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True. I remember 3 moments where I had to adjust my calculations as well. 1. The formula all above in this topic has movement speed and attack range on the same side. That is wrong. Because 0 damage with infinite attack range would make the unit infinite expensive. And a lot of formula's on the internet do the same. Why was it there in the first place? Many thought that a longer attack range would add to the durability of an unit. While true, it is movement speed that truely adds to durability, simply by moving away. 2. Attack range on equal grounds as movement speed? That didn't stay too long. Many games showed that the attack range is taking place on a 2d field. While movement is 1d. What I mean is that if you have a terrain. And you want to reach your target. Using movement, would need you to move to every spot possible on the map in case of the most crowded map with impassable terrain. As for attack range, a simple direct trajectory is the case in 99.9% of the RTS games. This means that the average terrain creates a factor between the movement and attack range. You only notice the effect of long range weapons if the designers did it wrong. I noticed this in Red Alert 2 with the Prism Tanks, but also the sniper and the GI inside a IFV. 3. The size of units. The combat density is one that is done wrong more than other value's. And this includes a limit on units as well. I started to look into this a lot more when I was making Starcraft/Broodwar maps with an altered RPS. The Siege Tanks in there are actually super small and packed together. Especially when I applied my own rules. According to my calculations, the Siege Tanks would cost 800, while marines cost 100. First, I thought it was the cumulative versus squared rule. But I quickly could rule this out. I discovered that due to the size effects, eventually I had to ram up the cost to 1200. This is over 10 years ago by now. As for theory and practise. I never said that you make it with theory alone. There are still aspects like: - Player Skills Slow/fast, dumb/smart, where do you place your balance? - Resource managment Testing on money maps, show the best results - Visuals How much can players see? Highest attack range, like in Warcraft 2? Or lowest tier attack range, like in Warzone2100? What about fog of war? - Special designs/Unique functions Some units, you need only 1 or 2 of. Maybe 3. Or a dedicated squad. If you build too little or too much of them, they don't serve their function anymore. Sounds like the Flame ATV from KKnD  But, the buggy/bike from the C&C games is similar. Which are great example for the 3 practical balances regarding the Flame ATV: A player needs to be smart. As for being fast, not sure, maybe? Resource managment in the map has to be relatively low. The unit is cost efficient, but only at a small number. Spamming has no use due to short range attacks. Visuals is not a key here. 1 can do the job. But if the enemy defends properly, Build like 4 to 6. No more. Or use 2 squads of 4. It depends on the map layout and defence structures. Their purpose? Find unquarded enemy structures. Preferably the resource managment of the enemy. As for the Buggy/Bike: A player needs to be fast. Resource managment requires the player to have decent defences as well. where it matters. As for attacking, a nice mix of buggies and bikes is what matters. Visuals is key here. There is a lot of FoW in C&C3. While in C&C td the vision for the player is simply small. You attack all over the place. In C&C td, 6 bikes. Or you spam them. In C&C3 you spam them anyways. The buggies are there for being fodder and dealing with some infantry if needed. But also to create even more chaos for the enemy. You poke all over the place. Until you get the upper hand and snowball your way into the enemy. In KKnD it is more of a tactical move, part of a grander strategy. In C&C3, clearly it is RTS all the way with that tactic. The player simply needs to see for when it needs to switch tactics at the right time.

I dunno, mate. maybe it's just cuz I'm a hands-on learner, but I've played KKND and this still sounds both overcomplicated and oversimplified at the same time... there are so many more factors that define a unit's strengths or weaknesses there was one concept you brought up that's particularly comprehensible to me though 😛 how I tried to balance the Summers' Solstice campaign was through units' roles, or functions as you put it, as opposed to on an individual basis. so even if we've got some new stuff here or there, they fall into certain categories and their strengths and weaknesses are representative of the category they belong to like Shock Raiders, for instance. fast, high damage, low durability. excels over open terrain, swarming targets. bad in head-on frontal assault. very similar to Quads, Raiders, Flame Tanks, other stuff like that even that example accounts for movement speed, effective weapon range, and other stuff like that too though. not just health and damage a lot of theory falls apart in practice, I've found. you know what they say: in theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. in practice, there most certainly is a difference 😆

