Experience Points from Combat

how to handle "who" gets how many Exp points from Victory

from Elemental Forums

A way to handle Experience Points (rather than 50 points per battle)

There should be a constant value of experience gained for enemy Combat Value. My numeric placeholders would be 2 x combat value. This experience should then be adjusted based upon number of kills and ratio of strength. However being stronger than your opponent should not cause less experience to be gained, although being weaker than your opponent should increase your potential experience points considerably.

This experience is then split into the participating units, proportionally based upon total damage dealt to the enemy x (1.10)^n where n equals the number of enemy soldiers* killed. *for killing a company, n would equal 10, and so on.

The actual experience that each unit gets is decided by taking the previous value that the individual unit recieved, and multiplying it by ( 1 + total enemy combat value/ unit's combat value).

In this case, if the individual unit is one third the power of the opposing army (that was defeated), then its experience gained is 4 times as much as its "share" of experience. However, if it dealt no damage to the enemy, then it recieves 0 share of the experience.

//examples

You fight 10 enemy soldiers. Lets say it was a company of infantry with total battle rank of 150. We then multiply this by 2, to get 300.

Lets say you fought against them with a company of archers and a Champion. Lets say the Archers did 70% of the damage, however the Champion got all 10 kills.

The archer would have 210 base experience while the Champion would have 90x(1.1)^10 or 233 base experience.

Lets say that the archer company had a battle rank of 50, while the melee Champion had a battle rank of 200. According to our equation, the archer would get 210 x ( 1 + 150/50) or 840 experience. The Champion would get 233 x (1 + 150/200) or 408 experience.

However, if the archers only dealt 30% of the damage, and the Champion dealt 70% of the damage and killed all 10, then the Champion would get 953 experience and the Archers would get 360 experience.

If the Champion dealt 70% of total damage, however the Archers got all 10 kills (and only totaled 30% total damage) then the Champion would get 367 experience points and the Archers would get 934 experience.

If the Champion dealt 50% damage and 5 kills, and the archers dealt 50% damage and 5 kills, then the Champion would get 423 experience and the Archer Unit (combat rank 50) would get 966 experience.

As another example, if that same champion of battle rank 200 fights a spider of battle rank 30, then it would get 76 experience. (30 x 1.1 x ( 1 + 30/200)) = 76 (rounded) ... I would prefer for experience to at least store 2 decimal places during calculation, and round to the nearest whole number before applying to the unit. Then units would only store experience as integers. Also, Units should probably level up as a whole.

My Final example will be a Sovereign of battle rank 46 vs a Spider of battle rank 20. The Sovereign would get 40 x 1.1 x ( 1 + 20/46 ) experience, or 63 experience.

The only thing I don't have a clear idea about is how many points it should take to level up. Personally I think that it should take 100 points to achieve level 2, and then 50% more points for each new level.

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Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top


This experience is then split into the participating units, proportionally based upon total damage dealt to the enemy x (1.10)^n where n equals the number of enemy soldiers* killed. *for killing a company, n would equal 10, and so on.

//examples

You fight 10 enemy soldiers. Lets say it was a company of infantry with total battle rank of 150. We then multiply this by 2, to get 300.

Lets say you fought against them with a company of archers and a Champion. Lets say the Archers did 70% of the damage, however the Champion got all 10 kills.

The archer would have 210 base experience while the Champion would have 90x(1.1)^10 or 233 base experience.

End of quote

I disagree that units should get bonus experience based on the actual kills it makes in a battle.   Having experience proprtioned on the amount of damage would seem fairer.  Using your example above:

why should the archers miss out on extra experience, considering that 1) they do their damage, and lots of damage before the melee attakers engage, 2) the melee attakers shuold just be mopping up like in the above example.  3)  mopping up shouldn't get you bonus experience.

Also, by giving bonus experience for getting "kills" rather than a purely damage based proportion of experience, will cause tactical battles that have people keeping their champion out of harms way until everything is ready to be one hit killed, resulting in a safe way of leveling.  I don't believe this mechanic would be a benefit to the game.

On your question regarding how much XP to level up.  I recall a media release or some such with regards to Vanilla Sins of a Solar Empire.  Stardock explained that allowing you to fully upgrade the Battleships didn't end up providing for strategies, rather than who could get their battleships lvled first.   To apply this to Elemental, Levels should require sufficient XP so that units will only be able to get REALLY good in one area, rather than be able to get REALLY good at everything.

