[Announcement] No RND Mod

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leonid
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[Announcement] No RND Mod

Post by leonid »

No "No RND" news for a long time, huh...

Let me introduce mod, that almost removes RND from Wesnoth. Why I did it? Some players (and myself) don't like RND in Wesnoth. This mod is for them. :)
This mod is inspired by Damage System Mod by ArtuR & Jed (NarajinX).

Goals:
1. Remove RND (almost).
2. 100% compatibility with original Wesnoth. (What I mean here is the balance
and game mechanics will be the same, so I don't need to rewrite AI, for example.)

Here is how it works:
Damage for each hit calculated as follows:
attacker.damage * (100 - defender.defence)
chance_to_hit is 100% (almost, see below)
also, random distribution for damage is +-10%. For gameplay this generally means +-1 point of damage sometimes.
additional 1% chance to miss and 1% chance to do double damage.
So, as you can see, RND is almost removed.

Right now there are no UI changes. "Damage Calculations" still can be used to some extent.

Suggestions on improving this mod or change it are welcome. Generally, I want to hear what people
that don't like RND in Wesnoth want Wesnoth to be.

I plan to release this mod for every new version of Wesnoth (development and stable).
I can backport this mod to the previous version of Wesnoth you have, just give me your Wesnoth version.

Right now this mod is distributed in the binary and source form. Compiled version of Wesnoth for Linux/Ubuntu can be found here:
http://sites.google.com/site/leonidsbox/
(Can I just attach binary here (around 3MB compressed) or better to use some other web-site/file sharing?)
I don't have Windows or Mac, so if anybody will help me compile for Windows/Mac and upload this would be great.
There are 2 files: No-RND-Mod-1.x.x.patch and actions.cpp.
Use patch to patch actions.cpp file, or if you don't know how to use patch, simply copy/replace actions.cpp file. And then compile. :)

Update:
Here you can find binaries and patches themselves:
http://sites.google.com/site/leonidsbox/
wesnoth-1.x.x-no-rnd.tar.gz -- binaries for Ubuntu linux (I tested on 10.04)
No-RND-Mod-1.x.x.tar.gz -- sourse code and patches

Update2:
I have created project on http://sourceforge.net/ for this mod.
Check it out here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/wesnoth-no-rnd/
Attachments
No-RND-Mod-1.9.9.tar.gz
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No-RND-Mod-1.8.6.tar.gz
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Last edited by leonid on November 22nd, 2011, 11:49 am, edited 3 times in total.
Velensk
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Re: [Announcement] No RND Mod

Post by Velensk »

Just a couple quick notes: It's RNG: random number generator

Also, you probably want to tweak the balance if you're doing this. Some units will need to be balanced differently in a deterministic mod.
"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
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Dixie
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Re: [Announcement] No RND Mod

Post by Dixie »

I am curious to know how you threated/are planning to threat these issues I've raised in a previous similar attempt:
Dixie wrote: I had given this project some thought some time ago, but there were three main problems (arguably flavour ones) that I couldn't find solution for and that this era does not address (AFAIK, I have not actully tested it). They are:

1) Slow and poison: If you auto-inflict them, it's clearly unbalanced, but if you let them be random, it kinda defeats the purpose of the project, which is to be 100% deterministic. If you were to play-test enough, maybe the solution would be to make it deterministic, but weaken the unit in some way to compensate...

2) The flavour-loss of many-strike units: With the randomness, many strike units were good unit finishers. But with deterministic damage... What's the point? Maybe their damage is less influenced by defenses/tod/etc. because of rounding? Than again, I don't know how this era threats attacks: does it condensate everything in a single big strike? That would be a mistake, imho, because the attacker would have a huge advantage/first strike would be clearly overpowered.