The post from Posted August 4, 2013 contains a mistake in the calculations. While it was used for a board game. It doesn't work that way. I never corrected that one. A few extra modifications on these, and you can use most of them for RTS as well. I see some on the internet. Assuming that they differ due to different game mechanics in their RTS. Most common used formula's in my department Main balance formula: Stats = a * ( Body + Weapon ) + b * ( 2* sqrt( Body * Weapon ) ) / ( a+b ) Initial H/D ratio. You simply pick a number that indicates how many turns or seconds a basic ammount of damage is needed for destroying a basic ammount of health: = HDratio Normally: Cost = Stats = Size Used for stacking cover mechanics. The SumSize gives different proportions to units that take cover inside things: SumSize = Body + Weapon Used for hiding cover mechanics. The Size of a design can also decide on the combat density of an army. Smaller means a higher density: %Cost = %Stats / sqrt( %Size ) Basicly, if the size is only 25% of what it is supposed to be. The costs will double. I left the %Stats in there, it is always 100% stats, so you can replace it with a 1. Please note that the Armor mechanic works completely different in every RTS game. In some, its subtraction. In others, it is part of a RPS system. Here it is part of a "RPS system" and receives a weight percentage: Body = %Armor * Health * %BodyAttributes * ( Speed + HDratio ) / HDratio Map design can be of influence on movement and projectile movement. Most modifications are withing the Attributes. But there is always a fixed factor between the Body and Weapon calculation: = Rf Personally, I always use 1.5 here. But the average number in RTS is actually sqrt( 2 ). %Damage is the mirror of %Armor: Weapon = %Damage * Damage * %WeaponAttributes * ( Rf * Range + HDratio ) HDratio Some designs can move AND attack at the same time: Weapon = %Damage * Damage * %WeaponAttributes * ( Speed + Rf * Range + HDratio ) HDratio Instead of simple Damage, you can also add in a SalvoFactor or DPS number in the Weapon formula above. However, the SalvoFactor is a sum of the moments that damage is dealt. And each moment has its own weight: SalvoFactor = Sum of all DamageMoments DamageMoment = (( HDratio / ( HDratio + 1 ) ) ^Moment ) / HDratio Salvo's can contain smaller salvo's. With each smaller salvo having its own moment weight. A simple example; if you pick a HDratio of 5 seconds. And the weapon shoots every second. With the first moment at exactly 1 second. The second moment at exactly 2 seconds, etc. The SalvoFactor will be 1. If you however start at 0 seconds immediately, your SalvoFactor will be 1.2. And to balance this, the damage should be 5/6th. A HDratio of 5 is actually very short. The fun starts when you consider a higher cooldown. So you fire every 5 seconds after the first one being on 0 seconds? The SalvoFactor here will be 0.33438. In a sense, this design may deal roughly 3 times more damage in order to be balanced again. In my boardgame, splash damage works different than in RTS games. In RTS games, there are several ways. But the main rule is that it is a yes/no mechanic, depending on the targets choices. This means that an explosion causing splash damage, will get an 50% extra weight for each additional possible target. In most RTS, smaller units can receive more damage this way. In rarer occasions, there is a maximum ammount of targets that actually get hit in the explosion. This is based on the fact that certain units absorb the damage, like in real life. This factor is often put in the %WeaponAttributes: %WeaponAttributes = 1 + 0.5 * NumberOfPossibleTargets If the game allows lower damage value's, further away from the centre of the explosion: %WeaponAttributes = 1 + 0.5 * %Exploson * NumberOfPossibleTargets + 0.5 * %Exploson2 * NumberOfPossibleTargets2 + ...

It is not the core. It is the giftpackage that finishes it.  In order to understand it. I explained it with the 2 most basic value's. As practical example. Where I got this idea from would be KKnD. KKnD is the best example. Here you can tell which units act as tanks and which as support. These tanks often move forward too. The AI shoots at the units that are the closest. The player can get an advantage here by aiming for easy soft targets that normally give dps. The units that are tanky, compared to their damage: Survivors have the Anaconda Tank and ATV. But also the Swat, these infantry are relatively cheap, but very durable in small forces combat. The Mutants have the Monster Truck, which just so happens to be 99,9% balanced to the ATV. And the Mastodon is the equivalent of the Anaconda Tank. They excel in their durability. And their infantry version would be the shotgunner. While the game has a lot of assymetry. The functional uses of the units are almost always, the same. My boardgame was another example. But that project slowly died due to creeping. As for other RTS. You can tell the absense of this root factor in C&C td. As for the core for balance. The H/D ratio, is THE key number for the weight factors of the movement speed, attack range, salvo (or dps, but cooldown and charging included). Map design also adds weight to the attack range. Body has the health, movement speed and other body related value's. Weapon has the attack range and salvo. As for the whole game balance. You have a basic formula. Based on the H/D ratio. Then you wrap it up with the root factor. Getting advanced? If you wonder if your H/D ratio changes due to having more or less support combat units. You could recalculate this one. And recalculate the entire list, assuming all units are used equally. A little macro. And you end up with a mathimatically balanced list. Still theory. Playtests will show how much players truly use certain units. Now for the fun part. Upgrade the list with the weight factors on how often the units are build. If they weight more. Their influence on the H/D ratio will weight more as well. Recalculate the entire list again. I believe that C&C3 didn't use the root factor to begin with. But I suspect they did use a matrix balance on multiplayer results. C&C3 also has an important factor...Size, thus the combat density sometimes matters when large armies are used. And another factor that matters with low unit counts. Would be the fodder/tank ratio. 

it sounds a bit too basic to really work out ^^ there are so many other factors to consider in a unit's power. maybe as a starting principle, but certainly not as the core of balance decisions and whatnot do you have some kind of example to showcase the success of this method?  a practical example, not... not more math