Complex balancing (Discussion?)

[Song]

So I've been going through my old stuff, and I'm trying to rebalance.....and some balance questions have turned up that I can't really seem to answer by myself. So I thought I'd see what other people think about the following:


1. How to balance WMD

2. Balancing damage types outside of their level band

3. Balancing shot HP (IE: How tough should a missile be?)

4. DPS VS average damage

5. Damage range balance

6. Armor penetration and Shieldbusting


These are all things that are quite important to get right, and while I have some basic ideas, I don't really know how to manage this right. Transcendence balance in official is supposedly governed by formulae. Some of these I've got access to (annoyingly, these balance tables aren't public, although they really should be), but these things, to my knowledge, are not covered. Important hing to note: This is for ship to ship combat. Not station stuff. Here's a more in-depth look at each of these questions I'd like to see people's thoughts on:

1. WMD Balance

WMD is, as we all know, the modifier that governs damage to hardened targets. This used to only matter for non-critical armor segments, but now that all large ships are covered in internal compartments, WMD has become more important. A high WMD weapon can rip through a crippled target and kill it quickly, while a non-WMD weapon may take over a hundred extra shots to take out a compartment and kill the target. This is very noticable in Eternity Port, where the Eurasian Diarchy energy launcher has no WMD at all. It scythes through armor like it isn't there, punches holes in shields......and then for large targets, does absolutely nothing you couldn't do with a basic particle cannon. This poses interesting balancing questions: Should high WMD weapons have their damage/ROF reduced in comparison to similar weapons that lack this ability to kill compartments, and if so, to what degree? This also to some degree applies to quasi-WMD weapons such as the Ion9, which achive a similar effect by using a spray of particles rather than a single shot. In addition to this, the player has no defense at all against high-damage-no-WMD shots, because playerships have no internals....this raises questions of balance VS AI against balance VS the player, assuming that a weapon should be designed so that it can be used by both player and AI.

2. Balancing a damage type outside of its level band

In vanilla, there is only one weapon that turns up far outside of its "band" in the Secret Balancing Tables. That weapon is the penitent cannon, and it's rubbish. But setting that aside, how should a weapon be balanced when it is outside of its damage bracket? The relationship between armor level and resistance complicates things a lot: an underlevelled damage type will do a lot more damage than it seem, and a weapon of a higher level than its damage type will struggle to actually do damage, even running into complete immunities. I've personally dealt with this by only really making a small number of these weapons, and they always use a gimmick (eg. A kinetic-based swarm-buster that shatters them)....but, setting aside immunities, how should damage be scaled to take into account the level curve, while not making the weapon either overly powerful against more advanced tech, or making it useless.

3. Shot HP balance

This is not a thing we have right now. Currently missile HP is set more or less randomly, and usually it's too low. However, because ICX is completely broken, this is a good thing: you can use your main gun to shoot down incoming shells very easily, and the low damage on the ICX will often kill lighter shots before bugs make it go haywire and annoy the nearest black market. The problem is that this doesn't make much sense, and when ICX is fixed it is likely to make them absurdly powerful. I think what is needed is another balance formula for shot HP, taking into account the level of the gun and the rate of fire. Maybe even some other things (like tracking or velocity) that make it harder to intercept. I'm not sure how this should work out though....has anyone worked on this before? I'd love to see if anyone has tried working this out before.

4. DPS VS average-damage.

Keeping in mind that I have no idea how the game calculates average damage (I hope it's just "middle of the damage range"), I've noticed a trend: high DPS weapons often suck compared with lower DPS weapons with higher average damage. Lower damage-per shot weapons will never get good crits, never one-shot anything, and are far more heavily penalised by the armor/shield curve than a higher damage weapon is. They do have the upside of not being as heavily affected by their common lack of WMD.....but given that WMD is more common on heavy weapons, this is small comfort. In fact, high damage weapons are sometimes only made obsolete by arbitrary "Oh hey, magic armor that stops your damage type" limits in the game (eg. The dual-MK.III being rendered obsolete by worldship armor). Should this always be the case, and how can a modded set of weapons really handle this appropriately?


