Point Calculating 2.0

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

I haven't put my higher brain functions to work in a few months here, so I think it's time I did some work.


We discussed previously a desire to reconstruct the point system in order to reward skill, while eliminating 'The Grind'.

What I suggested was a similar system to that used by the Snowboarding game SSX 3, where in you earn points for actions, but as you string actions together into a combo, you gain a secondary 'bonus pool' that grows as long as you keep performing tricks.   On top of this, the value added by each trick to the bonus pool goes from half the value of a trick early on, to twice the value of the trick when you have a high combo count.  With the clincher being that you have to not only go from trick to trick, but also NOT wipe out or you lose the entire pool before you can bank it.


Making that work for SF is the goal I have in mind, but we had yet to discuss how that would 'work.'


This morning I started inadvertantly brainstorming on one section, and I realized we'd have to break this down into tasks.


So the first section of building the point awarding system's going to also be the most risky part of gameplay.  Combat.



Who gets the most points in combat?   The best combatant.   But how do you determine the best combatant with so many varying ways to fight?

I propose the following.

Each player's ship starts with a base point value.  This point value is based on the credit value of the ship and all its components.    Automatically, big expensive ships are worth more to kill than dinky underequipped freighters.  This allows the game to already be half way geared to dispense points fairly to loadouts being used.

Well, that serves to tell us the statistical side of things, but how do you get the value based on a player's actual skill?


Well, here's the first combo stacker.   Chain-Kills.  Staying alive is paramount to being a good combatant.  Therefore, every time you get a kill, you add a kill to your active kill count.  What would be a good method to have occure here is to reward the player for long kill streaks.  Starting at three kills, the base value of ships you kill start getting multiples added to them.  Up to a multiple of ten.  This means that every third ship you kill, it's worth one X more than the previous.

So here's an example:

1- 2 Kills = 1X  3 to 4 kills 2X  etc... all the way to twenty active kills = 10X.

Essentially what this means is that every kill you make at twenty active is worth ten times their base value. 

This also works in reverse.  Your ship will also gain multiples of your value based on how many ships you've killed.  If you've killed twenty people, and someone kills you.  You're worth ten times your base value already.  This goes ON TOP of however many chain kill stacks they've earned.

So imagine for a minute that you've got two twenty-kill monsters fighting it out.  After a long firefight, one comes out victorious.   When you add the bounty stack, and the chainkill stacks together.   It's multiple of ten to the multiple of ten.   The player who died just gave 100X the points their ship was worth to the player that killed them.

Is this fair?  YOU BET IT IS!  Not only is that player that good as to stack up twenty kills without dying, they're good enough to handle their equal and win. 

Let's view this in practice.

Say my ship is worth 100 points based on parts.  This is merely a rounded number for ease...

If I kill 20 players.   My ship will be worth ten times that amount.

1,000 points.

If you come along and have stacked twenty kills and wish to kill me, and win, your stack multiplies against my stack.

My ship is worth 10,000 points.


Now one may ask:  "Can't this be abused by spawnkillers?"

Well, since we know that's possible.  There's two very easy to implement solutions.

One you are killed, a one minute (Subject to adjustment) timer starts.   During this one minute, any kills made on you don't go into their active count.  Likewise, for that one minute, your ship is also worth a fraction of a percentage of it's base value based on how long it's been in play.   Killed at respawn being worth NOTHING while alive for a full one minute means you've returned to full value.  Likewise, during that first minute, death penalties do not count against you.

Penalties.
There are two penalties to be had.  The first is of course, dying in general.  The first death does not acrue any negative score.  However, after that, there is a very rapidly climbing chain-death penalty.  Unlike chain kills, chain deaths go up every SINGLE death after one.   One death is worth nothing, but two deaths is worth two ships, then three, then four.   If you're so bad as to die ten times in a row, you desserve to be docked ten times your ship's value for that blunder.  Just remember... it's  0 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 = 54.   So if you get killed ten times in a row, you lose fifty-four times your ship's point value.  Which would seriously hit your dynamic score.

