Blog: Balancing Generals 2

[EA_Agm]

I've written a new blog about how EA/Bioware can infuse balance potential into the game by adding what are known as "balance handles" - ways in which you can make very specific, isolated changes to balance. The more handles you have, the more you can fine-tune the balance without affecting balance relationships you don't want to adjust. The blog contains a few examples of how additional handles could help balance a game like Zero Hour even though it was 12 factions.

http://www.gamereplays.org/generals2...ews&tid=867443

[IonorRea]

wouldn’t it be great if Rangers got more experience for killing Gattling Tanks, than Crusaders did, for example?

In Generals different units get same amount of experience for killing specific unit, but experience that are required for reaching higher ranks are different for most of units, so your solution for easier ranking when weak unit kill strong is already in practice. It's hard to believe you didn't notice this if you really played many online games, but most modders know it...

Example:
Experiences required to get higher rank for
Helix
100 200 400
Emeror
400 600 1200

[Golan2781]

That's not what he's talking about. Currently it doesn't matter if a unit gets 100XP for killing a counter to it or cannon fodder, even though the first is a much greater task. It's not about the Ranger being weaker then the Crusader in principle (e.g. in cost, health, damage) but about it being weaker vs. Gats specifically.

Anyways, while I do feel it's important that there are many ways to tweak balance and do in fact quite enjoy the additions they made in TW, it's IMO imperative that they don't just tweak on a direct interaction basis. Every game runs on certain rules and C&C is especially fluid because these rules are simple and reliable - there are a few basic rules you have to know, the rest is using your units to get the most out of them. Like for example that machine guns are effective versus infantry.
When such rules are broken to balance the game, the game gets fairer but not necessarily better. Take TW for example, Black Hand Squads can take truckloads of bullets - this is required to make the game balanced but at the same time makes it much harder to access because it simply doesn't make sense and is a stark contrast to established rules.
The very important thing is that fine-tweaking should not choke gameplay. Much of the longevity and appeal of RTS games comes from the ever shifting meta game where players use the resources at their disposal to utilize and combine them in new ways, a rigid, planned interaction table is neither desirable nor realistic.
But yeah, this is just an approach to using these handles, they should ideally all exist.

[CrazyGDIfan123`]

if i get this right, this is pretty much a blog about... modding?

i just dont quite understand what perspective this blog speaks from -- who is the 'balance designer'?
is it from the perspective of a VG developer? in which case, wouldnt it be possible anyway for the developer to create+implement those handles at a later stage if required?

so lets say the commanche never had a re-stealthing time because they never implemented it (so it restealths instantly)... and later realise that having a re-stealth time would be an ideal way to balance it, all it takes is creating the code for this new logic (or balance handle) and implementing it?

but ofcourse, in the interest of minimising the economic costs of patching/re-coding, a good initial design of these 'balance handles' is pretty important -- so is that simply what youre trying to point out?


but if youre NOT speaking from the developers point of view -- then it must be from a community modder's perspective, in which case, it obviously 100% depends on the nature of the mod tools available. The 'ideal' mod tools practically allow the modder to do anything the developer could do, but since mod tools are seldom that 'ideal', modders have less freedom -- so are you trying to point out here that BETTER mod tools/capabilities are needed than we've had for previous games?

in which case we're making a rather major assumption here --- that generals 2 will even HAVE mod tools so we can do what youre able to do today with your ZH balance project, a decade on from release.

currently theres no fb2 game out there with modding capability - so perhaps we'd want to push for this in gens2 before we even start talking about the nature of modding tools or even 'balance handles' etc?

--------------------
but anyways, about the blog itself -- it seems to assume the modding environment for gens2 (if itll ever have one) will have the same old/similar capabilities and limitations as gens1/cnc3/ra3... ie you can do anything allowed within the framework of the engine's modules, but you cant exactly customise it to your needs (by creating your own modules from scratch etc)

either way the modding tools/environment obviously is a HUGE factor here.

as an example -- the issue where you cant fine-tune the gatt's interaction with a certain units because there are other units which use 'gattling' type damage too which you dont want to affect... this is an inherent limitation of the ccg/zh engine.

cnc3/kw/ra3 have a similar number of 'damage types' as gens (~30), but they make damage types practically irrelevant by introducing a feature ('balance handle' if you will) called 'damage scalars' which can be used in weapons to define their damage output against ANY unit in the game, regardless of damage type/armor type interactions.

this practically means you have infinite damage types, and can fine-tune any unit interactions the way you want. As an example from kw:

traveler-59 having problems countering blackhand's anti-scouting + early flame-reckoner rush?
give traveler-59 seekers a damage buff against non-dozer upgraded reckoners... fixed - without affecting the viability of flame-reckoners in any other situation.

this is possible simply because the cnc3/kw modding environment/engine actually allows such changes.


but honestly -- if the mod tools are powerful enough, we should able to create/code our own 'balance handles' or any parameters from scratch - THIS is what we really need imo.

but sure, if we're assuming
1) gens2 will have mod tools
2) we get mod tools of similar capability as the ones we've had so far

then i would agree that thinking up the initial 'balance handles' is an important task for the developers.... but ideally we want more flexibility and future-proofing than that...

