Tanks and tiers: balance

[Althend]

As Exodus told, I create this threat to talk about position of tanks in game's timeline.


------------------------------------------------------------
Tiers vision

I currently see the tank subdivised by tiers:

Tiers 1 : tanks between 0 to 3500 gold (0 to 20 min)
Tiers 2: tanks between 3500 to 7500 gold (10 min to 40)
Tiers 3: tanks between 7500 to 13000 gold (20 to ...)
\ artificial barrier due to requirement
Tiers 4: 14k to 25k (50 to...)

The idea is that a tiers 1 cant handle a tiers 3. Each tiers can at max handle one tiers higher.
It is qui natural that a tank in highest price of one tiers can handle a tank in lowest price of tiers above.

Each new tiers appearance has an impact on players psychology. When in early game, tiers 2 appears all tiers 1 get more careful. Apparition of demon and hunter doest a great psychological impact.

Looking the structure this way, we can see that some troubles:

1/ Concerning air tank


Summary:
- Each air is in lowest price of his tiers (4,5 for airship, 8k for sky tanks and sky fort at 14k)
- Sky fortress meet artificial barrier making in high cost but frost can handle it
- There is no air tank based on high mobility in end game. Sky fortress is slow.
- Gap between airship and sky tank is low
- Air tank are quit popular (maybe do we want the game keep being Battletanks and Battleaireships tank by limiting them?)
- Air tanks have already a penality by reducing their Hp
- In late game everyone has telep and speed so advantage of being air is much more reduced.
-

2/ Gap between tiers 2 and tiers 3

- If we dont take account of sky tank, we can see that there is a weird gap between earth tank (7k) and hunter (9k). The difference of power between these tank is quit much more than 2k. (it is my opinion)
- The psycological impact of tiers 3 is much more higher than tiers 2. (Do people are afraid about sky tank appearing? When demon appear, people get much more careful)


3/ Gap between tiers 3 and tiers 4

- Between sky fortress and frost, there is only 1k difference. Theses 2 tanks can handle each other... But the artificial barrier make it much more higher. Should the sky fortress be in tiers 3 or 4 ?

4/ Spreads of tanks:

- Number of tanks by tiers:
Tiers 1: light, heli, antigrav, medi, shredder, tinker, exploder, demolisher, scout ---> 9 tanks
Tiers 2: thunder, airship, ghost, heavy, earth, goblin, gardian ---> 7 tanks
Tiers 3: sky tank, hunter, demon, frost ---> 5
Tiers 4: sky fort, infern, titan ---> 3

Each tiers has lower amount of tanks. So more the game last, more the variety decreases.
Facing to that there is 3 ways:
1) leaving as it is
2) make fusion of tiers 3 and 4 (decreasing power of tiers 4 tanks) so end game is more based on skills than saving for tiers 4
3) increase amount of tanks in tiers 3 and 4.


5/ Random stuff
- Players always do better choice by saving for tank than buying hull (most of the time)
- There are "special" tanks (i mean by special tank, a tank that has ability that remains interesting in all game: for ex: antigrav ulti, guard heal, hunter cloud/ulti, medivac ulti, shredder ulti, scout rune)
Keeping these tanks when other players are 2 tiers above is quit bad choice since the difference of hp is too high. Hp factor/item slot is much more important.
- There is no real "support" tank at tiers 3-4
- Making a tiers 3-4 tanks with shredder ulti, guard healing and anti grav ability would be quit interesting. :p
We like these skills, these are already implemented, isn't it sad that for competitivity we have to play them only at start-mid game ?


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Opposition to "tiers" vision: Linear vision

Each tanks has a power that depends on his price and its specialization.

1/ Linear constant differential
Keeping this vision, we can say an average differential of price that makes your tank not being a disadvantage to handle the other: Something like 3500. So heavy can handle without being an handicap all tanks above his price until 5500 + 3500 = 9000. Heli: 4500,

2/ Increasing differential
More the price of the tank is high, more the differential is high.

3/ Decreasing differential
More the price is high, more the differential is low


--------------> following the linear vision, how should be the differential?
The hp of each tanks is equal to his price (not for air) but skills get stronger so.... What do you think it should be?


