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RTS Battle Of The Sands (from KoTC developer)

DraQ

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Why do developers even put hit point bars on units when you have this many?
Because apparently there is something about HPs that fucks with your brain and turns you into a HP zombie.

You know what would work best for an RTS?
Small, hidden HP pool per unit (only displaying as damaged or undamaged, possibly using visual cues only), attacks doing randomized damage in such range that one hit kills are definite possibility (like in original HP systems, before the HP cancer took over), and vulnerability matrix (as in tanks take no damage from anything but heavy cannons, AT missiles and above, light armoured vehicles are impervious to small arms, but can be damaged by heavy MGs and SR and above, infantry gets damaged or killed by pretty much everything and so on). Some armour to mitigate damage from borderline cases via small DTs.
The rest would be a function of range, rate of fire, unit's aiming time, visibility, mobility and mode of firing.

I really can't get into RTS with this many units, with their meaningless little hit point bars above them. Hordes of orcs I can do, but hordes of tanks bore me. Mohawk sporting bikers in chaps MAYBE, hordes of trikes and dune buggies possibly, and tanks... no no no. WHERE DOES THE METAL COME FROM?! HOW DO THEY NAVIGATE AROUND THE HULKS?! WHY IS THERE NO RECYCLING?!
This. It's 2013, nothing stands in the way of implementing dynamic terrain and wreckage. It's not that much work even for lone programmer, and your computer can handle this.

There's no strategy in horde vs horde.
Well, micro doesn't necessarily imply tactics and vice versa, but typical RTS has giant fuzzball of units colliding with another giant fuzzball of units, so yeah.

I would recommend Homeworld 1 and Dark Reign 1 as detox, though.
 

Baron

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Small, hidden HP pool per unit (only displaying as damaged or undamaged, possibly using visual cues only), attacks doing randomized damage in such range that one hit kills are definite possibility (like in original HP systems, before the HP cancer took over), and vulnerability matrix (as in tanks take no damage from anything but heavy cannons, AT missiles and above, light armoured vehicles are impervious to small arms, but can be damaged by heavy MGs and SR and above, infantry gets damaged or killed by pretty much everything and so on). Some armour to mitigate damage from borderline cases via small DTs. The rest would be a function of range, rate of fire, unit's aiming time, visibility, mobility and mode of firing.
I like your thinking. Although I have a hardcore RTS friend who wouldn't. One year we were both running Play-by-Mails games, mine had a random component to success whereas his didn't. He was a big believer in the player's skill being everything to determine victory, and not getting shafted by bad luck. As much as I like an unpredictable game I conceded he had a point.

But your armour system I like a lot. They had a similar system in Palladium's Rifts, given a guy could smash another guy's face in with a baseball bat, but he can hammer away all day at a tank and do zero damage. Developers should be always pushing new features of classic games otherwise, fuckit, I'll just play the old games. I really liked Soldak's Din's Curse, despite finding Diablo games brain dead. Soldak stepped it up a notch, the world was dynamic, everything you did mattered. Was chaotic frantic fun with consequences to actions.

I missed playing Homeworld when it came out, always meant to play it. Did play a bit of Sins of a Solar Empire and enjoyed that.
 

DraQ

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Small, hidden HP pool per unit (only displaying as damaged or undamaged, possibly using visual cues only), attacks doing randomized damage in such range that one hit kills are definite possibility (like in original HP systems, before the HP cancer took over), and vulnerability matrix (as in tanks take no damage from anything but heavy cannons, AT missiles and above, light armoured vehicles are impervious to small arms, but can be damaged by heavy MGs and SR and above, infantry gets damaged or killed by pretty much everything and so on). Some armour to mitigate damage from borderline cases via small DTs. The rest would be a function of range, rate of fire, unit's aiming time, visibility, mobility and mode of firing.
I like your thinking. Although I have a hardcore RTS friend who wouldn't. One year we were both running Play-by-Mails games, mine had a random component to success whereas his didn't. He was a big believer in the player's skill being everything to determine victory, and not getting shafted by bad luck. As much as I like an unpredictable game I conceded he had a point.
I don't really buy bitching about bad luck. Well used randomness isn't about making your game a slot machine. It's about forcing player to be robust. Being able to plan for uncertain outcomes is also player's skill. A good engineer won't design stuff for pinpoint parameters and then bitch about RNG hating him when it flies apart because actual conditions differed slightly from what he designed for. A good programmer is jokingly referred to as someone who looks both ways when crossing one way street.
If some random event collapses your strategy like a house made of cards, then it was fucking shitty strategy to begin with.

