Need some help - ammo balance issues

[Vault Dweller]

What if rather than adjusting damage you adjust criticals?

I prefer to handle it through Critical Strike skill, although I agree that some weapons should probably have some CS modifiers, reflecting their designs.

Wouldn't you want to aim for somewhere important?

I assume that most people aim for something important, but hitting a moving target exactly where you aim could be complicated, no?

I don't remember if you're doing called shots, but if not the crit adjusment would take that into account anyway.

Yes. We have Aimed Shots targeting head, torso, arms, legs. A successful hit may* knock you out (head), ignore armor (torso), disarm (arms), cripple (legs) or cause massive damage to vital organs.

* depends on your critical strike skill.

I could easily see an experienced marksman carrying different types of arrows who worked out a system to automatically draw the appropriate arrow for the selected target where it would cause no appreciable penalty. I'd imagine anyone who'd bother getting different types of arrows would arrange something like that. Maybe regular arrows have the main advantage that they're common, while you'd have a more limited selection of sellers for the specialty arrows. Arrows you loot from non-marksmen would also tend to be the plain vanilla ones.

Makes sense.

 

[Sarvis]

So you're set with this then? I was going to play with the numbers but I was too tired last night...

 

[callehe]

galaish is right, multipliers is the way to go. Addition and substraction only will probably make it difficult to balance and change later on.

 

[Sarvis]

A thought occurred: You shouldn't be putting the onus of DR modifications on the weapons themselves. This is... difficult to implement and limiting.

Instead, make the armor react differently to different types of ammo. So platemail blocks a certain amount of damage, unless it comes from an AP weapon in which case it blocks a different amount of damage. Maybe add the ability for armor to do a percentage rather than flat amount of DR, so when hit with AP weapons it absorbs 50% of the damage rather than 4DR.

 

[galsiah]

...it can be understood intuitively already. 3.7 meaning "70% chance of 4; 30% chance of 3" might not be intuitive, but its implications are.

I think that it's not as intuitive as you may think.... Someone else might be very confused though.

Sure - I don't mean that the mechanics are themselves intuitive, or that it's simple to understand what they imply (though of course it is :D). What I mean is that the resulting system can be understood intuitively without any need to understand the mechanical details - like playing football without understanding physics.
Of course it's more of a grey area with tactical games - there's no need to hide the stats and mechanics. However, if things make sense on an intuitive "playing football" level, it's rarely necessary for the player to dissect the mechanics. It matters less that the details are a little tricky/unclear because any player who wants to can skip the details, rely on common sense, and still be making good decisions.
On the other hand, if you stick with large rounding errors, common sense is no longer an accurate guide. Then every player must dissect the mechanics in order to do well (not good).

Anyway, would you, by any chance, have some time to discuss some other mechanics involving numbers with me? I would appreciate that. PM me your current email if you do have time.

Sure - PMed.


@Sarvis
I'm not sure I see the advantage there. Both having DR changes per-weapon and per-armour are limiting in their own ways. If you want the most versatile system, you'd want both to have an impact. If you want simplicity, it makes sense to keep most modifications on weapons, not armour: the player will think most about his own attacks; with most modifications on weapons, he gets to dictate most of the inputs on the decisions he makes - i.e. his own attacks. With most of the modifications on armours, his most significant, detailed choice is entirely passive.
I can see the argument for using both to modify DR calculations, but I don't see much sense in switching from entirely weapon-centric to entirely armour-centric.

 

[Sarvis]

@Sarvis
I'm not sure I see the advantage there. Both having DR changes per-weapon and per-armour are limiting in their own ways. If you want the most versatile system, you'd want both to have an impact. If you want simplicity, it makes sense to keep most modifications on weapons, not armour: the player will think most about his own attacks; with most modifications on weapons, he gets to dictate most of the inputs on the decisions he makes - i.e. his own attacks. With most of the modifications on armours, his most significant, detailed choice is entirely passive.
I can see the argument for using both to modify DR calculations, but I don't see much sense in switching from entirely weapon-centric to entirely armour-centric.

I'm not necessarily trying to take stuff away from weapons though. For instance, the AP attribute would still be something a weapon has, it's more of a question of how armor will react to it.

I think I need to think some more. Right now I want to put an AP Potential on the weapon, and an AP Modifier on the armor, but I may just be massively overcomplicating things...

 

[galsiah]

I think I need to think some more. Right now I want to put an AP Potential on the weapon, and an AP Modifier on the armor, but I may just be massively overcomplicating things...

Worth a thought certainly - but I'm not sure you'd get much return for the extra complexity. Maybe though.

 

[kingcomrade]

Something I'm not sure on where you say here:

Armor Piercing: 2-3, vsDR = +5

Are you saying that it does +5 damage? Or that it reduces enemy DR by 5? Those are effectively the same thing against any armor with DR 5 or above (which is what you want, I think) but it would change the way the algorithm works, and would also provide a cutoff point for the benefits of AP. :S

 

[Vault Dweller]

Something I'm not sure on where you say here:

Armor Piercing: 2-3, vsDR = +5

Are you saying that it does +5 damage? Or that it reduces enemy DR by 5? Those are effectively the same thing against any armor with DR 5 or above (which is what you want, I think) but it would change the way the algorithm works, and would also provide a cutoff point for the benefits of AP. :S

Yes, it means that the bolt will ignore the first 5 armor's DR points. If DR is 2, only 2 points will be ignored, if DR is 8, all 5 points will be ignored and only 3 DR points will be used to reduce the bolt's damage range.