5. Damage Range

Damage is randomly calculated from a dice-roll ingame. Assuming that the RNG is truly random (or close enough), this should be a uniform distribution. Thus, weapons with a large distribution may roll low or high at times. How should this be taken into account when balancing? Should higher damage guns have proportionately the same range of damage as smaller weapons? When is it appropriate to make a gun more or less reliable?

(Note: The big vanilla culprit of this is the Ares Plasma Archcannon, which can fire the most damaging shot in the game, taking a huge chunk out of the health of an iocrym, one-shotting the player.....or doing 24 damage in total.)

6. Armor Penetration and shieldbusting.

These two things give bonuses to armor and shield damage at levels specified by the weapon coder. Ingame it's used on a few guns, most notably the insanely-powerful ares positron gun. But there's no documentation for balance. How should a weapon that punches through armor or shields be balanced? What kind of damage penalty is appropriate for such a weapon?


I don't think there's right and wrong answers to any of these, but I'm genuinely curious as to what people think about these things.

[Atarlost]

1. The formulas do not balance WMD, but the minimum damage per shot is 1 so I put higher WMD on slower firing weapons to compensate unless there's a thematic reason not to (in which case I'll often go for passthrough instead).

2. I don't adjust stuff one level out of band like the flenser or Ferian plasma cannon. Beyond that I'd look at the armor table. Think what enemies a weapon should be used against and what their defenses are like and look at the tables. So for example the Absolution Cannon wants to be used against Sung and Dwarg and Marauders because it's not actually available until the ungoverned territories. I think their capital ships all use level 4-6 armor excluding the dragon slaver. So it should be balanced against level 4-6 armor. Level 4 armor is in the tier 2 domain and takes 200% damage from dark acid and 100% from tier 2. Level 6 armor is in the same domain and takes 200% from dark acid and 40% from tier 2. The absolution cannon should therefore do 1/5-1/2 nominal damage. High tier low damage gets weaker the earlier you get it, though, so I'd lean towards the higher end of the range. It's better to be a bit too good against Dwarg Behemoths than terrible against Drakes.

3. Mostly I just spitball it.

4. You balance based on average damage. That's the average of the minimum and maximum values.

5. Doesn't matter unless you're using a flat range. The more dice you use the closer to the center it tends to be.

6. Those actually have an entry in the weapon guidelines. A shield buster should do 3x the damage of a normal weapon. Presumably that's the damage to shields. The damage to shields comes from the wiki.

shield This modifier multiplies the damage done when hitting shields. The amount of damage done to shields is increased by a certain percent depending on the difference between the damage modifier and the shield level. For example, if “shield5” damage hits a level 3 shield the difference is +2 levels. Conversely, if “shield3” hits a level 5 shield, the difference is -2 levels. Consult the following table to determine the damage increase:

⇐ -4 levels = no extra damage
-3 levels = 50% extra damage
-2 levels = 100% extra damage (damage is doubled)
-1 level = 150% extra damage
same level = 200% extra damage (damage is trebled)
+1 level = 250% extra damage
+2 levels = 300% extra damage (damage is quadrupled)
+3 levels = 350% extra damage
+4 levels = 400% extra damage

Interestingly this means that if the shield value is equal to the weapon level there should be no adjustment and if it's lower a shield buster should actually do more damage than if it didn't shield bust. I'm pretty sure this was not properly thought through. Maybe George meant to write 0.33x but then a shield buster with shield modifier equal to its level would do less to armor for no increase against shields which is also wrong.

Armor piercing doesn't have an entry, but uses the same mechanics as shield busting.

I mostly just don't use either. You can use armor or shield to compensate for under or over tiered damage, but otherwise they require determining how significant armor and shields actually are.

[PM]

I get the feeling many energy weapons were balanced when ships had non-critical/critical armor segments, before interiors came.

1. Weapons that do very low damage per shot, like Moskva 33, might need more or else there may be no effective difference between WMD1 and WMD2/3/4 despite the item screen saying otherwise. Aside from that, I use what feels good. If I get a gun that is supposed to be heavy ordnance, like nukes, I do not want to pump over a hundred shots to kill the target because of low WMD. For example, I think stock slam cannons have too low WMD.