I missed playing Homeworld when it came out, always meant to play it. Did play a bit of Sins of a Solar Empire and enjoyed that.
Homeworld is great, but it's relatively high-micro.

Dark Reign is an example of relatively low-micro game, because of great variety of all sorts of AI settings, scripts, commands and such, plus it has awesome line of sight and terrain mechanics, especially accounting for the fact that it's a 2D game.

You know what would work best for an RTS?
Amazing how you always know the best design for just about anything right off the bat.
Isn't it?
:smug:
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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The problem with random factors (especially in a PvP scenario) is that you're going to have them crop up more than once. And more than one random factor means a bell curve of the cumulative effect. Being at the wrong end of that curve utterly ruins a game. No amount of strategy is going to compensate for your soldiers shooting themselves in the foot while the enemy snipes out their pupils despite having the same level of training. And more importantly, in a match between players with close levels of skill (which is the norm at high levels of play, where the difference between the top 1 and 2% is incredibly minor, nevermind the top 10 and 20 players) even a small RNG advantage can make the difference.

So I don't think RNG should be in a PvP game really. PvP inherently has elements of randomness in the form of the enemy player being unpredictable. That's more than enough luck and uncertainty.

Single player is an entirely different matter of course.
 

Raghar

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Small, hidden HP pool per unit (only displaying as damaged or undamaged, possibly using visual cues only), attacks doing randomized damage in such range that one hit kills are definite possibility (like in original HP systems, before the HP cancer took over), and vulnerability matrix (as in tanks take no damage from anything but heavy cannons, AT missiles and above, light armoured vehicles are impervious to small arms, but can be damaged by heavy MGs and SR and above, infantry gets damaged or killed by pretty much everything and so on). Some armour to mitigate damage from borderline cases via small DTs.
Well I was designing and making these systems and majority of what you described. That stuff you wrote don't work. BTW look at steel panthers WaW to see something which works. But it's not exactly simple.
The rest would be a function of range, rate of fire, unit's aiming time, visibility, mobility and mode of firing.

Well real world tanks typically hide behind the hill, and then jump at you from behind.
So RPM isn't THAT much important, because it takes a while until targets find what kills them traverse turrets and return fire. (while doing evasive maneuvers)

Well, micro doesn't necessarily imply tactics and vice versa, but typical RTS has giant fuzzball of units colliding with another giant fuzzball of units, so yeah.

Play Supcom FA, while upgrading MX to T2 and using T1 units with enough production facilities allows some furball tactic, it's degenerate because game developers never asked themselves what would happen when someone would use T2 level of resources to produce T1 level units. It works on T2 units and T3 MX as well to some extend, but they tend to run to T3 to have mobile artillery to break turtles. Which happens because they try to resist T1 hordes.

Battle Of The Sands reminds me of AI wars. Also relatively simple GFX and relatively simple playing model which depended on not screwing AI. In this case behavior of group of units.

Well what did you expected from a small developer? I for example would have problem with GFX, and I doubt small developers can get around this problem easily. Though I prefer when a small developer would release few stuff as freeware, forces someone to spend money on him, perhaps some aggressive fan would know someone important and would create some financing/GFX/sound for small developer. Or well you wanted a GFX without giving it to original author for free? Tough luck.

Artists are idiots who expect every theirs image is equivalent of Da Vinci, and well I seen 10x more volunteers for programming jobs (because they wanted to learn stuff, which they can't at schools.
 

DraQ

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The problem with random factors (especially in a PvP scenario) is that you're going to have them crop up more than once. And more than one random factor means a bell curve of the cumulative effect.
You do realize that "cumulative effect" of multiple random factors is far less random than any of them alone, right?

Whether RNG has place in PvP is debatable, but I'd say it depends.
If that PvP game is meant to be clean and abstract affair, a contest of distilled skill with simple and minimalistic ruleset (see Go), then probably not.
If that PvP game has been designed with any thematic or simulationist considerations in addition to being a PvP game, then hell yes.

Well I was designing and making these systems and majority of what you described. That stuff you wrote don't work.
You'll need to do better than that.

BTW look at steel panthers WaW to see something which works. But it's not exactly simple.
RTS games do tend to be fairly simple, so I'm sketching out system that would work in them.