If My ship is worth 100 points, that means that if I got killed ten times in a row, I just got hammered for 5,400 points.   That's over half the points you'd get for the 'Perfect Kill' (You with a twenty active chain killing a twenty kill chainer.)  If your ship is worth more than a hundred points.  (Which no doubt it will)...  You'll be hammered even HARDER.

The second penalty is the suicide death.  Which works just like above, only it goes in multiples of 2! (0 4 ,6 ,8 ,10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20)  This is to discourage repeating suicide bomber tactics unless its the absolute last resort and it's more valueable than fighting the hard way.

Want to lose 10,800 points blowing your tiny ship up in someone's face ten times?  Go for it.


As I said before, the 'respawn' timer nullifies dead and suicide penalties.  The exact time would have to be adjusted to fit the game, but the reasons for the timer are as follows.
- To prevent spawnkillers from farming 'easy combos' off weak targets.  (Without having to directly punish them in case they have a legit reason to be spawnkilling... such as planetary assault in progress.)
- To prevent players who're trying their best to fight off said seige from being penalized for it.)



That's all I have at this time.

Point of potential abuse:  Basing point value of equipment credit value, if credit value of equipment can be modified, player can make absurdly expensive peice of useless equipment, and earn massive value by killing enemies with it equipped default. 

Solution A: Only Player kills count in the kill score during online gameplay, and bots still count as deaths.  Making cheat-cooperation harder.

Solution B: Do not place value of points in credit value of equipment.  However mass or other unit value does not guarantee the 'effectiveness' or actual 'useful value' of equipped gear to gauge how many points a peice of equipment may be worth.

Solution C:  Do not allow players to edit equipment credit values.   Problem is that makes judging the 'useful value' of equipment fall back into the issues of solution B.

[NiteHawk]

Pretty simple/basic system, overall good.

When I have more time to post more I will, however we would defiantly make sure that AI's don't count for this because AI's will forever never play like a human can play unless you make them cheatlike, which alot of games do, (Aka for EXTREME MODE in games its either 10000 billion ai coming at you or ai that have 1000% shields, and stupid shit that I don't care for). But ai kills will still tally in your score even still, just not your 'active score/points' if this were to be done.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

This is just the killing component of score stacking.

I still need to figure out ways to stack/multiply the less risky tasks.  Such as construction, colonizing, building, transporting, and repairing.

We want to provide ways to reward people who are skilled at tasks other than combat.

[Trompete]

In reality, we can just record all of the scoring information that will be used in calculations and then do the calculations later on the nexus. That's what we did for BF1942 when we needed to take into account flag captures/human kills/KDR...etc.

What would be more useful in the short term would be a list of things that we should record on the nexus.

[NiteHawk]

In reality, we can just record all of the scoring information that will be used in calculations and then do the calculations later on the nexus. That's what we did for BF1942 when we needed to take into account flag captures/human kills/KDR...etc.

What would be more useful in the short term would be a list of things that we should record on the nexus.

Indeed first step is getting a proper scoring system set up. Something standard for SF 2.0 would be:
Kills
AI Kills (Seperate, Kills = much higher point value.)
Deaths
Plant Colonizing/Captures (Colonizing/Capturing via Orbiting/Dropping colonies)
Construction (Building)
Repair (Maybe, might be to fast paced to bother with this, if we do it though it would be Per hull point for example, like 10 hull points = 1 repair point)
Total Time Online (Though would be only when there 'active' not afk or idling, would bea  very low low addon though)
Bonus (Lets say SF officials hold a tourny, this bonus would be used. Also winning the map would be considered this.)

I'm not so sure about transporting. What I wonder is its kind of difficult to actually do unless there 'missions' in a sense. AKA 'PLANET NEEDS X AMOUNT OF MATERIALS', and you take it there, otherwise i could see the potential exploiting in transfering to close planets etc etc. So Im' not so sure this is a good 'stat'.

For the most case, the initial SF will probably ave all the proper values just that they wont work until we code it properly, aka for the extra stuf,f such as CONSTRUCTION, for instance.

