The type of balance you describe cannot be applied without establishing ratios so that the effective value of each raw stat is on a 1:1 scale since clearly the raw numbers do not hold 1:1 value.
2 dB points is not equal to 2 points of stamina, 2 m/s move speed is not equal to 2 HP, etc.
Until ratios are established we cannot define the actual content of those "5 points" you describe above and thus cannot divide them successfully.

We need ratios to be able to move toward the type of balancing method you describe, which is AFAIK why the OP exists, because being able to move towards the more full fundamental balance you describe is desirable, but it requires a context which is currently lacking. Thus applying a framework that compares the relative values of things that have similar effects (of course no two stats will ever have the same effect or they'd just be one stat) in this case general survivability within matches, is called for.

Baselines need to be established, for stats and for their modifiers (slot layouts and skills) but intermingling those two is a recipe for madness. It is find and good to say that all things should be considered, and you are quite right they should all be considered, but clearly considering them simultaneously without baseline frameworks in place is ineffective within a complex system like Dust, if it were effective we'd have had tighter balance a long time ago not a rotating FotM for years as things have been, especially not with the use and utility margins that have been recurrent.

So, how do we achieve balance by balancing only two characteristics? We don't. Just like we don't achieve balance by trying to (in computer parlance) 'brute force' a solution by weighing everything at once without a frame work to assess what value or effective weight each factor holds. Thus we need to take an iterative approach, as the OP does, by defining frameworks. With those in place we can weigh all factors.

Cheers,
Cross

Sort of...? I mean, it's not directly damage and some would argue that some effects (reload speed, which the commando gets anyway and dispersion which some of us are convinced is just a placebo) have little or nothing to do with damage output.

Moreover, we get opportunity for increased combat performance.

Yes and that's what annoys me. We haven't even established a basic design for how things should interact with each other. I'm not a fan of designing five separate things first and then going back to see if they work and fit together. It's backwards. Like making puzzle pieces first and then printing the picture on the pieces after, instead of taking the overall picture and then breaking it up into separate pieces.

Cooking a meal for example, usually starts with the recipe. You don't go and buy ingredients first without a recipe. That what were doing. Were taking the ingredients of the game and balancing them without a recipe for reference. I don't have high hopes for the end result using this method.

The designs need to make sense, intuitively.

In order of priority, imagine a pyramid
Slot progression needs to make sense, within roles and between roles
PG/CPU capacity as they relate to slots and their layout
HP and Speed are inverse, that's just physics and again intuitive


These 3 principles form the foundation for Dropsuits. While they don't make sense, all the small things on top don't really matter. That's why I am not tackling role bonuses, because the foundation is cracked and not worth building on.

Sort of...? I mean, it's not directly damage and some would argue that some effects (reload speed, which the commando gets anyway and dispersion which some of us are convinced is just a placebo) have little or nothing to do with damage output.

Since its only ehp speed that is on the curve, the other stats are up for grabs are they not? I mean there is a lot to play around here.

They have so many slots that they can use kincats, is my opinion.

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.

ElOperator I can respect most of your opinions, but the entire post you made, especially THIS is either the most naive, or the most DELIBERATELY self-serving post I have EVER seen you make.

There's nothing naive about recognizing the progress thats been made, especially in the last 9-12 months, in actually balancing this game and getting it play smoothly (the current connections/latency fiasco notwithstanding). The "self-service" in my post is the point of the post . The statement I'm addressing has been a basis of my perspective and I'm saying so. Now, again.


The balance isn't even close to done.

I disagree. Its not currently perfect, and theres definitely work to be done BUT the work that has been done so far has in many ways been effective. What were countless variables have become constants. The danger now is in turning constants back into new variables endlessly and because of that the overall gameplay never actually stabilizing and becoming a reliable game to play. We all want people to come, play, enjoy and spend money. Spending money happens most and best when people know what theyre buying.

Progression is only balanced if you think that new players are properly intended as stat padding gunfodder.

