#Balance teams by setting limits to spawning in certain robot types

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

crude shore
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Considering how players enter games with a choice of 3 garage slots, it does make player balancing complicated.

I'm also gonna sidestep the existing balancing posts that are more focused on other game mechanics (amp cost, block attributes).

I wish to target 2 groups of players specifically, aerial players and medics.

Aerial players, in particular tsticks and flyers, have huge game impact. IMHO, even with perfect game balance, in terms of amp cost, block weight/hp etc, a flying robot will beat a ground robot all the time.
(I'm not sure where to place blimps on this, I've yet to see a particularly effective one that can dominate the game)

Its incredibly annoying when the enemy team has 3 flyers, and your team has none. The match quickly becomes a one sided affair.

To a lesser extent, I feel the same way about medics. Having no medics or too many medics really hurts the team. I'm guessing the "use medics to earn more credits" meta is catching on.

I'm suggesting a maximum ratio of 1 aerial and 1 medic per 5 players.
So in a 5v5, only 1 aerial and 1 medic bot is allowed per side. Once someone has already spawned in as a flyer or medic, subsequent spawns are disallowed.

edit: since a fixed ratio is proving problematic, how about a tandem ratchet system?
You may only spawn an aerial/medic robot if the enemy team currently has the same or +1 number of aerial/medic as your side.

This will help prevent lopsided teams where its 3 flyers vs 5 ground robots, or self sabotaging team picks like a group of 4 medics on the same side.

golden vector
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Air vs ground isn't that bad
Only aircraft that I've actually had real trouble with is drone/tsticks but you can just make a counter tank and they can't do anything

The deck system solves a lot of problems since you can basically deploy an AA platform whenever needed

random spire
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first, how you are going to make a function that identify a bot is an aircraft without false positives

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second, my entire deck are aircrafts and including a flying healer, i don't have any non-aircrafts available to play

slender grove
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Air-heavy teams are actually very disadvantaged against ground-heavy teams currently, because they have a very hard time capturing objectives and contesting them against enemy ground units. It is also not true that a flyer will always beat a ground bot (only true in cases where the ground bot has a weapon that sucks vs. air); given good aim on both sides the ground bot will often even have a favourable matchup as they can take more damage without losing functionality.

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I would support having the matchmaker try to balance the number of flyers and number of healers between teams, but not enforcing ratios between different bot types.

leaden iron
# crude shore Considering how players enter games with a choice of 3 garage slots, it does mak...

Expect users telling you that air is perfectly balanced because, if played right, while air bots are nearly immortal and will kill you faster and more times than any other ground bot, they aren't as good as ground bots to cap (lets keep pretending that this current gamemode will be the only one that will exist ever in this game), so that balances out somehow.

I disagree with that idea, since even the fact that air is bad at capping only matters when nearly the whole team is composed of air... and even then, only if your team has air so they can be distracted with dogfights (if not, ground will be in the respawn screen so much time that even flyers will be able to help to cap, nullifing somehow the disadvantage and being very frustrating for the players at the team without air).
Meanwhile, as you said, if the enemy team has just 2-3 flyers and your team none, unless the air users are newbies or have a very bad build, or your team have an equivalent number of gauss players looking at the sky, you already can exit the game because already know the result and you can avoid a lot of frustration (such that even if you win the expecience can leave you a bad taste).

Medics can also be VERY noticeable in the same way, where too many medics can be detrimental (or not, since Flux can degun you so fast that several of them can instacripple several ground bots) and too few means that you will lose your time going to base or just self-destructing (and waiting 30 seconds far too many times).