The final value would be a algorithm, called PRESTIGE. To get this:
AI kills + Kills + Planet Col/Cap + Construction + Repair + Bonus + Total Time Online + Transporting - Deaths

And note, I don't mean 1 ai kill would = 1 point. Lets say ai kills would be *0.10, kills would be *5, Friendly fire would be *0.02, etc.
Like (AI kills*0.10) + (kills*5) + (Plant Captures * 0.50) + etc - (Deaths *.10)... etc

Furthermore, You could even add 'Ship Damage' and 'Friendly Fire' when we do add actual hull values. Though this might be too beyond, it would consist of per hull point hit (not shield points), ship damage being the positive, and friendly fire being negative.

In the end this would have to be changed depending on extra things (Like Active kills Bonus if we sneak this in.)

[NiteHawk]

Oh I also don't see the reason to split up colonizing and capturing planets, because once colonized its rare to see a planet destroyed unless people sit around bombing forever, or the coding changes a great deal to benefit these two separately. though it might be too extreme for a 2D game.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Never ask a programmer to explain anything...  *Looks at Nitehawk's post...*


"Wut?"


Anyway, the scoring codes shouldn't be controlled by the nexus.  I'm always wary of making things dependant upon an outside operator.  Plus there are Issues I think about asside from this.

One thing about Battlefield is that is operates on a per-round basis.  Rounds that are... twenty to thirty minutes long.  These scores are calculated at the end of each round and are THEN added to your score.  Stellar Frontier won't have 'rounds'.  A single game session in a server may end up lasting for days.  Since it's impractical to calculate per-round, the alternative is to contact the nexus in real time every time the score is adjusted.  That's not going to scale well if you think of that as several dozen servers with a dozen players or more contacting the nexus on and off simply to run score checks.  Xp

(Plus I'd rather have the scores being run as I play so I can earn my ranks as I go.  Insant Gratification FOR THE WIN!)



So anyway, transport points.


What do you score off that?

Well, first establish the base value.  How many points is it to move something from point A to point B without someone killing your ass?  I say that depends on the value of what's being moved.

We have raw materials, supplies, and luxury goods.

Lux Goods, being of no 'use' to gameplay, while potentially earning you the most cash, do not earn the most points.  (Lux goods is the 'mission' based task you can do.)

Raw Materials, such as asteroid mines and deep space hydrogen collection, would be worth more, but are not immediately useable.


Supplies, are ready to use, and worth the most.


So here's the base value to scale.  (Not any final value)

A unit of each being moved is worth:

LG: 1
Raw Mat: 2
Sup:  4

So say you start with 100 points worth of goods.  (This is again, for clarity of calculation.)

So the next question is how much is it worth to take those goods anywhere?

Well, in transport, the most important value is distance.  How far is it going?  The second is, 'how soon can it be there?'.


I propose a value like such.  This value can be adjusted for scaling later, but it works different.

The value of transporting 100 points of goods requires that the minimum distance between the starting point, and the destination, be at least One AU.  And multiplying of value works on a non-liniar scale.

If you're moving any goods under the range of one AU, the goods are worth beteen 0, and 100% of their base value.  (Say you only go half an AU with the goods.  They're only worth 1/2 their base value.  So 100 points of goods are worth only 50 points.)

Above one AU, the goods point value climbs, but only by one tenth per additional AU traveled.  So in order to have 100 points of goods become 200 points, you have to travel 11 AU. 


Now, 'how fast' does it get there?  That should factor in.

However, this is very easily a point in which it could be exploited and must be set up carefully.

First off, the value of goods will not be multiplied over speed, but a 'speed bonus' will be tacted on depending on the percentage of travel time calculated based on distance.

The calculated speed will be the 'time to travel' calculated between two bodies based on distance, 0.5c

The timer starts at pickup, and stops when you deliver.  The calculation is made at delivery (since you could be going anywhere) at which point the timer is checked against the distance.  (The timer is also cleared)

A value between 0 and 100 is selected.   This may get messy, so let me walk through an example.

