Balancing option for points based MP

[IainMcNeil]

Hi guys,

it still seems like the maps are very much in favour of the Germans. Here are the options we have
* Increase the cost of the German heavy tanks again.
* Give the allies more free units.
* Give the allies more bonuses (airstrikes etc) than the Germans.

These are the basic tools we have. We cant change the cost of any Allied units as it will effect the single player campaign and require rebalancing which just isn't going to happen. German heavy tanks are in no SP scenarios so their costs only apply in MP. These can be tweaked without knock on effects.

My preference is to fix it with the points system so we don't have to balance every new scenario with new units.

The key units are Tiger, Tiger II and Panther. If we raise Tiger II to 250, Tiger to 180 and Panther to 210 it moves the balance a fair bit in the Allies favour. Can you test out these new numbers by forcing yourself to save the additional points unspent?

The Stug is also a nasty one which might need a small price hike as it easily beats a Sherman in a head on fight due to its sloped armour. It is not as useful when moving and worse vs infantry but still a good buy and I always max them out. I would put him to 110.

Let me know how you get on with this and if it doesn't work we can look for alternatives.

Thanks!

[enric]

Can you limit the number of these tanks by scenario to a total of two?.

[GottaLove88s]

Hi Iain, Thanks for looking into this.

As always, you're making great improvements... I like it... May I add a few ideas to yours?

1. Increase price of German tanks - Pushing up the cost of the heavy panzers is a smart idea, and may be worth going even higher than you first propose, perhaps King Tiger for 300 (BA 2.0.4 stats: ArmourPiercing 100, HighExplosive 43, Defence 100), Panther 275 (AP88, HE39, DEF86), Tiger 250 AP80, HE43, DEF96). Thinking about this logically, is a King Tiger worth three Shermans, cost 99 (AP60, HE39, DEF53). Oh yes, and then some! It won't be popular amongst Germanophiles (but they won't have anyone to play against if you don't).

You make a good point about StuGs because they're effectively bargain PzIVs, so long as you keep them accompanied by infantry (I hadn't realised that you'd factored in the sloping front for an armour bonus too, so maxing them out becomes compulsory at current prices).

2. Reduce the budget - It's worth reducing the budget for force selection. Santa got uber-generous when we upgraded from v2.0.2 to 2.0.4, jumping from 1,500 to 2,000 to spend on Meeting Engagement, I think. Similar jumps for other maps.

That means that we don't have to think about what we want for any particular strategy because we can have it all. A typical 2,000 starting haul for a German might include 2x Wespe mobile artillery, 1x mortar, 2x King Tiger, 3x Panthers, 1x Wirbelwind AA, 3x SdKfz 251 transports, 2x Pak40 AT guns, 6x infantry, 4x scouts, 2x panzershrek, still with a few pennies of change leftover... that means I've got a veritable army of everything, including five extremely strong tanks that could probably kill 2-4 Allied tanks each, plus 12 infantry to see everything sneaky that the enemy might try to do... too easy.

Maybe scale it back to 1,500, plus the more expensive prices for the German heavies, to force us to make difficult choices? Welcome to austerity war gaming (we'll gripe because we got used to being able to buy everything but it would make for better games). Somebody somewhere suggested a slider so that the proposer of the challenge could determine the budget? But that may be for the wishlist?

3. Give us (the Allies) our missing kit (PLEASE ) - The PzV Panther first saw action mid-1943; the King Tiger was introduced into the field early '44... The Allied 17-pounder fixed AT gun was first used in Feb'43, extensively in Italy and everywhere after that. The 17-pounder is a closer approximation to the German Pak40 (AP64, HE23) than the 6-pounder/57mm that we can currently buy (AP55, HE17)... the Sherman Firefly (AP86, HE34, DEF66) went into production early '44, more than 300 were involved in D-Day and another 500-600 shipped between D-Day and summer '44, replacing Normandy losses... Don't even start me on the M26 Pershing because ok, ok, they were rare until 1945.