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Chaos vision

Each tanks has his specificity, there is no general guideline. The specificity of each tanks make it has his own advantage and weakness. So it is better to focus on the concept and later balance. Players who are able to see some trick/advantage should use it. It is some part of skill. If all bt players follow a trend concerning an abnormal behaviour, it is a case of unbalance that we should fix.

All that based on hypothesis that players are rationnal and play with efficiency without taking account of "coolness/lolness/fun/style" of specific strategy



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


So so what do you think about all this crap? ^_^

[Prog]

Some thoughts can be found here:


http://forum.btanks.net/viewtopic.php?f=...7&start=23
http://forum.btanks.net/viewtopic.php?f=...7&start=27

Summing up: I think we should get rid of such a rigid Tier-System-Thinking. "If we get away from such a rigid system of Tier 1-4 problems will resolve, as the problem "there needs to be a tank in Tx about y k gold" just doesn't exist any more. (->the "bad positioning" of the sky tank doesn't exist any more) The tanks are the basis and the Tiers are constructed by the use, the strategies around those tanks. The Tanks are not based on Tiers, the Tiers are based on the Tanks and their use!"



Another thing to mention: Frost can't ever handle a well played sky fortress .

[TKF]

Well the tank selection in late game is less than early game as Althend points out. In my BT mod I just doubled the amount of end game tanks for fun, and it's not that bad idea actually, but the mid-late game tanks must also be followed up. Actually you have very high selection of cheap tanks, while the selection of expensive tanks is lower.

Unfortunately There's not much ingame models to use, I can only see firelord and mountain giant as potencial new tanks (robots), but I doubt the BT mapper will consider these.



End game tank could look like that

But the problem is that FATMAN Tank is that the filesize will increase with 100kb with this one.... although this look a bit awesome.

[scron2]

The poster here has a very big point here.

There should be nearly 0 req's for tier 1.

Normally when I play the requirements are like 0 up to frost robot
then you have to have like 16 to get the remaining 2 and 23 for titan.

That's such bullshit. If you go 23/4 you get something that is like "6".
SOOO you should have req's for tier 1 being 0,
Tier 2 being 6,
Tier 3 being 12,
and Titan being 18, and cap the armor upgrades at 20 & scale
that shit appropriately by adding more HP to the creeps or something.

THEN when someone gains a rax advantage, make that an incentive
to push (if you kill a rax your creeps spawn more stronger ones that
don't end up adding or taking away from the gold in the game)
rather than gank and upgrade which honestly sounds way lamer than
actually finishing the game. Don't give either team a loophole to gain
an advantage. That's bullshit. After 20x5mins, the armor upgrades
SHOULD NOT be a factor in the game... the only factor at this point
should be focused on ending the game already!

[Kesarion]

I think the Tier Vision is rather naive since you take away skills/weapons/hulls/player skill/others and try to make a selection considering the price of the tank. If we were to go by this kind of selection then we have to classify the Titan as Tier 5 since there is a difference of 6K between him and the infernal and the overall power of the titan is enough to take on anything bellow him with ease, except for hunter of course where the tank skills come into play.

[Althend]

I think the Tier Vision is rather naive since you take away skills/weapons/hulls/player skill/others and try to make a selection considering the price of the tank. If we were to go by this kind of selection then we have to classify the Titan as Tier 5 since there is a difference of 6K between him and the infernal and the overall power of the titan is enough to take on anything bellow him with ease, except for hunter of course where the tank skills come into play.

Who takes away what?
Tiers 5? Based on price?
You dont get it. It is about to get a structure to get a line of direction concerning the game.

[Kesarion]

I'm saying it's not exactly possible to make a good classification of the tanks on a complete scale. This is a tier structure made according to price and if I were to judge the current list I would have to say the Titan is Tier 5. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion so I can suppose it makes sense on a certain level to have only 4 Tiers and simplify things a bit, but I don't accept it - it just doesn't seem right, I don't think I can explain it any better since it has something to do with personal taste and experience.

Aside from that the Chaos Vision is a pretty interesting concept.