Well real world tanks typically hide behind the hill, and then jump at you from behind.
So RPM isn't THAT much important, because it takes a while until targets find what kills them traverse turrets and return fire. (while doing evasive maneuvers)
Well, RPM does seem to have some meaning given how popular all sorts of MGs are IRL. Difficult to hit (for whatever reason) or numerous units may be better dealt with high ROF weapon.

(Also suppressive fire)

Well what did you expected from a small developer? I for example would have problem with GFX, and I doubt small developers can get around this problem easily.
Find stock images with permissive licenses or even shoot some photos of various surfaces to base terrain textures on. As for units and buildings you can at the very least take masked sprite you've made, then stick a translated, transparent copy of mask underneath as simplistic shadow, possibly repeat for protruding bits if the object is meant to be highly vertical. It's not creative process, because it uses what you already have, so it takes no actual artistic skill, but it will vastly improve the feeling of three-dimensionality.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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The problem with random factors (especially in a PvP scenario) is that you're going to have them crop up more than once. And more than one random factor means a bell curve of the cumulative effect.
You do realize that "cumulative effect" of multiple random factors is far less random than any of them alone, right?
No they aren't.

5d5 is a lot less random than 1d21 + 4 (thats what a bell curve is compared to an even distribution) but it's not 'less random' than 1d5. The potential difference goes from 5-1 to 25-5. Picking one guy at random out of 500 people doesn't get you any less variation than one guy out of ten. And there can be a greater total difference between Any two groups of 10 people than there can between any two individuals, and the average variance (like say, the difference in combined height of each group) is going to be the same (or slightly greater maybe, I forget which.)
 

Raghar

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BTW look at steel panthers WaW to see something which works. But it's not exactly simple.
RTS games do tend to be fairly simple, so I'm sketching out system that would work in them.
Was Ground control simple? Was Close combat simple? Supcom FA? SoSE?

Well first you call RTS simple, then you are designing something even more simple.

Well real world tanks typically hide behind the hill, and then jump at you from behind.
So RPM isn't THAT much important, because it takes a while until targets find what kills them traverse turrets and return fire. (while doing evasive maneuvers)
Well, RPM does seem to have some meaning given how popular all sorts of MGs are IRL. Difficult to hit (for whatever reason) or numerous units may be better dealt with high ROF weapon.
Well we talked about tank combat.

(Also suppressive fire)
I heard troops that did supressive fire with 7.xx mm were told to avoid shooting when theirs M113 was between them and target. Risking few bullets into back was something a fluffy M113 wasn't guaranteed to survive.

But I doubt BTMB-84 would mind something less than 70mm.

Well what did you expected from a small developer? I for example would have problem with GFX, and I doubt small developers can get around this problem easily.
Find stock images with permissive licenses or even shoot some photos of various surfaces to base terrain textures on. As for units and buildings you can at the very least take masked sprite you've made, then stick a translated, transparent copy of mask underneath as simplistic shadow, possibly repeat for protruding bits if the object is meant to be highly vertical. It's not creative process, because it uses what you already have, so it takes no actual artistic skill, but it will vastly improve the feeling of three-dimensionality.

Complain about that to the developer. I guess they would add it into the list after make xmas tree item, when you'd be lucky.
 

Raghar

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re image under his name

Cute Tails.

JVnyZby.jpg

I liked this one as well.

And also Tails look kickass in this: http://i.imgur.com/uR3UH.jpg However original account on deviant art was already killed.
 

Johannes

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The problem with random factors (especially in a PvP scenario) is that you're going to have them crop up more than once. And more than one random factor means a bell curve of the cumulative effect.
You do realize that "cumulative effect" of multiple random factors is far less random than any of them alone, right?
No they aren't.

5d5 is a lot less random than 1d21 + 4 (thats what a bell curve is compared to an even distribution) but it's not 'less random' than 1d5. The potential difference goes from 5-1 to 25-5. Picking one guy at random out of 500 people doesn't get you any less variation than one guy out of ten. And there can be a greater total difference between Any two groups of 10 people than there can between any two individuals, and the average variance (like say, the difference in combined height of each group) is going to be the same (or slightly greater maybe, I forget which.)
The bigger the sample size, the closer to the expected average result you're likely to get in an empiric test.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Closer relative to the total possible variation yes. But the relative average isn't what is relevant here, it's the actual number in a specific circumstance. If you flip a coin once and give it to the guy who called it, at most, he'll have one more coin than the other guy. If you flip 50 coins, on average they'll both get 25 coins, but if every game is automatically won by a guy who gets 5 more coins than the other guy, that's small comfort unless you're doing best of 17 matches. And you can't possibly have any fewer games where one guy gets 5 more coins than the other guy by adding more coinflips, you were already at 0% chance with 1 coin.
 