You fly one AU with 100 points of goods and drop them off.  You manage to do this in 70 percent of the Half Speed of Light time required.

You take the leftover time, thirty percent, and apply that to the goods value.  You get thirty percent of the value of your goods.  30 points.  You place this value on top of your base value of 100.   100 Base + Time Bonus of 30 = 130 Total.

Now, the point of exploit is that a Q drive can be used with absurd speed and distances.  So how to reign this in is of great importance.  Obviously, we want to encourage legit servers that might be using huge distances and fast drives.  But we want to prevent custom server exploits without encroaching on player freedom.

One possible way to do this is set a value that reads the top speed of a Q drive.  IF the Q drive is engaged, the value of the drive is calculated against the time it takes to travel one AU at 0.5 lightspeed.  Let's call this 'One Minute'

So the distance is recalculated based on the new value of how many AUs the Q drive can cross in one minute. 

So what occures, is the original AU Value is replaced with the QAU value.  So if you've got a pair of planets 100 AU apart, but someone tries to exploit this by making the 100 AU/minute Q drive, they get a score as if that was only One AU.

If the Q drive is not activated, it remains on the normal setup.

This provides two controls. 
1: It prevents players from exploiting Q drive for points.
2: It rewards players who stick to realspace to transport goods. Risking intercept. (Because if they travel long distances in realspace, they don't get the distance recalculated.)

Penalty.
The only other possible exploit is the realspace thrust value of a ship.  This is easy to deal with.
Essentially, just look at the transit timer.  If the time-in-transit is less than half the required flight time and no Q drive is activated...  Instead of adding the bonus value, it subtracks that from the value from the base score.  So 100 and you get there thirty percent faster than half the time it should take...  You only get, 70 points.

Why this?  Well, first off, the maximum speed of any ship without Q drive can only be just short of lightspeed.  (Max speed of about 0.999999~ c)  Therefore, if the base speed for the timer is 0.5c, then any time shorter than half the time required to get any place means you're exceeding C without the use of a Qdrive.   IOW, you're cheating.




The final value, is a multipler I like to call 'Demand'.

How much is your supply load needed?  This point value would make players think about where they need to go with their loads rather than just pick 'farthest opertunity and fly'.

Obviously, luxury goods would not gain any additional bonus points because lux goods are NOT 'needed'.

But Raw Material and Supplies would work as thus.

Each planet will have a percentage value, but said percentage is based on their actual supply requirement value.  When a planet has less room for extra goods than you have load, you get a bonus of zero multiplier.

When a planet has more 'open space' than you have load, you start getting a 'demand bonus'.

It works as thus.

Say a planet can hold 1,000 units of whatever you're transporting.  (Either Raw Material, OR Supplies.)  You're moving say, 100 units.

If the planet has 975 units of supplies.  You deliver 100 units and top them off to 1,000.  However you do not recieve a bonus multiplier for it.

If the planet has 900 units of supplies, and you deliver 100 units to top them off at 100, you 'would' gain a 1X multiple, but value times itself remains the same.   So you don't start seeing a bonus value until the planet is at least 800 or less, where to 'top it off' requires 2X your load.  That's where the calculation hits.  Your bonus multiplier is however many times your capacity the planet requires.

This allows your load to be fluid in size.  If you only hold ten units, and the place needs 100 to top off, you get a ten X multiplier.  It would be worth the same amount of points as delivering the 100 unit load.


Now, stacking.

I already discussed how points would be start with a base load, adjust over distance, and get a time bonus.  The 'demand' bonus takes the grand total from this, and applies the multiplier.  The exact point value of your activites depends on how much you're hauling, where to, how fast, and how important it is to get it there.

When you stack all these together, you're effectively managing transport.

So let's say you need to transport 100 units of raw materials from an asteroid mine to a planet.

Each unit of raw material is worth 2 points.  So your load is valued at 200. 
The distance between the mine and two potential target planets is 1.5 AU, and 0.8 AU.   