[scron2]

I'm saying it's not exactly possible to make a good classification of the tanks on a complete scale. This is a tier structure made according to price and if I were to judge the current list I would have to say the Titan is Tier 5. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion so I can suppose it makes sense on a certain level to have only 4 Tiers and simplify things a bit, but I don't accept it - it just doesn't seem right, I don't think I can explain it any better since it has something to do with personal taste and experience.

Aside from that the Chaos Vision is a pretty interesting concept.

What is this the rebuttal of giving the finger?

You sir, are a fucking joke. You can't pick apart someone's post by choosing 1
thing and attempt so shoot down a collection of actually usable and valuable
ideas at the same time. He has a valid point AND I think the scaling of the
tank theirs really needs to be reworked as well.
&
Learn to argue, you missed the overall picture completely. You can't argue a
point by claiming a cheap tank like hunter actually takes "skill" to play to beat
a titan. IT DOES NOT! Either you are stronger or you are not, this is dependent
on weapons, so if you wanted to nit-pick the tiers more you could consider a tank
with Xgold in items actually as another tier given the right item combo....

THE POINT IS THE ORIGINAL POSTER HAS A GOOD POINT AND YOU ARE ONLY GOOD AT TROLLING>


hmmm that gives me an idea, determine the amounts of gold people are allowed
to possess in general by the upgrades. Now that's a good idea!
So tanks + weapons costs are subject to a gold-cap determined by the upgrades already
obtained! Solution ftw.

[Althend]

I'm saying it's not exactly possible to make a good classification of the tanks on a complete scale. This is a tier structure made according to price and if I were to judge the current list I would have to say the Titan is Tier 5. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion so I can suppose it makes sense on a certain level to have only 4 Tiers and simplify things a bit, but I don't accept it - it just doesn't seem right, I don't think I can explain it any better since it has something to do with personal taste and experience.

Aside from that the Chaos Vision is a pretty interesting concept.

This tiers is not originally made according to price. Price depends on capacity of the tank. It is not the price that makes the tank but the tank itself :o
The idea of tiers 5 is quit hard to handle since there is so few tank and tiers 3 can handle Titan without too much difficulties. (the titan do 10k damage and invincible ulti for 3-5 sec ok... but 15k gold on hull or other stuff makes it easy to handle someway. I think that the gap is too low to consider tiers 5 since the idea is that you should be not really able to handle 2 tiers above :p)
I dont say the tiers idea is perfect but it is currently the one that fits the most the current situation. (as I wrote: All that based on hypothesis that players are rationnal and play with efficiency without taking account of "coolness/lolness/fun/style" of specific strategy )

[Kesarion]

Hmm, well you can say that the price doesn't make the tank but just as easily you could say that the tank makes the price. And indeed whatever principle was used was probably a good one. I suppose it's a sort of middle-ground your tending towards, between efficiency and price.

I agree with you on the motive for the tiers, there aren't enough tanks to make a tier 5, big pricey tanks are scarce for some reason and we haven't seen any new tanks in a long time(not considering medic). It might be a real shocker but how about we get some new tanks, revive the game a little ? :wink:
Ideas are abundant, just make a thread "tank ideas wanted" and there will be enough to fill a few months of coding
Of course the new changes have to be "repaired" first.

[Lezowski]

Helicopter is the best shit ever. Flying plus speed boost at the start, where there are no teleporters, easily makes up for the health drop. It can pretty much do anything and has two stuns, and we all know how much stun matters when everything dies in a couple seconds. It is easily the best long ranger, the only one that can stay far away at all times because it bypasses terrain.

Demolisher is probably the funnest tank. Laying strategic mines and aiming artillery shots to kill the opponent when they expect an easy escape is very satisfying. Not to mention how funny burning oil is. You can only imagine the look on their face when they know they are destined to die a slow and painful death. Also, you get a big WTF? out of noobs who have never heard of the skill before.

