Balancing home systems

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Lord Brazen
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Balancing home systems

Postby Lord Brazen » Sun Aug 14, 2005 5:20 pm

Ok, So we can't agree on an overall map balancing method in the other thread (Balance Switch).

How about just balancing the home systems? What method should be used?

Here is something I have been thinking about (It's not finalized).

Each planet generated in the home system is assigned 2 values based on the quality of the planet (excluding the homeworld). One value is for the food quality and another is for the production quality as follows:

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food value=base_food*maintenance_penalty*gravity_penalty*planet_size_value production value=base_prod*maintenance_penalty*gravity_penalty*planet_size_value NOTE: These will be calculated without the effects of race picks.
The planet_size_value used in the calculations above is based on a lookup table bellow:

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Tiny 1 Small 2 Med 5 Large 10 Huge 20
The systems will be built from randomly generated planets of the types and the order listed below. For example, if there are only three planets in the system then only the first three types are generated:
  1. A pure production planet (a planet with a high production value but very low food value)
  2. An average production planet (a planet with a average production value and average food value)
  3. A food planet (a planet with a high food value but very low production value)
  4. Another average production planet (see above)
These rules will also be used in the generation:
  • No Huge pure production planets (as defined above)
  • No Tiny average production planets (pure production is ok)
  • Total of production values (total for all planets in system) must be roughly the same for all players.
  • Total of food values (total for all planets in system) must be roughly the same for all players.
  • All players should have same number of planets in home system.
I'd imagine this would result in fairly balanced homesystems. Maybe some of the rules or formulas need to be adjusted.

Any suggestions?
Last edited by Lord Brazen on Sun Aug 14, 2005 7:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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siron
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Postby siron » Sun Aug 14, 2005 6:05 pm

First impression: Looks very good
But it would be nice to some examples of this balancing procedure.
No Huge pure production planets (as defined above)
I agree.

Actually, I would propose that you also exclude URich NGs.

IMHO your nice planets switch has increased the occurence of these planets significantly...and it is the most powerful tolerant boost I can imagine.

But of course, you could also offer an /nourng switch separately.

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Gusset
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Postby Gusset » Sun Aug 14, 2005 7:33 pm

I see the potential here, LB. Can you expand on how the planets are actually selected? Does each home system get independently built from pre-existing lists of planets for each type, or does it happen once and then copied into all home systems?

I have a bit of a reservation about guaranteeing a rich planet in every home system (assuming "high production value" equates to rich at least). Being one who plays demo races exclusively, my particular bias leads me to the conclusion that such a guarantee would be something of a gift to uni governments. Yes, a rich world is certainly useful to a dictator or demo government, however it does not play into the governmental bonus like it does for uni.

Perhaps any rich world guarantee could have certain limitations. One example could be that the climate has to be crappy (ie toxic or radiated or barren), and kept to medium or small in size. A uni/tol or uni/aqua that finds a wet large rich world waiting for them in their home system on turn 0 just won the game unless an opponent took the same race picks, and I'd hate to see a "balance" algorithm end up skewing an already skewed game further in that direction.

These are first thoughts. Perhaps on further reflection I'll feel differently.

-Gusset

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Postby dirt-bag » Mon Aug 15, 2005 1:38 am

sundiver tried to come up with a solution here, and finally settled on an empty home system, but later gave in to a medium arid due to excessive whining

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StepNRazor
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Postby StepNRazor » Sun Sep 25, 2005 2:13 pm

On the productions sytem can you add a check some thing like.
if base_prod == UR then grav = HvyG.
This will both solve the UR NG and not penalize someone that takes race pick Hvy G (6points)

Can you add a flag to check for Low G. So hw colonies can be assigned to Low G except in the case of overrideing UR check applied for prod colony.

if RACE_GRAV == LOWG then grav = LowG.
Case for UR check becomes.
if base_prod == UR then grav = HvyG.
Else if RACE_GRAVE == LOWG AND then grav = LowG.

you could set all the grav on colonies to match that of race aslo.

Food colony vs lith.
Not sure how much space you have tack on flags or if you can look up race info but a flag to check if Lith is true would help rock farmers you could make thier food colony in greater size vs better crops. A wet world help in food and size, so if liuth perhaps adjust the wet value up a nothch as well as the size value for example for a non lith a med tundra but for a lith becomes large teran. not sure if that is over kill or how much to adjust say like maybe lith gets lrg tundra or med teran. but some compensation for liths would be nice.

Production uni's vs others
Perhaps lifting the check on UR NG or Maybee insure the prod colony for non is UR.
Might set all colonies to same grav as non uni owner, and or set the avg colony on uni to HvyG(once again keeping in mind 6 r-pic HvyG.

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Postby Shownuff! » Sat Oct 22, 2005 1:55 pm

Hi all!

This is my first post, so please forgive this virgin! I am going to writhe out some comments, and hope they help. Thanks so much for the dos version! MOO2 is my all time favorite game. I plan on joining Kali soon so I can play with my 3 friends here in town. We get together and have LAN games, but it is more difficult with kiddos to work out a schedule to all meet.

Each one of us (4 players) disagree on the best racial stats, but we all agree on the problems of the random homeworld systems generated. I am always the host of the group and this is the switch we play with.

