Combat system calibration

[Orgonwukh]

Combat system calibration   

Short version:

I propose that in general the amount of damage dealt by any weapon or magic spell should decrease with the distance from the attacker to the target. Also, fast weapons should generally deal less damage than slow weapons. The combat system including both weapons and magic has to be more balanced.

Elaborated version:


Damage (D):
This is the amount of health points subtracted when an single attack is successful. Examples for magic are:

• Energy Arrow (about 75 HP)
• Summon Missile (about 48 HP)
• Flying Stones (about 63 HP)

For weapons one has to include the levels and stats of attacker and target. As a reference I determine both attacker and target to have maxed stats and levels, full heavy armour equipped and to use two weapons at a time in bloody stance. The weapon damage is the average damage including the failed attacks. One could either ask a dev to look this up in the database or do a numberof attacks and measure the arithmetic mean. For convenience I determine the damage of short swords to be 500 HP.
This value is not the value specified in the weapons properties, but the “real” damage dealt.


Maximum attack distance (MAD):
This is the maximum distance from which an attack can be made. MAD can be measured in game units (the values you get if you type /pos). One unit should be about 0.5 metres. Examples for magic and weapons are:

• Energy Arrow (about 57 units)
• Summon Missile (about 37 units)
• Flying Stones (about 74 units)
• All weapons (about 2 units)

Attack speed (AS):
This is the time in seconds (s) between the starting of the attack and the moment when the damage is dealt. Examples:

• Summon Missile (about 0.48 seconds)
• Flying Stones (about 0.28 seconds)
• Daggers (1.5 seconds)
• Short Swords (2 seconds)
• Sabres (2 seconds)

Damage per second (DPS):
This is simply D divided by AS.


Effective Damage (ED):
I propose to let the DPS decrease linearly with the MAD. I introduce a factor (F) with which you can put more or less emphasis on the distance weighting. Based on the above assumed value of damage for short swords, I propose that the ED with a value of 500 should be used to weight all weapons and magic attack spells:

ED=F*(D/AS)*MAD=500
or
ED=F*DPS*MAD=500

For F=1 this simply is

ED=(D/AS)*MAD=500
or
ED=DPS*MAD=500.

Let us fix F=1 here for now for convenience. If my proposal for weighting is too daring or too conservative, we still can talk about setting a different value for F.


What does this mean?

Let us look at the weapons first and assume that the values for short sword are as I wrote above: AS=2, MAD=2 and D=500. Then DPS=250. This short sword deals an average damage of 250 HP per second. Since MAD=2, ED=500 HP. I have nothing to object concerning these values. This is my reference for the calibration of other weapons or magic spells from now on (see below).

Let us look at the spells:

• With a short sword you deal an average damage of 250 HP per seconds from a max. distance of 2 units.
• With Summon Missile you deal a damage of 100 HP per second from a max. distance of 57 units.
• With Flying Rocks you deal a damage of 225 HP per second from a max. distance of 74 units.

Is that fair? Does it make sense that more damage can be dealt from a safe distance? This “unfairness” is reflected in the ED values of the spells:

• Summon Missile (current):   D=48,    AS=0.48,    MAD=37.   ED=(D/AS)*MAD=(48/0.48)*37=3700
• Flying Stones (current):       D=63,   AS=0.28,    MAD=74.   ED=(D/AS)*MAD=(63/0.28)*74=16650

We notice that the value of ED is way higher for spells than for the short sword. Flying Stones also have a very high MAD and hence a high ED value.
If we assume that my proposal is appropriate for evaluation of the power of weapons and magic, this means that Summon missile is 7.4 times more powerful than using short swords and Flying Stones is 33.3 times more powerful than short swords. I think that is quite a realistic reflection of the current state


Calibration

I propose to calibrate weapons and spells by setting the values of D, AS and MAD in a way that the ED is about the same for all of them. In case we use the short sword for a reference, we could adjust the values for Summon Missile and Flying Stones by reducing the MAD, for example To do this we solve the equation for ED in regards to MAD:

MAD=500*AS/D

Then the values for the calibrated spells would be:

• Summon Missile (calibrated):   D=48,    AS=0.48,   MAD=500*AS/D=500*0.48/48=5
• Flying Stones (calibrated):   D=63,   AS=0.28,   MAD=500*AS/D=500*0.28/63=2.22

