Hehe, so its been a while since I posted. Anyhow, a friend who played this game a long time ago suggested an idea, that he never really got a chance to post, but I'll forward it.

Take however many inputs you have, armor, topspeed, mass, thrust, size, etc... and build a balancing program, such that (with a little random variation thrown in for pizazz) all the ships conform to a pretty straightforward balance curve.

The upshot?

Instead of having to balance each new device to all the preceeding ones, (creating a situation where the time to generate new items goes as N!, where N is the number of total items), New Items would fit into an existing balance structure.

you could represent this sorta like phase space in each parameter, such that the total "volume" of the system is constant (again with some random variation) for all ships.

The ship control system is pretty complex, it would be hard to find "balanced" ranges for everything to fall in and to figure out what stat needs to take away from what, etc, etc

Shape are you offering to solve the 10+ dimensional balance equation? Because it's basically impossible to do.

Hehe, sure! You offering to pay me?

But seriously, there's a fair amount of input here. How do the devs want to set it up? take their 2 most balanced ships (in their opinion) and then use the differences between those to generate their curves for their variables. Start out with linear relationships, and then balance it by evolving those relationships, rather than tweaking the ships.

Do the same thing with weapons, which weapons work the best right now?

ok, take those as your controls and build the rest according to the relationship between them

Perfect balance is perfectly boring.

Shape, what you're suggesting implies that it's a linear equation. We'd be lucky if it were a polynomial equation. If you were going to attempt it through taking a set of already balanced ships and then creating an equation off them you would probably need an infinite set of balanced ships, not just 2.

i agree with roguelazer. if everything is balanced, then nothing will be better than anything else and there would be no point to the level/faction standing system.

I'm suggesting a linear equation as a base, and then rounds of balancing adding terms. The 2 ships represent the best starting point for a set of linear equations.

Perfect balance is out of the question, its not possible, but ingraining weakness into ships is a vital part of making it a game.

The problem remains, how do you add new devices and items while attempting to retain this "balance" thing?

Either we add a great deal of content to make each "abnormality" one of many. Or we just try for what we're trying right now, adding things slowly with long stretches of balance in between.

Hmm. I am not sure what you are advocating here Shape. How are you going define your variables and the coefficients to your linear equations?

Gimme examples!

Hehe, will do, workin on the math now.

the problem with a "balance formula" is that it it would have to account for every posability. You wouldn't be able to add a new aspect to the game without changing the formula and thereby unbalancing everything that existed previously.

now, i'm shore the devs have some system for determining what a ship can and can't do, but any such system has to be more of a guidline than a rule or you will end up with ships that are different stat wise but have no indavidual character.

also the formula would have to represent a multidimensional membrane similar to those used in economics to calculate production possabilities amoung several compeeting goods. Now, i don't know how math savy the devs are, but i know some extreemly intelegent people (one of them is curently doing work with regards to string theory) who wouldn't even have a clue how to apply such a model to something as complex as Vendetta.

Nah, you can chuck in random variation,
It's ok for some things to be good, but everything within reason.

A balance formula basically just gives you a frame of reference. So you'll have a good idea just how good you're making something.

(Sorry guys, workin on this, but work and sleep got in the way)

Increasing acceleration or shot speed linearly, decreases/increases damage taken at least geometrically.
That means that a linear relationship between acceleration, and armor will create horribly unbalanced ships. This is the basic problem that has caused unbalanced Proms. Increasing their armor linearly does not balance them with significantly more agile ships. So instead their made more agile where small changes in their acceleration results in huge differences in how effective they are.

Well, I think the problem is that the devs tried to balance armor/firepower with torque/Moment.

The major problem with that, is that if a prom strafes in the direction they want to fire, then they don't have to turn as much. Meaning that a strong strafe translates into a strong turn.

I think that the parameters may have been defined a little awkwardly, but I still think its possible.