Unit stats

[Kellick]

Can anyone *cough*Balthagor*cough* explain to me how unit stats are assigned?
I've been at this since 2020....U3 probably and I'm still trying to figure out some kind of formulas that make sense.
I even spent hours last night doing searches every possible way I can think of wording it for game design theory on creating these kind of values and I get zilch.

I know it's very difficult to judge even the non-game stats (speed, cost, weight, carry capacity, etc) since sources conflict, some info is classified, even all the info from a single source might give different ratings (for example one might give cruising speed and another top speed, but both will be listed as just speed). Range and fuel efficiency in reality depend on your average speed.

Mainly the gamey ones that are hard to quantify in the real world. Attack and defense. Missile size especially is perplexing. Most stats of missiles in general.

Is a unitary warhead always a bunkerbuster or not? (in other words should it have high fort attack str) I'm inclined to think they should be but I can't find anything conclusive.
It seems safe to assume that cluster munitions are always going to be anti-personnel saturation.

Also missiles are all too expensive and the nuclear ones use way too much uranium. A 200kg warhead isn't made of pure uranium, it might be like 6kg.

[Balthagor]

Short answer - no I can't.

For all the reasons you stated. The unit stats for SRCW and SR2020 never got to where I wanted them to be but everyone clamours for features more than they do for a rebalance of the equipment file. And some standards changed without the manpower to go back and adjust things out of the era in question. We could have left all of the 2020 stuff out of cold war on the grounds of inconsistent balance but again, everyone wants it. You have no idea how much sleep I lose over the state of the equipment file in every project we do.

Like I said somewhere else, next BattleGoat title, we're revisiting Pong. There's only 2 units!

[Kellick]

Short answer - no I can't.

For all the reasons you stated. The unit stats for SRCW and SR2020 never got to where I wanted them to be but everyone clamours for features more than they do for a rebalance of the equipment file. And some standards changed without the manpower to go back and adjust things out of the era in question. We could have left all of the 2020 stuff out of cold war on the grounds of inconsistent balance but again, everyone wants it. You have no idea how much sleep I lose over the state of the equipment file in every project we do.

Like I said somewhere else, next BattleGoat title, we're revisiting Pong. There's only 2 units!

Did you come up with them originally or did you get them as hand me downs?
I can imagine how much sleep you lose, I lose a lot over it myself.
I was all ready to sit down and actually play through CW a week ago but since I decided to see what changes you made to the unitfile for it and you made a lot of good changes, even to the legacy units...I always wanted to do away with the tech level and just make more prereq techs so I was glad to see you guys did that...I wish I hadn't ignored CW development, part of why I am not ignoring 1936.

So I couldn't just port over my 2020 unit file directly because I wanted to incorporate what you did, but of course I still wasn't satisfied. When I saw the Midway with a capacity of 6 I thought WTF??? Why would anyone ever "upgrade" to the Nimitz with it's measly 4 squadron capacity and slow 56km speed! Then of course I go and consult the usual resources and I see that it's all based on the info we have available.

I'd love to help, especially since it saves me work in the long run. Modding isn't a hobby, it's more like an addiction. I was just going through figuring out thinking about uranium costs when it dawned on me that even though that warhead may only take 6kg of uranium, I have no idea how much raw uranium it takes to get 6kg of weapons grade material!

A 64-bit version of Pong LOL

I feel your pain. 1 of the big problems I see is of course there are just WAY too many units that aren't different enough from each other to really add anything to the game, but we both know the minute you go to cut one someone will scream that you got rid of their favorite iconic unit.

And of course the minute you lower a units stats to be more balanced for gameplay someone will scream that you nerfed their favorite unit, and then of course everyone thinks their countrys stuff should be better than everyone elses, and on and on and on....Yeah, I can only imagine your pain.

I've been thinking of scrapping all the units and doing a basic mod so I can balance everything and then add all the flavor back in. The problem is it still isn't so simple since balanced doesn't mean every nations comparable units should have the same stats. I take cost/time to build/manpower/special ability into account when I say balanced. Even still it's a lot of units to have since even having say 60 units per region (since I feel the need to have seperate units and variants for the Marine Corps, Airborne, SOF...hell 60 per "tier" might not even be enough)and having the upgrades say only every 10 years that's still an awful lot of units.

Any advice? The new old units you added for CW do seem to be pretty well balanced against each other. Do you feel they are a good enough base to just start balancing the forward going tech against? Are you going to have to add a lot of units for 1936 or are enough WW2 units covered already (I guess you guys need to start adding WW1 units...ugh...yeah every answer brings more questions).

[Balthagor]

If I come up with ideas I'll share them but I have a bunch of other tasks currently screaming for my attention.

I can say that we've tried to consult the balance work done for titles like People's General and Panzer Corps as those have been heavily play tested.

[mattpilot]

sighh...

after spending a week with SR, i realized again why i quit the game the first time around.