[Vomitus]

Allow me to add some points.
If your want to stick to your "linear vision" as a structural vision, you probably want to see it as "logarithmic vision" rather than linear. Examining this concept in one of the aspects, for ex. price, you will understand that difference in 1k for 1-tire tanks is nearly the same for 6k difference for 4-tier tanks. Same applies(should apply!) to all other aspects of "structural tiering/view".
Continuing this thought, it would be necessary to introduce an abstract parameter for every tank which would describe overall toughness, efficiency and usefullness of each tank. It sould be an integral value, that is based on tank price, tank HP, skill damage, skill specials etc. I don't say it would be easy.
And, as for "logarithmic vision", this "toughness parameter" should be the base on which tiers should be built.
Concerning "chaos vision" I find it more appropriate and logical in general, but it's advantages only apply to general concept of tank fleet structure. Dividing tanks to classes as "supporter", "tank", "damage dealer", something else, maybe "air" (I dunno here) you will eventually face a problem of balance where a strictly structured approach will strongly apply.

You can only imagine the look on their face when they know they are destined to die a slow and painful death.

You made my day
From here we should rename "Burning Oil" to "R.I.P. (Rest In Pain)" =)))

[griffin1987]

Hi Althend,

I Think you analyzed that pretty cool. Only problem I see is that that only counts true for strategic noobs And with that I don't mean bad players - actually I know many big-shots which are really good but strategically got no clue whatever.

Why am I saying this: For one, I've killed a titan with a tinker more than once. Sounds strange, I know, but It does happen quite often if you play some thousand games (already been over a thousand since i got my first hosting bot running) - just think about a tinker with gold hull, smoke, huge mines, units and tp (and a weapon). If you wait for the titan being a bit damaged or using up his skills, you can kill it. Of course that only goes for ppl i'd call strategic noobs.

Another bs. thing I didn't read in your analyze is about skills: Most of the time heli wins agains airship because of missing stun of airship and because plasma rain takes so long to hit / cast. Also you have more money left if you don't get airship, so you got another advantage.

Next example is infernal against titan - it's been so often I killed a titan with an infernal because of the newly removed delay in chaos teleport. Yeah, it's cool if you're on the winning side - but if you got a titan and suddenly 2 infernals drop in on you, you're dead for sure, as the stun just is too long to escape to anywhere or use kof.

About level requirements: I would remove the sky fortress altogether and replace it by a different airship, because some of it's skills are just totall overpowered, whereas other things are totally underpowered. That strange stun beam (must admit I hardly ever play sky fortress because it's so extremely slow) lasts far too long, while that slow speed just makes the bomb carpet useless many times. On the other hand I would not let you buy an infernal with level 12 for one reason: With an infernal in your team you can hardly loose a game anymore if your team plays it aggressiv, because, even if you suicide in the enemies base a couple of times, you can kill enough factories to make loose any chance they may still have.

Generally I'd be more for having no requirements for tanks at all while balancing them more - why not put the needed upgrades on the cost for titan?

Think about it this way: If you got a heli and 30k you're by far better of getting a titan than a frost laser. Wouldn't you agree?
Also, changing costs and balancing skills and hitpoints a bit more would probably solve the tier problem, as there wouldn't be that much "tank-grouping" anymore.

Or you could just add some anti-whatevertank skills to some tanks. A titan-killing skill for tinker would be cool for example (which would just let the tinker neglect that keep on fighting skill). Or some active revert stun-beam skill for the demolisher, which would shoot the sky fortress across the map and would only be triggerable if you klick a sky fortress which is using it's stun beam. Or an anti infernal rain skill for the antigrav.

I think you get the idea.

Just my 50 cents,

Cheers

[Vomitus]

I would remove the sky fortress altogether and replace it by a different airship, because some of it's skills are just totall overpowered, whereas other things are totally underpowered. That strange stun beam (must admit I hardly ever play sky fortress because it's so extremely slow) lasts far too long, while that slow speed just makes the bomb carpet useless many times.

Oh, no, not again. it seems you just haven't played SF long enough to find its good strategies. Try using speedpack & 6-10 mana upgrades.

[IlPalazzo]

Sorry, crazy wall of text... Blah blah blah...

2/ Gap between tiers 2 and tiers 3

- If we dont take account of sky tank, we can see that there is a weird gap between earth tank (7k) and hunter (9k). The difference of power between these tank is quit much more than 2k. (it is my opinion)
- The psycological impact of tiers 3 is much more higher than tiers 2. (Do people are afraid about sky tank appearing? When demon appear, people get much more careful)

Can you explain the first point a bit? I don’t play the Earth Tank/Hunter enough to understand where you’re coming from.