Until new players can remain in areas void of the supertrystompsquads they ARE gunfodder. My understanding of the phenomena is that "This is New Eden". I personally make it a point to not run fullproto fits pubs, advocated for creation of The Academy and even in the recent "Portal Testing" sticky brought up the creation under Special Contracts some sort of non-stat training area.

We still have no true balance between shields and armor. It's close but nowhere near resolved.

But its close.

AV/V is COMPLETELY UNBALANCED.

Hm. Despite your capslock I'll take this as what it hopefully is, which is that AV/V is still having its kinks worked out. I don't pilot much, though I'm working on it, so have very little relative input from that perspective, but I do AV. So " COMPLETELY UNBALANCED" as an overall assessment I can't agree with though I won't disagree with it either. Like most orher things tho its definitely been worked on and is in a much better place than it has been before. Room to improve? Sure.

The suits do not have equal utility within their class.

Why would they? Based on the variety of stats and bonuses the suits are largely worthwhile in some aspects and less so in others, with fitting flexibility allowing for either deeper specialization or broader generalization from the base.

The classes do not have equal utility with each other.

Same as above, Why whould they? The class utility is the class utility, if you're looking for other utility there're other classes.

Rock, Paper, Scissors. Pick one, and if you lose maybe pick something else.


The weapons are completely segregated by utility. If balance was even close to extant all of them would be used more or less equaly.

Again, Why would or even should all weapons be being used evenly? Any strategy game I've ever played, from chess to Command and Conquer to Axis and Allies theres never been any expectation that I would use or deploy assets evenly in a 1:1 fashion. My national military doesn't have or use strictly 1 machinegun: 1 ICBM. That we don't have only 16 weapons total with a limit of one type on the field at a time also begs the same question.

And the balance you say is almost there is A revolving door of jacked up and screwed.

Revolving door that just keeps spinning so long as work achieved becomes work scrapped in favor of work to be achieved that then becomes work scrapped in favor of .........

What rattati proposes is to set a baseline, so it can actually be determined what the value ratio between speed and HP actually is.

So long as the wiggle strafe is considered a viable tactic because it breaks hit detection, wedwe do not, and NEVER WILL be able to balance ANYTHING.

Wiggle strafe being viable because it breaks hit detection is a product of not yet finding a solution to the hit detection issue, not the other way around. And the more rewriting and deeper we go in redrawing stats without fixing hit detection the farther out of that hole we'll have to climb once a hit detection solution occurs. If hit detection (blue shielding) is unsolvable then sure, lets proceed. If its still able to be remedied then that should happen first else we're just trying to level a jenga tower while we bounce it on a trampoline.

Every single post telling rattati no has been the most thinly veiled cover for self interest from people who want their top fit to remain the top fit AT ALL COST.

This I take as a comment to the slayer/assault community since I primary as a logi and my logis are anything but top fit. And "top fit" in the sense I think you're stating it is far from any "goal" I have for my chosen class.

Welcome to the meta tree shaking again. Figure it out and try to help make progress because "this far and no farther" battle cries from people who enjoy a position of ability to at-will trash the majority of the playerbase through use of abundant resources and near unlimited ability to casually drop proto everything gets rapidly old and uninspiring.

Still no thoughts on the shield recharge delay on calmando or minmando?, i think ill come back later.

Nono, it just means, I have the means to always have assault and scouts have the highest strafe speed, regardless of walking/running speeds.

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.

> Google Doc <

Each model now includes base movement and sprint charts for the following loadout scenarios:

* Base HP (No Shields, No Plates)
* Max Ferro HP (Max Shields, Max Ferro Plates)
* Max HP (Max Shields, Max Complex Plates)

Additionally, R-¦ values are now displayed for each scenario's speed/hp curve! In essence, the closer the R-¦ value is to 1, the tighter the data fit the curve.