That being said... your idea is VERY hard to implement. You enter with 3 bots, that means that you want to be able to use them, and being blocked would be very painful.... also, as Sii said, if you only have one of those types of bots, then what? While i agree on the spirit of the idea, I dont find that solution desirable for the players, tbh.
At the same time, since you can change mid-match your bot type, the teams can start apparently balanced but get disbalanced later...

crude shore
golden vector
leaden iron
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i dont fault them, its the correct strategy there, but its what it is...

golden vector
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I do wish flyers were encouraged to be more direct and closer in combat, but achieving that requires design and adjustments across everything and the devs aren't aiming for that direction anyway I'm pretty sure

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Maybe I'll make a guide on how to counter flyers that new players / casuals can use

crude shore
# random spire second, my entire deck are aircrafts and including a flying healer, i don't have...

classifying flyers is possible, but might be tricky to implement. RC already did it, iirc it was via a combo of counting how many wings and/or thrusters.

for me, a more foolproof method is for players to classify themselves, perhaps via core types or some other mechanism. If you pick a "ground core", no limits apply to you, but to prevent workarounds, your robot becomes disabled or disconnected (simiilar when going out of bounds) when climbing above a certain altitude.

as for deck selection, the idea is to have some sort of balanced limit in the number of flyers in the match. so yes, I hope to nudge players to always include a ground bot in their deck of 3.

golden vector
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It's just not worth it anyway

crude shore
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okay, what about the ratchet system instead as a way to broadly enforce balance between both sides?

random spire
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the method you mentioned could lead to accidents. for example i have a bot with extremely high thrust that can launch heavy tanks into the air. also i'm just a spaceship spirit that doesn't want to bound to move on the ground, and seriously i don't even play planes; if the game would force me to not play it i would rather quit that match and find another.

golden vector
crude shore
random spire
leaden iron
crude shore
golden vector
crude shore
# random spire https://discord.com/channels/215212717278101514/215212717278101514/1521533456734...

nice bot 🙂

I think this is fine, its just a matter of setting the right altitude limits. If you classify yourself as a ground bot, you will need to adjust your playstyle to only engage below say 75m. If you wish to classify yourself as an aerial bot, you will face spawn limits, but would be able to morph into proper tstick and chase other aerial robots.

This is why I think the self classification system + enforced altitude limit is the most foolproof. Because knowing all the creative builders out there, we will try to find a workaround hahaha

crude shore
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if you guys have other better ideas as to how to balance the number of aerial/medic bots, feel free to suggest them too

golden vector
# crude shore eh, I would think that 3 tanks have lesser battle impact than 3 flyers, and bala...

In the current game mode, 3 tanks will beat out 3 flyers if both teams are comp. Flyers only win vs casuals because it's much harder for a casual to fight.

This is why although I strongly prefer flyers, I only really play ground bots rn because flyers don't have any serious contest power on points so in this game mode you end up relying on your team which will go badly most of the time.

And then if you have a good team or better yet a squad, it's even more preferable to go tanks because you can get AA tank and normal tanks and you just win. But that ends up boring af so I usually go hover

random spire
random spire
crude shore
golden vector
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The current dynamics kinda sucks for casuals but that kind of thing requires big game design to prevent.

But purely on practical measures, 1 AA tank decimates flyers. Only gets hard when medics show up.
Whether or not that's an enjoyable dynamic / game design is another story, but that's how it is as far as I've played and I've got more time than I'd like to admit in the genre

crude shore
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okay moving away from a fixed ratio, what about the ratchet system? meaning either side will have a max difference between aerial or medics by 1

random spire
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the player is considered a flux weaver bot if any one of the three is, skill issue if they picked one in deck and choose to not use it.

golden vector
random spire
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if you just want to try equalize the amount of these bots between both teams i have no issue with

golden vector
golden vector
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But I don't think the player base is big enough for all that

random spire
crude shore
random spire
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i would say that flux weaver users should be equalized before all else

golden vector
random spire
golden vector
random spire
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iirc someone has a comment about it somewhere

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oh it is here #╖procelio message

golden vector
random spire
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seriously i even made a heavy airship that can try capture the point like a heavy tank does, instead of play a heavy tank

upper oyster
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rebalancing teams mid match would be far better than this in my opinion

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who would want to wait to play the class they like in tf2?

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big brother craig shouldn't care if you win/lose matches cuz your team decided to be all medics, id rather fix the issue of teams getting super imbalanced

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WHile there may not be enough players for true skill based matchmaking, maybe some sort of player effeciency score could be good

random spire
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well don't introduce autobalance

upper oyster
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I like the contract offers

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1.10-1.5x reward for switching maybe?

random spire
upper oyster
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however something like this I imagine is insanely difficult to implement

loud sequoia
# random spire first, how you are going to make a function that identify a bot is an aircraft w...

