Use exponential dropoff for raid points.

Started by Greep, July 10, 2018, 07:14:15 PM

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Greep

Many players like playing infinitely long bases, usually on a relaxing difficulty level.  The game uses a simple division system when raid points get too high.  However, this is still a straight up linear relationship.  Furthermore, while lower difficulties have a much lower multplier, this is also a straight up linear relationship.

This can lead to, even in an unmodded game, people on medium difficulty experiencing dozens of centipedes and hundred man raids.  And it can get very silly with mods.

Solution:  use exponents for very large raids:

Current raid points (last I checked):  For points above 1000, divide by two, points above 2000, divide by 4.

New raid points:  In addition, for points that would have been divided by 4, also use an exponent defined by difficulty.

Extreme: .99
Rough: .95
Medium: .85
Base Builder: .7

Example:  20000 raw raid points (post difficulty) above 2000. 

Old system:
Approximately 7000 raid points.

New system:
Extreme:  2000 + (20000/4)^.99 = ~6500 raid points
Rough: 2000 + 5000^.95 = ~5200
Medium: 2000 + 5000^.85 = ~3300
BB: 2000 + 5000^.7 = ~2400

Note: While this system preserves early game balance, one could just completely replace the old division based system and artificially weakened early game raids just with an exponent.

Edit: while the division part doesn't quite match 1.0, the reasoning still stands especially for difficulties.
1.0 Mods: Raid size limiter:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42721.0

MineTortoise:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42792.0
HELLO!

(WIPish)Strategy Mode: The experienced player's "vanilla"
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43044.0

Madman666

While this is heaps better than broken threat scaling we have now, a hard cap on threats is still badly needed, since towards late game threats tend to just flat out don't give a damn about your defenses (drop pods and infestations), unless you literally stick a turret in each bedroom to keep colonists company at night. And especially that cap is needed for caravan threat generation, since having more wealth and more colonists most of the time doesn't really allow you to send out more colonists.

And of course I still think that caravanning should scale to parties sent, not to what you have at home.

Greep

#2
Well, exponents end up giving a hard"ish" cap, as long as you choose a harsh enough exponent, as each additional point is reduced more and more relatively.  For instance, on the medium example, that 20,000 extra raid points above 2000 gets converted to just 1300 extra raid points, and every point after gets severely reduced.  And on extreme, technically at a certain point even that .99 exponent will start halving each additional point, although that number is absurdly high.  I guess extreme should be .97.

Edit: Regarding caravans  I think it's a good idea that they scale to home, simply because sending an armed guard actually ends up increasing the points if you do it the other way.  It's just that the scaling should be weaker imo.

In any case, the current system uses a simple curve system for raid points, and just multiplying the points on the curve by the difficulty scaling would also work, rather than multiplying the raw points.  That might actually just be the best solution, as I think medium is .25 or something, and the hard cap of 10k would get reduced to 2500 which sounds about right.
1.0 Mods: Raid size limiter:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42721.0

MineTortoise:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42792.0
HELLO!

(WIPish)Strategy Mode: The experienced player's "vanilla"
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43044.0

Madman666

#3
As long as raids scale indefinitely - they will get ridiculous at some point. Like dev-spawning 3k point raids - they're quite bullshit enough. It will take heaps longer with your idea, so as i said its already a lot better than current system. I highly doubt it ll get implemented though, since that'll kill the fun of being unavoidably mauled by a drop-podded horde of scythers at some point and telling an ultra interesting tragic story about it on forums. Thats not how Rimworld 1.0 operates.

Scaling caravans to a home tile wealth gauge will always be bs, since this will make it neccessary for you to scale your party to a threat level of world site instead. Which will eventually turn intially small scale skirmishes into 20-30 man mess, where pawns can only be treated as expendable chess pieces. For small caravans to remain viable even lategame, scaling must only happen to the amount of people you send out.

Greep

Well yeah but that's why I think it should just be like a 5-15% scaling.  And if that is affected by the hard cap as well which might be reduced to about 3k, you're looking at a cap of like  150-450
1.0 Mods: Raid size limiter:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42721.0

MineTortoise:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=42792.0
HELLO!

(WIPish)Strategy Mode: The experienced player's "vanilla"
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=43044.0

Madman666

We can only dream about it anyway, but yeah, that d be nice thing to have.