NUD Balance?

Post by **th15** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 5:14 pm

Kills aren't a good way to gauge performance, they're just there for kicks really. The thing with kills is that it's highly dependent on where the NUD is in relation to the invader's path. A big NUD may do all the hurting at the start but one small glow NUD might finish the invader off.

I'm going to ramp up both the shrap and lance NUD's raw damage. I'm currently planning on making Lancets start at 22 dmg and shraps start at 32 with a fire rate of 90 instead of 120.

This is designed so that Lancets will do less dps for cost than a mono or glow against single targets but will do higher dps/cost if it hits 2 or more targets. In v0.08 the value was tuned so that it would need to hit 3 targets to equal a mono/glow.

As for shraps, I'm working on a baseline accuracy of 40% (achievable with a full "shell" of NUDs and warpNUDs around) so that the dps/cost of the shrap (assuming that 40% hit rate) is slightly better than a mono or glow. However, shraps benefit greatly from having a mono beside it. Having just one lvl 1 mono beside a shrap effectively doubles its dps/cost.

You'll see these changes in v0.09, I'm still testing these settings and tuning the level difficulty to match.

IBurn36360 · Post by **IBurn36360** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 5:59 pm

The speed 5 arrow enemies are extensively hard to hit. Even with ~800 DPS, I was unable to kill hardly any of them, (they had 200-240 HP) even in the long corridors of my setup. It seems as if the mono's fire at random at them instead of actually aiming at them. 4's werent as bad but still were difficult.

Nyme · Post by **Nyme** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 8:07 pm

IBurn36360 wrote:The speed 5 arrow enemies are extensively hard to hit. Even with ~800 DPS, I was unable to kill hardly any of them, (they had 200-240 HP) even in the long corridors of my setup. It seems as if the mono's fire at random at them instead of actually aiming at them. 4's werent as bad but still were difficult.

Totally right. Only Glows are effective against them, and even they can't stop them very well. All of my survivals have ended to the 4 or 5 speeders.

th15 wrote:Kills aren't a good way to gauge performance, they're just there for kicks really. The thing with kills is that it's highly dependent on where the NUD is in relation to the invader's path. A big NUD may do all the hurting at the start but one small glow NUD might finish the invader off.

You are right. My example didn't work. But I see you have seen the current state of the Shrap.

th15 wrote:I'm going to ramp up both the shrap and lance NUD's raw damage. I'm currently planning on making Lancets start at 22 dmg and shraps start at 32 with a fire rate of 90 instead of 120.

This is designed so that Lancets will do less dps for cost than a mono or glow against single targets but will do higher dps/cost if it hits 2 or more targets. In v0.08 the value was tuned so that it would need to hit 3 targets to equal a mono/glow.

Sounds pretty reasonable. I'm looking forward to the next version. Keep up the good work.

Artman40 · Post by **Artman40** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 10:01 pm

Well, maybe making glows to deal damage based on the speed of the enemy. So then we'd have.

Glow: Good against fast enemies.
Mono: A little bit of everything.
Warp: Helps greatly against heavyweight creeps.
Lance: Good against groups of small creeps.
Sharp: Good against medium- and heavyweight creeps, but only in certain locations.

Of course, level designs are important too. For an example, the last level, Roundabout, provides good opportunities for maze planning and using different NUDs.

Nyme · Post by **Nyme** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 11:50 pm

Artman40 wrote:Well, maybe making glows to deal damage based on the speed of the enemy. So then we'd have.

Glow: Good against fast enemies.
Mono: A little bit of everything.
Warp: Helps greatly against heavyweight creeps.
Lance: Good against groups of small creeps.
Sharp: Good against medium- and heavyweight creeps, but only in certain locations.

Of course, level designs are important too. For an example, the last level, Roundabout, provides good opportunities for maze planning and using different NUDs.

Not a bad idea. But I would still get rid of 5 speeders. If they are left in game and Glow is made more powerful against them, there is really no other Nud that can destroy 5 speeders. It would make the speeders akin to flyers in some other tower defense games, and that is not a good thing in my opinion. I have never liked flyers because they ignore the maze, and the maze is half of the TD game. 5 speeders are doing almost the same, just by not getting hit by anything else than Glows.

