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Leither Yiltron
Molon Labe. RUST415
1
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Posted - 2015.05.27 20:51:00 -
[1] - Quote
I think it's rapidly becoming clear that the debate on this topic is going to come down to whether it's possible within the proposed "speed vs eHP" trade off paradigm to make additional changes that result in balance.
The issue here is that we have these knobs to turn where suit balance is concerned:
- Fitting (PG/CPU) - Role+Racial bonuses - Speed and speed related statistics (the idea of messing with the sprint modifier is novel) - Slot layout - Base HP and other HP related statistics (EG repair rate and shield delay)
Of all these, speed and HP are probably the least discrete. What I mean by a "discrete" variable is that even the smallest change in that variable has a high potential to change balance. Slot layout, in particular, is extremely discrete just based on the evidence that the different suit classes provide.
By tying HP and speed together in a firm relationship, we lose a "knob" from the above list. We can still twist the twin HP-speed subsystem knob, but they can't really be twisted independently. The ensuing discussion has focused around the other knobs: Slot layout. suit bonuses, and combinations of those.
Here's my question that I don't really have the answer to because it's hard, but really needs to be considered: Is it possible to achieve a reasonable state of balance after adopting the HP-speed tie-together given the highly discrete nature of slot layouts and to a lesser extent suit bonuses? It's possible that the answer is no, which puts us in Kage's camp. In that case we can still tie speed and HP together in the proposed way, but tune that combined "knob" to a different position.
On a different note, I think it's important to note that speed doesn't affect survivability exclusively. Speed is also a substantial contributor to aggression potential. I think that's one of the reasons I'm a bit afraid of the "killer bees" returning. From an anecdotal perspective, I run ferroscale plates as opposed to regular ones. It's not that the speed necessarily just keeps me alive more than the HP bonus, it's that I can also choose to take fights and chase down fleeing opponents more readily.
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Leither Yiltron
Molon Labe. RUST415
1
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Posted - 2015.05.27 22:11:00 -
[2] - Quote
Pokey Dravon wrote:Perhaps instead of a speed to HP curve, its speed to mobility curve, where mobility is defined as a function of speed and stamina? You could then vary speed for logistics to maintain the proper mobility by throttling stamina as your independent variable?
I'm reposting this because it ended up being the last post on page 7 and I think it got into that unfortunate position where the page count bumped before anyone saw it. I've suggested categorizing the different variables we have to turn into some (albeit obvious) distinctive categories.
Leither from p7 wrote:I think it's rapidly becoming clear that the debate on this topic is going to come down to whether it's possible within the proposed "speed vs eHP" trade off paradigm to make additional changes that result in balance.
The issue here is that we have these knobs to turn where suit balance is concerned:
- Fitting (PG/CPU) - Role+Racial bonuses - Speed and speed related statistics (the idea of messing with the sprint modifier is novel) - Slot layout - Base HP and other HP related statistics (EG repair rate and shield delay)
Of all these, speed and HP are probably the least discrete. What I mean by a "discrete" variable is that even the smallest change in that variable has a high potential to change balance. Slot layout, in particular, is extremely discrete just based on the evidence that the different suit classes provide.
By tying HP and speed together in a firm relationship, we lose a "knob" from the above list. We can still twist the twin HP-speed subsystem knob, but they can't really be twisted independently. The ensuing discussion has focused around the other knobs: Slot layout. suit bonuses, and combinations of those.
Here's my question that I don't really have the answer to because it's hard, but really needs to be considered: Is it possible to achieve a reasonable state of balance after adopting the HP-speed tie-together given the highly discrete nature of slot layouts and to a lesser extent suit bonuses? It's possible that the answer is no, which puts us in Kage's camp. In that case we can still tie speed and HP together in the proposed way, but tune that combined "knob" to a different position.
On a different note, I think it's important to note that speed doesn't affect survivability exclusively. Speed is also a substantial contributor to aggression potential. I think that's one of the reasons I'm a bit afraid of the "killer bees" returning. From an anecdotal perspective, I run ferroscale plates as opposed to regular ones. It's not that the speed necessarily just keeps me alive more than the HP bonus, it's that I can also choose to take fights and chase down fleeing opponents more readily.
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Leither Yiltron
Molon Labe. RUST415
1
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Posted - 2015.05.30 19:49:00 -
[3] - Quote
CCP Rattati wrote:Archduke Ferd1nand wrote:Rattati, I beg of you: Adjust eHP instead of speed for assault if they don't fit on the curve. They've needed an HP nerf for a while. Don't screw with their mobility though. That would be like giving the scrambler rifle ridiculous kick or something to balance it, instead of just nerfing the damage a tiny bit.
HP is the problem here, and I can personally promise that. They have so many slots that they can use kincats, is my opinion.