The other option to the Sins reasoning above, is that lvls automatically distribute their bonuses.  This way an archer is only ever going to get better at being an archer.  This would also avoid the one unit being the jack of all trades problem.  However, this way means that players can't trick people by having archers that upped all their melee stats, still not as good as soldiers, but could cause the wrong move by the enemy (send peasants with daggers) resulting in easier kills and shifting the balance of power.

The last option I can think on leveling, is providing bonuses to certain traits for units.  eg:  soldier just leveled up, get 5 points to spend.  To spend those points amoung health, attack, magic,  would confer a 2x, 3x, and 1x modifiers respectively.   This way you can make a soldier an even better awesome soldier.  or have it diversify a bit at the cost of being GREAT at one thing.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

... hehehe. Well, in DnD there always seems to be a favoritism towards who gets the kill. Now, I am fine with experience being split amongst the group only based upon % damage ... however I want for number of kills to effect the total experience somewhere, so in that case I would want for total "battle experience" to equal Enemy Combat Value x 2 x (1.1)^N where N equals total number of kills.

By keeping the Kill value present "somewhere", even though sending Hoards of weaklings to their death is both fun and effective, it will increase the amount of experience your opponent receives.

//

Now, onto your question of "how" leveling up should effect a unit. We already have a fairly good method for leveling up our Sovereign.

I will postulate the rest of my idea based upon the Sovereign method of leveling up.

Sovereigns get 10 points, Champions get 8 points, Elites get 6 points, Experts get 5 points, Veterans get 4 points, Regulars get 3 points, Draftees get 2 points, and Slaves get 1 point.

I would advise re-naming Veteran to "Honor Guard" and renaming Expert to "Exemplar"

I would love if each weapon has 3 skills (2 useful skills and 1 "super skill"). Regular units gain a skill each 5 turns, with the Super Skill being gained at level 15. Draftees and Slaves can never unlock skills. Honor Guard start with first skill, Exemplars start with first two skills, and Elites start with all three skills. Champions also start with all three skills.

Base HP for a default Champion should be 30, and base HP for a default Sovereign should be 40.

(base HP for regular is 10, base HP for Honor Guard is 12, base HP for Exemplar is 15 and base HP for Elite is 20)

base HP for Draftee should be 8 and base HP for slave should be 5.

Champions should have about 20 or so "feats" to choose from. 10 or so of these feats should be "generic" feats ... like stealth, hardy, Trollskin, ect. The other 10 should be dependent on Weapon-type ... meaning each "type" of weapon should have approx 10Champion feats attached to it (more or less depending). These would include Point-Blank shot, Rapid Shot, Long Shot, Precision, ect (Bows). Also including Dual-Wield, Parry Master, Nimble Blade, ect (Swords), Sweeping Strike, Knockdown, ect (Giant Weapons), Armor Smash, Excessive Force, Concussion Strike, Disarm, Trip, ect (Blunt Weapons), Disarm, Trip, Sweeping Strike, Arrow Block, ect (Staff Weapons), Excessive Force, Armor Slice, Decapitate, Dismember, ect (Axe weapons).

For specialty feats like Decapitate, Dismember, Disarm, Trip, Concussion Strike, Knockdown, ect ... would depend on relative levels, relative rank, and probably have some Champion/Sovereign only feats that allow full immunity towards said effects. (as well as many monsters being immune).

You probably would have 10% penalty for trying to specialty feat each rank above you, and a 5% penalty to try and specialty rank each level above you. With like-minded bonuses for specialty feat-ing ranks and levels below you. Trying to Specialty feat a Sovereign is an additional 20% penalty.

Ranks are Slave -> Draftee -> Regular -> Honor Guard -> Exemplar -> Elite -> Champion -> Sovereign.

So a level 5 champion would have a 10% penalty trying to specialty a level 1 Sovereign. While a level 1 Sovereign would have a 70% bonus trying to specialty feat a Regular soldier.