---

Base HP
Ranking - Model Name (R-¦ Movement, R-¦ Sprint)
96.9% - Heim's (0.969,0.969)
96.3% - Red's (0.963,0.963)
95.1% - Adipem's (0.951,0.951)
94.7% - Varoth's (0.947,0.947)
93.7% - Aeon's? (0.937,0.937)
93.1% - Rattati's Prototype (0.931,0.931)
93% - Thokk's (0.93,0.93)
91.6% - Haerr's (0.916,0.916)
91.35% - Booby's (0.949,0.878)
90.65% - Ripley's (0.949,0.864)
90.1% - Spero's (0.851,0.951)
87.95% - Rattati's +/- 0.3 (0.95,0.809)
82.5% - Current (0.825,0.825)

Max Ferro HP
Ranking - Model Name (R-¦ Movement, R-¦ Sprint)
95.3% - Rattati's Prototype (0.953,0.953)
95.1% - Aeon's? (0.951,0.951)
93.3% - Adipem's (0.933,0.933)
92.9% - Haerr's (0.929,0.929)
92.1% - Heim's (0.921,0.921)
90.7% - Varoth's (0.907,0.907)
90.2% - Red's (0.902,0.902)
87.6% - Ripley's (0.938,0.814)
86.7% - Spero's (0.802,0.932)
85.95% - Booby's (0.919,0.8)
83.85% - Rattati's +/- 0.3 (0.918,0.759)
83.2% - Thokk's (0.832,0.832)
74.2% - Current (0.742,0.742)

Max HP
Ranking - Model Name (R-¦ Movement, R-¦ Sprint)
91.7% - Rattati's Prototype (0.917,0.917)
91.2% - Aeon's? (0.912,0.912)
91.1% - Adipem's (0.911,0.911)
90.7% - Heim's (0.907,0.907)
90.3% - Red's (0.903,0.903)
90% - Haerr's (0.9,0.9)
88.7% - Varoth's (0.887,0.887)
85.2% - Ripley's (0.913,0.791)
84.4% - Spero's (0.778,0.91)
84.15% - Booby's (0.898,0.785)
82.7% - Thokk's (0.827,0.827)
81.6% - Rattati's +/- 0.3 (0.898,0.734)
72.4% - Current (0.724,0.724)

Overall Ranking
Ranking - Model Name (Sum of R-¦)
93.4% - Rattati's Prototype (5.602)
93.3% - Aeon's? (5.6)
93.2% - Heim's (5.594)
93.2% - Adipem's (5.59)
92.3% - Red's (5.536)
91.5% - Haerr's (5.49)
91.4% - Varoth's (5.482)
87.8% - Ripley's (5.269)
87.2% - Booby's (5.229)
87.1% - Spero's (5.224)
86.3% - Thokk's (5.178)
84.5% - Rattati's +/- 0.3 (5.068)
76.4% - Current (4.582)

* Ranking (%) = (R-¦ Movement + R-¦ Sprint) / Maximum (2)
* Overall Ranking (%) = Sum of All R-¦ / Maximum (6)

---

Note:
Max Ferro and Max HP curves assumes Commandos receive +1 Low Slot.

Caveat:
Each model's Speed/HP curves are currently derived from that model's data. We've established that an inverse, exponential relationship should exist between Speed and HP, but we've yet to determine/define the optimal Speed/HP curve. In other words, we don't have an ideal curve to plot data against; the curves you see in the graphs and the R-¦ rankings above -- while fun for spitballing and comparison -- are not necessarily "correct" as they are not fit against the ideal.

1. How hard would it be to break strafe speed out into its own category?
2. Thanks for building and maintaining all these sheets o7

1. Strafe Speed is a constant at 0.9 movement. If added to these graphs, strafe values for each scenario would appear directly below the movement values (mirroring them perfectly). To answer your question, not hard. But arguably not necessary, unless you have variable values in mind you'd like to see modeled.

2. NP! (I'm having a blast).

Adipem you running for cpm?

No chance, Heim. Wife and I have our first kid on the way (due September).

No chance, Heim. Wife and I have our first kid on the way (due September).