Population Values.

Issues dealing with gameplay balance.
Antandron
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Population Values.

Postby Antandron » Tue 09 Jan, 2018 11:58 am

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Last edited by Antandron on Thu 02 Dec, 2021 9:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Nurland
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Re: Population Values.

Postby Nurland » Tue 09 Jan, 2018 10:48 pm

More or less so. What are you aiming at?
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Paranoid Kamikaze
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Re: Population Values.

Postby Paranoid Kamikaze » Tue 09 Jan, 2018 11:56 pm

Also serves to limit the size of your army.
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Re: Population Values.

Postby Antandron » Wed 10 Jan, 2018 12:25 pm

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Oddnerd
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Re: Population Values.

Postby Oddnerd » Wed 10 Jan, 2018 3:16 pm

A unit's pop cost is not strictly a product of their raw power/utility, the context of which faction they belong to and which tier they are available at also is important. Some races can get certain kinds of units for less resources or pop cost but other for higher cost... the overall internal balance of the race roster is what matters - not just lining each unit up on a chart of strength vs pop cost and seeing which appears to be the best.
Atlas

Re: Population Values.

Postby Atlas » Wed 10 Jan, 2018 9:57 pm

An excellent post by Antandron. I think we can all agree that Eldar/Nids/IG is underpriced and SM/Chaos/OM is overpriced :P
Therefore we should nerf the "horde" races and buff the "power armor" races.

Anyway, as Oddnerd has indicated, population is just one way to adjust a unit's cost. On the purely economic front, don't forget squad cost, upkeep and reinforce costs! Also, the general fragility of a unit also becomes a factor. A Tac Marine may be 5 pop compared to a 2 pop Dire Avenger, but no one would really argue that the Tac should be 4 or 3 pop even if it is also a core unit in its respective roster. This is because of the general "strength" of the model ALONG with all of its other properties.

Still, it's something to think about. The Baneblade being considerably higher in pop than other supers is a little eye raising, for instance. Same with the Thropes, though I can understand somewhat on that.
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Re: Population Values.

Postby Impregnable » Thu 11 Jan, 2018 4:43 am

Although we cannot completely base our balance on that population value, what Antandron did would be a nice thing to do every time we make pop value of some squads change in a patch. We will be able to use it as a reference when dealing with pop value aspect of the balance for it is indeed a factor too.
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Antandron
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Re: Population Values.

Postby Antandron » Thu 11 Jan, 2018 11:09 am

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Re: Population Values.

Postby Antandron » Thu 11 Jan, 2018 11:22 am

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Re: Population Values.

Postby Reg9678 » Thu 11 Jan, 2018 1:27 pm

While I can't contribute something to the question at hand I have another question which belongs to a very similar topic. How is the upkeep of a modell calculated? Is it based on the pop value, the initial cost of the squad or is it a value artifically defined(so basically a value which can be changed on demand)? Some of the upkeep values seem unlogical to me: Why does a Scout have an upkeep of 7,65 per modell while CSM have 9,6. And Tacs, which are the same or maybe even slightly inferior to CSM have 12,75?
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Forestradio
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Re: Population Values.

Postby Forestradio » Thu 11 Jan, 2018 4:26 pm

LEAVE POPULATION VALUES ALONE messing with them screws everything up we already had 5 patches of that with chaos preds being 15 pop and bloodletters being 12 pop and oh wait are you suddenly fielding extra t2/t3 units because you have the room and 0 upkeep?
Antandron
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Re: Population Values.

Postby Antandron » Thu 11 Jan, 2018 5:39 pm

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Last edited by Antandron on Thu 02 Dec, 2021 9:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
Atlas

Re: Population Values.

Postby Atlas » Thu 11 Jan, 2018 6:52 pm

Reg9678 wrote:While I can't contribute something to the question at hand I have another question which belongs to a very similar topic. How is the upkeep of a modell calculated? Is it based on the pop value, the initial cost of the squad or is it a value artifically defined(so basically a value which can be changed on demand)? Some of the upkeep values seem unlogical to me: Why does a Scout have an upkeep of 7,65 per modell while CSM have 9,6. And Tacs, which are the same or maybe even slightly inferior to CSM have 12,75?


