Balancing / Damage infliction

[stefanhendriks]

So I've been playing SC2 a lot now. And one of the things I really like, is that it is very well balanced. You can't win with massing a specific unit type, as there is always another unit type that owns it.

Looking at SC2, I see there are several properties involved for calculating damage inflicted to other units. So I'd like to discuss this, perhaps there are other properties that can be used. Eventually I want to rewrite D2TM in such a way so that these properties are used and that each unit from Dune 2 has its own use. (Soldiers for instance are helpfull, all the way in the game).

So, the properties I have found so far:

- hitpoints (life of unit/building)

- Armor

- Light Armor

- Damage (hp) inflicted

- Damage to Armor

- Damage to Light Armor

- Attack speed (ie, every X second)

If I understand correctly, damage is calculated by:

Damage (hp) inflicted - ((Armor - Damage to Armor) + (Light Armor - Damage to Light Armor)).

Here is an example:

Lets say a Soldier has the following properties:

HP: 100

Armor: 0

Light Armor: 1

Damage (hp) inflicted: 10

Damage to Armor: 0

Damage to Light Armor: 1

Lets say a Soldier fights another Soldier, and attacks it.

The amount of damage done to the enemy Soldier would be:

10 - ((0 - 0) + (1 - 1)) = 10 HP

Lets say a Trooper is the same as a Soldier, but has Light Armor = 3 (for the sake of this example). A Soldier attacking a Trooper would inflict:

10 - ((0 - 0) + (3 - 1)) = 10 - 2 = 8 HP

So a Soldier vs Trooper will result in:

- A soldier doing 8 HP damage to a Trooper

- A Trooper doing 10 HP damage to a Soldier

This is just an example, but I believe it is very flexible.

You can also fill in (heavy) Armored units in this. Like Tanks. They have armor and thus recieve less damage from soldiers. With the right amount of HP / Damage properties I believe Tanks could be made 'weak' against Troopers, and Troopers 'strong' against certain tanks. But not all the time.

What do you think?

[X3M]

In StarCraft II, units deal a base amount of damage and may gain a bonus against certain unit types, as opposed to in StarCraft, where damage may be reduced depending on what unit type is being damaged. Damage is added on a "per hit" basis, and bonuses are calculated before armor is subtracted.

Attack types are more varied than in StarCraft, and can gain bonuses towards light, armored, biological, and massive units[3] Most units are either light or armored. Buildings are treated as armored and have the "structure" property. Some units, such as the archon, are neither light nor armored.

Shields are subject to the bonus damage of the unit underneath them.

Got this from: http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Damage_types

So you where almost correct ;)

I like this system more then the system from SC1.

Yet for Dune2 you don't need to implement armor, just add more health and armor types. They use armor because you can upgrade it.

It's obviously clear that you can use the same system. Yet keep in mind, you need to balance the game in each level. Blizzard did this, C&C was the same. Dune2 did not had the system so the units where practicaly all the same types, just stronger with higher costs. Dune2000 allows the 3 races to have infantry and troopers, trikes/raiders and quads. So well balanced in early missions.

If you are going to use this. Make sure the 3 races are balanced in mission 2. If so, then balance the Quad in mission 3. Etc.

Or you do this by making sure the trooper is equal to infantry/infantry squad and trikes/raiders.

Or you start allowing other races to have more different units.

For the first option, i got a thread going somewhere on this forum. The last post of mine has a little story on how i started all over again.

[stefanhendriks]

So basically you're saying I need to rebalance the units in every single player mission again? I never thought of this :)

[X3M]

Well, i don't mean that the stats would be different every mission.

But the game should be well belanced in Level 2.

When the Quad arrives in Level 3, it will be good against some units and bad against other units.

The Combat Tanks and other units after this will be easy to balance. And more specialisation will occur.

All we have to do is decide on what to do on Level 2 and 3. The rest will be logical.

Stefan, could you form an oppinion about my last post in that other thread?