Hello again. I was wondering if any one has had expereince in developing equations for game balance before? Essentially we are create a system to moniter level ups vs. Enemies vs. PLayer''s Stats. Right now it''s: enemy_stength - player_defence = player_hp_loss. this is obviously too shalow. Just wondering if anyone has any resources or methods for achieving a better equasion for these sorts of things. thanks, Liquid Moon Team X2: Official Site

That depends on what kind of balance you had in mind. If you want a slightly stronger character to totally dominate a slightly weaker character (like in tactics ogre), that will be a much different equation from wanting a slightly weaker character to stand a decent chance against a much stronger character.

Square Root can be your friend if you want the stronger character''s advantage to be less severe. E.G. SQRT(attack - defense). Division is your best bud if you want it more severe. Attack/Defense * Attack. Or you can combine them for a very restrictive range of values. Attack / SQRT(Defense). Or perhaps it could be something like Damage = 100 * Attack/Defense. That way, the ratio of attack to defense determines the damage, which defaults at 100.

Well anyway, there''s a lot of ways to do that. It''s just a matter of figuring out what specifically you want to do with the numbers, then translating that to an equation.

don''t put all the fat enemies on the same side of the level

Attack - Defense is okay provided you continually provide the player with a means to increase these variables over the course of the game. Of course, if thats an impossibility (I.E. you shudder at the thought of a copper sword, iron sword, steel sword, mythril sword, GODHASCREATEDTHISMETALium sword progression) then what you can do is leave the damage total in the hands of the attacker, and have defense act as a percentage, eg.:

Attack * (100-Defense) / 100

Which is not far from what final fantasy 6 does.

(vigor * attack * level * level / 256) * ((256-defense) / 256)

The idea is to get a grasp for what you want the item list to look like. Something accessory heavy and armor lite would work with a percentage. If you have a grand list of armor, then the progressive idea works fine. Just remember though to keep track of what variables are increasing. Obviously attack will be one thats ever increasing.