)
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: Shield on April 26, 2012, 07:14:20 AM: Quote from: keptin on April 24, 2012, 08:31:30 AM
Not sure what you guys are going on about; all the ship stats are in the ship_data.csv file. It's easier to edit this in Excel than mess with an editor. While editors are nice, they make people lazy.

Take a look:
Spoiler
(http://i.imgur.com/3nlxw.jpg)
[close]

How the hell do you get open office to look like that, I can never get it to look like that, or it just adds a ton of commas to my ship file.
Title: Re: A plea for balance
Post by: arcibalde on April 26, 2012, 01:26:05 PM: Quote from: Shield on April 26, 2012, 07:14:20 AM

How the hell do you get open office to look like that, I can never get it to look like that, or it just adds a ton of commas to my ship file.

Waaa???? it always look like that. Look here http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=633.msg12266#msg12266

And first 2 fields on top i don't even touch i left them how OpenOfice defines them and that's it, just put comma thing a check ant you are gtg 8)