Total upkeep is taxed by the multiplication of a population value and upkeep rate. The standard upkeep rate for the game is 2.55. Which means that for every 1 pop a model or vehicle takes up, it would cost 2.55 requisition to "maintain" for most units as upkeep.

A Scout has 3 population, and 2.55 x 3 = 7.65. Likewise, a Tac is 5 pop and 5 x 2.55 = 12.75. CSM is an example of a non-standard upkeep rate and are charged at roughly 2 (which is something to look at actually).

The initial cost of the squad and the number of models within a squad are the factors that determine the reinforcement cost and are unrelated to upkeep cost. There is SOME artificial variance we can insert to reinforcement costs, but we can only bend the hard formula cost somewhat.
Antandron
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Re: Population Values.

Postby Antandron » Thu 11 Jan, 2018 7:10 pm

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Adila
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Re: Population Values.

Postby Adila » Thu 11 Jan, 2018 9:31 pm

Let the upkeep alone, you will break even more stuff if you change stuff here.
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Nurland
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Re: Population Values.

Postby Nurland » Thu 11 Jan, 2018 11:41 pm

If you/we decide to touch the population values, internal balance should always be taken into account as it affects upkeep and what you are able to field and timings etc.

I wouldn't really start doing a major population revamp.
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Lolgar
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Re: Population Values.

Postby Lolgar » Fri 12 Jan, 2018 3:24 pm

I feel that messing with population and upkeep values of races and units as a whole or especially individually will disrupt the balance of the game and will likely end up causing a lot of smaller problems and criticisms. Great post though, a good viewpoint and this is the sort of activity and questions that hep this community and the game.
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Re: Population Values.

Postby Adeptus Noobus » Tue 16 Jan, 2018 8:40 am

According to this metric of strength you have developed, sub-commanders would be the most OP units in the game. This post did trigger me to create an Excel sheet with some data for each faction to measure their economic strength (i.e. avg. req/pop, upkeep/pop, etc). Once the table is complete with all the data, I will upload it here.

So far there are some interesting values coming up for Gayos...
Antandron
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Re: Population Values.

Postby Antandron » Tue 16 Jan, 2018 2:21 pm

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Adeptus Noobus
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Re: Population Values.

Postby Adeptus Noobus » Tue 16 Jan, 2018 2:56 pm

My concept of "strength" is a function of the properties of the unit which effect the win rate of 1v1 VP control games vs a random opponent. Hence HP, armour type, dps, mobility, buffs and debuffs plus other stuff.

This doesn't hold true in various examples. Take for example the Tac (strength: 30) vs Guardsmen (strength: 35) situation: now everybody would rightfully assume that Tacs win this fight any day. The strength metric would have us believe that the opposite is true. Even more, once you add the Sergeant to the Guardsmen squad, the strength of the squad should go up since not only dps and survivability-wise but also economically this unit is now stronger. Guardsmen + Sergeant = +3 models = +3 pop for 85 req => 295 req / 9 pop = 32 strength. It's strength has actually decreased, which does not reflect its actual properties.
When I first started putting in the numbers into my Excel sheet I noticed that this metric does not reflect unit size properly and will never be able to. Why is that? Usually, the fewer models your squad has, the more hp every single model will have, so the metric holds somewhat true for low model count units as they are a lot easier to compare. As the model count increases, usually you see model hp drop but there are exemptions from this rule. Take for example the Nob Squad, Seer Council, Kommandoes. Some units don't even need their full squad count to have maximum efficiency still. Quite the contrary: some units are better left not fully reinforced as it decreases pop and upkeep (e.g. Rangers, Setup Teams, Shoota Boys).

Before I confuse people eve more...
TL;DR
It's not so easy to slap a number on a squad and say: this number reflects said units strength regardless of faction, unit type, etc.

P.S:
I like the idea though. What is actually starting to emerge from my numbers is that you can clearly see economical differences for each faction i.e. Eldar obviously being more dependent on power than e.g. Gayos or even Space Marines. Chaos pays less upkeep and req and power on average per pop compared to Space Marines as well giving them quite the economical advantage not only early on.
Antandron
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Re: Population Values.

Postby Antandron » Tue 16 Jan, 2018 3:34 pm

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