3) The flavour-loss of dodgers vs resisters: Let's assume that a fencer with his dodge - poor resistances is well worth an heavy infantry with his resistances but low defenses, max hitpoint considerations aside. So as I was saying: let's assume they are equivalent: I feel this is a big flavour loss. In standard wesnoth, being a dodger feels really different than being a resister, but they are the same in a deterministic environment. If anything, being a resister is now better because it is not terrain dependant. Though I haven't done the math, but my gut feeling is that fencers would be virtually useless, with less HP and less damage output, for only two more moves gained and skirmisher. (Ok, this last point isn't phrased pretty fluidly and coherently, but you get it anyway, do you?)
Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny - Frank Zappa
Current projects: Internet meme Era, The Settlers of Wesnoth
leonid
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Re: [Announcement] No RND Mod

Post by leonid »

Velensk wrote:Just a couple quick notes: It's RNG: random number generator

Also, you probably want to tweak the balance if you're doing this. Some units will need to be balanced differently in a deterministic mod.
Ah, I meant here RaNDom, but doesn't matter as long as name is clear. (I can change if people will complain)

My purpose is to keep balance intact. (but probably some units will need to be balanced, but I need more testing to prove that)

Dixie,

1) Slow and Poison act exactly the same as in original Wesnoth, that is if some unit in original Wesnoth always poison when hit, then in this mod this will be the same (except it's deterministic) and average damage should also be the same.

2) The flavour-loss of many-strike units: No point here. Any unit now can be a finisher. But average damage is the same, so I think this is fine.

3) The flavour-loss of dodgers vs resisters: I don't really get your point here but anyway since average damage is not changed this is OK.

Yes, maybe this mod need some tweaks, but I need more testing for that.

---
(merged my two last posts into one (looks weird otherwise)
unPassant
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Joined: October 6th, 2011, 1:37 pm

Re: [Announcement] No RND Mod

Post by unPassant »

Nice. I myself have nothing against rng but I have friends who get frustrated when beaten for stroke of bad luck.
Would it be possible to use your mod for multiplayer games ? I believe only the server would need to be patched with your mod ?

Best Regards,

B.
leonid
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Re: [Announcement] No RND Mod

Post by leonid »

unPassant wrote:Would it be possible to use your mod for multiplayer games ? I believe only the server would need to be patched with your mod ?
Yes, it's possible to use my mod to play multiplayer games. Play as usual but make sure that you play with players who have the same mod otherwise the game will be out of sync. You can even join official server to play with this mod but again make sure you play with players who have the same mod. No server/campaign server patches are needed for this mod, only the client needs to be patched.

You can even have 2 versions of Wesnoth at the same time: one with this mod and another is original. Just rename executable to something line "wesnoth-no-rnd." Thus if you want you can play either this mod or original wesnoth at any time. But games started with "No RND Mod" can only be played with the same mod and vice versa.
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Simons Mith
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Re: [Announcement] No RND Mod

Post by Simons Mith »

A possible way to stop Poison and Slow being 'all-or-nothing' is to introduce the concept of a partial dose. Say a normal random hit from a ghoul would inflict 5 points to a particular unit. Therefore 5 points of accumulated damage from deterministic attacks would introduce a full 8-point dose of poison. If the unit is on 70% terrain, and the calculated damage is 3.2, then that would mean only a 64% dose, hence 5 points of poison. Admittedly combinations such as Slow+Poison+Leadership get horribly complicated very quickly.

My personal preference for a deterministic mod would be to multiply all hit points and healing by ten so that fractions of a point of damage are not lost to rounding, combined with fractional doses for poison and the like.

I do have an interest in this because I'm writing a puzzle campaign where it's necessary to have 100% deterministic damage; otherwise you could lose a scenario simply because the RNG baulked at the wrong point. As game balance is not a problem, I'm currently mulling just making all to-hit probabilities 100%. That would work for my (rather specific) purposes, but I will be looking at the various less-luck mods too to see if any are suitable.
 
