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feature request: non-visual batch-operated balancing-test.

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 12:35 pm
by DuHFeX
non-visual: without graphic display of the game; running as background-function.

batch-operated: ten thousand games, one after another; maybe more.

balancing-test: a simple gui to change characteristics of units.

when i started playing c&c 18 years ago, the most fun was to watch several AIs against each other. no question i did this in OpenRA too. but there was a problem i found: the game is not balanced. with every team having the same AI setting, the Allies usually win, the Soviets usually lose. to balance this, we need to have the AI tens of thousands of fights against each other. even in "fastest" game speed, it took me up to two hours for one game to end. i did other things meanwhile. without the need to show us users what the AI does, a game can be finished in a few seconds (or less; depending on the CPU speed), with that speedup, we can have a sample size, that is big enough, to see, how little changes in units balance or unbalance the game.

before i registered, i red a few posts; including one, that mentioned how to change chars of units by editing a file. i thonk, that this is way too complicated. a gui within the game would be preferable.

Re: feature request: non-visual batch-operated balancing-test.

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 7:17 pm
by netnazgul
the game is not balanced. with every team having the same AI setting, the Allies usually win, the Soviets usually lose.
this also might be (and definitely is) the problem with poor AI and how it uses units, not with the game balance. Such testing doesn't really give you any useful info on balancing if AI doesn't play Factions properly

Re: feature request: non-visual batch-operated balancing-test.

Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2019 11:59 pm
by camundahl
netnazgul wrote:
Sun Jan 13, 2019 7:17 pm
the game is not balanced. with every team having the same AI setting, the Allies usually win, the Soviets usually lose.
this also might be (and definitely is) the problem with poor AI and how it uses units, not with the game balance. Such testing doesn't really give you any useful info on balancing if AI doesn't play Factions properly
Agreed.


Although I do like his point about having a GUI to mod the game, like GameMaker or TibEd

Image

https://goo.gl/images/38f8qX

Re: feature request: non-visual batch-operated balancing-test.

Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2019 3:27 pm
by netnazgul
Yeah, I once asked about something like this when diving through infinite layers of YAML trait inheritance. Though I suspect such a GUI won't be a trivial one to make, but doable, just takes quite a huge amount of time.