4. Balance costs of AT & transport - If historical accuracy means that Allied tanks don't match up to King Tigers, Panthers or regular Tigers, could you raise the limits on the number of fixed AT guns and transports that the Allies can buy? Right now an M4 Sherman costs 99 (AP60, HE39, DEF53). The server's down so I can't check but doesn't a 6-pounder/57mm AT gun plus an M3 transport to move it, cost about the same as a finished Sherman in MP? If we could buy a 17-pounder AT gun plus a transport for perhaps a third less than the price of a full Sherman, then it's worth getting six of them to give the first two Panthers to come within range a bloody nose... it would quickly degenerate into a battle royal where the third and fourth Panthers would likely take out most of our fire battery, but it would even the odds.

As ever, it's easy for us all to see how wonderful you've made this game. In reality, it was a slog for the Allies because the Germans had better kit... but it wasn't impossible... You're so nearly there! Thanks for all of your fantastic work.

[IainMcNeil]

Can you try a scenario with the suggested lower price points for now. I think those prices may be too extreme. Give it a try and let me know how you get on. Feedback from a couple of your on how this went would be great.

A Tiger II is great but if you know hot to take it out then its not that bad. It also breaks down a fair bit and is slow so is hard to get in to action.

Only the Brits had 17pdrs and the scenarios are all set up as US forces. The US had no fireflies either and really do struggle without a decent anti tank weapon buts its what they had

Transports are cheap if you get trucks - they are only 9 points. Half tracks are armoured and have MG's so are a useful combat unit so more expensive.

[GottaLove88s]

Thanks Iain, Ok, I've set up a couple of games. Enric & I will try it out with the new points system and we're also going to cap ourselves to 1 King and 1 Panther. Will feedback via a live AAR.

Aha! I knew there was a reason for it (the lack of stronger 17 pdrs and Fireflies). Hadn't realised the US/Brit split in these new MP scenarios. I guess that makes sense (although boy is historical accuracy painful when it works in favour of the Germans lol). M26 Pershing was definitely American?

At the moment the Tiger II isn't slow... at 24 move points, it's just as fast as a PzIV, a Sherman or an M36... it does break down, sometimes... but when it works, it's just as fast.

Sometimes, I feel there's a language difference between us... there's a useful Chinese phrase that covers this, ting bu dong, meaning hears the words but doesn't understand... that's me when you when you say that a Tiger II is great but "if you know how to take it out then its not that bad"... I hear the words but I have noooooo ideeeeeea how to put them into action.

For other similarly handicapped players, how on earth should we approach taking out a Tiger II?

I've lured them (and Panthers) into ambushes, where they've been surrounded by mixed teams of anything up to 6-8 Sherman 76s, M36s, mortars, Calliopes and Priests from at least four different directions; the Tiger/Panther just rolls into the trap, fires off a pop shot, receives feeble reaction shots from 3-4 Allied tanks in reply, realises it's in danger and merely reverses back, hardly scractched; I've ambushed them with 6 pdr/57mm guns one and two spaces away supposedly hidden in forest; the Tiger loses 10-20 morale and kills the "hidden" AT gun... Nothing works...

But when we post that the game is (currently) biaised towards the Germans, it feels like you guys tell us not to be so silly as to fire at heavy German tanks... That's why I'm ting bu dong... I hear you but I'm obviously missing something...

What is the right way to take out a Tiger II? Rather than merely (temporarily) softening its morale (and probably losing 2-3 Allied units just for doing that).

Help. Please. I know that you know how...

[enric]

Yes, help us, tell us the secret to kill those Tiger II.

[IainMcNeil]

The way to take out Tiger II's is to make them surrender. They are very hard to actually destroy.

