Beta Galactic Artifact - Game Balance


TrevorBradley

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Joined
Nov 6, 2007
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732
Two things. This post is mostly directed at TheMonkey, but I invite anyone who's played Galactic Artifact for a bit to join in the fun.

Secondly I'm not in any huge rush. I'm not back to coding yet but there are a few things spinning in the back of my mind that I want to move forward on.

I'd like to gather some gameplay data, particularly on game speed and artifact cost in an attempt to fix game balance up a bit.

If someone has the time to play through about 9 or 12 single player games over the next week or so, I'd like you to try the following experiment:

1) Play three games on single player mode. Gameplay doesn't need to be rushed, but should be played at a relatively steady pace. Play to upgrade your ship first (ONLY sell artifacts for upgrades and fuel, not information), and then start gathering data to find the prize artifact. You *must* completely upgrade your ship before searching for the artifact... this means it's OK to head towards the core, as long as you don't have an idea where the prize artifact is.

Record the time it takes to fully upgrade your ship (using the game timer) and the time it takes to finish each of the three games.

Feel free to use "P" for pause if you need to take a break. The gameplay timer should pause as well.

2) Repeat step 1, except only upgrade your ship to exactly 9 in each of the 5 available categories. Do not upgrade Radar, Speed, Tank, Drive or Cargo to 10, as it would invalidate the test. Comp of course will already be 10. Record the time to reach level 9 upgrades and the time it takes to complete the game for each of the three games with a level 9 ship.

3) Repeat Step 1/2, except only upgrade to level 8. Record the time to reach level 8 upgrades, and then the time to complete each game with a level 8 ship.

4) If you're masochistic, same deal, but with a level 7 ship.

I'm not going to ask anyone to try the same with a level 6 ship. I think I can extrapolate with this set of data.

This should result in 24 times that I can plot out and attempt to tweak gameplay around. My goal here is to tweak the value of the ships upgrades so that there's an incentive to try to start your artifact search without completely upgrading your ship. This might make some of the early upgrades cheaper, and the later ones more expensive. It might also mean I try to balance the time between the two phases, so that ship upgrading and artifact exploration end up taking a similar amount of time.

Thanks for any time you're able to put in on this request!
 
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'Trevor Bradley' said:
If someone has the time to play through about 9 or 12 single player games over the next week or so, I'd like you to try the following experiment:
Sure, Ill post it here later this week.
 
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'TheMonkey' said:
'Trevor Bradley' said:
If someone has the time to play through about 9 or 12 single player games over the next week or so, I'd like you to try the following experiment:
Sure, Ill post it here later this week.


Thank you, and my apologies in advance if that level 7 game is too long.. :)
 
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It mainly depends on where you start, empty area or dense spiral arm...can make a huge difference...and even more, if you start in the sector WITH the price Artifact. (this way I've got my personel record of 13 Minutes :D)
 
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'fusion_power' said:
It mainly depends on where you start, empty area or dense spiral arm...can make a huge difference...and even more, if you start in the sector WITH the price Artifact. (this way I've got my personel record of 13 Minutes :D)
This is why I'm going for multiple data points. Hopefully it should average out a bit...
 
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I don't have time to play your game through 9 times right now. at my current play speed of 1~1.5 hours per game, it would take about 2~3 days of pretty much solid playing ;) . (a save feature would be nice)

Howeaver, something I have noticed is a tendency for a particular type of alien to dominate an aria near the start of the game, for example In a game I just started, there seems to be a plague of industrialists.
 
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Here it is, but I see a problem with the data that fusion_power mentioned... lucky starts...


CODE
lvl 10 - won
7:55 - 12:20
6:19 - 9:10
5:53 - 9:58

lvl 9 - won
14:22 - 20:55
6:48 - 12:15
12:49 - 17:22

lvl 8 - won
9:38 - 16:46
7:52 - 14:10
5:10 - 11:47

lvl 7 - won
7:45 - 21:26
6:15 - 26:52
7:11 - 11:05



As you can probably already guess, lucky starts are messing up the data.
 
'TheMonkey' said:
Here it is, but I see a problem with the data that fusion_power mentioned... lucky starts...


CODE
lvl 10 - won
7:55 - 12:20
6:19 - 9:10
5:53 - 9:58

lvl 9 - won
14:22 - 20:55
6:48 - 12:15
12:49 - 17:22

lvl 8 - won
9:38 - 16:46
7:52 - 14:10
5:10 - 11:47

lvl 7 - won
7:45 - 21:26
6:15 - 26:52
7:11 - 11:05
As you can probably already guess, lucky starts are messing up the data.


Is lucky starts exclusively defined as "I'm close to the artifact" or is also "I got a good break finding stuff" (which would be easy to exclude from the data here).

This is actually really useful data. There's distinct trends I can pick out here. Thanks!
 
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QUOTE
Is lucky starts exclusively defined as "I'm close to the artifact" or is also "I got a good break finding stuff" ...


I have found 3 types of lucky starts.
1) Start in a very dense place.
2) Start close to the artifact (as you mentioned)
3) Pickup a $$$ artifact in the first few minutes, or "I got a good break finding stuff". (this one. wow. one time i picked up 2 different $$$ within the first 3 minutes.)
 
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'TheMonkey' said:
QUOTE
Is lucky starts exclusively defined as "I'm close to the artifact" or is also "I got a good break finding stuff" ...
I have found 3 types of lucky starts.
1) Start in a very dense place.
2) Start close to the artifact (as you mentioned)
3) Pickup a $$$ artifact in the first few minutes, or "I got a good break finding stuff". (this one. wow. one time i picked up 2 different $$$ within the first 3 minutes.)


The numbers I really needed to know (for the moment) were the second half.. how long it takes to find the prize artifact when powered up to certain levels, so #1 and #3 get factored out.

#2 is the variability in the data. 3 data points don't make for a huge data set, but it gives me a good guesstimate to go on.
 
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