Rock-Paper-Scissors

[Meneldil]

This thread should really live somewhere between this forum and the suggestions forum, but I've put it here because this forum looked more like it needed an injection of life.

This post is a thought I've had for a little while since I started playing again this round. It's not fully developed, or entirely thought through, but I think it's valuable so I'd welcome discussion of it!


Bushtarion is a complex game with many aspects, but I think one of the key features - which Azzer has reiterated his commitment to on many occasions in the past - is that it's rock-paper-scissors: SAs beat RPGs, RPGs beat Rangers, Rangers beat SAs. That's really good, it makes the game interesting, it makes having a diverse selection of routes in your alliance a Good Idea, it also makes the game significantly easier to balance.

Now, there are cases where Route X absolutely thrashes Route Y, which absolutely thrashes Route Z, which absolutely thrashes Route X. Likewise, you get similar loops where the relative power is lower, so X marginally beats Y marginally beats Z marginally beats X.
Of course, this is a simplification, as it neglects different troop setups within each route, but this model can deal with that by considering differing setups as different routes.

Now, I'm going to use the following notation:
"X < Y" denotes that route/setup Y marginally beats route X
"X << Y" denotes that route/setup Y significantly beats route X
"X -- Y" denotes that neither route clearly beats the other (for example SA -- Vamp)

The observant among you may have noticed that it's not really clear what "beats" means. I'm not really sure either, the best description I can think of is by assigning a number to (X,Y) which means what the maximum % of your score they can be to be worth attacking, and when that number is very high (I don't know how high) X<<Y, when very low Y<<X. Of course, this varies with land etc., and I don't think this description is perfect, but I think we all have an intuitive idea of what it means which works pretty well, so I'm not going to worry about this too much.

Now, the point of this thread: I think thinking about routes in this way can help with making useful suggestions about how to improve the game. Here are some thoughts I've had:

* It is not clear what sort of level you want the highest (X,Y) values to be: having routes who can attack players much much larger than them if that player has the correct setup seems to be a Bad Thing - it makes the rock-paper-scissors-effect too strong. However, you also clearly want quite a strong r-p-s effect, as this makes the game - finding targets, having effective attacks/defence - very fun. I'd encourage people to think about whether they think the game would be more fun if the highest such values of this kind were higher or lower. I suspect slightly higher values than there currently are would be more fun (i.e. a slightly stronger r-p-s effect in most places), but there are certainly cases where I think this effect is too strong: and I think it can be very frustrating when these values are too strong (c.f. RPG players needing high activity or just being SA fodder).

* It is, I think, a Good Thing if the different setups within a route are able to significantly affect which routes is does well/badly against. That is, consider a route/branch X, then there are different setups within that route (X1, X2, ... Xn), and there shouldn't be a route/setup Y such X1 << Y, X2 << Y, ... Xn << Y. This means that players, once they've chosen a route, can still do things to stop them being completely at the mercy of one particular other route setup.

* Given a route X, the different setups within that route -- X1, ... Xn -- should be different in interesting and useful ways: no one setup should be strictly -- or even close to strictly -- better than all others. That is, there should be routes/setups Y and Z such that (X1,Y) < (X2, Y) and (X2,Z) < (X1, Z). This means that there's not an obvious choice of setup, and you can vary it depending upon what you want to do.

* Going to a slightly lower level of analysis, I think changing the proportion an individual unit in routes should be changing your strength significantly against more than one route/setup: units which are only good for one thing are pretty dull, and an uninteresting balancing solution. I'm not entirely sure how to defend this right now, but I think this is another principle which should be thought about.


Now, with this in mind, are there bits of the game which are obviously good/bad? Are there more principles which this brings to light? Are there things which obviously need some work?

 

[Max]

I think that on the whole, this is one thing that Azzer has actually worked VERY hard at over the years and has tweaked very nicely in many respects.

There are a few cases where it doesn't matter how you tune your route, you will die. A PA player can change what ratio they buy their Autos/PAs/CWs/TDs but will ALWAYS fail when attacked by a striker, no question.

However, most routes provide plenty of options for flexibility and is pretty good.

My opinion is that this is very important for solos, but not for alliances. In alliances, it is the team element that is clearly more important, so actually if you get your striker player to MASS STRIKERs and your SO player to MASS SAs, overall that's a terrific combo and perfectly balanced.

So the route combination factor is incredibly important and must be taken into consideration.

 

[tobapopalos]

I love the balance of strength/weakness for most routes, and think it is one area where Azzer has done a good job (although I believe he had quite a lot of help from players in the early days).

However, I think the introduction of dragons and vampires back in round 19 screwed up the rock/paper/scissors thing to quite a degree. I've never really seen a place for either route in the game and they seem to get changed every other round to try and counter whatever route was strongest the previous round. Vampire becoming counter-SA, dragons getting bunker busters, not to mention all the hidden bonuses which seem to have been added purely on a whim. Even now no two sorc players agree on what the route is strong or weak against.

 

[Dax]

Dragon's aren't particularly strong against anything - They are what you make them. They are a group of units that when moulded in certain ways combat different things. It's a beautiful route in that you can pick and and always have targets, as you can simply re-arrange ratios to counter a popular route that is around.
Vampires, on the other hand - I've played them in an alliance and they were poor, I spent more time rolling stealth to fool defences than I actually did attacking anyone. BUT, I was successful with the route, regardless of the faffing around. They serve no solid purpose, bar to copy the SA's role in the game (but have a very high anti-TL capability, whereas SA do somewhat lack in that role). The conversion units are good fun early in the round, and Mummies do serve a vague purpose as a brilliant health-flak/mid tick AP stripper, and Gargs are absolutely brilliant and cheap rush units (as Johnnie has demonstrated countless times now). They serve no definitive purpose, but they have their uses.