Planet A's adjusted transport value is: 250
Planet B's adjusted transport value is: 180

Planet A: 1.5 AU, needs 50 Units.
Planet B: 0.8 AU, need 300 Units.

Calculating your load.  You get no multipler for Planet A, and A 3X multiplier for planet B.

Planet A Pre Transport Value: 250
Planet B Pre Transport Value: 540

So your research pays off.  Now you fly to planet B.

You get there with thirty percent extra time to spare, and don't use the Q drive.

Your base load is 200, the time bonus is 60 points.  So your load value is 180 + 60 == 240

240 x 3X Multiplier = 720 points.


The transport player is awarded for moving the load, quickly, to where it needs to be the MOST.  A player skilled in transport loads will be able to operate this decision making routine quickly and is thus rewarded with rapid, consistent high-scoring transport runs.  In short, the better he is at 'doing business', the more he earns in points.

Add in pirates and enemies causing trouble, and the need to evaluate risk (you get killed, you don't deliver, nuff said.) and it gets a whole lot more complicated for the transport player.

A master transport pilot will be able to spot opertunity, exploit that opertunity, and fly the load quickly, safely, and consistently.  He will be able to find his next 'run' before he even finishes his current run so he can string these high value loads together.  The better he is, the faster he can out-transport the competators (be it bots or otherwise), the more he earns in the points.

[ChillFactor]

For the tasking system we can look into NAEV's freight/transport missions. Refer to here

About the deaths smashing your points, I wouldn't agree completely, especially for newbs. Maybe we should have a training environment where these points don't work.

So far, so good

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Chain deaths smash your points.  I mean seriously, how bad can you be to die ten times in a row?  There's got to be SOMETHING you can kill more effectively than yourself.

[NiteHawk]

Most peoples deaths aren't even close to there kills.

It wouldn't be a huge affect, a few robot kills would mostly get you back to where you are, its just something to 'affect score' a bit so the guy with 50000 kills and 0 death is different from the guy who has 50000 kills and 50000 deaths.

But again its not going to be life draining or anything like that. Very minimal loss.

[Mobious]

In general it could just be handy... as I've mentioned before... to collect as much information as possible at first until we really smooth (read: balance) out how the score will be calculated. Therefore we can keep a stats system as it is now but have additional data on the nexus to play with (this is done already just we don't mess with some of it) That way in the future we can just alter how the score is calculated without having to wipe everyone again if we switch to a more prestige minded system.

All in all fun. Server collects the info - send to nexus to store... nexus does the processing.

[Trompete]

In general it could just be handy... as I've mentioned before... to collect as much information as possible at first until we really smooth (read: balance) out how the score will be calculated. Therefore we can keep a stats system as it is now but have additional data on the nexus to play with (this is done already just we don't mess with some of it) That way in the future we can just alter how the score is calculated without having to wipe everyone again if we switch to a more prestige minded system.

All in all fun. Server collects the info - send to nexus to store... nexus does the processing.

This is what we're planning to do.

No 3-page replies about formulas are necessary. It will be done separately from stat collection by the nexus.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Ah.  So what you want is to collect performance stats first to find the 'average' performance before you implement the scoring formulae.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Anyway, what's next?


Well, I've broken down the acts of combat and acting as a transport pilot.



Let'a address 'business ownership'  (AKA: You build things) and get that out of the way.

I'm thinking the act of building in itself should not give you points.  And there should be nothing to be gained from chaining that.

Instead, rewarding points to the construction player should be based on his intelligent placement of what he builds.
IOW: How much it gets used.  In business they say 'Location Location Location'.

So construction players should earn points based on the use of their facilities by other players.  The better the location, the more players use the 'establishement' more frequently.

Throw in a fixed value on how many points are earned per 'use', and call it a day.

Conversely, add a penalty to capture (by pirates) or destruction. (by enemies.)  that way absolutely piss poor strategic placement (right near a major area of contest or right next to enemy held planets... pick something stupid)  is punished.   Only keep the punishment here fairly low.  A freighter captain can't exactly defend his equipment.