Correct. Matchmaking on bot type should be added to the Common Suggestions NOIDEA list, and people have already explained why:

  • No clear boundary between Air vs Ground bots.
  • It's not worthwhile. Air is not inherently superior to ground due to good map and obj design. @slender grove explained it well #1526667362244366437 message.
  • It's not fair or feasible to matchmake on healer count without forcing players to stick with one weapon type, and that's not fun.
  • Deck metagame is a good thing - Swap bots to adapt. A 3 bot deck with swaps only on respawn is a great way to balance bot counterplay.

I'd favor other mechanisms for balancing:

  • Spawn objectives closer to the losing team's respawn.
  • Backfill maybe 1-2 more players or even AI bots to the losing side (within constraints). Maybe use a matchmaking score to select which players backfill which games, but I'd be cautious about this causing longer queue times.

Ultimately, I'd never want to see queue times increase beyond 10-20seconds because of more stringent matchmaking.

random spire
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why you reply to my message with this

crude shore
# loud sequoia Correct. Matchmaking on bot type should be added to the `Common Suggestions NOID...

thanks for the input, but I would contest the defeatist mentality. of course balancing is tricky, especially in a game that explicitly rewards creative building and gameplay.

I do think there is a way to effectively distinguish between air vs ground bots, namely by self classification and using altitude limits to ensure that self classified ground bots, remain on the ground layer. 75m from the ground would be my suggested limit. Any jumpjet style robots, or accidental flights/glides should be covered. Any true flyers trying to stay under that limit cannot escape easily and are significantly more vulnerable to ground robots.

We can agree to disagree here, but I maintain that aerial robots are superior to ground robots and need to be balanced accordingly.

patent ocean
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Players bot choice shouldn't be limited by what other players chose. That said, I think the matchmaker should take bot variety into account when deciding which team for an odd player

loud sequoia
# crude shore thanks for the input, but I would contest the defeatist mentality. of course bal...

I agree creative building is important. To be clear, I mean creativity to achieve a win, not creative doge/meme/non-combat bots.

I generally want:

  • Minimal constraints due to a matchmaking system.
  • High build variety with good tradeoffs for varied builds. This is where the vast bulk of balance/matchmaking should exist.
  • Bot and deck choices should matter - so adapting/counterplay mid-match should be viable and even required for some players. Maybe a third to half of players should find it useful to do so in a pub match. I dont want whiplash from changing team composition, but I expect players to be aware of the enemy team comp and want to find ways to counter it.

Some of the suggestions in this thread constrain creativity - specifically the creativity to find a win - either through limiting build options or limiting tactical options in a battle.

I'd say youre making some bad assumptions:

  1. You think Air vs Ground is a major factor for win/loss. It's not. Medic count is certainly a far larger factor, for instance. So the premise for your desired constraint is flawed.
  2. That players cannot (and should not need to) creatively find solutions to counter air builds. I think as long players have options to counter air well, we should not limit them.
  3. Air builds are (and should be) limited to the current air builds in the meta. Heavy copters for instance would play quite different from existing bombers or drone builds.

Even looking at your explained air/ground boundaries in good faith, there are big gaps. It's a deep pit of boundary cases that would require one cludgy solution stacked on another - i.e. a waste of dev time.

rigid bear
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remember that classifying bots of people would need to include all three bots in the lineup.
For example, if you'd tried to balance medics in the team, nothing stops all 20 players from having a medic in the linup, but one team simply doesnt play them
Same would apply to ground bots, flyers, or whatever
I dont think it is practical or useful

crude shore
rigid bear
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self classification is always gonna be exploited, and should not be implemented

crude shore
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of course, so you also need a foolproof way to enforce it. I'm suggesting a 75m altitude limit for anything self classified as a ground robot

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the bigger issue I think is that, of the participants here at least, many think that there is already balance between aerial vs ground robot, and therfore any balancing is unnecessary.

of those that agree that there is a difference between aerial vs ground robots, they would prefer to achieve said balance by other subtle means that would not impose any hard limit on player choices or playstyles

loud sequoia
crude shore
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for those who say aerial bots are balanced vs ground, wanna take a guess which player is the flyer? which team won? and who consistently was dominating every fight?

