Game Design Document
Introduction
This page is supposed to be for Developers of this game and others. To understand why we came to the conclusions we did to finish the game, and how to improve on the game moving forward. Helpful guidelines on what is suggested to be a good idea for specific parts of the game will be listed and hopefully explained in some form. It's hard to tell with us though we're a bit scatterbrained. Despite all that. Whomever takes this over, I believe in you. You can make this game better than I could. Even if I'm just writing this to future me. Good Luck Commander. ~Lavtiz29
Math
Before we start I'm going to state some facts.
- All of the math in this game is nonsense, bullshit, made up, and possibly even actually intelligently designed.
- Durability is the base Unit of the game. Everything ends up being based around that. It's partially because of anti-bloat, partially due to its cost of 1 point per durability. So if things get out of hand that's why.
- Currently all Unit Stats (Accuracy, Assault, Evasion, AP, and Movement) are worth about 10 points per improvement.
Units
Units by themselves have about 3 costs wrapped up in them.
- Stat Reduction Costs
- Base Durability Costs
- Class Costs
Stat Reduction Costs:
All Units are expected to have stat reduction costs, even if they improve the stat as in the case of AP or Move, of 4. This means all units should have a standard Core Cost of 40. However, since *all* units have this it technically is supposed to balance out to 0. This remains to be seen since Evasion is considered to be an extremely useful Stat.
Base Durability Costs
In this case, this is just how much armor is on the mech. Sadly this is controlled basically at random by the Dev team. However since all durability costs the same, you can see how tough a mech will be to take out by its durability.
Class Costs
This is where things get weird and may need to be modified. Classes are defined by size into 5 categories.
| Class | Durability |
|---|---|
| Class 1 | 0-75 |
| Class 2 | 76-150 |
| Class 3 | 151-225 |
| Class 4 | 226-300 |
| Class 5 | 301+ |
However despite this the costs for each category aren't the same.
| Class | Move | AP | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Class 1 | 5 | 2 | 70 |
| Class 2 | 4 | 2 | 60 |
| Class 3 | 3 | 3 | 60 |
| Class 4 | 2 | 4 | 60 |
| Class 5 | 1 | 4 | 50 |
As you can see, class 1s despite or possible due to them being much easier to kill have an increased amount of points allotted to them. I am still unaware if this was intentional.
Thrusters
Once again, random shit I haven't decided is a problem but we'll talk about anyway.
With the addition of *any* thrusters to the mech, you have the ability to double your move if your move takes you in a straight line. Like a run. This would arguably increase all classes costs however once again the change is the greatest on the smaller units.
| Class | Move | AP | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Class 1 | 10 | 2 | 120 |
| Class 2 | 8 | 2 | 100 |
| Class 3 | 6 | 3 | 90 |
| Class 4 | 4 | 4 | 80 |
| Class 5 | 2 | 4 | 60 |
Still doubt this was intentional. Just a thing that happens and something to think on when you are building your Units.
Weapons
So this is where a whole bunch of my thinking for the last week or so comes in. Once again let's set some boundaries.
Base Curve
Most weapons, to be viable, need to be put on a base curve. The initial thoughts here are: 1. You want to kill an Alto in half the time it takes to play a game. 2. A game takes about 10 rounds. 3. The AP of Mechs is approximately 6 or 7. (1d8+2/3)
Due to all this information the base Damage to AP ratio is
| Damage | AP |
|---|---|
| 3 | 1 |
| 6 | 2 |
| 9 | 3 |
| 12 | 4 |
| 15 | 5 |
| 18 | 6 |
| 21 | 7 |
| 24 | 8 |
| 27 | 9 |
| 30 | 10 |
| 33 | 11 |
| 36 | 12 |
| 39 | 13 |
| 42 | 14 |
| 45 | 15 |
| 48 | 16 |
This means a weapon of 2+ AP needs to be a multiple of 3 to get the results you want most of the time. (Statistical results not withstanding.)
Costs
Due to the limitation of 600 points for a "small game" this means a weapon needs to fall into about a 20-60 range for single weapons. (I will talk about the costs of pilots later.)
Since our initial costs of Durability + Range + Damage - AP was simple and worked. I ended up using this as a base for the math. However since to get the best effect the math ends up being Durability + Range + (AP*3)-AP actually. So the whole math problem ends up being shortened to Durability + Range + (AP*2).
Now the problem ended up being: "What do you do when a weapon goes above or below the curve." Sadly I had to chuck it in the fuck it bucket and say "I don't know let's double the cost and call it a day". So I did The final formula is: Durability + Range + (AP*2) + (Additional Damage*4)
However There is one more thing of note here I forgot originally. When speaking with both Black and Nexus they stated that "Damage should be more expensive than Durability" (paraphrased for brevity). So this means the formula would actually be Durability + Range + (AP*2)*2 +(Additional Damage*4)
or more succinctly
Durability + Range + (AP*4)+(Additional Damage*4)
Additional Damage can be positive or negative to get the effect we want. Of Which is the addition of damage for weapons that are on the curve being expensive, and the reduction in damage be very forgiving. Whether that's good or not, it's not clear yet.
Ability Costs
Once again things get wacky here.