2. I noticed that damage tends to follow a pattern, which I wrote down. See below. That said, 1.2 really powered up thermo and plasma (and Ares brand) weaponry.

3. I use this guideline: the bigger, slower firing, and higher-tiered the weapon is, the more it should get. Most kinetics and small blasts that are not ammo should not get any, and probably should use less than 100 interaction.

4. I always go by DPS. If a high damage, slow firing weapon has lower DPS, it probably has other advantages like longer range, lower powerUse, or something. If armor or shields with integer damage reduction become official or more common in mods, high damage per shot weapons will be more valuable.

5. All that matters to me is the average. It usually makes no difference to me if weapon damage ranges from 1 to 2N or is always N. It is just a matter of style and preference. If it is that important, maybe add a note of (un)predictability in the description. This assumes attacks that are not particle based like PK25 or plasma torch. I do not know how particles apply their damage, and it always shows maximum damage instead of average.

6. Player is on a constant gear treadmill. Anything good now is usually obsolete four to six systems later, except possibly launchers with ammo of varying levels and damage types (but they will become obsolete too, just not as quickly). Buster weapons are ineffective against higher level stuff, or at least less effective than a weapon with higher DPS or passthrough. However, too many enemies seem resistant to particle type damage in the midgame, when they are generally available (i.e., St. K's or later), and I am tempted to add busters on all of my particle weapons just to counter the glut of over-resistant enemies. (Only thing making particle viable midgame is it sometimes spawns a glut of pirates, outlaws, and other early game opposition instead of Dwarg, Sung, and worse.) Also, buster is a nice way to power-up weaker weapons without raising DPS or passthrough, or if you want a weapon designed to crush defense, such as Ion9 against Luminous.

I wrote some educated guesses about some this (which I use to balance my own weapons). Below is a copy of Notes_DPS.txt, found in Items Pack 912.

Code: Select all

======================================================================
Transcendence Weapon Design:  Damage Per Second
-----------------------------------------------
Last Updated on 12/21/2013
Written by PM
======================================================================

While writing additional weapons for my mods, I compared the stats of
my weapons to the standard weapons (between 1.01 and 1.1).  After
trial and error, I (think I) discovered the damage progression of
weapons.

On Damage Per Second (DPS)
--------------------------
Damage at level I is 15 for laser and 16.5 for kinetic.
Damage at level IV is 33 for both particle and blast.*
Damage at level VII is 65 for ion and 78 for thermo.**
Damage at level X is 135 for positron and 156 for plasma.**

* (Damage is 31 from slam cannon, or 33.75 from Moskva 21.)

** Many high level weapons in 1.2 have higher damage stats than
before; but, with one or two exceptions, they still fall within their
level range.

Notice that matter damage is up to 20% greater than an energy damage
attack of the same tier.

Notice that positron damage at level X is nine times greater than
laser damage at level I.  Plasma damage has a similar damage ratio.
The cube root of 9 is about equal to 2.08.  When damage increases a
tier, such as from laser to particle, we can expect the damage to
increase by a factor of 2.08 over the last tier of damage from three
levels ago.  If damage progression holds steady beyond level X, then
we have the following numbers for higher tiers of damage.

Damage at level XIII is 280 for antimatter and 335 for nano.
Damage at level XVI is 585 for graviton and 700 for singularity.
Damage at level XIX is 1215 for dark acid and 1458 for dark steel.
Damage at level XXII is 2527 for dark lightning and 3032 for dark fire.

Damage of its type increases by a factor of four when tech level
increases by three.  For instance, you can expect DPS of a level IV
laser based weapon to be 60.  From this, the damage multiplier we can
expect when level increases by 1 is cube root of 4, or 1.5874.
However, some weapons can be stronger for their level.  For instance,
the level IV dual turbolaser has DPS of 75 instead of 60.  It is,
in effect, a level 4.5 weapon.  The damage multiplier for half a
level is 4 to the one-sixth power, or 1.259921.  From the above
observations, a table was constructed.