1.png
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the ability to pick your fights, engage from a high angle where armour tends to be weaker, the ability reposition quickly, to scout where the cap is, to harrass or outright kill lone players. nope sorry, aerial bots > ground ones everytime

slender grove
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Kills are not how you win the match. I agree flyers are better at getting kills, because they can more easily seek favourable engagements. They're not better at winning games, though.

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I've played 1v1 (+3 bots on each side) as a flyer against an ELC car; I ended the match with 30 kills to their 8, and lost with 2 caps to 5.

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You can argue that's mitigated in larger matches where both sides have at least some ground, which is true but only to a certain extent — if the team with more ground just focuses the opponent's lesser ground force, the flyers are forced to suicidally throw themselves onto the cap to and try and stall long enough for their ground allies to respawn, which means they die and the team's respawns get staggered.

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Not saying that flyers are inherently worse either mind you, just that flyers having generally higher kill counts is not a sign of them being OP, it's due to their role being largely "go kill that vulnerable target before it causes problems for the ground forces". Flyers in this game are support units which exist to disrupt the enemy and assassinate important things, while the ground bots' job is to contest obj and win.

empty totem
slender grove
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On the topic of the matchmaker and drop deck interaction though, it might make sense to balance based on how many players include a bot of x type in their drop deck.

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i.e. if you have 6 people in the match who have a healer as at least one of the bots in their drop deck, try to put 3 of those on each side.

leaden iron
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the argument "yeah, they make miserable the match for everybody else on ground, but they dont cap so its perfectly balanced 👍" doesnt sound too solid to me...
we should stop pretending that capping will be the only gamemode in Procelio... they should be balanced in fight terms, independently of the gamemode (or do we expect to apply different balancing to each gamemode?)

slender grove
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Of course that does leave it up to them to make the call to actually swap if their team is falling behind on heals, but that's just a skill like any other.

rigid bear
crude shore
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well I speak as a flyer myself and as someone who also has obscene hours in RC, mostly in a flyer. the odds are so stacked against ground bots. And going by the weapon and movement types currently present, its why I wanted to bring up this topic early

slender grove
slender grove
# crude shore well I speak as a flyer myself and as someone who also has obscene hours in RC, ...

Oh I'll absolutely agree that flyers in RC were overpowered for most of the game's history. A lot of the things that made that true aren't the case here though. Non-full cubes having full/near-full HP and fractional mass in particular was an awful decision, because you could make flyers out of tetras/prisms with drastically lower mass and barely any sacrifice to HP. And then flak was a poor attempt at a band-aid solution which ended up only making the problem worse.

rigid bear
crude shore
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heh more like you're crippled by the time you reach the cap, unless you were already travelling in a convoy. guess who doesn't have to travel in a convoy just to stay alive?

rigid bear
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now, i'd really like to have better options to fight air in my bot lineup (because my rivet+missile car fucking sucks), but half the time i'm just ignoring planes because there's bigger threats, like nova cars in my face

rigid bear
slender grove
rigid bear
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sure, a 43 kmh tank will be fucked, but that's the point. You dont need to use tracks (and i think tracks suck, tbh)

slender grove
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Slow tanks currently being vulnerable while on the way to obj but strong once they get there is... a thing. I don't know if it's necessarily a good or a bad thing.

crude shore
rigid bear
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honestly? anything you can do on tank tracks you can do on wheels, except turn in place

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that's literally the only advantage tanks have over wheels.
You can go "oh, but tank can go full heavy blocks"
so can a wheeled vehicle, and be significantly faster still even at 60-70 tons

leaden iron
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i agree with tracks sucking hard (they really need a buff, but they will never get one just in case pilots cry about not being able to kill tanks as fast) but using wheels you can also get crippled exiting the base, since air attack from really far away

rigid bear
leaden iron
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its just a game of chance

rigid bear
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you can also get crippled on wheels if you can on a tank

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and even then, not really?

slender grove
# crude shore hmm interesting, I would still say the aerial bots have a mobility advantage no?...

