Balance, teamsize, and resorces
Frosty
Join Date: 2003-04-20 Member: 15667Members
Join Date: 2003-04-20 Member: 15667Members
As a vet of NS1.4 and up I recall one thing that had a huge effect on balance, and probably shouldn't have was team size, mostly as a function of resource rates. Due to the marines resources being pooled and the aliens being divided, matches with few people tended to be skewed toward the aliens, who could advance through there tech tree insanely fast compared to the marines, and the soldier lost to be the commander mattered more, however as more and more people joined the game, the scales tipped the other way, with alien upgrades coming much slower, but marine tech rates remaining basically the same, and the difference of one less combatant matters less. In competent pubs (aka pubs frequented by regulars who both understand and use tactics, and communication) I found the balance point to be about 10 players per team. In clan matches it was problem closer to 8ish per team.
So the suggestion is basically to scale the resource income per RT with the amount of players on the server (or more specifically the amount of players on the opposing team. The scaling factor would be greater for aliens than for marines, as the addition or removal of new players effects the aliens more. I figure that the initial value of resource per tic for marines RT's will be greater than that for aliens, be equal at the "balance point" for NS2, and and be less than the aliens for larger teams. scaling the resource income to players on the enemy team will also help balance out the extra man when teams are uneven.
So the suggestion is basically to scale the resource income per RT with the amount of players on the server (or more specifically the amount of players on the opposing team. The scaling factor would be greater for aliens than for marines, as the addition or removal of new players effects the aliens more. I figure that the initial value of resource per tic for marines RT's will be greater than that for aliens, be equal at the "balance point" for NS2, and and be less than the aliens for larger teams. scaling the resource income to players on the enemy team will also help balance out the extra man when teams are uneven.
Comments
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Charlie: And team size and balance. So the question is: is NS2 going to be balanced like NS1? Well, NS1 was balanced for 6v6, and will NS2 be the same? And that thankfully is not the case. Let’s see, ok, how do I describe this? The new resource model, which I don’t want to describe yet, because I don’t know if it will work, that will actually allow the economy to be the same at all levels. The way it worked in NS1, how the resources were split up among the alien team, the team size actually affected the flow of resources into your teammates. So that actually totally changed the pace of the game and I think there are some other reasons. The resources for aliens were divided among many pools instead of the marines, where it was all in one pool, then you could fall below a threshold of technology, you fall below a threshold that you need, a minimum threshold, more often. Does that make any sense? It’s really hard to describe. If it costs 10 resources to build something and you have 10 among the whole team, but not among any one person, then you can’t buy that thing, whereas on the marine side, you could buy that thing. And if that’s a resources tower, then the aliens can no longer get resources. So it kind of had all these invisible boundaries all over the place in NS1 and so I think that will all be fixed for 2. So, the game will not be balanced for one particular team size, and it should work for all team sizes, probably anywhere from 2v2 to 16v16. And let’s see what else we have here.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->