This is an overly-specific discussion to engage in, but there are two comments to raise about kincats:
(1) They only affect sprint speed, which is crucially different than non-sprint speed. Aeon points out that sprint speed doesn't increase strafing speeds (unfortunately an element of tanking), and this also affects mobility given the terrain issues the game experiences.
(2) Low slots aren't equitably important across all racial variants for the obvious reasons. Saying "well slap a kincat on it and then you'll be good!" kinda implies that suits which can spare the low slot automatically fare better in your envisaged new design. That doesn't sound fantastic to me.
Ultimately this reasoning ignores one of the cornerstones of the developing conversation. If assaults need to give up a slot to be "viable" in terms of speed, then assaults' utility vs logi's have to be evaluated with one less low slot attributed to assaults.
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Leither Yiltron
Molon Labe. RUST415
1
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Posted - 2015.05.30 20:36:00 -
[4] - Quote
Adipem Nothi wrote:Leither Yiltron wrote:If assaults need to give up a slot to be "viable" in terms of speed, then assaults' utility vs logi's have to be evaluated with one less low slot attributed to assaults. Not arguing against the merit of your concern, but any number of if/then's could be brought up here. Scouts need to run damps, so X. Heavies need to run plates, so Y. None of these arguments detract from Rattati's points on Page 1. Ultimately, if Logis (or Scouts, or Commandos) are out-assaulting Assaults, then other attributes can be tuned until said overlap is corrected.
I did say it was an overly specific discussion . Chiefly the reason I bothered posting it at all is because I think it's important not to fall into reasoning which attempts to brush problems under the rug out of hand.
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Leither Yiltron
Molon Labe. RUST415
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Posted - 2015.05.31 04:37:00 -
[5] - Quote
Breakin Stuff wrote:CCP Rattati wrote:When assault is worrying about it's speed, let's be honest. Is it about the run-strafe speed. Because I see assault players saying
"I will trade run for sprint any day of the week" even though fast sprinting should get you in and out of combat situations and be better.
We can have dynamic strafe speeds as well, so assault can be slower than logi, sprint faster, and still have superior strafe speed. This is going to exacerbate the extant problem, sir. I respectfully request that you not actively provide avenues for people to exploit the hit detection in the game. This is first, last and all reasons in between why strafing is the most important consideration. Heimdallr69 copped to as much when I called them out on it. All of the others who are crying about the change have studiously ignored my commentary. I have repeatedly tried to bring this to light, as it is easy to use and provably effective. The fact that this is the primary and most successful "tactic" it shows that strafe speed is a problem. Being rewarded for standing in the open and juking back and forth two meters rapidly is quite frankly nonsensical, especially when it is MOST effective within the optimal ranges of the most destructive CQC weapons in the game. This is how a calassault duels a heavy and doesn't take more than a quarter of their shields while utterly destroying his opponent at 20m versus a boundless HMG. This is not "skill" it is a mechanical failure on the part of either the client or the server.
It's a reality of how the game plays. Until something changes in that ecosystem it's silly to try to stuff our fingers in our ears and go "lalalala" about the consequences of the mechanics.
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Leither Yiltron
Molon Labe. RUST415
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Posted - 2015.06.02 19:33:00 -
[6] - Quote
So here's a data crunch I did in an attempt to answer Pokey's question about creating a unified "mobility" statistic that is a composite of the individual core speed statistics: Speed, sprint speed, strafe speed, stamina pool, and stamina regen. I applied a modification of the process that the National Research Council used to derive their rankings of PhD programs in the United States. It is detailed fairly thoroughly here: http://phds.org/about/ranges .
The short-and-sweet explanation is this:
Methods (1) Data for each role+race combination in the game was collected in the categories of speed, sprint speed, strafe speed, stamina pool, and stamina regeneration
(2) The data was normalized so that the average value of each of the above 5 statistics across the different suits is 0, and its standard deviation is 1. http://www.inside-r.org/r-doc/base/scale . This scaling procedure allows data which may be measured in different units to be compared on a direct, numerical scale in a more appropriate way.
(3) 1000 simulated rankings were generated. To rank the suits, a weighting factor for each of the 5 suits was uniformly randomly selected. Essentially this step assigns importance to each of these categories randomly. Each suit gets a composite score which is the sum its statistics multiplied by the statistics' weighting factor. That is:
Composite = stat_1 * weight_1 + stat_2 * weight_2 + ... + stat_5 * weight_5
And then the suits are ranked with the suit ranked number 1 having the highest composite score (coughMINSCOUTcough)
(4) Since this process was repeated 1000 times, we get distributions of rankings that the suits received
Here are the results: https://i.imgur.com/CqsWYL6.png
Interpretation
Since the weights for each category are randomly selected rather than based on some sort of expert analysis of which speed category is most important, the results don't necessarily convey which suit the population at large would evaluate as the "most mobile". These results do give a good baseline around which to indicate what those numbers could look like, however. They also show off potential "rank bleed" in each suit class. The bigger the range of rankings that a suit receives, the less certain its ranking can really be evaluated to a single number in the hierarchy.