Generally the fear of a demon tank spawns from a person being fed to ridiculous and uncontrollable levels. Also consider this, the Demon Tank player usually saves up his money early game, skipping tier 2 and jumping straight into the demon tank for its burst damage. In contrast, players who go Sky Tank usually buy more weapons, hulls, etc. than their Demon Tank counterpart before transitioning into the Sky Tank. Since it lacks the burst damage but has a greater amount of mobility that make it effective at sniping, the Sky tank is usually bought at a later point in the game than the Demon Tank. Maybe you’re right, but perhaps the fear comes from the fact that the Demon Tank is usually appears much earlier in a game than a Sky Tank merely from the build players are trying to do. The Demon Tank is there for it 2-4k burst damage. The Sky Tank is there to get around and pick away at the enemy armies from a distance (generally), which require players to buy weapons before purchasing the tank itself.

Another consideration to your second point, the Goblin Tank (6500) has greater burst damage from it’s abilities than the Demon Tank (10000), which makes me think that the Sky Tank may be weak compared to the other tanks with it’s one burst damage ultimate or that the psychological impact it somewhat misguided. I think the fed player would be almost as powerful if spent his gold on a Goblin Tank/Item than if he bought a Demon Tank.

3/ Gap between tiers 3 and tiers 4

- Between sky fortress and frost, there is only 1k difference. Theses 2 tanks can handle each other... But the artificial barrier make it much more higher. Should the sky fortress be in tiers 3 or 4 ?

The Sky Fortress’s viability is heavily dependent on weapons, which places it comfortably within the two tiers. I say this because the System Overload hinges on the idea that you will be able to deal out more damage to your enemy given that he fire’s back at 50% his weapon DPS. If the SF has bad equipment, then tier 3 will easily overcome the Sky Fortress, but if the Sky Fortress and the Titan are fighting it out with the same end-game weapons, it will often favor the Sky Fortress.

Each tiers has lower amount of tanks. So more the game last, more the variety decreases.
Facing to that there is 3 ways:
1) leaving as it is
2) make fusion of tiers 3 and 4 (decreasing power of tiers 4 tanks) so end game is more based on skills than saving for tiers 4
3) increase amount of tanks in tiers 3 and 4.

I think option 3 would be the best way to go, as tier 3 and 4 lack dimension, and option 2 seems to be cutting things from the game rather than improving it.

To make my point... As your time-table says,

Tiers 1 : tanks between 0 to 3500 gold (0 to 20 min)
Tiers 2: tanks between 3500 to 7500 gold (10 min to 40)
Tiers 3: tanks between 7500 to 13000 gold (20 to ...)
\ artificial barrier due to requirement
Tiers 4: 14k to 25k (50 to...)

Considering that full games can last anywhere from 15 minutes to over 2 hours. I would think that tanks in tier 3 are too “weak” to carry players into the end-game. It wouldn’t as so much about “skill strategy” as it is frustrating because the end-game tanks would be unable to accommodate the end-game weapons. The “end-game” would likely consist of 15k Hunters, Demons, Frost Bots, etc. rigged up with Swarm of Chaos and Frost Lasers, which seems much more unfitting than the end-game of Titans/Sky Fortresses rigged with Swarm of Chaos and Frost Lasers. In this case, player will be able to kill tanks in under one second, which will severely limit the playability end-game. If tier 3 were to be the end-game we must do the following things:

1. Shorten the length of the game, so players do no run into “Titan/SoC/FL” stalemates they do now.
2. Lower the power of end-game weapons so the tier 3 tanks won’t be decimated in a fraction of a second.

- There are "special" tanks (i mean by special tank, a tank that has ability that remains interesting in all game: for ex: antigrav ulti, guard heal, hunter cloud/ulti, medivac ulti, shredder ulti, scout rune)
Keeping these tanks when other players are 2 tiers above is quit bad choice since the difference of hp is too high. Hp factor/item slot is much more important.
- There is no real "support" tank at tiers 3-4
- Making a tiers 3-4 tanks with shredder ulti, guard healing and anti grav ability would be quit interesting. :p
We like these skills, these are already implemented, isn't it sad that for competitivity we have to play them only at start-mid game ?