If you think this attack range is too low, there is the possibility to calibrate the spells by setting the damage after solving the equation for ED in regards to D:

D=AS*500/MAD

Then the values would be:

• Summon Missile (calibrated):   AS=0.48,   MAD=37, D=AS*500/MAD=0.48*500/37=6.48
• Flying Stones (calibrated):   AS=0.28   MAD=74, D=AS*500/MAD=0.28*500/74=1.89

It is also possible to calibrate the AS with AS=D*MAD/500. You can also try out different trade offs between D, AS and MAD as long as ED=500. As long as the ED is the same for all weapons and spells, the relation between damage dealt per second and the attack range is maintained.

Calibration will also be helpful once the attack range for weapons is implemented. Let us examine the calibration of the broad sword and let us assume that this sword has a damage value of D=750:

• Short Sword (current):      AS=2,   D=500,   MAD=2
• Broad Sword (calibrated):      AS=3,   D=750,   MAD=500*AS/D=500*3/750=2

So the attack range is the same while the attack speed and damage differ. One might think that it is more important to increase the attack range instead of the damage because of the bigger size of the broad sword. So let us assume that the damage value for the broad sword  is D=600:

• Short Sword (current):   AS=2,   D=500,   MAD=2
• Broad Sword (calibrated):      AS=3,   D=600,   MAD=500*AS/D=500*3/600= 2.5

This seems to me an appropriate representation of the differences between the weapons: A broad sword has a longer range and deals more damage, but is slower than a short sword.


Final notes

This is a proposal for balancing the combat system. All values of weapons and magic are either estimations or assumptions. Feel free to provide the true values, if possible. My assumptions about the levels, stats, armour and weapon properties of attacker and target are subjective and should be discussed.

Limitations:
Maxed levels were assumed, the properties of lower lever levels are unknown to me. But when known, those levels can be calibrated as well.
I did not include the amount of mana needed for the spells yet. A simple rule could be to have a linear relationship between damage dealt and mana used (maybe 1 to 10, so you can still kill a 800 HP opponent with 222 mana, which is the maximum at the moment as far as i know).
While the attack area of spells is a circle with a radius of AD (you just have to be closer than AD, facing direction is disregarded) while the target is in the centre of the circle, the area for weapons is much smaller because the attacker has to face the target. It should be something similar to a triangle. This disadvantage of weapons is not accounted for here. On the other hand, it is assumed that a spell caster casts spells as fast as possible. This disadvantage is not accounted for here, either. If those differences between weapons and spells is considered too big, you can think about setting F to another value than 1 for an appropriate weighting.
Once spells and weapons are calibrated, prices should as well be calibrated. You could either raise the weapon training costs or lower the magic training costs. Maybe doing both is a good idea.

Advantages:
Using this calibration, it is possible to design various weapons and spells which are different concerning D, AS and MAD, but they are weighted in a more appropriate way than it is the case now. Your choice of weapons is based on what you prefer: range, damage, speed or a weighting/combination of them. Combat can be balanced and become more interesting once players fight each other with different properties of their weapons and attack style.
The work for the devs is small. You need to change a single value for each weapon and spell.

Link to corresponding bugtracker feature request: http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/flyspray/index.php?do=details&task_id=2956

[zanzibar]

Wow.  This is very detailed work!

I definitely like the idea of magic and weapons being balanced.  I also like the ideas of weapons and attack spells being equally good but in different ways (trading off damage for speed and range, for instance).  That way, people can pick weapons based on the personality of their characters rather than the effectiveness of the weapon.  There can still be junk weapons of course - clubs, chair legs, pies...

With magic, I think it's ok for the spells to have different strengths.  For instance, energy arrow isn't available to all crystal way mages, whereas summon missile is.  So it's natural for energy arrow to be more powerful.  But since crystal way also has healing spells, it makes sense for red way to have more powerful attack spells since it's more specifically focused on aggression and dealing damage.

[perlyboy]

[talk about spoilers]

[Nivm]

The Game Balance attacks the Realism with its Assumed Sense Rapier!
Its left lung has been pierced! Its left kidney has been mangled!
The Realism has fallen unconscious.