The way morale works is that a unit will not recover morale if it loses morale this turn. Make sure you are continually hitting it with something such as a mortar, airstrike, artillery, priest etc. Once its suppressed you want to keep it that way if at all possible. Don't let it kill anything if you can avoid it - the extra 25-50 morale will make them extremely tough to deal with. Once suppressed you can take out the supporting units or drive up behind it and shoot at point blank range. Your Hellcats are ideal for this.

The amount of morale damage you do depends on your chance to penetrate. If you have 0% chance to penetrate you will never inflict morale damage unless you get a deflection. At 100% chance to penetrate you will always inflict 25 morale damage. Deflections always cause 10 morale damage. This means you want to get up close and shoot it from behind for the best result. It doesn't mater what your chance to hit is - its a fear thing. The enemy knows you have a weapon that can hurt them so don't worry about moving fast. In fact in this case its better as it makes you harder to hit!

If you shoot at an enemy unit when adjacent and the morale drops to less than 0 it surrenders.

I'm not saying its easy to do but they are by no means invincible. The secret is to get cost balance right so the Allies have enough numbers to make it work, but not too many so that the Germans always get swamped.

[GottaLove88s]

Ok, interesting... Let me test it... We're running our head to head AARs now (Enric as German in AAR1, me as German in AAR2)... the difficulty I've had so far is getting that final unit close enough to win the surrender once you've got the panzer's morale below zero... if your enemy is smart, he'll pull his Tigers/Panthers well back once morale falls <50... and on a large map like Meeting Engagement, it's just not possible to have hidden spare units close enough... it's a loooooooong way around the back... and there's so much open space that moving anywhere near him, in view, just results in instant flaming death from suppression fire

[IainMcNeil]

Guys can you test by changing the points cost of the units not artificially limiting how many you buy of them combined. Unfortunately the way you're testing it wont show us anything we can use for balancing.

The points need to be balanced - that's the key - anything else is just a fudge.

[enric]

why not?, you may limit the number of Tiger and Panther that you can buy when selecting the units. As I can buy only three halftracks or two Priest, you limit to one Tiger and one Panther.

[GottaLove88s]

Thanks Iain,

We get you and we want to help. The thing is, from playing 2.0.4 many times, Enric's come to the view that pushing the price of King Tigers up +19% from 210 to 250 isn't enough to even up the fairness to make MP games fun and equal again. He thought it might be simpler just to cap the German side, to say two heavy tanks, of any combination of King Tiger, Panther and Tiger (in the same way that AT guns are capped at max 2 or 3, transports at 3 or 4, Priests or Wespes at 2, etc). We can add as many PzIVs or StuGs to that as we want. I'm sort of with Enric there, because even if a King Tiger costs 250, the German player could theoretically choose four King Tigers and still have 1,000 left over for plenty of infantry and other necessities, if Meeting Engagement keeps its budget at 2,000.

Junk2Drive points out that BA is meant to be a straightforward, fun to play war game, which means that lots of real world stuff got chopped out because it's hard to program or would make playing too complex. The problem is that German armour got the historically accurate benefits of 88mm guns and impenetrable frontal armour, but Allied infantry didn't get the benefits of staying hidden in effective (immobilising) adjacent bazooka or grenade/charge attacks. BA's simple (and wonderfully playable) morale suppression model becomes meaningless when facing teams of Tigers or Panthers (because the game engine for German armour means that nothing can take them out from almost any direction, even a close-range, fixed and therefore highly accurate AT guns). Tigers/Panthers will always shoot you on sight even if they're suppressed; they can almost always detect you if you fire first and will shoot back, probably kill you, and raise their morale again. And their overwhelming firepower has >50% chance to destroy your feeble armour, even with the supposed suppression handicap.