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Damned Registrations, I don't follow your thread of logic. My knowledge of statistics prevents me from being able to comprehend something so wrong.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Your knowledge of statistics is being misused then.

Suppose we have a race between olympic atheletes. And we add 1 second to the finishing time of one or the other if a coin comes up heads or tails.

If we do one race, it's extremely random. If we do many races, it's not very random. But that isn't what we're dicking with here. We're dicking with the number of coins being flipped. And flipping 6 coins is never going to introduce LESS luck into the outcome of this race than 5 coins, because 6 coins has the variance of 5 coins + the 6th.

If things actually worked that way, you could roll 50000000000000d6 in monopoly and always land on the exact same square 99.99~% of the time. That isn't how shit works. The chance of a perfectly balanced outcome stays the same the more dice you roll.

What we want to do is land on 101. Doing 97 + 1d6 does that more often (one in six) than 94 + 2d6 (one in seven), and both do it more often than 31 + 20d6 it's all the same 1 in 6 chance. Except 97+ 1d6 never ever gets you to 130 like 31+20d6 might.

(Was pulling the 7 from the 2d6 being the most common roll into the 1 in 6 chance of getting it as a result.)

Edit: the proper example that has finally come to mind is that if you want average characters in DnD, you're better off rolling 3d6 than rolling 7d6 -14. The first is very clearly less random than the one resulting in people with strength values ranging from negatives to demigod status.
 

Damned Registrations

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Are you trolling or is this math seriously too much for you?

7+ 1d6 gives a result between 8 and 13. If you used it to roll stats for DnD characters and then had them fight, there'd be very little variation. 1 out of 3 results give you 10 or 11, with no modifier.

3d6 gives a result between 3 and 18. If you used it to roll stats for DnD characters and then had them fight, there'd be a TON of variation, with only 1 out of 4 results giving you a 10 or 11 with no modifier. And the guy that rolled the 3 con weakling would get his ass handed to him.

More dice = more random.
 
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OK, now that you have simplified your argument down to something that is no longer in the "not even right or wrong" category, I can say that you are clearly wrong.

What matters is the probability curve, not the absolute numbers. 1d6 has more variation than 3d6 statistically. The absolute deviance will be greater but on a percentage of the mean basis it has less variation.

Furthermore, on a completely separate issue (pertaining to your example) you are arbitrarily redefining the upper and lower bounds of the rolling and then pointing out that, OMG, the upper and lower bounds are different. The "more dice" version of 7 + 1d6 is 7 + 2d3, or 7 + 3d2. These have far less variation. (No the bounds don't work perfectly because dice are shitty and incapable of rolling 0).
 

Raghar

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Your knowledge of statistics is being misused then.

Suppose we have a race between olympic atheletes.
Everyone knows Kiprotich wins. And when he will not participate, then Kenya would win.

That's quite bad example, racing isn't dependent on random events.

Edit: the proper example that has finally come to mind is that if you want average characters in DnD, you're better off rolling 3d6 than rolling 7d6 -14. The first is very clearly less random than the one resulting in people with strength values ranging from negatives to demigod status.

Well starting characters should be extraordinary, so it's 4D6 remove worst dice. Or 5D6 remove two worst dices.

Furthermore, on a completely separate issue (pertaining to your example) you are arbitrarily redefining the upper and lower bounds of the rolling and then pointing out that, OMG, the upper and lower bounds are different. The "more dice" version of 7 + 1d6 is 7 + 2d3, or 7 + 3d2. These have far less variation. (No the bounds don't work perfectly because dice are shitty and incapable of rolling 0).


It's not the same, you'd need 5 + 3D2.
1D6 - 1 can roll 0.
 

Damned Registrations

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Except it's not.

""cumulative effect" of multiple random factors is far less random than any of them alone"

2d3 was not a random factor of 7+1d6. 1d6 was the only random factor. You CAN'T add random factors to 1d6 and make it LESS random. (Never mind that 2d3 doesn't even average out to the same number as 1d6... probability too hard?)

