`peOn
24th February 2002, 21:19
Subject:
From:
Date:
Re: Random Damage: Why?
Rob Pardo
Fri Feb 22 20:15:14
On Fri Feb 22 12:09:09, ilnp wrote:
> What is an up side of Random Damage? Yes, in the long run it
> balances out to the average. However, in Starcraft, if a dropship
> was running away with 19 HP left you *know* that 1 shot from a 20
> damage weapon would kill it. Could you say the same if you had a
> 15-25 damage weapon? Would it make sense to send one unit
> sacrifically to kill the dropship, if you don't know that it will
> deal out the damage necessary to kill the target?
> Having static damage allows people to make concrete decisions such
> as this. Random damage takes that away, without providing any
> upsides that I can think of. Maybe it's just there to give it
more
> of that RPG feel.
> Blizzard?
> -daniel
Random damage is actually "more" balanced then static
damage in many cases. In an RTS game with many units of the same
type attacking repeatedly, all you really care about is average
rate of damage since the random factors quickly disappear over a
large enough sample size of attacks.
With random damage, we can effectively balance on the decimal
point. Think of how pen and paper RPGs work. You have sides of dice
and number of dice. War3 uses a similar concept.
For example, let's say a unit did 1-4 damage and we wanted to make
him more powerful. We could now have him do 2-4 damage which is a
much gentler improvement then moving a unit from 3 damage to 4
damage.
-Rob
From:
Date:
Re: Random Damage: Why?
Rob Pardo
Fri Feb 22 20:15:14
On Fri Feb 22 12:09:09, ilnp wrote:
> What is an up side of Random Damage? Yes, in the long run it
> balances out to the average. However, in Starcraft, if a dropship
> was running away with 19 HP left you *know* that 1 shot from a 20
> damage weapon would kill it. Could you say the same if you had a
> 15-25 damage weapon? Would it make sense to send one unit
> sacrifically to kill the dropship, if you don't know that it will
> deal out the damage necessary to kill the target?
> Having static damage allows people to make concrete decisions such
> as this. Random damage takes that away, without providing any
> upsides that I can think of. Maybe it's just there to give it
more
> of that RPG feel.
> Blizzard?
> -daniel
Random damage is actually "more" balanced then static
damage in many cases. In an RTS game with many units of the same
type attacking repeatedly, all you really care about is average
rate of damage since the random factors quickly disappear over a
large enough sample size of attacks.
With random damage, we can effectively balance on the decimal
point. Think of how pen and paper RPGs work. You have sides of dice
and number of dice. War3 uses a similar concept.
For example, let's say a unit did 1-4 damage and we wanted to make
him more powerful. We could now have him do 2-4 damage which is a
much gentler improvement then moving a unit from 3 damage to 4
damage.
-Rob