Everyone agrees that it would be crazy to mess around with BA's game engine (if it 'aint broke, don't fix it). But everyone also agrees that right now the game is unbalanced. That leaves four ways to make whatever comes after 2.0.4 fun and fair again:

(i) capping German access to heavy tanks (Enric's suggestion),
(ii) realistic German:Allied tank ratios (see below),
(iii) giving Allies exclusive or enhanced access to morale rally and health boosts, or
(iv) giving Allies exclusive or enhanced access to airpower

(iii) seems easy and a no brainer. I doubt (iv) would work because if I was playing as a German it would feel unfair and extreme to be the only one to get bombed in long games (even though it's historically accurate for 1944-45).

Because I couldn't understand why the Allies kept losing in 2.0.4, I looked into production numbers for WW2 tanks, to figure out what the real world ratios were...

TankRatios.jpg (113.12 KiB) Viewed 4920 times

In the worst year, 1944, the US enjoyed nearly 3x more tank production than the Germans for heavy tanks. Every other year, it was at least 8x in favour of the US. By 1945, more than 16x! Real world, the Germans only built 1,350 Tiger Is, 480 King Tigers (Tiger IIs) during the entire war. That means the US produced 30-90x more Shermans than King Tigers... 30-90 times! The US built 2,162 M26 Pershing heavy tanks in 1945 alone. Don't even start me on the tens of thousands of Soviet T34s and KV1s that those German production numbers also had to fight (12,000 T34s in '42, 15,000 in '43, 15,000 in '44, 21,000 in '45).

But BA 2.0.4 calculates that a King Tiger (cost 210) is only worth 1.9x Sherman 76s (cost 108). We're not asking you to price a King Tiger at 30x 108 but it sure should be MUCH more than 210... but if that's not possible, Enric's suggestion to cap our access to them seems to make sense.

We want to try this out because we want to help you to find an answer. We're staying approximately within your proposed price changes. And if the new price raises still don't stop German sides choosing 2 Tigers and 3 Panthers (and the attack/defence model still favours them), Enric may have found a solution. We hope so because if you can make the German and US sides even again, BA is the best iPad war game bar none!! You've created something amazing. Thanks Iain. Let's give it a try

*All data is sourced from Jane's reference on WW2 tanks & fighting vehicles... http://archive.org/download/Janes-World ... eGuide.pdf

[IainMcNeil]

The issue with hard limits is they don't scale and mean you always buy the heavy tanks as they are undervalued so there is no variation. If my costs are too low let's push them higher. Maybe tRy 300 for tiger II and 270 for Panther and 240 for Tiger I. I want them to be valued right so you have a choice between heavy and medium tanks. Right now it's a no brainier. As for the historical accuracy it doesn't matter at our scale. You could easily have 4 Tiger IIs in one place. I really want to balance with price please guys. Thanks!

[GottaLove88s]

Ok, fair enough. That's true. And thanks for listening Iain... We all want the same result - to make your final release awesome... I'll PM with Enric. Maybe we should get our German sides (in the current AAR) to drop two infantry each. They cost about 40 apiece which would have the same effect as pushing the heavy tank prices up... We can't play out every possible scenario in one AAR but going to 300 would certainly make me question "is a Tiger II really worth 3 StuGs?" I wouldn't be buying three of them any more... and that would make for a more even game...

[IainMcNeil]

I think if we get the balance right in one scenario then it should be near right for the others.

I'm not sure at this stage if these tweaks are going in this update or the next one and will let you know as soon as Phil is back on Wednesday.

[IainMcNeil]

Guys can I have your final thoughts on the prices by the end of the day.

We need to get the new update submitted ASAP.

[enric]

About prices

My opinion is that is that there are two things to be taken into account in this area.

1) the point value of units.
2) the amount of each unit that could be chosen in a force selection scenario.

Why only 3 halftrack but 6 Panthers can be chosen? or, why 3 tiger II and only 2 Wespe? etc.. If the FS should be really a player choice the units should not be limited in amount, only points count on the total. This seems to induce the player to take FS based on tanks. Why not to make a FS based on mechanized infantry, AT, and some SP to yeah quickly some targets and defend them?.