Level designs do matter as you said, and some Nuds are more effective on some levels. That's why I like to use Bifurcation as a "benchmark", not only because it offers great self-maze-building possibility due to the large empty space, but also because the maze possibility provides the possibility to test the Nuds in different situations on the same map.

Artman40 · Post by **Artman40** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 1:30 am

Another option is to make nuds a bit different. When reaching final upgrade, they would weaken certain creeps for a short amount of time so other nuds would damage them more.

For an example: Basic medium-sized circle creep would be vulnerable to trinud. When it's hit by trinud, it would turn weaker so that other types of NUDs (but not mono-, duo- or triNUDs) would do little more damage to it.

Post by **th15** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 2:01 am

I don't know if anyones realised that the warpnuds work rather differently now. They scale their effect according to how fast the target is moving so fast invaders jerk backward really fast whereas slower ones will only slide backward slightly.

Honestly, I'd really rather avoid explicit damage types. One of the design objectives of NUD is to prove that varied gameplay can be achieved without resorting to something as heavy handed as a damage type vs armour type table.

I'm trying to get some NUDs to be more effective against certain types of invaders in specific situations through the way the NUD behaviour interacts with the properties of the invaders. The glownud is a clear example because it's effective against fast invaders because they are perfectly accurate. The warpnud stretches things a little by scaling its effect by target speed, but my reasoning is that since it sends the invader back through time it's slightly more intuitive.

Lancets are good in situations where you can get it to hit more then one target most of the time. Shraps are designed to be good if you get them in just the right place and support them properly.

With these mechanics as the baseline, the adjacency bonus system adds that final layer of strategy which fleshes out NUD as a full blown game despite the small number of NUDs and invader types.

In short, the plan is to use a small number of interesting mechanics to create a large amount of gameplay.

Artman40 · Post by **Artman40** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 4:51 am

Hmmm...I wonder what kind of bonuses will sharpnuds give to nuds next to them? I think they should give something, considering their cost.

The Boz · Post by **The Boz** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 4:57 am

How about a 5%(10, then 15) chance for nearby NUDs to deal splash damage with a shot?

Beamnuds · Post by **Beamnuds** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 4:12 pm

Guess who busted the Scoreline scoreboard...

Yeah keep beamers the way they are, I love them. =)

IBurn36360 · Post by **IBurn36360** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 5:46 am

IBurn36360 wrote:The speed 5 arrow enemies are extensively hard to hit. Even with ~800 DPS, I was unable to kill hardly any of them, (they had 200-240 HP) even in the long corridors of my setup. It seems as if the mono's fire at random at them instead of actually aiming at them. 4's werent as bad but still were difficult.

Alright, I have a revision of this. GlowNUD's are not only capable, but surprisingly good at taking these guys down. Trying the folowing formats:

B = Basic NUD
G = Glow NUD

Corners:

G B
B B

Straights:

G
B
G
B
G

These setups allow for extensive damage from the basic NUD's, while the Glows focus on taking down the speeders. I am currently trying other combos.

Post by **th15** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 12:58 am

Alright, v0.09 is out. No more speed 5 fast invaders. Mono and Glow nuds are slightly less effective at higher upgrades. Lancet and Shraps are lots more effective now.

Also, the survival mode should ramp up a lot faster.

Nyme · Post by **Nyme** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 1:59 am

A short test shows that the game is now more balanced. Lances are now pretty good, and Shraps are better but I still have to test them a bit more. Now I have to go, though.

And thanks for removing 5 speeders!

Warpman · Post by **Warpman** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 2:04 am

Maybe some feature should be added? Make shraps fire only at 180' arc? Just cause only in 2 cases it would fire more.

Beamnuds · Post by **Beamnuds** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 1:20 pm

Perhaps you should create a different thread for each build, and list out the detailed specs for each tower so we can critique more easily.