Hello there!

I’m writing in this forum with the hope to get some help concerning a somewhat simple problem of balancing. While I have notions of balancing, I currently don’t have the methods and mathematical background that would allow me to find the proper solution by myself.

I can reach some results with empirical methods, but I feel that there is a more optimal way to do things and to get knowledge that would better inform my decisions.

My problem is the following:

I have a race between the player and his opponent. The opponent is dealing more and more damage over time. To counter the damage and stay alive, my player must invest points in either upgrades or health. Upgrades will improve the generation of points.

In this simplified example, I don’t care about other mechanics, like defeating the opponent. I just want my system of upgrades to counter the increase of damage of my opponent over time.

Now, to balance this race, I need to define several things, and this is where I struggle:

• How much the upgrades should cost?
• How more efficient should the upgrades make my generation of points?
• How to measure the decision-making of my player = the optimal distribution of points between health and upgrades?

If it helps, I can provide an excel file... Then, does someone knows a method to answer these questions?

We don't know enough about the numbers behind the game to make a definitive answer for you.
Here's a process for figuring out your numbers on your own, though (the questions are for asking yourself, I wouldn't know what to do with the answers).
- Do a run with bumping just health. How long does it last? Does it feel like it should last longer or shorter?
- Do an upgrade early in a run. How much longer does boosting only health last?
- Try to (or get someone else to try to) cheese the system with upgrading as quickly as possible.

This won't get you all of the answers you'll need, but it will get you several of them.

If health makes the player lose slower and upgrades make the player win faster, they are balanced if, when the player wins, very little health remains (ideally 0, but some buffer is needed): remaining health is wasted, so the player should have bought increased damage instead. Erring in the opposite direction, a character with too little health would die before reaching the goal.

It is a whole curve of balanced strategies: with more upgrades there's less time for the player to get hurt, so less health suffices.

The extremes of so many upgrades that the player wins before getting hurt and no health is needed, and of so much health that low damage (possibly base damage before any upgrades) suffices to win very slowly are probably boring: push the player towards fun intermediate strategies with a cost plan that makes whatever fun strategy you see fit the cheapest one.

Is the point generation like a passive thing or does the player has to do something (e.g. kill an opponent) to gain points?

Make sure to put some sort of requirement for point generation upgrades (like player has to be this certain level to get it) and make it a tad bit more expensive than health upgrade so that most players do not automatically opt for it early in the game since more point generation automatically equates to faster upgrades.

Damn, it has been two busy weeks… Thanks for your answers. Let me clarify this issue.

Let’s say our context is the following:

I’m building a base in an arid country where the weather becomes worst and worst, thus eroding of my buildings. My base has health points (HP). The HP are progressively reduced by: current HP – current Erosion score

I also have a factory generating money $, which can be invested in upgrades of this building, thus increasing its production rate of $, or in the reparation of the base (HP).

The goal here is to resist to the erosion by choosing when investing the money in HP or in upgrades. Again, at this is no really a game, I want to understand what is the best methodology to design an upgrade system.

You can see the excel representing this system:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IzdHwJ7YQ4WNGXjtghVitDuv2f_lovH0pIJ4GBYgVII/edit?usp=sharing

What I had done was first to add in r2 (HP) an amount of points equal to the score of erosion. So my HP are always equal its starting amount.

Then I used the remaining $ in upgrades while trying to figure out what should be the upgrade cost (r3) and their associated gain in production rate (Upgrade bonus). But currently these last values are a bit random. I think it it were properly balanced, my values in the r1 column should always stay close to the minimum, instead of gradually increasing, so there must be a clean way to calculate that.