I see what you say here, but I disagree with one point. I think tier 4 should have some “special” abilities, even if some are to reappear, but I think tier 3 SHOULD lack support.

Although I agree that “Special” tanks cannot fight tanks two tiers above very well, they DO remain effective up until tier four when you consider team dynamics. The Anti-Grav’s double stun and phase out one player for a few seconds, the Shredder’s ability to pull an enemy tank hundreds of yards into your team’s forces, and the Medivac’s ability to mimic KoF makes these tanks very viable when groups fight occur up until the end of tier 3/beginning of tier four when the Sky Fortress replaces the Anti-Grav’s ability with a hold, the Titan replaces the Medivac with KoF, and the Shredder becomes replaced with factories and everyone buying speed-packs.

I think the lack of support tanks in tier 3 is a good thing, as it allows player with a tier 1 tanks to help their team with their “special” tank. It also forces teams (that do work as a team) to decide who should transition into the next tier and become more powerful as an individual and who should stay in the lower tier to provide support that will benefit the team in the overall scheme of the game. This fact also allows weaker/poorer (behind in kills) players to stay with their lower tier tank and remain an effective part in helping their teams.

That said, I do think that tier 4 needs a bigger slew of support tanks to create a better end-game (should a game last long enough to happen). The fact the end-game of Titans/Sky Fortresses/ and Infernals loaded with Frost Lasers/Swarm of Chaos becomes a game of stunning the opponent, teleporting in, and producing as much burst damage as possible is very disappointing when you compare it to the early game dynamics in battle tanks. There’s no army, there’s no healing involved, and there’s very little thought to the timing and placing of skills (except for Keep on Fighting). It would be nice to see more end-game tanks in tier 4 to have a more unpredictable and dynamic end-game, even if that means having certain abilities reemerging (though it would make Battle Tanks a much better game if we can develop completely new abilities).

Next example is infernal against titan - it's been so often I killed a titan with an infernal because of the newly removed delay in chaos teleport. Yeah, it's cool if you're on the winning side - but if you got a titan and suddenly 2 infernals drop in on you, you're dead for sure, as the stun just is too long to escape to anywhere or use kof.

2 infernals? Where's your teammate? If he's next to you, spread apart so only one of you is stunned, if he's not even there that's a problem... That is a problem when you are outnumbered though.

Generally I'd be more for having no requirements for tanks at all while balancing them more - why not put the needed upgrades on the cost for titan?

Meh, it forces the team to work together to move into the upper tier. I could do without it also, but at least they have the option for no/extended/normal upgrade requirements.

Think about it this way: If you got a heli and 30k you're by far better of getting a titan than a frost laser. Wouldn't you agree?
Also, changing costs and balancing skills and hitpoints a bit more would probably solve the tier problem, as there wouldn't be that much "tank-grouping" anymore.

Why would you buy a titan or a frost laser, and why SHOULD these options be they be equal in this situation? Shouldn't part of the challenge of the game be knowing when to correctly transition into the next tier or when to build up your equipment. You have 6 slots for weapons/items and only one choice for your tank. Let's take this example. You have a Demon Tank (no weapons) and 20,000 gold. Do you you buy that Titan or buy an upgraded Darkness Cannon and keep the Demon Tank?

Or you could just add some anti-whatevertank skills to some tanks. A titan-killing skill for tinker would be cool for example (which would just let the tinker neglect that keep on fighting skill).

A free tank shouldn't be the counter to a 25,000 tank, what meaning does that give to the winning team when the losing team downgrades to significantly CHEAPER tanks to win?

Or some active revert stun-beam skill for the demolisher, which would shoot the sky fortress across the map and would only be triggerable if you klick a sky fortress which is using it's stun beam.

Why not just use a net or a stun to help your ally out of the hold?

Or an anti infernal rain skill for the antigrav.

Doesn't Dimensional Shift work for that?

[Tom-Ace]

I would like to point out that Frost bot is 13,000 and Sky fortress is 16,000 thats a gap of 3k not 1k.

Althend wrote:
3/ Gap between tiers 3 and tiers 4

- Between sky fortress and frost, there is only 1k difference. Theses 2 tanks can handle each other... But the artificial barrier make it much more higher. Should the sky fortress be in tiers 3 or 4 ?