Cogmind Weapon Stat Rebalancing (Patreon)

Work on the latter part of X9 continues, most recently going through all the weapons for a comprehensive review of their balance. This week I actually streamed an overview of the process, and we also made a few changes during the stream as well: https://youtu.be/s_dxVKmBbyc. Attached are the latest charts in image form, but that can be pretty unwieldy considering how many weapons we have, so it's also available as the Excel doc I'm using to work on these. Red values are those which have changed since the currently released X9 prerelease. THIS SHEET CONTAINS SPOILERS, AS IT IS A COMPLETE LIST OF ALL WEAPONS IN THE GAME. So if you're not into spoilers, maybe skip the sheet and just read along here for some of what's going on :)

It's really useful to have a separate spreadsheet in which to manage this balancing process, where the data can be reformatted and examined in a form unlike the one used for game data itself, allowing me to view things from a different perspective. Highlighting values such as short vs. long range, for example, makes it a lot easier to tell at a glance which weapons deviate from the standard sight range. It's also easy to pick out the different damage types and weapon categories by tier and type, for quick and accurate comparisons.

Cogmind's items were originally designed and balanced based on a large set of desired data ranges and mostly linear progression from the lowest to highest ratings, though it's been many many years since that time, and some individual items were later adjusted for various reasons, usually taking into account the original scale, but not always other important factors like any potentially related other existing items, leading in some cases to either undesirable deviations from the scales, or more annoyingly items that weren't unique enough to justify their existence.

Of course the idea of scaling for balance here is referring primarily to commonly available items, not unique one-of-a-kind items or other special gear, which are where even more of the fun comes from. But we need a stable core set of items, and that's where the desire for balance comes in, especially now in Beta 11, after which we will again be free to start adding new and interesting parts to the fringes :D

Balancing How?

We do have the designed progression on which to base balancing decisions, but that only works for a smaller number of core parts, whereas we have many parts at each rating, and each part should ideally be different somehow, while still potentially worth using in some build, if possible. (It's true there are always some cases where a part is intended for the AI bots, though it's nice--but not necessary!--if and when these can also be made useful to Cogmind as well.)

So what kinds of factors do we need to take into account here? There are a number of axes along which stats are compared, here taking weapons as an example:

• Does each common weapon have suitable stats for its rating?
• In a general sense [<-insert this phrase before all statements here :P], is it unique enough compared to other weapons equal to its rating [this one, too->] in the same category?
• Is it better than weapons of the previous rating?
• Are prototypes at a given rating better than non-prototypes at that rating?
• Are prototypes somewhat equivalent to non-prototypes of the next higher rating? (though perhaps still have some unique quality that might make them better)
• Do weapons using a given prefix have characteristics that accurately reflect that prefix?
• Do weapons across different ratings that share the same tech/name also share similar characteristics?
• ...and so on

Note: Comparing between categories, e.g. thermal guns vs kinetic guns, is occasionally needed but not quite as important anymore since each category already has a pretty clearly defined set of characteristics that make all of its constituent weapons fairly different from those in other categories.

Balancing usually takes the form of simply adjusting numbers to meet our goals here, though it's worth pointing out that one of the advantages to doing this now, as late as Beta 11, is that we have more levers than we did back when these parts were first created. New mechanics have been added over the years, giving us new benefits and drawbacks to consider, or even use to directly control the balance by assigning values and moving some of these levers.

The original item design wasn't able to take into account things like heat transfer, unique critical strikes, and EM spectrum, and new mechanics like gunslinging allowed me to rethink the overall balance between kinetic guns and cannons, shortening the average range of the former by 4 cells (still leaving them at an average of 18, beyond the usual sight range :P).

In another example, neutron-based weapons were given spectrum effects (and disruption), the first non-EM weaponry to have them, as that effect didn't exist back in 2014. That was more of a flavor thing, however, since they technically didn't need to be more powerful or effective, but part of this process has also been ensuring that weapon characteristics fit the tech represented or implied by their name. (See also: Electrolaser replacement :P)

Progress

If you've been following Beta 11 development so far, you'll know that propulsion was already reworked like this over a number of releases, resulting in changes across the board, so that's complete and out of the way.

I also recently did this same spreadsheet thing with power sources, revisiting them to adjust a few that were clearly out of whack, but overall changes there were minimal.

With these latest charts weapons are on their way to being complete, though I have yet to actually apply the changes indicated in the spreadsheet, so if you have any further comments, feel free to drop them here, or drop by the Discord for discussion. Again we also covered a lot of that during the stream I linked.

Many utilities have already been modified or expanded in previous Beta 11 prereleases, and the latest X9 continued that trend, even going so far as to remove a few of them. I also recently added a few more, but still have yet to do the item-by-item review of all older utilities, so that will be up next.

And at the end of all this I'll be looking back through all items with an eye towards making some naming changes. There are a number of inconsistencies or potentially confusing aspects that I might want to clear up through changes, though at the same time there's always the eternal dilemma of flavor vs. function. Do we want naming schemes to lean more on the functional side, which tends to be drier and lack character (see POLYBOT-7, where I leaned heavily in that direction!), or more on the flavorful side, a route I decided to take with Cogmind 7DRL (and the subsequent project) but have gradually scaled back just a bit over time... The changes won't be drastic, for sure, but there will at least be a few coming soon.

All these changes will be released this month as a new version of X9 (I mean I guess we could call it X10, since it's going to mega break saves and change quite a lot, but it was supposed to be the remainder of X9 xD).