I spend most of my game time comparing unit stats. There's so many freakin units that its impossible to get an idea of whats useful. Ya know.. i dont want to make a wrong decision when it comes to researching or building . But what especially annoys me are these "traps" - you know, if there's units like this infantry unit with 500+ supply consumption and only 4 hours combat time. Why would i build that? WHy is it in there? Then when i spent ages sorting though my build list there's the odd offer from AI to buy (mostly bad) units .. again the comparing starts.. or when tech trading.

My head just explodes - i dont get to enjoy the game cause im preoccupied with figuring out what units are useful. I guess its a disease i have .

So anyway - I figured i'd read up about modding the Unit File to reduce the number of units down to a "generic" pool ... all countries get the same unit pool assigned and have the same choices. But then it hit me.... 20000 Units to look through and i dont have the experience to know what the game needs.

Yea... i agree, the amount of units and different unit naming adds a lot of flavor to the game, but the amount of choices on what to build ... added with teh bunch of bad choices one can make just kills it for me.


So... i dont suppose anyone has already made a "generic unit mod" or is inclined to make one?

[Kellick]

No one has to my knowledge. Most of us who do work on units don't seem to agree on standards or priorities (this is an observation drawn from comparing the different mods vs there being any actual disagreements or animosity between anyone, the big modders who have been around for a while have shared a lot, most of the wiki info on modding comes from their efforts). From this little discussion here you can see why it is such a difficult task.

Myself I tend to jump around a lot, although the USA units get the bulk of my attention, since those are the ones I am most familiar with and also the most data is available. Aircraft and ships are a little bit easier since a ship is 1 ship and an aircraft squadron is made up of 6-18 of the same exact unit and the squadron is designed for a specific mission(s) -in the game of course, in reality there are mixed squadrons but it isn't worth trying to model in SR...especially when ECM doesn't exist.

Land units are a little more complex since they represent a battalion, and btns are never made up of 38-54 of the same vehicle. Then there is a fact that the soldiers who make up said btn also vary widely in training and equipment. So it isn't enough to look at vehicle stats, you need to understand how said country organizes their military. Also how warfare is conducted has changed over the years so it isn't enough to understand it at 1 point in time when looking at the unit list as a whole, but you need to study it for the entire period modeled.

Then there is living inside the limitations of the game engine, deciding what can be modeled realisticly in relation to the rest of the game and what has to be left abstract. Finally deciding what needs to be fudged for gameplay reasons. Everyone has their own ideas on how to handle things, also I don't think anyone but George (and George would probably be the first to say he doesn't know them all either, and he wrote the game) understands all the nitty gritty details of how the code and datafiles interact so we are all constantly learning and relearning.

Sorry you had to sit through my whole discourse on unit design theory.

So long story short, I've been thinking about it for a while like I said above, just still trying to reduce it all to formulas so that it is easy to add variety back in.

[mattpilot]

You'd be my hero if you made a generic unit table

While what you listed are valid points, what it essentially comes down to is that this is a Game and that it needs to be balanced and fun. At the moment Supreme Ruler, to me, feels like an "analyst game" - cause thats all i'm doing. The Game engine/concept itself and what it allows one to do is otherwise excellent - especially the combination with the economic system.


I see 2 extremes in the Unit system. One extreme is having to much variety like we have now - the other is having to much generalization.. like say Civilization series has. Ideally i'd like something like Alpha Centauri game has - a unit workshop that allows me to custom build my units out of various components (In a Supreme Ruler context, one would research platforms & components, and then build the units - wouldn't this be epic? ).

But given the limitations and i suppose the historical context battlegoat is trying to maintain, i suppose a unit workshop wouldn't be their thing. So my "ideal" situation for Supreme Ruler would be perhaps a Generic table with 200-300 units? where units start at "infantry Mk1" and increment with technology to "infantry Mk2" etc... For different roles one coudl make different varients... like "Helo Mk3 Var A" for an attack helo, or "Helo Mk3 Var B" for a subhunter. But essentially everyone has the same equipment table and can progress along a "sane" technological route - researching what they need.

From a programming perspective ... if i were battlegoat, id make it so you could have this "generic table", but to add flavor each nation draws from a different "naming table" - so the USA still has their F15 and the USSR has its Mig29, but essentially their both "Fighter Mk 10 Var A".

[Kellick]

Yeah, detailed unit design (a better example most here are familiar with is supreme commander) would be awesome...it would fit in the theme too. You would just have to have a battalion designer for land units as well. Where you could select how many of each vehicle go in the unit, making combined arms btns as you want them. Maybe in SR2050

Well I'm all for variety in quality too, it just has to make sense, so say we take the generic MBT and then there is a higher quality one that costs more and takes longer to build, and then a lower quality one that is quicker and cheaper to build. Then you could say this countries tanks are HQ, these are middle of the road, etc.

I'm working towards it, it is just going to take a while.

[Hullu Hevonen]

There is no real consensus on how to balance the database. I'm trying to figure out some sort of standard to implement in my database. The older carriers have less supply for resupply perposes. Battalions are mostly mixed in-realife, but there are people that already think it is too much with this battalion system and advocate a HOIish system.