remaining resistance balance issues

Discussion among members of the development team.

Moderator: Forum Moderators

Invisible Philosopher
Posts: 873
Joined: July 4th, 2004, 9:14 pm
Location: My imagination
Contact:

Post by Invisible Philosopher »

Yes, now I agree: "Resistance at the end" multiplication is a good solution.
Play a Silver Mage in the Wesvoid campaign.
silene
Posts: 1109
Joined: August 28th, 2004, 10:02 pm

Post by silene »

When the mixed additive boni/multiplicative bogi scheme was proposed, I wasn't fond of it. It was indeed fixing a problem with the current scheme, but in an ugly way, too complicated/painful for a player to manually handle (or at least for me). Now with RATE I'm a lot more convinced. ToD and leadership bonus are still additive, charge and the like still have a global effect, and the resistance simply becomes a multiplier of the base damage. I like it.
quartex
Inactive Developer
Posts: 2258
Joined: December 22nd, 2003, 4:17 am
Location: Boston, MA

Post by quartex »

It looks like a good idea. And "RATE" is a great acronym. ;-)
Darth Fool
Retired Developer
Posts: 2633
Joined: March 22nd, 2004, 11:22 pm
Location: An Earl's Roadstead

Post by Darth Fool »

As far as I can see It should work well as long as 1) multi-weapon specialties don't enable charging-back-stabbing attacks, and 2) we don't add more damage modifying effects then the current ones. If either is violated, it means that some of these damage bonus effects should get pushed down to being additive, not multiplicative. In any case, moving resistance to a multiplicative effect looks like it is better then leaving it as an additive one.
quartex
Inactive Developer
Posts: 2258
Joined: December 22nd, 2003, 4:17 am
Location: Boston, MA

Post by quartex »

I haven't been following the specifics of this discussion but I wanted to add one experience I had with resistances. I discovered that when a ghost in the night with a blade attack, the cumulative 60% resistance to blade and 25% night bonus, meant that 85% of the damage was negated. Thus it didn't matter if the attacker did 2 or 8 damage, the attacker still did only 1 damage per attack. The attacker would have to do 14 damage per attack to be able to do 2 damage under these conditions.

Having an elvish captain, I realized that a level 1 elvish fighter with leadership actually did more damage than a level 2 (or even a level 3 fighter, since champions only do 12 damage per hit). Resistances this stiff really make leadership important, if not a necessity in certain conditions.

So I think making resistances multiplicative instead of additive, will help tone down the their power, to keep them from being too powerful in certain situations. It just seems odd that a level 1 elvish fighter with leadership would do more damage than a level 3 elvish champion.
Invisible Philosopher
Posts: 873
Joined: July 4th, 2004, 9:14 pm
Location: My imagination
Contact:

Post by Invisible Philosopher »

Darth Fool wrote:As far as I can see It should work well as long as 1) multi-weapon specialties don't enable charging-back-stabbing attacks
Who cares? No one would actually seriously make a charging backstabbing attack, and if they did, I think multiplying them together for 4x damage would be the appropriate action if someone did make such an attack.
Darth Fool wrote:, and 2) we don't add more damage modifying effects then the current ones.
We will just have to see what to do with any new damage modifications if they appear. No problem yet.
Play a Silver Mage in the Wesvoid campaign.
Dave
Founding Developer
Posts: 7071
Joined: August 17th, 2003, 5:07 am
Location: Seattle
Contact:

Post by Dave »

Hmm...so essentially RATE is exactly the same as pure multiplicative, but with leadership being treated additively with a tod bonus if both are present?

David
“At Gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck.” -- Ian Fleming
Invisible Philosopher
Posts: 873
Joined: July 4th, 2004, 9:14 pm
Location: My imagination
Contact:

Post by Invisible Philosopher »

Dave wrote:Hmm...so essentially RATE is exactly the same as pure multiplicative, but with leadership being treated additively with a tod bonus if both are present?
Yes. 25% differences are much easier to calculate in your head if they're added instead of multiplied.
Play a Silver Mage in the Wesvoid campaign.
ott
Inactive Developer
Posts: 838
Joined: September 28th, 2004, 10:20 am

Post by ott »

Dave wrote:Hmm...so essentially RATE is exactly the same as pure multiplicative, but with leadership being treated additively with a tod bonus if both are present?
Sounds like a fair summary.

But I like to think of it as "exactly the same as the current model, except resistance is treated multiplicatively instead of additively".
Dave
Founding Developer
Posts: 7071
Joined: August 17th, 2003, 5:07 am
Location: Seattle
Contact:

Post by Dave »

ott wrote:
Dave wrote:Hmm...so essentially RATE is exactly the same as pure multiplicative, but with leadership being treated additively with a tod bonus if both are present?
Sounds like a fair summary.

But I like to think of it as "exactly the same as the current model, except resistance is treated multiplicatively instead of additively".
Right...but resistance takes place in maybe 50% of calculations, while leadership in maybe 5%...so with my description it is exactly the same as a 'known system' almost all the time.

Anyhow, I think it'd work well :)

David
“At Gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck.” -- Ian Fleming
quartex
Inactive Developer
Posts: 2258
Joined: December 22nd, 2003, 4:17 am
Location: Boston, MA

Post by quartex »

Dave wrote:
Right...but resistance takes place in maybe 50% of calculations, while leadership in maybe 5%...so with my description it is exactly the same as a 'known system' almost all the time.

Anyhow, I think it'd work well :)

David
I look forward to seeing it implemented in 0.8.10. :-)
miq
Posts: 17
Joined: October 22nd, 2004, 9:33 pm
Location: Germany

Post by miq »

Right...but resistance takes place in maybe 50% of calculations, while leadership in maybe 5%...so with my description it is exactly the same as a 'known system' almost all the time.

Anyhow, I think it'd work well :)

David
Well, RATE produces different results than the current model whenever aligned units in day/night and/or lead units attack defenders with resistances against that attack type.

Look at the damage tables for the orc warrior that ott posted for example.

So for unaligned units, neutral time of day and no leadership it produces same results as the current model. It does make quite a difference else.

But I too think it'd would work very well...:-)

bxe Miq
ott
Inactive Developer
Posts: 838
Joined: September 28th, 2004, 10:20 am

Post by ott »

Dave is right, RATE will produce the same results as currently in the vast majority of cases. That is good! It's the 5% of problematic cases I was aiming to fix. What's broken should be fixed, but what's not broken doesn't need fixing.

As mentioned, the patch is available at Savannah, ready to apply for playtesting.
Post Reply