	LevelUp		DPS Multiplier
	-.5		 0.7931 (0.75 used by some standard weapons)
	0.0		 1
	0.5		 1.2599
	1.0		 1.5874
	1.5		 2
	2.0		 2.5198
	2.5		 3.1748
	3.0		 4
	3.5		 5.0397
	4.0		 6.3496
	4.5		 8
	5.0		10.0793
	5.5		12.6992
	6.0		16

Weapon properties affect the effective DPS level of a weapon.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Damage level penalties (tech level increase)
--------------------------------------------
	varies	fragmentation weapon*
	0.5	passthrough="50" or particleSplashChance="50"**
	0.5	has device or deviceDisrupt
	0.5	extremely long range (range 100+, past LRS)
	1.0	howitzer weapon
	1.0	passthrough="80" or more**
	2.0	omnidirectional or tracking weapon***
	6.0	shockwave weapon****

* In 1.2, three non-tracking fragments count as one hit.
For example count of 15 fragments gets shown as (x5).
Playtesting for general killing speed has shown me to be the case.

** In 1.2, damage stats are multiplied by passthrough divided by 20,
roughly.  For example, passthrough="80" gets shown as (x4).

*** Power use of omnidirectional or tracking weapons is from half to
one level lower than normal.  Does not include shockwave weapons.

**** +5 level for x10.6 damage from fragments and +1 for
passthrough="80".  Does not include mitigation like ammo
use and/or short range.

Damage level bonuses (tech level reduction)
-------------------------------------------
	varies	capacitor or temperature*
	0.5	particle style weapon (e.g., PK25, plasma torch)**
	1.0	causes EMP damage only
	1.0	requires an additional weapon slot***
	1.0	melee range (range 10 or less)
	1.0	Lamplighter****
	1.5	uses ammo or charges*****
	3.0     causes blinding damage only

* As long as average sustained DPS over 12 to 16 seconds matches
the standard, initial burst DPS can be almost anything.  Burst should
not last more than a few seconds.  Ares lightning turret has a burst
length of 1.53 seconds, and advanced tritium cannon has a burst length
of 6.667 seconds.

** Damage shown is the maximum possible, not the average!

*** Other stats such as value and powerUse may remain at an increased
level.

**** Lamplighter is a special quest reward and noted accomplishment
near the end of part I.  Acquiring it means you give up other
overpowered rewards elsewhere.

***** Power use of ammo/charge using weapons is three or four levels
lower than normal, which is about from 10% to 20% of unlimited use
weapons of the same level.

Other notes
-----------
Weapons may have up to a half level worth of extra DPS for free.
They tend to have some combination of higher cost, powerUse, or
shorter range.

Radiation does not affect level.  It is a tradeoff property.
Radiation is guaranteed slow death, but you cannot dock without
contaminating your ship unless it has immunity.


======================================================================

Passthrough
-----------
How much more damage can passthrough yield?  Assuming the attack has
infinite lifetime, and the target has infinite size, the expected
damage over time is damage multiplied by (1 / (1 - X)), where
X = passthrough / 100, and 0 <= X <= 1.

Passthrough	Expected damage multiplier
------------------------------------------
          0       1
         20       1.25
         25       1.333
         33       1.5
         40       1.667
         50       2
         60       2.5
         66       3
         75       4
         80       5
         90      10
         95      20
         99     100
        100     Infinite

The damage multiplier is the average number of hits per attack, after
many attacks.  Some attacks may hit only once, while others hit much
more than average.

Note that regardless of how many hits an attack is capable of,
the target can only take hits as long as the attack remains inside.
Once the attack exits the target, it can cause no more damage to that
target unless it reenters the target somehow.  Against small gunships,
expect two to three hits.  Against larger targets, expect five or six
hits for attacks moving at lightspeed, or much more for much slower
attacks.


Shockwaves
----------
Shockwaves with default stats have 32 fragments and passthrough="80".
Three non-tracking fragments count as one missile for expected damage.
Thus, with 32 fragments, the shockwave is expected to hit for the
listed damage times 10.6.  With passthrough="80" each segment can be
expected to hit more or less than five times before it is stopped.


