[B18] Manhunter Animals Rebalanced (22nd Jan 2018)

Started by XeoNovaDan, December 12, 2017, 10:12:10 AM

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XeoNovaDan



Compatibility
I haven't patched any animal mods to be rebalanced yet, but they'll still work fine. Dinosauria's animals have already been calculated on the spreadsheet used to calculate the combat power ratings though so expect an update for that in the future.

This mod should work fine with other mods such as Hardworking Animals and Animal Logic.

In theory, this can also be added to and removed from existing savegames without issue since it only patches Combat Power values for animal PawnKindDefs.

Download
GitHub
Steam

Like this mod? Check out my other mods here!


Overview
This little project is one I undertook because some of the 'combat power' ratings for animals seemed way off for how effective those animals are in combat. Examples include wild boars and insects having a lower combat power rating than what they're worth, and boomalopes having a combat power rating that's higher than what they're worth. The changes here affect both manhunter packs and infestations.

As a result, boars are now worth 80 points rather than 55; megascarabs are 55 rather than 40; spelopedes are 165 rather than 75; megaspiders are 270 rather than 150. Boomalopes are 65 rather than 95 since they're slow, large, fragile and have a tendency to chain react. Many other animals were changed too though.

What's factored into the new formula for 'Combat Power' ratings:

  • Movement speed relative to a baseline human
  • Total coverage of parts that directly and indirectly affect movement
  • Body size's impact on ranged accuracy
  • Health scale (multiplier of body part HP and pain to incapacitate)
  • Total coverage of parts that may cause death when destroyed
  • Effective damage reduction for sharp and blunt damage
  • Damage per second (DPS)

Here's just the spreadsheet for those that want to perhaps patch or amend to their animal mods or something like that - maybe even experiment with or come up with a better formula. Do note that for animals like boomrats, their explosion wasn't factored in; I added a value on myself.

For those that don't know what 'combat power' ratings do: the size of a manhunter pack, like raids, is determined by using 'points' which is influenced by colony wealth; population and how long the colony's been around for. Think of the points as a budget, which the game uses to 'buy' hostiles to attack your colony. The higher a pawn's 'combat power' rating, the more they cost when using this analogy.

While one can argue that the new combat power ratings that this mod introduces are purely from a theoretical standpoint whereas vanilla's combat power ratings are based on results from practise, the 'battle royale' mode used to test the latter is completely random in terms of pawn pairings and therefore results will be skewed to varying degrees. I tried my best to ensure a mostly accurate replication of in-game conditions in the new formula though.

Credits
Marnador for their wild RimWorld-style font.

License
As is standard with my mods: you may include this mod in a mod pack, and you may derive from this, but please inform me if you're doing so either through here or Ludeon Forums, and give credit where credit's due.

frenchiveruti

Although I like that the mod "decreases" the amount of bugs, I think this was intentional for giving infestations a greater feel of challenge.

XeoNovaDan

Hmm, maybe. I'll see how it goes; maybe give insects a 25% decrease to make infestations 33% larger than normal.

kaptain_kavern

Hi there, colleague,

Is it possible to ask for more details on how you have computed all that, please? Or, even better, one of those spreadsheets you have the secret for?  :)

What I mean : you know I often do animal mods? And it always bothered me that I hadn't a real precise way of determining/balancing what to chose/use for all the stats like damage, bodysize, bodyhealth and the infamous "Combat power" ^^ So anything that can help me rationalize my approach would be great.

Thank you in advance and, of course, thank you for the mod. In fact, the reason I asked about that is obviously because I found your changes to feels great  ;D

XeoNovaDan

#4
Hey Kap!

The spreadsheet should be bundled with the mod, but I'll roughly piece together the formula here and I'll do a link in the future:

Base Combat Power = mS * hS * DPS * 17.5
where mS is the Movement Score; hS is the Health Score and DPS is the Damage per Second. Here's how they're all calculated:

mS = S / pBM / 4.61
where S is movement speed and pBM is Percentage of Body that affects Movement.

hS = H / (1 + (RA - 1) * 0.5) / (dmB * 0.5 + dmS * 0.5) / ((pBV + 0.5) / 2) / 2
where H is the health scale; RA is the body size's ranged accuracy multiplier; dmB is the effective blunt damage multiplier; dmS is the effective sharp damage multiplier and pBV is the percentage of the body that may be fatal to the animal if destroyed.

Then standard DPS calculations.

The base Combat Power rating is then basically post processed with the following 'curvepoints':
(0, 0)
(10, 20)
(100, 100)
(175, 167.5)
(300, 255)
(500, 355)
(9999, 2255)


Or in other words: ratings below 10 will bear 2x weight; 10 to 100 bears down to 1x weight; 100 to 175 bears 0.9x weight; 175 to 300 bears 0.7x weight; 300 to 500 bears 0.5x weight; beyond 500 bears only 0.2x weight.

Multistream

Does this mod add possibility for any animals to be in a manhunter pack (will be great)? Or it changes only existing ones?


frenchiveruti

Quote from: Multistream on December 13, 2017, 06:47:44 AM
Does this mod add possibility for any animals to be in a manhunter pack (will be great)? Or it changes only existing ones?

"For those that don't know what 'combat power' ratings do: the size of a manhunter pack, like raids, is determined by using 'points' which is influenced by colony wealth; population and how long the colony's been around for. Think of the points as a budget, which the game uses to 'buy' hostiles to attack your colony. The higher a pawn's 'combat power' rating, the more they cost when using this analogy."

Multistream

Quote from: frenchiveruti on December 13, 2017, 01:47:19 PM
Quote from: Multistream on December 13, 2017, 06:47:44 AM
Does this mod add possibility for any animals to be in a manhunter pack (will be great)? Or it changes only existing ones?

"For those that don't know what 'combat power' ratings do: the size of a manhunter pack, like raids, is determined by using 'points' which is influenced by colony wealth; population and how long the colony's been around for. Think of the points as a budget, which the game uses to 'buy' hostiles to attack your colony. The higher a pawn's 'combat power' rating, the more they cost when using this analogy."
Great english level. I do not understand, sorry if I am dumb

frenchiveruti

Quote from: Multistream on December 14, 2017, 09:00:53 AM

Great english level. I do not understand, sorry if I am dumb
Ok, no problem.
It doesn't add new animals, it just gives a bigger or smaller quantity of animals in a ManhunterPack depending on the animal.