/hugestart /goodstart /planets=5 /picks=14 /monsters=199

On the first turn I save the game, then edit using Corion. I want to make the home systems balanced for each player including the AI's. It suxs if a player has 2 or 3 ultra poor or toxic planets and someone else has a gaia or ultra rich. I also believe it should be paramount to NOT loose your home system. Since there are 5 types of mineral planets each planet in the home star gets edited to make up the 5 types, unless a player spent a points to make their homeworld mineral poor or mineral rich. With your /hugestart setting every home star has 1 ultrarich huge barren planet of the default gravity plus their medium (or large) terran (or ocean) planet. I then make the other 3 planets huge, radiated. This makes terraforming and radiation shields tough to bypass or trade for.

My friends and I like the randomization of the other planets, but we all get excited about the different specials. I love Ancient Artifacts, one friend just loves Splinters, one loves Natives, and my last buddy loves Gems and Gold (he wants to buy stuff constantly). (I hate natives and will skip them, cause I do not know how to kill them off when I colonize. Is this possible?) With the monsters=199 It makes almost all of the non homeworld stars more juicy with specials. Monsters also force players to scout, build ships and be more balanced I think than the colony ship star hopping games. It is exciting also to try and take out monsters early with cruisers to get the juicy planets nearby. My strategy is always the same. Colonize all home star planets, scout, build monster killing ships, colonize outside home star. My other friends strategy is different. Some mix up, most attack next stars early and ignore their poor radiated, and ultra poor radiated planets until mid game.

Has this next idea come up yet? I have not seen it, but it would be cool if we could have an external text file that could contain our racial stats per player. I like to have more neat traits, which means more negatives than 10. My friends do not, and some don't even take the full -10. I usually take -23 points, which means I can't take evoluntionary mutation, because it will not accept any new changes because of the -10 setting. Have you noticed that sometimes one of the AI's has not take all their points? or that they give themselves more? I am fine with them taking more (always play Impossible), just not less (which is sure death for that AI).

Ok guys, I know I have been long, but is it clear what I think? Random map, but even home system? Is there a new switch I that will do this now? I do like the idea of just typing switch=50 or switch=60 and it knows what combo it needs to use (could this be a text file?). I love nebulas and black holes. Can be a pain or help keep enemy away.

We always play with Orion and Guardian, but sometimes one of the AI's get it. The Guardian is always edited to make it very hard. Gets a stellar converter, Doom star class, etc. etc. You will always loose at least one ship when you visit Orion. I would like to put this in a text file too, to keep me from having to edit it each time.

My friends I and disagree on some of the ship officers and colony leaders, but we all want Loknar! Hehe. In the beginning we panic when one of the AI's spits out a battleship! Arrrrh! a battleship! I'm doomed! hehehe.

Thanks!

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Postby siron » Tue Oct 25, 2005 1:10 pm

Welcome shownuff!

I look forward to the next time that I will hear the claim our headless chicken dirt-bag plays strange setups. I will refer to your post then. :P
/hugestart /goodstart /planets=5 /picks=14 /monsters=199
Almost everywhere monsters? And some wormholes?
It is exciting also to try and take out monsters early with cruisers to get the juicy planets nearby.
Actually, you just need 4-9 frigates to kill any monster (battlepods with interceptors or mirv). A fast teching demo lith race might work extremely well under your setup. BTW, you play pre or average?
I like to have more neat traits, which means more negatives than 10.
I also thought about this idea. (But not because of challenge, I thought it would be possible to mod better pickcosts then.)
Have you noticed that sometimes one of the AI's has not take all their points? or that they give themselves more?
I had a list where all this bonus picks were listed but I lost it. Dunno if some other player has kept it. Mebbe dirt-bag?

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philcha
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Postby philcha » Wed Dec 05, 2007 9:05 am

I don't go in for multiplayer but I find it frustrating that most maps are unbalanced. So I use Corion, but that gets me into a rut. It would be better if maps were balanced but varied.

The first issue to to define "balanced". I suggest that we leave HWs out of it as that's a race design option, i.e. the software should balance the map and then set HW properties as per race design. Lord B and others have pointed out that the same home and nearby systems can have very different values depending on your race design, and that applies to specials as well as to basic planet properties. I suggest that's something we'd have to live with in the first version - as someone pointed out above, Aqua is only 5 picks because it's a gamble. So at present I'd go for balanced = identical (except for HW). Despite the race design issue, it would still be more balanced on the whole than current maps. Beyond that it may be possible to reduce imbalances between race designs by modding the race design process, e.g. reduce the picks cost of Aqua for those who want to gamble, perhaps increase the cost of Tol and / or Lith - or increase the cost of Colony Ships so that even Unitol needs to do some research to build more than 1 in a decent time, and possibly reduce base pop growth rate but increase the effectiveness of pop techs (Clones. Microbiotics, etc.).

I agree that the most obvious way to get balance is some form of symmetry. I'm surprised that no-one's mentioned that symmetry requires the galaxy to be circular rather than rectangular. Getting enough stars in a circle may require reducing the size of objects on the unzoomed main screen. On the plus side, a circular galaxy would leave spare room for other widgets such a "chess clock".

You can still provide some variety by "mirroring" the segments randomly. That would mean that all stars must be separated from the edge of a segment by at least 1/2 the minimum gap between stars, and nebulae could not overlap segment boundaries.

I remember one management course whose instructors repeatedly said, "Don't let the best be the enemy of the good." I don't expect any balancing method to be perfect, but it's better than finding that you have a rubbish home system and no decent systems within your initial range, then finding out that someone else has a far better start.

Finally, thanks to Lord B for raising this complex issue when he's the one who'll wind up doing the work.


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