Luther
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Re: [Announcement] No RND Mod

Post by Luther »

leonid wrote: also, random distribution for damage is +-10%. For gameplay this generally means +-1 point of damage sometimes.
This mechanic is so common in other games that I have to ask: What purpose does it serve? It's just barely random enough to obscure the combat rules, but not random enough to really influence the battle. The only reason for it that I can think of is that proprietary game developers want to make it difficult to figure out how damage is calculated. I have no idea why free games do it.
leonid wrote: additional 1% chance to miss and 1% chance to do double damage.
This is really more of a pet peeve than a question: What's the point of only having a negligible chance of something big happening? This stuff won't be common enough to influence strategy, but every once in a while, it will either piss the player off or give them a huge freebie.
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Dixie
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Re: [Announcement] No RND Mod

Post by Dixie »

Simons Mith wrote:A possible way to stop Poison and Slow being 'all-or-nothing' is to introduce the concept of a partial dose. Say a normal random hit from a ghoul would inflict 5 points to a particular unit. Therefore 5 points of accumulated damage from deterministic attacks would introduce a full 8-point dose of poison. If the unit is on 70% terrain, and the calculated damage is 3.2, then that would mean only a 64% dose, hence 5 points of poison. Admittedly combinations such as Slow+Poison+Leadership get horribly complicated very quickly.
Good idea to fix the poison issue, I support this! It's a bit more complicated with slow, but common sense would suggest that it should behave like poison does, although calculations might be verily complicated...
Simons Mith wrote:My personal preference for a deterministic mod would be to multiply all hit points and healing by ten so that fractions of a point of damage are not lost to rounding, combined with fractional doses for poison and the like.
I also support this suggestion, especially with counter-poison/slow, calculations and roundings would be much less messy.

My opinions on what has been anounced about the mod itself:
the small variance, imho, has little point: is the mod deterministic or not? Seems like you wanted to thrash the RNG but wanted to try and accomodate people who like it, the result likely being that nobody is satisfied at all. Same goes with the small total miss/super-crit chance, which is just the same previous behavior on steroids. You should be consistant with your goals, imo.
Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny - Frank Zappa
Current projects: Internet meme Era, The Settlers of Wesnoth
leonid
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Re: [Announcement] No RND Mod

Post by leonid »

Simons Mith,
Simons Mith wrote:A possible way to stop Poison and Slow being 'all-or-nothing' is to introduce the concept of a partial dose. Say a normal random hit from a ghoul would inflict 5 points to a particular unit. Therefore 5 points of accumulated damage from deterministic attacks would introduce a full 8-point dose of poison. If the unit is on 70% terrain, and the calculated damage is 3.2, then that would mean only a 64% dose, hence 5 points of poison. Admittedly combinations such as Slow+Poison+Leadership get horribly complicated very quickly.
This change would affect the balance and a lot of units would need to be rebalanced but one of the goals of this mod is to keep balance intact. What you suggest would be valid if in original Wesnoth the poison dose was dependent on how many hits attaking unit takes but it doesn't. In original Wesnoth poisoned units take 8-point dose no matter how many times they got hit, the same in this mod: poisoned units take 8-point dose no matter how much damage they take. Same goes to Slow & Leadership.
Simons Mith wrote:My personal preference for a deterministic mod would be to multiply all hit points and healing by ten so that fractions of a point of damage are not lost to rounding, combined with fractional doses for poison and the like.
I don't think this is good idea; this would require a lot of re-balancing for no gameplay benefit. I don't deny that mathematically this is different but this mod is for players not mathematicians. :D
Simons Mith wrote:I do have an interest in this because I'm writing a puzzle campaign where it's necessary to have 100% deterministic damage; otherwise you could lose a scenario simply because the RNG baulked at the wrong point. As game balance is not a problem, I'm currently mulling just making all to-hit probabilities 100%. That would work for my (rather specific) purposes, but I will be looking at the various less-luck mods too to see if any are suitable.
You can try to play this mod to see if it fits your needs. While this mod is not 100% deterministic, it's 99% deterministic and you can't lose a scenario simply because the RNG decided so. What's left from RNG doesn't decide your victory/losing, it just gives you a little bit of surprise. If after playing this mod you feel it still doesn't fit your needs I can volunteer to create 100% deterministic mod for you. (not as replacement to this one though)


Luther,
Luther wrote:This mechanic is so common in other games that I have to ask: What purpose does it serve? It's just barely random enough to obscure the combat rules, but not random enough to really influence the battle. The only reason for it that I can think of is that proprietary game developers want to make it difficult to figure out how damage is calculated. I have no idea why free games do it.
I did it for more interesting gameplay.
Luther wrote:This is really more of a pet peeve than a question: What's the point of only having a negligible chance of something big happening? This stuff won't be common enough to influence strategy, but every once in a while, it will either piss the player off or give them a huge freebie.
Did you actually play this mod to state that?