Somewhat, but there is an inherent large durability tradeoff for that. Compared to a high-mobility ground bot (possibly with limited flight like jumpjet types or MDD) they trade off some ability to actually exchange fire... in a way, you could say they're just even more strongly specced into mobility than said fast ground bot. In fact that's kind of literally true, since it's just a matter of spending a bunch of AMPs to gain that aerial ability in addition to baseline mobility tools that ground might use (thrusters/turbofuel/MDD/etc).

crude shore
leaden iron
rigid bear
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the thing that launches your bot wherever you're looking

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that purply void hole thingy

crude shore
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the blink dagger? 🤣

slender grove
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Molecular Distortion Drive; it's kind of like a blink/teleport thing? Moves you super rapidly over a moderate distance.

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Yeah. On a ground bot you can use it to hop over terrain and stuff, letting you beeline instead of going around things.

crude shore
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you know, it might really just be a player level thing. flyers, as a by-product of the tech tree, have more hours in the game

the ground robots might be a pro, might be a newbie

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I wish there was a way to see each player's level

leaden iron
slender grove
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Ground bots are a much more mixed bag and may be people who are anywhere from absolute first-time newbies to people with thousands of hours

crude shore
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yeah my hunch is that, for now at least, that is the simpler explanation as to the vast difference in battle inpact I'm seeing right now

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still wish there was better balance though

slender grove
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You could probably argue that mobility in general is a little too cheap for how much benefit it offers; I'm not entirely convinced that's definitely the case but it's a valid consideration. I wouldn't mind seeing tank tracks just get their sprint functionality be always-on and not disable turning tbh, since a good player will just toggle it on/off precisely when needed so it kind of doesn't matter anyway and just nerfs newbies. I might make a suggestion to that end actually.

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In fact I wonder how many newer people just don't know tracks have a sprint in the first place and get caught out of position a lot because of that?

crude shore
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going by how little thrusters, boosters or blink daggers I'm seeing in the ground bots, I suspect they just started playing

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that is making them far slower than the ideal ground bot is supposed to be in other to achieve some parity vs aerials

slender grove
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Actually, that does bring something to mind... going back to the whole mobility cost thing, on second thought I feel like it's less "mobility is too cheap/strong" and more that being legitimately slow is not really a supported playstyle currently.

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atm if you are really slow, you are just doing it wrong; it's always better to achieve at least decent baseline mobility, because the cost of going from "slow" to "moderate" is quite small and the benefit is enormous.

loud sequoia
# leaden iron the argument "yeah, they make miserable the match for everybody else on ground, ...

I'd expect any future game modes would have some kind of objective that focuses action to a small subset of the map - and it will always be on the ground. Timing of obj activation and availability will also always have to account for the slowest ground bots.

Thus, ground bots will always have an inherent advantage controlling objectives and the win condition. Kills/damage might boost ego, but they dont win games.

If I want to win games in a team of 4, I will always pick 3 ground bots in that team. Even if copters are intended to add a heavy air role, I'd say I want 2-3 heavy builds on any team of 4.

slender grove
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Yeah, compositionally that was basically what we found as well in the pre-Steam smaller matches. Meta was heavy ELC tanks with like 1 healer, and maybe 1 flyer to try and gank the other side's healer while the ground bots engage. This was generally with pretty experienced players all around, both on the ground and air bots. Balance of individual parts has shifted a little since then, but not very much and I don't think the general principle has changed.

loud sequoia
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Yeah. I suspect damage vs heals (or alpha damage vs sustain) balance is probably in a good place if when looking at 4v4 to 5v5 matchups, the decision to go from 1 healer to 2 healers is a meaningful choice, and not just a given either way.

In 6v6 or higher, it's a no brainer to have 2 healers.

rigid bear
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in a 5v5, i'd probably take 2 healers, 2 ground, and 1 air

pulsar inlet
rigid bear
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please

pulsar inlet
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I'm surprised I haven't made a feedback post about it yet, I've been voicing this opinion for what feels like years

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there

rustic oracle
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limiting player freedom of what bot they can play in a game about building bots is very bad design