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Unit point cost

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Sun, 08/28/2005 - 16:12
Fhizban
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Okay another question of mine:

I am using a standard point cost system in my current game - a wargame. So each player buys the troops he wants to use in the battle before the game starts.

In a typical game each player has 1000 goldpieces (buy-points) to spend on troops, artefacts and equipment (just like in warhammer but one thousand is a suitable number.

all of the objects in my game are made of "Generation Points" that the designer can spend to buy attribute-levels and special powers. some roleplaying games allowed the player to generate his character using a point system just like mine. in my scenario the generation points are only for the game-designer (i want to be able to expand the game later on).

as a rough guide all of my units are made up from 12 to 70 points. so i am trying to assign a goldcost to any number of generation points or to find a suitable formula to calculate the total cost. right now i am using a triangular numbers aproach - but the numbers get very large (a 70 point unit costs 2485 gold according to the triangular number formula).

so any suggestions welcome. I can change everyhting except the number of generation points and the fact that I just want to use a steadily increasing point cost model instead of the standard 5-10-15-20-25-30-25-and-so-on stuff.

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Sun, 08/28/2005 - 22:53
#1
Emphyrio
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Unit point cost

You can use a simple exponential formula -- just decide how much gold the 12-point unit should cost and how much the 70-point one should cost, then fiddle around with the base and exponents until you get a series that you like.

For example, if you use the formula g = 3 ^ (n/12) where g is the gold cost and n is the point value, your 12-point unit costs 3 gold and your 70-point unit costs 607 gold. If you use the formula g = 2.2 ^ (n/10), the 12-point unit still costs 3 gold (rounding up) but the 70-point unit only costs 249 gold. If you use the formula g = (n/6) ^ 1.5, the 12-point unit still costs 3 gold, and the 70-point unit costs 40 gold.

A spreadsheet program makes these calculations very easy. But you still have to decide how much more valuable a 70-point unit is than a 12-point unit -- 10 times? 100 times? The best way to do that is probably to see how many 12-pointers you need to take out the 70-pointer. Then you can do the same with some intermediate-value units to get a better idea of the curve you're trying to fit.

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Mon, 08/29/2005 - 01:23
#2
Fhizban
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Unit point cost

Thanks for the Info Emphyrio. I will try and play a bit with the formula you provided.

Basicly I used triangular numbers because I wanted the goldcost to rise curve like. Because a 20 point unit is much more powerful then 5x5 point units. The 5x5 get more attacks but thats relative because the 20 point unit has much more possibilities: it can access the higher skill levels and better skills in general.

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