When I play this mod I don't feel this way indeed even when I miss/get double damage I don't feel any unfairness from RNG.


Dixie,
Dixie wrote:Good idea to fix the poison issue, I support this! It's a bit more complicated with slow, but common sense would suggest that it should behave like poison does, although calculations might be verily complicated...
See reply to Simons Mith for my explanations about this idea.
Dixie wrote:I also support this suggestion, especially with counter-poison/slow, calculations and roundings would be much less messy.
Same here, see my reply to Simons Mith.
Dixie wrote:My opinions on what has been anounced about the mod itself:
the small variance, imho, has little point: is the mod deterministic or not? Seems like you wanted to thrash the RNG but wanted to try and accomodate people who like it, the result likely being that nobody is satisfied at all. Same goes with the small total miss/super-crit chance, which is just the same previous behavior on steroids. You should be consistant with your goals, imo.
Obviously you didn't play this mod. I suggest you to play this mod before you critisize/make objections against this mod. If you have played this mod you wouldn't ask such questions.

After playing games and campaigns with this mod I can state that:
1. RNG doesn't influence the result of the game
2. Wesnoth with this mod remains same very well balanced, no futher tweaks are needed. (except to get updates from upstream)
3. Wesnoth became a better game for me, and I don't get any frustration from it, only positive emotions. Also no save-scumming and other headaches are needed. I feel this mod is good and I want to share it with people who also don't like RNG in original Wesnoth, but like Wesnoth as a game.
Luther
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Re: [Announcement] No RND Mod

Post by Luther »

leonid wrote:
Luther wrote:This mechanic is so common in other games that I have to ask: What purpose does it serve? It's just barely random enough to obscure the combat rules, but not random enough to really influence the battle. The only reason for it that I can think of is that proprietary game developers want to make it difficult to figure out how damage is calculated. I have no idea why free games do it.
I did it for more interesting gameplay.
Can you explain why that's more interesting? I find a game much more interesting when the rules are transparent.
leonid wrote:
Luther wrote:This is really more of a pet peeve than a question: What's the point of only having a negligible chance of something big happening? This stuff won't be common enough to influence strategy, but every once in a while, it will either piss the player off or give them a huge freebie.
Did you actually play this mod to state that?
No, but I have played many other games with the same random damage rules. I meant my post as a general question/comment rather than a criticism of your mod. I've done web searches to find out why this design decision is so universal, but so far, I've found nothing. I figured you were as good a person to ask as any. This issue mystifies me because, IMO, Wesnoth achieves better gameplay with much simpler usage of the RNG.
leonid
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Re: [Announcement] No RND Mod

Post by leonid »

Luther wrote:Can you explain why that's more interesting? I find a game much more interesting when the rules are transparent.
This give a bit of surprise in a game which I think improves gameplay. For example, if you attack with 3 points of damage then most of the times you will hit 3, but once in a while you will hit 4 or 2.
I'm trying to make rules as transparent as possible, maybe some rules are needed to be explained better. Can you tell where in this mod do you feel the rules are not transparent?
Luther wrote:No, but I have played many other games with the same random damage rules. I meant my post as a general question/comment rather than a criticism of your mod. I've done web searches to find out why this design decision is so universal, but so far, I've found nothing. I figured you were as good a person to ask as any. This issue mystifies me because, IMO, Wesnoth achieves better gameplay with much simpler usage of the RNG.
In my case I wanted to improve the gameplay and this is mostly inspired by HoMM3 where you can get double damage/miss under certain circumstances. And in my opinion other games did it also for better gameplay where a little randomness gives players a bit of surprise but doesn't decide their victory/losing no matter what numbers RNG produce. Unlike in original Wesnoth where RNG can decide your victory/losing especially on a small maps, so some players don't like this (including myself), and that's why this mod was created it the first place. :)
Ant
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Re: [Announcement] No RND Mod