Lets say that Knockdown and Trip have a 40% default success rate (enemy loses 1 combat turn). Concussion Strike has a 30% default sucess rate (enemy loses 3 combat turns), Disarm could have a 20% success rate (enemy loses weapon ... 5 turns? whole battle?), Dismember could have a 15% success rate (enemy permanently loses an arm, effects stats accordingly), and Decapitate could have a 10% success rate. An unhealed Dismembered soldier could have 5 combat turns before it passes out/ dies. If Dismember successfully activates twice, both arms are removed, and if it activates a third time (upon the "somehow still alive" soldier that lost both arms) then it acts as decapitation.

Meaning, that if a soldier loses an arm, it has 5 turns to live. If it loses a second arm the next turn, then its total "dying" speeds up by 1 turn, so it has 3 turns to live (instead of 4). If dismember activates the next turn (on the same unit) then its head is cut off, and it automatically dies. A soldier with no arms, and no attack value anywhere else on the body (Bite, Feet-claws), it will either remain in rank/file, or flee.

If a soldier is healed by magic before the 5 turns run out (or its head is cut off) then it will resume normal combat ability. If a soldier has "died" due to the timer (and its head was not cut off) then it will lie passed out on the ground for another 10 combat turns. If there is any magic capable of healing it, and its cast before the 15 turns are up (or the 10 "on the ground" turns are up) then the soldier will not die, but will remain passed out for the rest of the battle (or 50 combat turns). To return a healed, yet passed out soldier to combat ability, you need to use a spell that wakes sleeping units.

A successful Decapitation immediately kills the unit, with no chance of magical healing (unless you have some sort of resurrect spell). If you DO have a resurrect spell, you can only use it once per battle. So you can either use it during the battle, or immediately after the battle is concluded (if you won). Leads to more interesting decisions imho.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Whoa,   super DnD based leveling.   Heroes of Might and Magic had a learn skills every couple of levels system.   To be honest, the DnD system you described is waaaaaay to cmplex for Elemental.  With the curent system in place, the majority of how the unit will act is based on the equipment you design it with (or aquire and equip).  This system is much more alikened to Master of Orion ship design.  Only the special units (Soverign, Champion) should get skills, which at the moment are chosen before any leveling is done.

Speaking against the current system though, soverigns should have a "type", which confers bonus points when you level up some stats compared to others. At the moment creating a soverign thatcan end up great at everything won't add to strategy or tactics.  Built units should be assigned a type based  on their weapon, thereby determining the abilities that get bonuses when increasing from level ups.

Don't take this a a knock agistcomplex DnD type systm, I love DnD and the crazy stuff you can do with the elaborate rule set, I just beleve it is not for Elemental.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Well, in any case, when it comes to levelling up, I am a firm believer in 10 points for Sovereign, 8 points for Champion, 6 points for Elite, 5 points for Expert (exemplar), 4 points for Veteran (honor guard), 3 points for normal (regular), 2 points for Draftee and 1 point for Slave.

All the extra skills and feats are just extra, which I have a feeling will be used. All it really does is multiply the data size of each weapon by 13. Which ... I guess is alot, but only a little when compared to the 3-D engine (and it doesn't really seem overly complex ...)

Still, all that other stuff is just extra. my main point is that Sovs get the most points per level, and elites get twice as many points per level as regulars.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

There are more ways to make a decent xp system, but before I post any ideas, I would like to know the following: How is the "battle rank" calculated right now?

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

How is the "battle rank" calculated right now?
End of quote

I think it is something like ATK + DEF + sqrt(HP) . Which can be totally misleading since a group of adventurer can have a total battle rank of 38 and can be easily dispatched by a starting supercombatant sovereign while a troll has a battle rank of 36 and will always kill a starting supercombatant sovereign

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Well, that just shows that the combat system is already showing some complex depth from its "simplicity." Anyways, this idea arose from the fact that currently, all Champions recieve 50 xp from each battle, and all normal units recieve 5 exp from each battle.

So this could be a useful placeholder until someone comes up with something more useful (of course I prefer my system ;) )

In any event, I usually don't try to attack Trolls till I have at least 50 HP and 2 or 3 combat speed. Either that or have a few warriors with me ... and by a few I mean at least 40-50 HP worth.

 

Troll Killer is usually a Sovereign that has 70+ HP, 20+ attack, 20+ defense, and 3+ combat speed.

The last Sovereign I owned in that range had a combat rank of 71 iirc. He defeated an AI army of combat rank 90+ while only taking 4 damage.