======================================================================

Capacitors and Temperature
--------------------------
The point of a weapon that uses a capacitor or temperature is to make
it output higher DPS than normal for a few seconds, then force it to
rest.  While resting, the weapon has (or should have) less DPS than
a similar weapon without a capacitor.  A good question would be how
long until the combined burst and rest DPS of a capacitor weapon
should match the DPS of a weapon without a capacitor?  Given the few
standard weapons we have, Ares lightning turret and advanced tritium
cannon, a reasonable guess would be about 15 seconds, give or take a
few.

Use this equation to check weapon balance, and adjust stats as
necessary.

d1(x - t) + d2(t) = d3(x)

d1 = Damage per second when capacitor is empty.
d2 = Damage per second while capacitor is not empty; i.e., full power.
d3 = Desired damage per second over time if not using capacitor.
 t = Time for capacitor to go from full to empty with continuous fire.
 x = Time for DPS stats of both sides of equation to match.

We solve for 'x'.  We strive for a time of about 15 seconds.  If not,
adjust DPS and/or capacitor stats until we do.  If x is too high,
the weapon may be overpowered; and if x is too low, it may be
underpowered.

Examples below:

Ares lightning turret
---------------------
d1 = 32.  It fires about two shots per second.  16 * 2 = 32.
d2 = 240.  16 * 15 = 240 -- Simple.
d3 = 52.  We will be generous it and assume the best level 8 DPS.
 t = 1.53 seconds.

Solve for 'x'.

32(x - 1.53) + 240(1.53) = 52x
32x - 48.96 + 367.2 = 52x
32x + 318.24 = 52x
318.24 = 20x
15.912 = x


Advanced tritium cannon
-----------------------
d1 = 75.  Temperature cools off for 2.5 shots per second.
d2 = 300.  30 * 10 = 300.
d3 = 196.5.  Assume standard level 9 DPS.
 t = 6.667.  Overheats if fired continously for this long.

Solve for 'x'.

75(x - 6.667) + 300(6.667) = 196.5
75x - 500 + 2000 = 196.5x
75x + 1500 = 196.5x
1500 = 121.5x
12.345679 = x


======================================================================

Stock weapons/ammo that are underpowered:
-----------------------------------------
Omnidirectional laser cannon:  Should be level 2 instead of 3.

dual recoilless cannon:  You tell me a dual laser cannon is level 2
while this, a dual version of the standard level 1 kinetic weapon, is
level 3?  Lower this to level 2 already!

Shuriken Neutron Blaster:  It is weaker than the lancer cannon or dual
particle beam weapon, but that is only because those two weapons are
at the upper limit of level 5 weapon power.  The Shuriken's DPS is
only slightly below expected level 5 particle damage.  What puts this
weapon in the underpowered list is its cost - it is too high (and/or
the cost of the other two level 5 particle weapons are too low).  As
a weaker level 5 weapon, its cost should be no higher than 7000.

Dragonfly missile system:  Its DPS would be fine if it was an ammoless
weapon.  However, it is an ammo weapon, and one with the infamous
laser array wide spread.  Since this is the Molotok's signature
weapon, an easy fix would be to lower its level from 6 to 5, and maybe
replace the Military tag with Illegal.  If the level must remain at 6,
then lower fireRate to 20 (for 3 shots per second).

PM6 Slicer Cannon:  It is weaker than the dual particle cannon (fires
10 instead of 12 shots per second), and level 6?!  It also has less
range and uses more power.  Just turn this into a level 5 weapon with
lowered powerUse.

TeV-9 blaster:  This only has 1.5 DPS higher than the dual particle
beam.  It is slightly higher than the equivalent of a level 5.5
weapon, which is weak.  Just lower fireRate to 14 or 12 for 4.3 or 5
shots per second.  As an alternate, remove the Military tag and keep
the weapon as it is.