Post by Ant »

Hello Leonid,

thanks for the effort i am really looking forward for a non-random Wesnoth game. I haven't played your mod yet, because of Wesnoth version conflicts, but i would like to give some feedback from experience i made while playing about 100 games against the AI using the No-Luck Add-on of Mabuse, which has a very similar damage calculation.

The two main problems balance wise for such a mod, beside what was already said are:

firstly that the single and dual hitter units like the Thunderer, Infantryman or Wose become disproportional strong, since they often can kill an enemy unit without retaliation, since a damaged unit dies on the first or second hit. Further as a consequence of this the attacker over all gets a significant advantage over the defender, which changes the whole dynamic of the game.

secondly, at least in Mabuses mod and i suspect from your explanation how your mods works in your mod also, since it also rounds to the next integer, is, that attacking another unit on good terrain with any unit, but especially with units with low attack and lots of hits, like the Skirmisher leads to significant "rounding" errors. What i mean by this, through the rounding to integers, the damage is significantly different for a no-luck mod from the expected average damage from standard wesnoth (in the 20% ballpark). This rounding effects can get even worse with the day-night time game mechanic (things like 100% effective increase of attack because of rounding from 1 to 2).

For both these points see the discussions in the No-Luck addon thread of Mabuse.
Simons Mith wrote:A possible way to stop Poison and Slow being 'all-or-nothing' is to introduce the concept of a partial dose. Say a normal random hit from a ghoul would inflict 5 points to a particular unit. Therefore 5 points of accumulated damage from deterministic attacks would introduce a full 8-point dose of poison. If the unit is on 70% terrain, and the calculated damage is 3.2, then that would mean only a 64% dose, hence 5 points of poison. Admittedly combinations such as Slow+Poison+Leadership get horribly complicated very quickly.
leonid wrote:
This change would affect the balance and a lot of units would need to be rebalanced but one of the goals of this mod is to keep balance intact. What you suggest would be valid if in original Wesnoth the poison dose was dependent on how many hits attaking unit takes but it doesn't. In original Wesnoth poisoned units take 8-point dose no matter how many times they got hit, the same in this mod: poisoned units take 8-point dose no matter how much damage they take. Same goes to Slow & Leadership.
Simons Mith is correct, to keep Wesnoth balance in some sense a partial poison (and slow effect) is needed, since even though you are right, that in standard Wesnoth Poison (or Slow) is all or nothing, but for that the unit has to hit at least once. A Shaman in a forest attacked by an Assasin has at least 34% chance to take no Poison damage at all in standard Wesnoth. Which is the reason why a partial Poison (Slow) effect is needed to actually keep balance. Leadership works differently and is not related to this, since it is not a status effect like the other two, but works only during the actual attack.

Simons Mith wrote:My personal preference for a deterministic mod would be to multiply all hit points and healing by ten so that fractions of a point of damage are not lost to rounding, combined with fractional doses for poison and the like.
leonid wrote:I don't think this is good idea; this would require a lot of re-balancing for no gameplay benefit. I don't deny that mathematically this is different but this mod is for players not mathematicians. :D
Again Simons Mith is correct, since the multiplication by 10 of both healthpoints and attack of all units is to my knowledge the easiest method to remove the big rounding errors, which will occur from the rounding of the attack damage in the game (this works because terrain defenses scale also with a factor of 10). Not doing this will induce big rounding errors, which significantly alter the game balance, and has nothing to do with players vs "mathematicians", since i suspect players want to play as close to the already balanced standard wesnoth as possible, and for that one has to multiply by 10 to remove the rounding errors.
leonid wrote: While this mod is not 100% deterministic, it's 99% deterministic and you can't lose a scenario simply because the RNG decided so. What's left from RNG doesn't decide your victory/losing, it just gives you a little bit of surprise. If after playing this mod you feel it still doesn't fit your needs I can volunteer to create 100% deterministic mod for you. (not as replacement to this one though)
I personally would prefer a 100% deterministic wesnoth since it would be really more like chess, where you can plan your whole turn in advance.

