Race vs. Culture

[Taqwus]

For a concrete example with numbers drawn uselessly from my befuddled mind...

Consider a veteran (say, +20% -- reachable easily via the training facilities) ship in an elite fleet (+30%, say) belonging to a fairly aggressive race (+10%, it's expensive in race points) but a normal culture (no +/-). Let him fire a Wave Motion Gun (+30%) at somebody at range 6. Also, he's got Combat Sensors III (+65%).

That's something like +155% offense, ignoring range at the moment.

Say the victim is a cruiser (+10% def due to small size?), is legendary (+47%) but not in a fleet (no bonus -- moral: put warships in fleets, even if they're small). His race and culture are normal wrt combat (no bonus or penalty). His ship has ECM III (+60%), as well as scattering and stealth armor, both level III (something like +15% for each). Figure a total of +147%.

Suppose the base chance to hit at range 1 is 100% (don't remember if it is, but it's close). Subtract 50% for 5 more steps in range, so the base is 50%. Add offense bonus (except weapon bonus), for a total of 175%; subtract defense of 147% -- 28% net, which is in [1,99] so we don't need to adjust it. Then add weapon bonus of +30%, for a total of 58% to hit. If either side had an appropriate facility in the system, it could change further -- e.g. War Shrine III gives something like +15%, so the hit % might be 43% or 73% depending on whose shrine it is.

Morals:
- Put ships in fleets.
- Train ships and fleets. Ship and fleet experience each go up to +50%, if memory serves. Training alone (no combat) will get you to +20%/+20%, which is the equivalent of a lot of race points if your opponents haven't trained to equalize the field.
- Spending 10kt of space on ECM and sensors is *really* worth it. Your opponents will. Would you really miss out on a 65% hit/60% def? You'll a) miss a lot, and b) get pLastered.
- Researching armor high enough to get stealth and scattering armor can really be a good thing, to; w/o them, the defender would have been hit w/ prob 78%.
- The religious talisman is nice, because otherwise defending bonuses can readily deny you the nice certainty that your salvos will be effective. Likewise, fighting in Holy Space (by which I mean having both war and death shrines; +15% combat bonus, +15% or so damage bonus) makes a difference.

[dmm]

You forgot ramming, which always hits. (Of course, you have to get right next to the enemy and have one movement left. And any shields you may have are worthless.)

[Torkle]

Thanks for all the quick answers.

I'm modifying the Cultures.txt file to be balanced with respect to the racial characteristic costs and needed to know how to compare all of them. For instance, each point in the cultural trait Space Combat should be four times more expensive than each point in Ground Combat since Space Combat is the equivalent of the racial characteristics Aggressiveness and Defensiveness, both of which are double-cost racial characteristics, while Ground Combat is equivalent to the racial characteristic Physical Strength (which is normal cost).

PS - I found the section in Settings.txt spoken of earlier in this thread:

Combat Base To Hit := 100
Combat To Hit Modifier Per Square := 10

[Jourin]

Torkle

I already did that. Check out the Excel spreadsheet included in my Culture.zip file. It balanced all the culture traits based on an equal amount of racial points. I used 800 points based on putting a 2 in all categories for neutral (making neutral a playable culture).

[Torkle]

And why not make Neutral culture the default (and still viable) at zero overall points? That seems more reasonable to me. Here's my revised list:

http://www.io.com/~torkle/spacemp.html#culture

Every culture balances out to zero points.

[Jourin]

Whatever works for you. My goal and yours was to balance the cultures so one culture does not get an unfair advantage.

I analyzed the original culture values and found a range from +525 for Berserkers and Warriors to a -450 for engineers. Explains why Berserkers and Warriors where the favorite culture of all the modded races.

I wanted to keep the values as close to the original as possible without penalizing any of the cultures since people got used to the bonuses from the original text file. Some of the great AIs in the TDM mod pack used the warrior and berserker culture and I did not want to make those AIs less effective. Therefore I wanted a standard number at least +525. Putting a 1 in all values for neutral gave me +400 and a 2 gave me +800. Therefore I used +800 as my base. From a personal standpoint I like 2s in everything for neutral instead of 0s. Makes me want to play a neutral culture more.

To me, the critical piece is not the actual numbers, but that the cultures are balanced and neutral is a playable culture. You method is as good as mine.

[ 06 December 2001: Message edited by: Jourin ]

[ 06 December 2001: Message edited by: Jourin ]

[jimbob]

So then, the questions I have are...

1) Jourin: when you modify the cultural values, do they end up looking something like the ones from Torkles' table (see website)? If so, should this become the new standard for multi-player play?

2) Anyone: what happens to the Berserker & Warrior AI when we take away their unfair advantage by boosting other cultures' values?