Skip to Content
 

Balancing teams

4 replies [Last post]
Fri, 08/19/2011 - 14:48
Kalmari Krapula
Offline
Joined: 11/19/2010

Hello,

I'm working on a little space-game project and now I'm thinking about balancing teams. In the game there are various amount of races, about 6-10. Three of them represent alien races, and the rest are different kind of humans. Human races should be different toward each others and all of human races should be different to the aliens.

So, how do you think Alienrace A, Alienrace B, Alienrace C and Humans different from each other. There is such important things as spaceship and weapon technology, mining and construction, trading and politics, battleskills. I'm not so sure what these skills really means, so use your imagination. :)

Also there is maybe 3-8 different resources, 3-5 different weaponsysytems and 3-7 different space ships for various purposes and every human race have their own combinations of them. :)

ust throw some ideas.

Thanks, Kalmari

Top
Sat, 08/20/2011 - 16:30
#1
dtigertron
Offline
Joined: 08/20/2011
Re: Balancing teams

It is really difficult to comment on these types of things with out knowing more about your game mechanics. The thing about special abilities in good games, is to make the abilities varied so it feels different when you play with different teams. However it also needs to be balanced. You need to start with the question ' How does some one win my game?' Then figure out how each different aspect of your game (Tech, resources, armies, ships, whatever is in your game) gets a player to the point where they can win the game. Then make the 'powers' proportional to how much that aspect of your game influences who wins. Did that help? I am new here and want to be helpful, if they have 'private messages' on this site you can give me more details and I will give you my thoughts on your game.

Top
Mon, 08/22/2011 - 05:15
#2
Kalmari Krapula
Offline
Joined: 11/19/2010
My idea

The idea for this topic was to just throw some ideas about balancing mechanics and more actually, how to create balanced teams which are different to other teams.

Anyway, the goal in the game is to collect the most (VP) vistory points (WOW, you say). Players can gain VPs by economical, political and military achievements. In the beginning of the game these achievements are mostly being alive and owning a spaceship -types of things and they evolute towards the end of the game to something like boost your economy to develop your army to destroy entire alien race -types of things. Also the playing will evolve from the self-centered very beginning to the co-op very end. Of course the very very end is not co-operative because there is only one winner, but the middle part is very co-operative because its the only way to gather VPs.

There are also about 10-15 different spaceships, from small and unarmed mechantvessels to the enormous battleships with multiple turrets and missilebays. Players are able to modify their fleet in many ways, developing armed forces, research facilities and cargo transports. In the game there are 6 different weapon- and 4 different shieldsystems, which allows the player to modify their ships. Also the game includes 2 or 3 different resources + citizens which are both, political resource and labour.

Also the games political aspect grows toward the end.

So this is my game in a nutshell.

The differences between humans are in starting ships and resources and in some bonuses. But the question is how aliens will be different from humans. It should be on a greater level. Also I would like to spesify every alien race into something.

Top
Mon, 08/22/2011 - 05:46
#3
Cogentesque
Cogentesque's picture
Offline
Joined: 08/17/2011
Hey Mr. Krapula (lol) Exactly

Hey Mr. Krapula (lol)

Exactly as our good friend says, this is something that is hard to really comment on as in order to help "balance teams" we need to know about the teams themselves and in great depth (eg: Alien race Y tends to always win space battles - we could say "try making the laser beam have a 50% chance to fire succesfully, or maybe put the laser beam into a tier 2 area, so they would only have access to it towards the game by which time the others would have developped laser defences "

But at the moment it sounds very big, broad, and awash with the starts of some great ideas. What I would say in your specific example in all honesty is it sounds already like there will be hundereds and hundereds of different choices and items and ships etc. And if you want 10 alien races as well, then you would need to test and balance each piece of equipment, ship, dice rolls, card options for 100's or possibilities if - as you say - each alien race needs to work totally differently. Perhaps we can keep the number of different races but maybe its better to start with, say 2 or 3 and then gradually release more and more as expansions and ad-ons?

Either way I think your best choice of action in regards to your orignal question ("How do I balance the races effectively within the game ideas") is to first of all, completely sort 1 race (say humans) and then play a coupld of games of humans vs humans. Like a mirror match. This will test out if all "systems are go" first of all, and if the game at the heart of it works or does not work or is boring or is super fun! What I would do then, is think "oustide the box" a little and think to yourself: if the "building spaceships " part of the humans game is really fun, then maybe I could have another race that doesn't have any buildings at all, but has big mother ships that build smaller ships themselves! And then tihs could be the basis for your first alien race. And another could be say: The humans are much better at building than conquering and get VP very quickly from building, perhaps I could make a war-like alien race that gets a lot of there VP from the game by destroying things! But then each thing would need a "destroy: VP" value. Perhaps then I could have one alien race that can actually increase the value of VP's gained through its high-tech technology, but themselves are very bad at fighting, so they should ally with the warrior race, as perhaps they would get points from allying! But then the VP increasing race and the warrio race (once allied) would perhaps be too powerful, so Ill make another race that excels at destroying things "in alliances" perhaps some kind of bio-race that infects one unit, and it spreads to a corresponding allied troop, killing them both. But then that would be powerful so I would invent a cybertronic race that excels in combat against bio-organic organisms but not so good against robot organisms - etc .etc .etc. etc. etc.

And you can see that once you have a fully fledged and ready -basic- race you can easily go on to define other characteristics of other races. But you need this first initial concept before we can REALLY help you out with some great ideas :o)

Cog

Top
Mon, 08/22/2011 - 07:19
#4
Kalmari Krapula
Offline
Joined: 11/19/2010
thanks mates

Your help is priceless, even though my description hasn't been so exact. :) The game is about surviving post-apocalyptic world and managing civilization through the crisis and eventaully get the revenge. Part of the game is to find out which race destroyed the world, other part is building your economy and fleet with very limited resources and the final is to destroy the alien faction.

At the moment it looks like in the first prototype there will be 3 human and 3 alien races. This means about 60 vessel cards and corresponding hex-counters. This means there would be around 150-200 weapon and shield square-counters. There would also be around 200-300 woodcubes and 100-150 woodcylinders. So in total, one deck of cards, 200-250 counters, 350-400 wooden pieces, one bigger gameboard and six smaller.

My goal is to make game that lasts around 120-240 minutes, is suitable for 2-5 players and is very replayable. My secondary objects are to make it as cheap as possible and to use as much natural and recyclable material as possible. :) So wish me luck. :)

Top
Syndicate content


forum | by Dr. Radut