For weapon platforms, award the constructing player the points they make for their kills.  However, since it is an automated weapon, and not the player's action, that makes the kill, do not allow for any stacking or bonus values.  This should also go for any other 'remote' weapons.  Such as fighters off a carrier. 


Moving on.


What else?


I've covered combat and economics.

Colonizing/Capturing

Well, the new system will have direct colonization efforts rather than tugging big colonies around like giant freightliner trucks...

First we'll need to establish what scenarios tend to occure.


Colonize Empty World.
Counter-colonize enemy held world.
Force a surrender via Blockade.
Wipe out enemy colony.



Now that these are broken into catagories, it becomes easier to assign point values.


Colonizing an empty world would be the easiest, thus is should have little more than a base value for taking a planet, most likely a dynamic value based on the 'desirability' of that planet.  This way, the most important factor is to determine what kind of world you're going after FIRST.  Especially creditable in large map games with a significant number of planets.


Counter-Colonizing a planet is more difficult because of the ease in which any population based combat value can be modified.  So perhaps part of the process here should identify how carefully you take the world.

In this case, conquering the world via bombardment and attack would work to lower the condition of the planet and adversely affect the desireability.  Meaning that you get rewarded more points for more 'carefully' executed (and thus difficult) assault campaigns.  (Either going with troop storms, or being careful what kind of weapons you're using.)


Blockade captures should net the most gain.  In combination with any kill scores you attain over a blockade attack period, you take the target planet with little fuss.   There should be a bonus multiplier to a planet's condition/desireability capture value. 


An extermination should yield a moderate score.  Though this would be most difficult to fix a value at.  Perhaps just fix a straight value and leave it at that.  You're not really taking the planet, and it's certainly not going to be in anything ressembling good condition after your genocidal campaign. 

Throw ideas in on this section, as mine are vague at the moment.

We want to reward efficiency in doing these tasks, but avoid abuse potential before the coding stage.

[NiteHawk]

Alright, please don't make a giant post now that I'm about to check this out tomorrow (Since I am now back for the most case. More so on weekends at the moment.). As you know, I want 'one total' point system, which is prestige. Remind you, this is basic stuff first, no extra stuff yet (like chaining/etc). Please don't include it.

I would still record things like KILLS, DEATHS, etc, but they would not be apart of gaining prestige. The reason why I state this is that we can have a more dynamic system. What I mean is for example: Ship Damage would be a stat. Ship Damage would be the amount of damage you have delt to other ships. This would be apart of the 'total' prestige. It would be based on HULL or SUBSYSTEM damage, not shield damage. Here is an example:

There is a scout with 200 hitpoints (hull?). Trompete and I attack it. Trompete breaks through the shields and damages it for 160 points, leaving it with just 20% hull left. I attack and hit it for the other 40 hitpoints, killing it. Trompete would get 160 points to his 'SHIP DAMAGE' stat, and I would get 40 points to my 'SHIP DAMAGE' stat. So we would get points dependent on how well we have done. Thus Trompete, even though he did not get the kill shot, still delt alot more damage, and gets most of the points.

Another thing is, the bigger the ship, the more points you'd get (more hull points normally.) So that part would be balanced in one go. This system is more dynamic, and you don't have to worry about people 'stealing your kill' and would balance quite nicely (Or so I think.) The issue is, I wonder if it is too much for SF over all. It is not COMPLICATED, and I apologize if I am wording it horribly. But I think it would add a nice touch, and things like "PLANET DAMAGE' could be added, so we know if you like bombing, repairing, killing, capturing planets, etc. Get me?

Please give me a YES/NO and a basic statement of why, or a better way to improve it, try to be small. I honestly like the idea, as it will balance rather nicely depending on the ship you kill point wise, and it's very easy to adjust AI vs Player wise. The KILLS/etc stat will still be there, but just be for ranking more or less, since SHIP DAMAGE is basically similar, but its a breakdown of the actual kill.