Full Auto turned out to be simple +Damage*4 to the end of the formula, and regardless of what you put for the damage number you'll get the correct effect and be *mostly* on the curve.
Explosives is where I had trouble because despite it doing up to 3 extra total damage ticks. I can't prove that it would. So instead since those weapons are mostly on the curve already and even then there's no way to prove that it will do the damage expected. I did +Damage*2 on weapons. This means that you would effectively only get one more damage tick in cost. It doesn't make Nexus happy, but I can't make everyone happy.
Spread is the final one I know what to do with. The short of is +Damage*0.5 because it gets one whole extra damage tick. This is still arguably less than it's supposed to be, but it balances as good as I can get it.
Pilots
Okay Pilots right? Do you know how much absolutely rat basterdy is tied up in Pilots? Like how many quite rules and rulings had to go into pilots and how much minor math had to go into figuring out pilots?
No?
Good. It's fucking annoying. Onto the important shit: First the original/Current Pilot chart. Don't know what to call it as of this long ramble it's technically the 3rd or 4th version of this chart.
| Pilot Rank | SRM | Mods | Traits | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Rookie | 0 | 0 | 1 | 25 |
| AI 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 25 |
| AI 3 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 50 |
| Vet | 2 | 2 | 1 | 75 |
| Ace | 4 | 3 | 2 | 200 |
So after some looking at it and complaining and thinking I've realized two things. 1. There's 9 ranks in this chart for some stupid reason. 2. 9 Ranks means there should be about 25 points per level and there's not since 200/9 is not 25 it's really 22.2 repeating.
However in an effort to resolve this I did math and came up with some things. Useful? I don't know!
Keeping our base cost for any SRM to be 10, that means we'd need to solve for the other 160 points. However since it's actually 158 points I solved for that instead. We can all cry about the 2 lost points later when I care more.
This means with 3 Mods and 2 Traits at max level of 158 points to burn the math events out around 30 for Mods and 34 for Traits. This tells us a few things: 1. Mods are worth around 30 points of usefulness. Technically less due to the "cost" of being able to put them on at all. 2. Traits are worth more than mods, so they should, but not by much.
This means moving forward we'll have to watch out how good both mods and traits are. Also moving forward I suggest we use the following for the Pilot Rank chart.
| Pilot Rank | SRM | Mods | Traits | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 22 |
| 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 44 |
| 4 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 66 |
| 5 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 89 |
| 6 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 111 |
| 7 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 133 |
| 8 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 155 |
| 9 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 178 |
| 10 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 200 |
This Covers both the original chart and extends it to handle everything including roleplay style upgrades.
The only two downsides I see are the obvious 22 at every level save 5 and 10, and the fact that to keep the numbers working I had to back load the Traits. Which probably isn't something people want based on the original charts, but what do I know.
Abilities
So this is where Systems, Mods and Traits would really get their legs. Sadly I can only really go over Systems and some mild concepts for Mods and Traits.
Systems
Since it was decided way above that the improvement of stats should cost about 10 points a piece. Systems are fairly easy to create. Just figure out what the bonuses are multiply by 10 done. I did do some minor changes for things that are temporary especially stuff that doesn't affect your Unit personally. Those are now +5 in cost. Meaning if you start in an aura that gives +1 move, you get that till you leave. So less cost. I don't know if that's balanced, but we're here now. Tell me what I should have done instead. I'd love to hear it.
This does cause several problems of *really powerful* Systems. As let's just say that Maxion got some anime bias and therefore most of their armor systems are expensive. Your welcome.
Mods
So Mods are supposed to be around 25-26 points in worth due to their usefulness. However also due to their non-visibility we have done some nuttier things with them. Like the mods that increase/decrease your class. Yeah those are totally not worth 25-26 points. Even with the stat changes. I don't know if that's worth fixing. More information will be needed to make that determination.
Traits
Traits are supposed to be how the pilots express themselves as people. Therefore they are worth 30 points...That's all I got sorry.
Statistics
You know this has been like 2 hours and I realize I forgot to talk about the math.
So the interesting thing about the statistics is that we have critical hits on 8s for hits that changes the math and means if you have an 8 for Accuracy or Assault you basically always have a 12.5% chance to hit and deal damage.
For everything else the math is ((8-ACC/ASS)/8)+1/8 This means that the chart will look like this, if you can read it on discord.
| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 21.88% | 31.25% | 40.63% | 50.00% | 59.38% | 68.75% | 78.13% |
| 3 | 20.31% | 28.13% | 35.94% | 43.75% | 51.56% | 59.38% | 67.19% |
| 4 | 18.75% | 25.00% | 31.25% | 37.50% | 43.75% | 50.00% | 56.25% |
| 5 | 17.19% | 21.88% | 26.56% | 31.25% | 35.94% | 40.63% | 45.31% |
| 6 | 15.63% | 18.75% | 21.88% | 25.00% | 28.13% | 31.25% | 34.38% |
| 7 | 14.06% | 15.63% | 17.19% | 18.75% | 20.31% | 21.88% | 23.44% |
| 8 | 12.50% | 12.50% | 12.50% | 12.50% | 12.50% | 12.50% | 12.50% |
If you don't understand. Besides having an ACC/ASS of 3 plus a +1 bonus to rolls being the best. Evasion is very powerful since it deals with both of the other two.
