The Raven Republic Forums

@atdsutm
yeah, matter of fact, i'll try to get that stuff up later this evening. keep in mind that the angles' origin is based on where you're looking (i.e. straight ahead is 0 degrees, and an CAMS angle of 50 degrees means that it'll shoot down from -50 degrees to +50 degrees: a 100 degree width total)

i also noticed that the broken values are also incomplete, are they hard or impossible to find within the game?

Yo Adiyel, Leperman and I've begun working on some hard numbers. Maybe we should all work on some common spreadsheet on google docs or something.

https://spreadsheets0.google.com/spreads...uN0O#gid=8
heres the spreadsheet and some of my balance ideas although they're not complete

btw this sheet is still tentative and ill just reupload and change link if i have finally fully updated this

Just made an excel sheet with the numbers with pictures of parts. Mostly balance ideas for Gens, Rads, and Boosters. We've pretty much finished Gens and we're currently working on Rads, which is very boring to balance. Boosters, we're still thinking of how to give a niche for each one.

Essentially for Gens, we aim to create three basic archetypes of generators for three different weight classes:

Low weight (relative to weight class), low heat, low cap, but low refresh = LOTUS (light) MAGNOLIA (mid) FUDOH (heavy)

Mid weight, Mid heat, mid cap, mid refresh = G78 (light) G91 (mid) KUJAKU (heavy)

High weight, high heat, High cap, high refresh = KONGOH (light) G84P (mid) ORCHID (heavy)

G69 is the odd one out, we just put that as an entry level generator with really light weight and almost low calorific value.

The weight, heat, cap, and refresh are relative to their weight class respectively.

Anyway, these are just preliminary balance ideas. Heck, you can't balance gens without considering rads and boosters, so now I feel From's pain when people keep telling them to balance their game. This shit is really hard.

EDIT: I could switch around the framework, like make the whole thing linear. As weight increases, so does refresh, battery cap, and calorific value. Same goes for radiators. What do you think?

So we're currently using a spreadsheet on googledocs to work on the changes. If you want to participate, please PM me your google account. I'll post a public link one of these days.

For anyone interested, here's the spreadsheet for boosters, generators, and radiators. Still a work in progress.

my google account is...adiyel (!)

i've been through this, and let me tell you, you'll never get it balanced unless you understand that the goal is only to expand the playable pool and have no banned parts, NOT to make every single part as playable as the next. for instance, you want this sorta thing:

>2-3 (LOTUS, G-91, maybe G-84P) playable gens becomes 4-5 playable gens (G-78, new LOTUS*, G-91, new KONGOH, and new ORCHID)
>1-2 playable (ANANDA, and maybe R-92) rads becomes 4-5 (new ANANDA, new LAUREL, new FURUNA, new R-92, and new HAZEL2)

what you don't want is to do what Blizzard is doing in starcraft 2...'cause you'll be perpetually re-balancing. this is how you approach a radiator issue like ANANDA:

>what is its nature/niche? if it has a playable niche that no one else can fill, DON'T CHANGE IT! just exacerbate it... reduce ANANDA's cooling by 100, and increase its emergency consumption to around 3300. this is just enough to allow it to still be a cookie-cutter radiator, and actually considerably be bad in overheat (and a bit more susceptible to it, i might add). see? minimal changes.

to be honest, in order to balance boosters/gens/radiators, you have to understand that they are in practice single units. that is, the b/g/r combo you use is a single unit. so if you want to make the MAGNOLIA more playable, create a radiator and/or booster that is/are gendered towards it specifically. it also involves the same logic you use to solve a sudoku, but you want to start with the boosters (as AC's speed affects so many other aspects, and they're the safest to modify).

it's actually a lot simpler than creating special niches for b/g/r, as FROM actually did a halfway decent job doing so. we all forget that things like FURUNA and ORCHID are not made for anything but tanks, but as-is they're just a dollar short and a day late as far as payoff goes. giving them about 150-200 less weight, 200 less drain, and 400 less calorific would make them amazing on tanks (as their impact on speed is negligible).

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also, i'll take a look at the spreadsheet, but i must warn you all about something VERY important that many of you are not considering: some stat values are repeated in the part's thumbnail and/or 3D model, and thus are not given true representations, but substitutions. for example, values like 'FF' and '64' (255 and 100 in decimal) are very common and are usually substituted (i.e. no stat change!), and groups of zeros are eliminated in the compression. these aren't in exact order or exact to a specific part, but they serve an educational purpose.

a stat list (a non-radar head) that looks like this in decimal:
240 , 199 , 900 , 300 , 460 , 180 , 185 , STANDARD , N/A , N/A , N/A , 251 , 02 , N/A , - , - , - , -

looks like this in hex:
F0 00 , C7 00 , 84 03 , 04 01 , 68 01 , B4 00 , B9 00 , 01 00 , 00 00 , 00 00 , 00 00 , FB 00 , 02 00 , 00 , 00 , 00 00 , 00 00 , 00 00

and could look like this in hex compression:
F0 ?? , C7 00 , 84 ?? , 04 01 , 68 01 , B4 00 , B9 00 , 01 00 C6 , FB 00, 02 00 C8

if anyone understands this, what this means is that you can: partially modify (weight, AP), fully modify (cool, stab, s/e DEF, cpu type, Vs ECM), and can't modify/add (radar, or anything associated with it). sometimes, a stat is sub'd and doesn't even appear; this is especially apparent in FCS capture dimensions and generator calorific values! the inability to change most gens' calorific values will thwart a lot of your modifications before you even get started...!