You're arbitrarily redefining the random element of the factors from 1d6 to 1d3 or 1d2. If you're assigning HP totals to units, giving them 1d2 + 10 is going to be less random than any possible number of 1d2 dice. More importantly, if instead (as would be the case with what Draq wanted, with people dying in one shot etc.) you're giving units 1d6 hp period, having 10 of them is really fucking random. They could all get mowed down by a squad of 5 guys they should have a clear advantage against through numbers just because of shitty hp rolls. Which would be a stupid way to resolve a game. And adding accuracy and shit into the mix makes it even worse.

The upper and lower bounds of the random chance are what matters. And the only way to keep them low is to make the randomness in the game negligible, since you're going to be multiplying any randomness in a game many times over, for every hp roll, to hit roll, damage roll, etc. You can't have a variation like 'takes between one and umpteen shots to kill' on a unit and not get a huge difference between boundaries. Even half a dozen dead units can be the difference between victory or defeat. And the boundaries you want are literally zero and infinity.
 
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It's not the same, you'd need 5 + 3D2.

No, that doesn't work. 5+3d2 has a bound of 8 to 11. 7 + 1d6 has a bound of 8 to 13

7 + 1d6 is effectively 8 + [0..5], and 5 is a prime number so you can't divide it cleanly. You'd need to roll 6 + 1d3 + 1d4 if you wanted the correct example that matched the bounds and gave you a less-random result.
 
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Except it's not.

""cumulative effect" of multiple random factors is far less random than any of them alone"

2d3 was not a random factor of 7+1d6. 1d6 was the only random factor. You CAN'T add random factors to 1d6 and make it LESS random. (Never mind that 2d3 doesn't even average out to the same number as 1d6... probability too hard?)

As I said, blame dice. If you want the perfect bounds you need 1d3 + 1d4 - 1. Dice are stupid.

You're arbitrarily redefining the random element of the factors from 1d6 to 1d3 or 1d2. If you're assigning HP totals to units, giving them 1d2 + 10 is going to be less random than any possible number of 1d2 dice. More importantly, if instead (as would be the case with what Draq wanted, with people dying in one shot etc.) you're giving units 1d6 hp period, having 10 of them is really fucking random. They could all get mowed down by a squad of 5 guys they should have a clear advantage against through numbers just because of shitty hp rolls. Which would be a stupid way to resolve a game. And adding accuracy and shit into the mix makes it even worse.

The upper and lower bounds of the random chance are what matters. And the only way to keep them low is to make the randomness in the game negligible, since you're going to be multiplying any randomness in a game many times over, for every hp roll, to hit roll, damage roll, etc. You can't have a variation like 'takes between one and umpteen shots to kill' on a unit and not get a huge difference between boundaries. Even half a dozen dead units can be the difference between victory or defeat. And the boundaries you want are literally zero and infinity.

:retarded:

I... just... I can't go on.

No one has said that adding randomness makes games less random. That's all you are proving, that adding randomness makes games more random.

The more times random events OCCUR the less statistical randomness there is.

TL;DR
1d6 is random
2d3 is less random
3d2 is even less random
3 is the least random.

Wow, it's like you managed to confuse yourself and try to disprove the entire foundation of mathematics in your ramblings.
 

circ

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KoTC was a decent game. Compared to a modern AAA game it's even fine. But story was really bad and AI was predictable after a while + ridiculously OP crafting broke everything.

This on the other hand looks like a shitty Dune II clone.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Ok then smartass, explain to me how you can have a random element in a game, multiply it by a thousand (since you're going to fire that many shots at enemy units in a long game) and not have it be incredibly fucking random?

You're the one trying to tell me that the edges of a bell curve don't exist you fucking retard.
 
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Ok then smartass, explain to me how you can have a random element in a game, multiply it by a thousand (since you're going to fire that many shots at enemy units in a long game) and not have it be incredibly fucking random?

You're the one trying to tell me that the edges of a bell curve don't exist you fucking retard.

Do... you...understand...what...a...bell...curve...is?

Go watch a game of WC3 and tell me how games are so random because every unit has randomized damage.
 

Smashing Axe

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Divinity: Original Sin
I think you guys might find this useful in the argument you're having.

http://anydice.com/

Use it to generate a probability curve for dice.
 

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