leonid wrote:
After playing games and campaigns with this mod I can state that:
1. RNG doesn't influence the result of the game
2. Wesnoth with this mod remains same very well balanced, no futher tweaks are needed. (except to get updates from upstream)
3. Wesnoth became a better game for me, and I don't get any frustration from it, only positive emotions. Also no save-scumming and other headaches are needed. I feel this mod is good and I want to share it with people who also don't like RNG in original Wesnoth, but like Wesnoth as a game.
Again thanks for the work, i am really looking forward to playing it. I especially agree with your 3rd. point, Wesnoth is more fun deterministic, but i have to strongly disagree with your 2nd. point.

Nowadays balance changes in standard Wesnoth are made by changing the stats of single units only slightly (see for example the discussion about slightly changing the health point of caveleryman). This mod because of the rounding and the heavy hitter problem changes the damage units can deal in significantly higher proportions (i suspect for the Skirmisher at least in the 25% range for example) and this for all units and not only for single units in special cases. Further it changes some of the playing dynamics. So i really suspect it is not balanced at the moment. Actual balance can only be determined after some several 1000 multi player games with feedback from good players.

PS.: Great work.
leonid
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Re: [Announcement] No RND Mod

Post by leonid »

Hello Ant,

Thank you for your review, I will go over your input and post detailed reply a little later. But for now...

Everybody,

Firstly, sorry for so late reply, been busy lately but have something to announce...
I have created project on http://sourceforge.net called "Battle for Wesnoth: No RND".
I can be viewed at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wesnoth-no-rnd/
There I have backported this mod to all the versions of wesnoth 1.8.x and 1.9.x and mirror directory structure of "Battle for Wesnoth" project, so it will be easier for others to find their particular version. Anybody want to try this mod on older version of wesnoth, say 1.6.x or something? I can backport to older versions of wesnoth if needed, I didn't do it because I don't know if people still play wesnoth 1.6.x or older... Currently this mod is distributed in source form, and the only change is in wesnoth client. (right now I don't have access to windows or mac box, and I don't upload binary for linux since original wesnoth don't do that either. Anybody needs binary for linux?)
There are 2 files in each archive: No-RND-Mod-1.x.x.patch and src/actions.cpp. Use patch to patch actions.cpp file, or if you don't know how to use patch, simply copy/replace src/actions.cpp file and then compile wesnoth client.

Secondly, I want to clarify some things about this mod.
1) The goal of this mod is to make gameplay more deterministic. And not to make it completely deterministic or remove RNG from the game. (as some people think that there can only be either complete random or complete deterministic game) Generally this mod makes gameplay deterministic while still leaves players with a little randomness. Deterministic here means that players decide outcome of each turn/game and not some other mathematical term...

On the other hand, RNG is core part of original Wesnoth, and all it's gameplay built around it, including tactics. So, here are the options for mod creators:
1) Rebalance all the units to fit original Wesnoth tactics.
2) Keep balancing of units intact but change tactics.
I have choosen the second one. So, in short, to play this mod you certainly need to change you tactics to fit deterministic gameplay. (such as you can be sure that your Wose will hit...) But I have to say that change in tactics is not very big, scout is still scout and healer is still healer...

So far I only saw people talk about issues as if my mod was implementing the first option, but it is my fault, because I didn't make it clear from the beginning.

2) So, how can I state that this mod is balanced?
What is balanced game?.. In this case it means a game where there is no fraction that is stronger than the other and there is no super-strong all-in-one unit, such that, when you have the army of such units, you will win. (and balance here doesn't mean that you can use your old RNG-style tactics to play deterministic game) There is no such a unit in this mod, if you have just an army of Thunderers (or any other unit of your choice), you will loose. And you can't find the strongest fraction in this mod either.