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all this aside, i have a working (and very interesting) set of boosters, generator, and radiators ready for the next hack. keep working on the spreadsheet** but keep an eye out for the hack. oh yeah, the part break stats are not hard to find at all, i just haven't had the time.

*people just don't realize how similar G-78 is to LOTUS in practice. it's ridiculous, really. most designs that can utilize LOTUS could easily use G-78 instead, especially OB builds. LOTUS is easy and safe to modify so i use it for an alternative generator to the G-91, making G-78 a bit higher on the output and a replacement for the old LOTUS

**as far as tuning goes, if the total amount of weight lost in a generator tune is 100, then even if you increase the normal weight to 10,000 it will still only lose 100 weight when max-tuned for weight. this makes choosing mod-templates a bit difficult, as LAUREL wouldn't be a good template for a light radiator

Super helpful post. Thanks so much as usual, Adiyel. But it's 1:38AM, so will get back to you in the morning. But gotta say that not being able to change calorific value is a real dampener.

Also, would be great if you could expound a bit more on how tuning is computed in the game, and if that's editable too.

there is no such thing as a BGR combo lol

only BG

i think it will be impossible for us to get this right on the first try or even make at least a couple of more parts actually playable, since making the part "playable" will require a lot of play time and testing. We will naturally find ourselves rebalancing one way or another.


could you make a check to what parts stats that are easily changeable and to those that are not? so we could get a heads up for this before even making a spreadsheet of other parts. at least give me a Stat/hex/hexcompresion representation of each different part in the game (from 2 types of heads up to weapons at least)

kinda got flustered hearing that some important stats could not be changed

(05-18-2011, 01:43 AM)atdsutm Wrote: [ -> ]there is no such thing as a BGR combo lol

only BG

i forgot all about ANANDA...sorry

Quote:i think it will be impossible for us to get this right on the first try or even make at least a couple of more parts actually playable, since making the part "playable" will require a lot of play time and testing. We will naturally find ourselves rebalancing one way or another.


could you make a check to what parts stats that are easily changeable and to those that are not? so we could get a heads up for this before even making a spreadsheet of other parts. at least give me a Stat/hex/hexcompresion representation of each different part in the game (from 2 types of heads up to weapons at least)

kinda got flustered hearing that some important stats could not be changed

true about re-balancing, but you can minimize the number of times you do it by making small changes across the board to get a feel of how the meta shifts. lots of play-testing is only necessary when you make huge changes to a few parts in response to something being broken. remember, we want to enable aggressive, and not passive competition.

that would take a long time...besides, the target files that need to be changed in order to make a difference in combat are different each time, but they do follow closely to a scheme that can be found simply by searching for the part's name in the hex editor...

well, lemme say that weapons of all types are easy to change and seldom have any noticeable issues unless you write over something important like a n00b (which i did at first )

you just have to be careful when it comes to internals (FCS, gens and rads, namely gens).

@NiX
you can change calorific values...just not all of them! but i'll be honest, if you gauge a gen's stats by its calorific value, then you already have a nice spread of gens to work with - you just can't get all sentimental with your pet-parts and compromise an entire re-balance because of it.

Thanks for the heads up on the gens. Can you let us know which gens' calorific values can be changed? For the moment we'll just work on defaulting Calorific Value as an untouchable stat and work around it.

(05-18-2011, 05:05 AM)adiyel Wrote: [ -> ]i forgot all about ANANDA...sorry

im just saying that our current radiator is the ananda and we are too used only having one viable radiator in the game and thus our experience in setting up an AC against cooling and radiator combination is "limited"

even more so trying to add new viable radiators will be uncharted territory for us and might end up creating another "ananda" instead of having a couple of viable radiators. (no wonder we cant get this balancing right on the first go)

but i am seeing a lot of possible combination potentials with the amount of stats presented in radiators alongside generators

can we get at least a stat/hex/hexcomp of at least BGRs so we could get a heads up on what can we currently adjust

ok bump
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?auth...N0O#gid=19
finally finished most of the part list (FCS, booster, generator, radiator not included)

ive put some legends markers

-bolded parts means "viable" parts (at least for me)
-(atdsutm's)part changes will show underneath under yellow line
-under black line means are subjective buffs or nerfs that cannot be or not yet quantifiable (blue means buff, red means nerfed).
-put a yellow line again if you want to place a change and black line if necessary
-blue change means buff
-red change means nerfed
-red background means "restricted" or "semi-restricted" parts or a "demonic" parts

haven't forgot about you, guys. but i'm getting ready to head off for a "work" vacation, so it'll delay the release to around early-mid april.

...plus, i need to refresh my mind. but i will get the list of calorific values that can be mod'd before i leave, some time on monday or tuesday.

(05-29-2011, 06:26 AM)adiyel Wrote: [ -> ]haven't forgot about you, guys. but i'm getting ready to head off for a "work" vacation, so it'll delay the release to around early-mid april.

so will it be next year?