I don't want to bias interpretation too much further. What I will note is that stamina and stamina pool are perhaps "overweighted" insofar as I think that many people would not weight these stats as highly as a random weight would assign compared to the others. Additionally, it's notably just from the raw data that the MinMando + Min Sentinel break the stamina regen curve really drastically. Each of them have 40 stamina regen, with their closest neighbor in the heavy class at 20. To put it in perspective, the Amarr Scout also has 40 stamina regen.
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Leither Yiltron
Molon Labe. RUST415
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Posted - 2015.06.02 20:15:00 -
[7] - Quote
Adipem Nothi wrote:Leither Yiltron wrote:So here's a data crunch I did in an attempt to answer Pokey's question about creating a unified "mobility" statistic that is a composite of the individual core speed statistics: Speed, sprint speed, strafe speed, stamina pool, and stamina regen. I applied a modification of the process that the National Research Council used to derive their rankings of PhD programs in the United States. It is detailed fairly thoroughly here: http://phds.org/about/ranges . The short-and-sweet explanation is this: Methods(1) Data for each role+race combination in the game was collected in the categories of speed, sprint speed, strafe speed, stamina pool, and stamina regeneration (2) The data was normalized so that the average value of each of the above 5 statistics across the different suits is 0, and its standard deviation is 1. http://www.inside-r.org/r-doc/base/scale . This scaling procedure allows data which may be measured in different units to be compared on a direct, numerical scale in a more appropriate way. (3) 1000 simulated rankings were generated. To rank the suits, a weighting factor for each of the 5 suits was uniformly randomly selected. Essentially this step assigns importance to each of these categories randomly. Each suit gets a composite score which is the sum its statistics multiplied by the statistics' weighting factor. That is: Composite = stat_1 * weight_1 + stat_2 * weight_2 + ... + stat_5 * weight_5 And then the suits are ranked with the suit ranked number 1 having the highest composite score (coughMINSCOUTcough) (4) Since this process was repeated 1000 times, we get distributions of rankings that the suits received Here are the results: https://i.imgur.com/CqsWYL6.pngInterpretationSince the weights for each category are randomly selected rather than based on some sort of expert analysis of which speed category is most important, the results don't necessarily convey which suit the population at large would evaluate as the "most mobile". These results do give a good baseline around which to indicate what those numbers could look like, however. They also show off potential "rank bleed" in each suit class. The bigger the range of rankings that a suit receives, the less certain its ranking can really be evaluated to a single number in the hierarchy. I don't want to bias interpretation too much further. What I will note is that stamina and stamina pool are perhaps "overweighted" insofar as I think that many people would not weight these stats as highly as a random weight would assign compared to the others. Additionally, it's notably just from the raw data that the MinMando + Min Sentinel break the stamina regen curve really drastically. Each of them have 40 stamina regen, with their closest neighbor in the heavy class at 20. To put it in perspective, the Amarr Scout also has 40 stamina regen. This is definitely interesting, but I don't understand what is being hypothesized or proposed. If we were to assume that there is direct (or causal) relationship between mobility and viability, how might we explain the MinScout's efficiency ranking? Would we not expect it to be at the top of the pile rather than the bottom? Or am I thinking about this all wrong?
Rank 1 is the "best" score, rank 20 is the "worst". The Minmatar scout is consistently rated highly since it has very high statistics in all the categories mentioned.
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Leither Yiltron
Molon Labe. RUST415
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Posted - 2015.06.02 20:42:00 -
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Adipem Nothi wrote:I could've told you the MinScout was highly mobile :-)
But what is your point? Are you proposing we should make it less so for the sake of normalization? It may be an outlier on your mobility scale but it isn't exactly topping performance charts in game. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Don't mean to detract; just trying to figure out the "why" behind this exercise ...
The why is: I was interested, and wanted to open up some discussion of this particular method. Once we have firm numbers for the new proposal, I can rerun this and see what kind of rank bleed we experience. The sprint speed suggestions indicate that perhaps the assault roles will bleed more into the higher ranks to challenge logistics suits in the new system. In that sense if we see substantial rank bleed in the proposal, we kinda have to conclude that the proposal isn't tying "mobility" overall to eHP. Perhaps this is the more desirable outcome and we can see if realistically the assault suit can attain a similar mobility ranking to logistics suits while logistics suits maintain some of the survivability Rat so desperately wants to inject.
For the record, the ranks just solely by running speed are:
Suit,Rank C-Sc,2 Gal-Sc,2 Am-Sc,5 M-Sc,1 Gal-Ass,6 Am-Ass,9 Cal-Ass,6 M-Ass,4 Am-Log,12 Cal-Log,10 Gal-Log,10 M-Log, 6 Am-Sent,20 M-Com,13 Am-Com,17 Cal-Com,14 Gal-Com,14 Cal-Sent,17 Gal-Sent,17 M-Sent,14
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