So, to play this mod you certainly need to change some of your tactics, to fit new gameplay.

Given all this I see the available options are:
If you like original Wesnoth, play original Wesnoth.
If you want to play original Wesnoth, but without RNG, you can choose among many attempts. (search this forum)
If you want to play game based on Wesnoth, but with deterministic gameplay and with different tactics, you can choose this mod.

Hope this post makes things more clear.
leonid
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Re: [Announcement] No RND Mod

Post by leonid »

Hello Ant,

This post is a reply not only to you, but also to anybody who raise similar points.
Ant wrote:thanks for the effort i am really looking forward for a non-random Wesnoth game. I haven't played your mod yet, because of Wesnoth version conflicts, but i would like to give some feedback from experience i made while playing about 100 games against the AI using the No-Luck Add-on of Mabuse, which has a very similar damage calculation.
Does the project I have created on http://sourceforge.net/ covers your version of Wesnoth? And since it is distributed in source form, do you need my help compiling Wesnoth?
Ant wrote:The two main problems balance wise for such a mod, beside what was already said are:

firstly that the single and dual hitter units like the Thunderer, Infantryman or Wose become disproportional strong, since they often can kill an enemy unit without retaliation, since a damaged unit dies on the first or second hit. Further as a consequence of this the attacker over all gets a significant advantage over the defender, which changes the whole dynamic of the game.
Well, let's compare original Wesnoth and this mod, say, you have Thunderer...
in original Wesnoth: whether you hit or not is unknown... it is completely random... your unit can be super-strong or super-weak, it is unknown...
in this mod: you will most certainly hit, but the damage you give usually is in the range 70%-30% of original Wesnoth, it depends on defense of defender. It is very unlikely that you will kill anybody with the first strike (except seriously wounded units, of course)

I don't see disbalance here..
Ant wrote:secondly, at least in Mabuses mod and i suspect from your explanation how your mods works in your mod also, since it also rounds to the next integer, is, that attacking another unit on good terrain with any unit, but especially with units with low attack and lots of hits, like the Skirmisher leads to significant "rounding" errors. What i mean by this, through the rounding to integers, the damage is significantly different for a no-luck mod from the expected average damage from standard wesnoth (in the 20% ballpark). This rounding effects can get even worse with the day-night time game mechanic (things like 100% effective increase of attack because of rounding from 1 to 2).