When such rules are broken to balance the game, the game gets fairer but not necessarily better. Take TW for example, Black Hand Squads can take truckloads of bullets - this is required to make the game balanced but at the same time makes it much harder to access because it simply doesn't make sense and is a stark contrast to established rules.

personally i dont quite agree with that particular instance, or atleast your perspective
its true they had huge amount of bullet resistance, but afaik it was done so they could actually serve as counters to certain gun-units like riflemen and watchtowers

blackhands were basically turned into proper 'heavy infantry' (i remember greg black even stating that in an interview about the patch) - a class of inf that IS designed to take a lot of hits (or atleast that was the intention -- unfortunately in the official versions zonetroopers/shocks had paper armor)... however what did NOT make any sense was the fact that blackhands were ridiculously vulnerable to crushing...

the stark contrast in the fact that your APCs struggle to kill a blackhand squad while your predator can just run it over in 0.5 seconds was certainly very unintuitive and stupid as hell... (from both ends of the situation: apc's were an intuitive counter to bh's, but certainly took too long to kill them, while preds which arent even anti-inf nullify them with impunity)

[IonorRea]

That's not what he's talking about. Currently it doesn't matter if a unit gets 100XP for killing a counter to it or cannon fodder, even though the first is a much greater task. It's not about the Ranger being weaker then the Crusader in principle (e.g. in cost, health, damage) but about it being weaker vs. Gats specifically.

You just prolonging inevitable...

Counter to Gattling is Crusader
For killing Crusader get Galling 100XP, for killing Ranger 20XP, so Gattling needs kill 5 Rangers to get same amount of experience as for killing one Crusader. Five Rangers are problem even for Gattling if not controled properly, but same apply on Suicide bikes vs Emperor. If you send bikes frontaly and not as group they fail similary like Rangers killed from distance by constantly retreating Gattling tank but if Rangers are paradroped on Gattling position then it can be different story.

[EA_Agm]

CGDIfan, the blog is from the perspective of anyone who needs to balance the game, whether that's EA, or the community 10 years later after EA has abandoned it. I am trying to put together a balance mod for ZH right now, but I am limited by the lack of balance handles available. It's nice to know that C&C3/KW has damage scalars, as that accomplishes what I talk about in this blog.

However I'm not really talking about modding, I'm simply talking about doing the equivalent of editing ZH's .ini files to adjust balance. I know that's "modding", but you don't need modding tools to do that aside from XCC or FinalBig. Obviously C&C3/KW is more complicated, but the principle is the same: whatever methods were added in the code have some of front-end interface that lets you adjust their values.

While it would be great if you could write some C++ code directly and save it in a file such that you could modify the game at the most fundamental of levels, I highly doubt that's something they would do. And unfortunately, that's something that would be necessary if you wanted to introduce something like energy into the game.

You just prolonging inevitable...

Lol?

Five Rangers are problem even for Gattling

*SIGH*, no, it's not. A gattling tank can comfortably handle well over 10 rangers on its own, with or without micro. Since it is DESIGNED to kill infantry, it should not get as much experience for doing so. 20XP might make sense for other infantry units that kill rangers, but for gattling tanks, it should be more like 5XP.

[IonorRea]

*SIGH*, no, it's not. A gattling tank can comfortably handle well over 10 rangers on its own, with or without micro. Since it is DESIGNED to kill infantry, it should not get as much experience for doing so. 20XP might make sense for other infantry units that kill rangers, but for gattling tanks, it should be more like 5XP.

Yeah and infantry specialised general promote enemy General or his units on higher rank like never because you use units supposed to be used for killing infantry which will have by your opinion specialy designed useless experience gathering agains units which are supposed to kill.
Hope you don't be among people to play beta on which opinion will be game modified into final... or just stop trolling when you see that your idea is little brainless.

[Golan2781]

personally i dont quite agree with that particular instance, or atleast your perspective

I think we're saying pretty much the same. I know the settings of BHs are sensible from the perspective of balance, but I feel they aren't from the perspective of the game as a whole. Now, if a clearly heavy armor infantry like ZTs could take as much punishment as BHs, that'd work, but BHs look and behave almost the same as all other infantry...
...until they casually walk up to an APC and roast it. If you have to go that far to balance something, you brake the game no matter what, as it removes one of the key strengths of C&C games and Generals in particular.

[EA_Agm]

Yeah and infantry specialised general promote enemy General or his units on higher rank like never because you use units supposed to be used for killing infantry which will have by your opinion specialy designed useless experience gathering agains units which are supposed to kill.
Hope you don't be among people to play beta on which opinion will be game modified into final... or just stop trolling when you see that your idea is little brainless.

Honestly, what the **** are you talking about at this point??????

I *Think* if I understand your attrocious English, that you're complaining that Infantry General will never end up promoting, say, Tank General because infantry do not give off much experience to Gattling Tanks.

But it's quite clear you do not comprehend the point of this blog. The point is that you design the game in such a way that you would have control over how much experience each specific unit gives off to another specific unit. So if you want minigunners and tank hunters to give more experience to Gattling Tanks than Rangers do, you would have that ability....

I really truly fail to see why you think being given MORE control over the experience values of unit, would cause more problems....

[IonorRea]

I try it simpler for you...

In Generals experience reward for killing unit somewhat corespond to avarage difficulty which present destroing this unit with infantry, aircrafts etc.
With your system is player discouraged by experience loss for units or general promotion (in Generals for killing enemy both your unit and you as general obtain same amount of experience) for using adequate tools to do the job.

Second problem is that with more complexity you make diversity easier but balancing harder, not simpler and in case of experience system where isn't much of dispute within players community, its unwanted change to make game more complex if it not neccesery help but made balancing more time/resource consuming.