Basically, first we check DR and vsDR properties, determine the modifiers if any, then apply them to Min/Max damage values, and then roll the dice.

 

[John Yossarian]

regular also has the advantage of being ok against a large range of light/medium armoured adversaries.

In the original system? Using a c. bow, regular is better than AP in two cases, DR 0 and 1, and only marginally at DR 1. OTOH, AP is better at 11 cases, including the average DR 5-7 ones. Even if I couldn't switch or it took to long, I would keep the AP bolt.

I'd suggest something like:
Regular: 1-8; standard DR
Jagged: 5-10; *2 DR [i.e. +100%]
AP: 2-4; *0.3 DR [i.e. -70%]

S/Bow: *1.0 damage
L/Bow: *1.3 damage [i.e. +30%]
C/Bow: *1.5 damage [i.e. +50%]

That gives:
S/Bow:
Jagged best for DR 0-2; decent for 0-3.
Regular best for DR 3-4; decent for 0-6.
AP best for DR 6-12; decent for 2-12.

L/Bow:
Jagged best for DR 0-3; decent for 0-4.
Regular best for DR 4-6; decent for 0-9.
AP best for DR 7-12; decent for 3-12.

C/Bow:
Jagged best for DR 0-3; decent for 0-5.
Regular best for DR 4-7; decent for 0-10.
AP best for DR 8-12; decent for 3-12.

Unless im messing up the math real good, I don’t think Regular bolts are best for 4-7. Take the c. bow for example. I get Regular is better (averaging the damage ranges) than AP at DR 3 and 4 (0-7.5 Vs 1.65-4.65 and 0-6 Vs 1.2-4.2), equal at DR 5 (0-4.5 Vs. 0.75-3.75) and worse at DR 6 and 7 (0-3 Vs. 0.3-3.3 and 0-1.5 Vs 0-2.85). Still, even if I got them right and it’s screwy right now, im sure it can be tweaked to make it do what you wanted.

But just in case it’s too much work changing to multipliers, I’ll put some tweaks on the original sytem. The idea behind them is to make jagged best at DR 0-3, Regular 4-7 (includes the average DR ranges, which makes sense IMO) and AP best at the rest. Also, regular being regular, is somewhat useful at almost all DR values.

First, make the DR penalty on jagged after 3 instead of 2, and make the damage 6-10. Give Regular bolts a DR bonus of 3 up to DR 7 ( the realism justification for this could be as simple as writing “ Generic bolt with some armor piercing capabilities” :wink: ), with damage 3-7, and make damage of AP 1-3. These should be the results:



Anyway, regardless of what system you end up using, I hope you have time to put the extra effects mentioned by others.

 

[Vault Dweller]

So you're set with this then? I was going to play with the numbers but I was too tired last night...

I'm open to and would like to see different ideas, which is always the best way to go. I'll try all proposed ideas and see which ones work better.

 

[galsiah]

Unless im messing up the math real good...

I think I just managed to confuse you by saying:
Probably it's best to multiply after DR. Probably it's best to multiply after DR. Probably it's best to multiply after DR. Actually that's stupid......so here's a system where you multiply before DR.

Multiplying before DR probably makes more sense, and also might be more interesting - since the effective uses of ammo change with a change of bow. Of course it makes things slightly harder to balance (all my "once one bow is balanced, they all are" is out), but that's not too bad really.
Multiplying after DR just occurred to me as a neat way to make the balancing simpler. That didn't make it a good idea overall though.

Anyway, regardless of what system you end up using, I hope you have time to put the extra effects mentioned by others.

Agreed. I'd like to see a solid core system in place, but there's no reason not to sprinkle on a few interesting extras too. Once the core system is right, it shouldn't be a focus of player interest: it'll be that much duller because it's mostly natural common sense, and (hopefully) free of daft exploitable quirks. That's a good thing, but it arguably makes it even more important to add some points of interest by design - since you're not getting any as dodgy side-effects.

 

[Sarvis]

Ok, here's the first stab at arrows. I calculated averages rather than min/max damage... just easier to look at for me. Not sure I made much progress, but here's the link: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=phCJiCvusvzmo9N5KyD2PHQ&hl=en_US

And the forumla for the actual damage calculation:

Function GetDamage(Damage, DR, APMod, WeaponType)
    
    Dim tempDam As Integer
    
    If WeaponType = 1 Then
        tempDam = Damage - DR
    ElseIf WeaponType = 2 Then
        tempDam = Damage - (Damage * APMod)
    Else
        tempDam = Damage - (DR + (DR * APMod))
    End If
    
    If tempDam < 0 Then tempDam = 0
    
    GetDamage = tempDam

End Function

Sorry about the VB, but that's what Excel uses for custom functions...

Anyway, the idea is (for those who don't read code) normal arrows just do damage - DR. Jagged arrows do damage against an increased DR. AP arrows ignore the actual DR, but do a certain percentage of their damage set by the armor.

That last bit gives a bit of flexibility, in that you can have a DR9 armor with varying AP resistance. Not sure about the jagged calculation yet though...

Also, not sure that I like the bows adding to the damage. Maybe a percentage based bonus would work better...

 

[John Yossarian]

I think I just managed to confuse you by saying:
Probably it's best to multiply after DR. Probably it's best to multiply after DR. Probably it's best to multiply after DR. Actually that's stupid......so here's a system where you multiply before DR.

My bad. I reworked the numbers multiplying before DR and it does exactly what you said. It was actually a useful mistake since before I had no idea what you meant by before/after DR.