Gaian Demolition Cannon:  DPS is 78, which is the expected damage of
a level 7 thermo weapon.  Since this weapon uses charges AND requires
two weapon slots to install, this could easily be a level 4 weapon.
In other words, it is overleveled by five whole levels as a level 9
weapon!  Since the player cannot recharge the weapon, the discussion
is largely moot.

Omnidirection ion blaster:  This was fine in previous versions at
65+ DPS, but now it is weak at 52.5 DPS, which is barely past the
level 8.5 midpoint.

Kytryn Plasma Pod:  As an ammo weapon, its DPS (about 234 per shot,
1.5 shots per second) is well within level 10 range.  Sure, this
missile can cause severe damage if all the fragments hit, but that
happens rarely.  (I guess that is why only a third of the fragment
damage is shown.)  Its only use right now is to hurt Iocrym and
Phobos; other high level thermo missiles are more effective against
everything else.

Iocrym repeller:  Its damage is on par with the standard, but its
range is terrible (13 light-seconds, just slightly beyond melee range)
and it pushes things away.  It does the job it was designed to do, but
as a player weapon, it sucks.  Since this weapon is no fun to use, it
should be buffed in some way rather than its level lowered to 9.

Positron lancer:  The DPS may be the standard, but its powerUse is a
bit high for the damage it does.  The weapon is also boring.  This
weapon either should have its powerUse cut down to 300 MW, or have its
DPS (and possibly range) increased by speeding up fireRate (to 16) and
increasing lifetime for more range, so it feels just like the other
lancers.


======================================================================

[EditorRUS]

I hope it's just "middle of the damage range

It is. 4d6 will yield (4+24)/2=12 average dam.

DPS is Damage Per Second. Note that damage is applied as if there is no resistances or level differences at all.
The problem here is that when resistances and level-difference calculated, they use MULTIPLY operation, therefore there is no difference in two weapon with same DPS: 50 laser with 1 shot per sec or 5 laser with 10 shots per sec - they both have 50 DPS and if we, say, have a shield with 100% laser resistance and same level, we'll get 25 and 20 respectively actual damage per second (because fraction is removed, making 5 / 2 = 2)
If we had had SUBTRACT operator at the place of MULTIPLY, then there'd have been huge difference then. Like if we have a shield of -1 laser resistance (subtracting 1 laser damage), then our result would be 49 and 40 respectively.

So no, I disagree about sucking of weapon with different DPS provided they are at same level and damage type.

Damage is randomly calculated from a dice-roll ingame. Assuming that the RNG is truly random (or close enough), this should be a uniform distribution. Thus, weapons with a large distribution may roll low or high at times. How should this be taken into account when balancing? Should higher damage guns have proportionately the same range of damage as smaller weapons? When is it appropriate to make a gun more or less reliable?

It's actually gauss distribution. For some reason the wiki returns me 404, so I can't give you that link. So no, damage tends to be average.

[Atarlost]

DPS is Damage Per Second. Note that damage is applied as if there is no resistances or level differences at all.
The problem here is that when resistances and level-difference calculated, they use MULTIPLY operation, therefore there is no difference in two weapon with same DPS: 50 laser with 1 shot per sec or 5 laser with 10 shots per sec - they both have 50 DPS and if we, say, have a shield with 100% laser resistance and same level, we'll get 25 and 20 respectively actual damage per second (because fraction is removed, making 5 / 2 = 2)
If we had had SUBTRACT operator at the place of MULTIPLY, then there'd have been huge difference then. Like if we have a shield of -1 laser resistance (subtracting 1 laser damage), then our result would be 49 and 40 respectively.

So no, I disagree about sucking of weapon with different DPS provided they are at same level and damage type.

Not quite. A weapon with firerate 60 loses a maximum of 1 dps from roundoff error. A weapon with a firerate of 2 loses a maximum of 30. Level based resistances get big, especially on armor. Stuff near the end of its level band may do 40% damage, but 40% of 1d8+1 is 1.75 not 2.2 and 40% of 2d4 is 1.625 not 2. That makes the Lancer and Shuriken substantially weaker than slower firing weapons with the same nominal DPS would be.