For both these points see the discussions in the No-Luck addon thread of Mabuse.
My mod is different in this respect, I don't just floor to the next integer, I round it by mathematical rules, so that, 7.7 becomes 8 and 7.3 becomes 7, for example.
Here are my points why is this OK:
1) In original Wesnoth, because of leadership and day/night bonuses, you may also loose fractional part, and nobody cares...
2) Since I round to the closest integer, and not just throw away, sometimes you will loose fractional part, but sometimes you will gain fractional part, but on the average you don't loose anything and also don't get anything. Average damage is kept the same.
Ant wrote:
Simons Mith wrote:A possible way to stop Poison and Slow being 'all-or-nothing' is to introduce the concept of a partial dose. Say a normal random hit from a ghoul would inflict 5 points to a particular unit. Therefore 5 points of accumulated damage from deterministic attacks would introduce a full 8-point dose of poison. If the unit is on 70% terrain, and the calculated damage is 3.2, then that would mean only a 64% dose, hence 5 points of poison. Admittedly combinations such as Slow+Poison+Leadership get horribly complicated very quickly.
leonid wrote:
This change would affect the balance and a lot of units would need to be rebalanced but one of the goals of this mod is to keep balance intact. What you suggest would be valid if in original Wesnoth the poison dose was dependent on how many hits attaking unit takes but it doesn't. In original Wesnoth poisoned units take 8-point dose no matter how many times they got hit, the same in this mod: poisoned units take 8-point dose no matter how much damage they take. Same goes to Slow & Leadership.
Simons Mith is correct, to keep Wesnoth balance in some sense a partial poison (and slow effect) is needed, since even though you are right, that in standard Wesnoth Poison (or Slow) is all or nothing, but for that the unit has to hit at least once. A Shaman in a forest attacked by an Assasin has at least 34% chance to take no Poison damage at all in standard Wesnoth. Which is the reason why a partial Poison (Slow) effect is needed to actually keep balance. Leadership works differently and is not related to this, since it is not a status effect like the other two, but works only during the actual attack.
Yes, there are some differences here, see my previous post about balancing issues. I agree that maybe this will need to be changed, but, let's be fair, in real life (in the game, actually) when you are attacked by poisoning unit, you will most likely get poisoned. So, because of this, I am considering this as a minor issue.
Ant wrote:
Simons Mith wrote:My personal preference for a deterministic mod would be to multiply all hit points and healing by ten so that fractions of a point of damage are not lost to rounding, combined with fractional doses for poison and the like.
leonid wrote:I don't think this is good idea; this would require a lot of re-balancing for no gameplay benefit. I don't deny that mathematically this is different but this mod is for players not mathematicians. :D
Again Simons Mith is correct, since the multiplication by 10 of both healthpoints and attack of all units is to my knowledge the easiest method to remove the big rounding errors, which will occur from the rounding of the attack damage in the game (this works because terrain defenses scale also with a factor of 10). Not doing this will induce big rounding errors, which significantly alter the game balance, and has nothing to do with players vs "mathematicians", since i suspect players want to play as close to the already balanced standard wesnoth as possible, and for that one has to multiply by 10 to remove the rounding errors.
See my explanation about rounding above, and my previous post.
Ant wrote:
leonid wrote: While this mod is not 100% deterministic, it's 99% deterministic and you can't lose a scenario simply because the RNG decided so. What's left from RNG doesn't decide your victory/losing, it just gives you a little bit of surprise. If after playing this mod you feel it still doesn't fit your needs I can volunteer to create 100% deterministic mod for you. (not as replacement to this one though)
I personally would prefer a 100% deterministic wesnoth since it would be really more like chess, where you can plan your whole turn in advance.
Rest assured in this mod you can plan your whole turn in advance. Mostly this mod is inspired by HoM&M, where randomness were never an issue, even though there is a lot more randomness compare to this mod. Well, I don't know what to say about 100% deterministic Wesnoth... I am willing to get input from players, but maybe try to play this mod as it is first?...
Ant wrote:
leonid wrote:
After playing games and campaigns with this mod I can state that:
1. RNG doesn't influence the result of the game
2. Wesnoth with this mod remains same very well balanced, no futher tweaks are needed. (except to get updates from upstream)
3. Wesnoth became a better game for me, and I don't get any frustration from it, only positive emotions. Also no save-scumming and other headaches are needed. I feel this mod is good and I want to share it with people who also don't like RNG in original Wesnoth, but like Wesnoth as a game.
Again thanks for the work, i am really looking forward to playing it. I especially agree with your 3rd. point, Wesnoth is more fun deterministic, but i have to strongly disagree with your 2nd. point.

Nowadays balance changes in standard Wesnoth are made by changing the stats of single units only slightly (see for example the discussion about slightly changing the health point of caveleryman). This mod because of the rounding and the heavy hitter problem changes the damage units can deal in significantly higher proportions (i suspect for the Skirmisher at least in the 25% range for example) and this for all units and not only for single units in special cases. Further it changes some of the playing dynamics. So i really suspect it is not balanced at the moment. Actual balance can only be determined after some several 1000 multi player games with feedback from good players.
See above and my previous post about these issues. I think it deals with them. Correct me if I am wrong.
Ant wrote:PS.: Great work.
Thank you!! (especially for your support, I appreciate that)

Given my previous post and the fact that I have created a project on sourceforge.net can you try to play this mod? I can help you if you have any issues playing this mod. It should be 100% compatible with original Wesnoth.
Thanks.
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