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 Faction balance and fun with numbers 
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Post Faction balance and fun with numbers
Every once in a while someone says that CC is awfully unbalanced, ronins are crap, dummies are nonsense, techion are wargods etc. So, I decided to collect some stats on vanilla factions and their performance against each other and see how bad it is (not really bad I must say). The idea is simple, script spawns two squads of random units with random weapons, limited by a budget of 1500 oz of gold each. Then it makes them fight each other. Battle lasts 25 seconds, after that scripts counts survivors. Faction with more survivors is obviously better. Script ignores pistols and ACrabs. Simply because ACrabs are rare and somewhat shared among all factions and pistols are pretty useless. I ran 500+ battles to collect these stats, you can do the same and even collect stats for your faction, in case it’s compatible with Unmapped Lands 2 or Void Wanderers.

Those results may seem inaccurate, and maybe even look like totally incorrect but at least it’s something and they can give you some estimates on your survival rates when you’re fighting against AI enemies. Just think of them as valid only for AI players, simply because they operate all units simultaneously and can overwhelm with numbers.

Results are quite funny, Ronins are simply beasts!!! Techion squad has just a 0.15 kill/death ratio against them. Even Browncoats have just 0.82! That’s because Ronins are the cheapest folks and their 1500 oz squad is usually made of 8+ units about 170 oz of gold each. AI controlled ronin squad beats the crap out of any other faction in the game.

On the other side Techions are the weakest units! Who could imagine. Any other faction beats them, and only against Imperatus they have 0.84 k/d ratio. Their average squad is less than 5 units, and they cost almost 300 oz of gold each.

“The Invincible” Browncoats are weaker then Ronins, but stronger than any other faction, especially against Dummy and Techion.

Dummies vs Coalition have almost 1.0 k/d against each other. Surprisingly Dummies are not the cheapest folks, but at least second after Ronin, with 202 oz per random unit.

Coalition are great against Techion and on par with Imperatus and Dummies, but that’s all. When operated by AI they are way weaker than Ronins and slightly weaker than Browncoats.

Finally Imperatus are great against Dummies and awful against Ronin, but pretty good against others with average priced units.

Feel free to share your own data or provide stats about your factions :grin:

You can grab the full data here and download stat-collecting activity here. To clear all collected stats simply delete WeaponTest.rte/Stats.txt

Latest stats file with 2000+ rounds and a few mods - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/174 ... /Stats.txt


Last edited by weegee on Sat Aug 24, 2013 3:36 am, edited 1 time in total.



Thu Aug 22, 2013 10:52 pm
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Joined: Sat Nov 03, 2007 9:44 pm
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Post Re: Faction balance and fun with numbers
Interesting.
"Quantity has a quality all its own"


Fri Aug 23, 2013 4:14 am
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Joined: Sun Jul 22, 2012 3:06 pm
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Post Re: Faction balance and fun with numbers
Coalition/Dummy/Imperatus/Techion, especially the robots in these techs, could use some better GibWoundLimit's and some units especially could use tougher material for their head (or an attached armor piece of sorts). I think one advantage of being made of metal is that you can have multiple CPUs integrated to the body, so headshots should be less 'wounding'. Because the thing about Ronin is that they have that 1 powerhouse team of three on the field almost every time: ak47, m16, m60. Because these target both Head (with spray) and GibWoundLimit, without a helmet or something the robots get their head broken open with only a couple of shots.


Fri Aug 23, 2013 6:20 am
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Post Re: Faction balance and fun with numbers
It'd probably be easier to share (useful) data for a faction if there was a clear way to 'fix' one of the factions. Otherwise you wind up sitting through a lot of unrelated faction fights waiting for the faction you're trying to test to come up.


Fri Aug 23, 2013 7:17 am
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Post Re: Faction balance and fun with numbers
You can select which factions you want to test and then turn randomizer off via Controller actor on the bottom of the screen. But if you want hundreds of autonomous runs, you'll probably better just edit the script and set everything there.


Fri Aug 23, 2013 7:33 am
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Post Re: Faction balance and fun with numbers
Well, so far, Imperial Guard performance is incredibly hit-and-miss. They do pretty well if most of the squad is armed with automatic lasers (M41, Hellgun), the heavy stubber, or the auto shotgun, but slower-firing weapons aren't so good. On top of that, rare ones like flamers or one of them has a plasma gun? Let's just say friendly fire is a pretty common thing. :roll:

It has, however, made me realize I may need to adjust the dummy rounds for the meltaguns, as meltagunners would sometimes just stand there and ignore enemies in front of them.

They're kicking the snot out of Dummies and Techion, but have a lower success rate against enemies like the Browncoats, Ronin, or Coalition.

Ed: Cutting out certain rare weapons or those prone to excessive friendly fire is a significant improvement, and I think it helps reflect actual performance a little better.


Fri Aug 23, 2013 8:00 am
Profile YIM
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Post Re: Faction balance and fun with numbers
Arcalane, I've added some options to make automated faction testing easier. And if you want to temporaly disable some weapons just open your faction file, set their CF_ItmPowers to 0 and AI will never use them during tests.

There's also a non-budget mode in which you can simply test the might of units against each other unrelated to the cost of the units. In this mode the script will always spawn 8 units for each squad. Stats for each mode are separate, the don't interfere with each other.

AI controlled Psyclones turned out to be pretty weak, can beat only Techion (well who could not ))) and sometimes Imperatus. And Bear Federation is not even close to be balanced thanks to their cheap weapons and mechs.


Fri Aug 23, 2013 8:27 am
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Post Re: Faction balance and fun with numbers
It's only ignoring actors with an ItmPowers of 0 -- weapons are used regardless of their power level.

As evidenced by only getting Assault Recon/Assault Marine units (all others are 0), armed with Autocannons (which are ItmPower 0). They're also using all the normal weapons too though.

Incidentally, a single Assault recon can decimate an entire Coalition or Ronin infantry column in about four or five autocannon shots. :lol:


Fri Aug 23, 2013 9:47 am
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Post Re: Faction balance and fun with numbers
Oh I thought it worked. Anyway, I fixed it, now scripts won't use CF_ItmPowers = 0 weapons. Also added proper pre-equipped factions support. Stats now 1000+ battles.


Fri Aug 23, 2013 3:52 pm
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