The balance of point by unit is more o less the same that in SPWW the only big difference is in infantry that in BA cost too much compared with tanks.

SPWW-BA.numbers.jpg (164.68 KiB) Viewed 4870 times

[IainMcNeil]

We cannot change the points of any Allied units so we cant change the cost of infantry. We have to balance this by adjusting the cost of the German heavy tanks.

Please let me know what you think these should be. It may not be the perfect fix but it will be much better and we will continue to improve it as time goes on.

Other options are not available right now.

[GottaLove88s]

Hey Iain, Apologies have been slow on further input. Wifi has been down in our area so I haven't been here for awhile. Sending you a quickie from Starbucks (how's that for loyalty? ).

I'd stick to my revised view below. I understand that Allied prices can't change so a 3-to-2 ratio feels about right. Capping Germans to only two heavies can be beaten too easily. Agree with others that unit limits should be lifted too, ie. we should be able to buy as many transports, artillery, etc. as we feel we can afford. Will allow us to really try out completely different strategies. I'm particularly looking forward to testing fast combined armour-infantry-transport brigades.

Good luck finalising changes. Looking forward to playing them!

GL88

Thanks Iain, You're right, 300 is too high. My current best estimate is 280 for a Tiger II, 240 for a Panther, 220 for a Tiger I (T1 isn't that much worse than a Panther given its strong AP and DEF stats, and we don't want Germans to switch to hordes of T1's just because they're too cheap). On that rationale, Germans could pick 5 heavies, 2 Wespe, 2 mortars, 2 transports and 7 infantry for 2,000 (Meeting Engagement budget). Every Tiger II chosen instead of a Panther means one less infantryman. Alternatively, Germans could pick fewer heavies, add some StuGs, and increase their infantry (for better scouting). From testing our earlier thoughts, I'd leave the price of a StuG at 105 because they can't see for toffee, and the shorter fire range leaves them vulnerable to similarly priced US tank destroyers. Assuming Allied costs unchanged, a US general could pick 2 Priests, 3 mortars, a Calliope, 4x 76s, 3x M36s, 3 halftracks, 3x 57mm AT guns, 4 rangers and 4 scouts for a numerical superiority of 3-to-2. Sure, the German player can still roll around the map in his classy, impenetrable armour, but the Allied player has more options to be clever (because he has to, otherwise he's toast). That might look too generous to the Germans until we all play around enough to learn that KTs aren't invincible. For experienced players, it might swing the other way, to be too generous to the Allies (although sitting here now, I doubt it). I'd be curious to hear what Enric and others think?

[bones65]

if i can have a tiny input,..for the tiny amount of playtesting i've done 4 turns a day ish ever since had beta) ....210 is a little too cheap for K/T maybe 260 ish or 270 .. 300 is too high imho as the amount of other stuff available to allies is overwhelming! .. what's with the obsession of 'taking k/t 's out!! they hardly ever move anywhere as it is! the point of the game is to get the flags..they can't be everywhere at once ..why not just add 4 more flags! ,.. when i played kerensky in panzer corps he pretty much proved that in Hylan Valley the armour of the germans was beatable, by not taking it out,..but by going for the objectives! .. if we have pershings,..then there should be jagdtigers haha! .. it would be good for airstrikes to be purchased at a far cheaper price than for allies .. job done X-) (j/k) .. ps my version of b.a. keeps getting a warning notice coming up after i close the game,..and beta says i need to update,.. and there aren't any! 2.04 before you ask! ..your continued quest for near perfection is appreciated by all i'm sure pip and iain,i knew this was gonna be a classic.

[IainMcNeil]

Hi guys

I'm going to go with

Tiger II - 270
Panther - 240
Tiger I - 210

I think the speed of the Panther makes it a fair bit better than a Tiger I, so want to differentiate them enough.

This will go in the 2.0.5 update. We can continue to tweak and balance so keep the feedback coming! It may just hit the streets in a later update.

Thanks for all the feedback!