“Talon Tuesdays” is an article series appearing on InsideGMT periodically on Tuesdays.  It features articles from the Talon development team regarding the game’s design, development and upcoming release.

Issue #6 

Thus far on Talon Tuesday, we have taken a look at an overview of the game, a detailed example of play, and even some fan fiction and back story of the Talonverse.  Today starts a series where we look “under the hood”.  So much work has been done on this system.  It has been refined, refined, and refined.  Some of this work can be seen in the spreadsheets that we have laid out for point values…..and, frankly, I want to show them off.  🙂

The weapon sheet is a good example of this extra work.  There are six major weapon systems in the game and each is COMPLETELY different.  They have different damage, to-hit probabilities, ranges, charging systems, etc.  Originally, point values for weapons were estimated and plugged into a larger spreadsheet on ship points.  The goal was to balance them through playtesting.  However, to balance such different systems proved very difficult, especially as we made changes.  A major change in some ways would invalidate previous playtesting.  We needed a system to rate weapons, and the power of weapons, so that changes would not upset balance.  Extra credit goes to Patrick Barley, one of our playtesters, who really helped immensely with the development of this sheet.  In fact, whereas I was the driving force for the ship point sheet, he was the driving force on the weapon point sheet.

To put it simply – if we could come up with a system to rate all the factors of a particular weapon, and then balance that system so that we had confidence in it, then changes to a weapon would automatically be comprehended in the value of the weapon.  This would give us the freedom to be able to make changes to the weapons to enhance the fun of the game.  The weapon sheet allowed us to do that.  The values from this sheet feed directly into the point values for each ship.  So, changes in weapons automatically are reflected in the cost of a weapon, and the change in the cost of a weapon are automatically reflected in the cost of a ship that has it.  I love it.  🙂

So, let’s take a look at the Weapon Sheet.

Each Weapon is rated for the following:

1. Range – Obviously, a weapon that does a certain amount of damage at a longer range is more powerful than one that does the same amount of a damage at a shorter range, because, the longer ranged weapon would be able to fire first.
2. Damage/Accuracy – Some weapons do a variable amount of damage depending on range.  Other weapons do a fixed amount of damage regardless of range, but the hit probability changes.  Either way, this can be reduced down to a fixed amount of potential damage.
3. Charge Time – In any large ship engagement, weapons are going to be charged and fired multiple times.  The amount of power and time it takes to recharge the weapon impacts the value of the weapon.
4. Special Ability – A couple of the weapons have a bonus special ability that obviously adds to its value.

Damage Opportunity

The first formula on the chart is (Range +1)*Damage*Accuracy.  If the damage of a weapon is 1 and the accuracy is 100%, then you can see that a weapon with a range of 1 would be worth 2 and a weapon with a range of 4 would be worth 5.  Adding 1 to the range gave us values that were confirmed by playtesting and appropriately accounted for the impact of range.  The Close versus Far comparison on the bottom of the page reveals that a weapon with a range of 3 or 4 is worth approximately 1.7 times the value of the same weapon with a range of only 1 or 2. 

For each weapon at each range, the row calculates the value of a weapon.  So let’s take a look at the Phaser for example:

At range 1, it does 2 damage on a roll of a 1-5 and 1 damage on a roll of a 6 (not shown on the table).  That is why the table shows its damage as 1.83 at 100%.  Multiplying that through our formula, we get a value of 3.66.

At range 2, it does 2 damage on a roll of 1-3 and 1 damage on a roll of 4-6 (not shown).  That is why the table shows its damage as 1.5 at 100%.  Multiplying that through our formula, we get a value of 4.5.  Notice that, although the weapon does less damage at range 2 (on average) than range 1, it has a higher value at range 2.  That is the impact of range on the value.

At range 3, it does 1 damage on a roll of 1-2 and zero damage on a roll of 3-6 (not shown).  That is why the table shows its damage as 1 at 33%.  Multiplying that through our formula, we get a value of 1.32.  Not the best damage, but the extended range is what gives the value.

At range 4, the weapon does no damage.

To get our total Damage Opportunity, we sum those values and add to it twice the value at the best range.  Anyone who has played tactical space games knows the value of an Alpha Strike (firing as many weapons as possible all through the same shield at one time).   Effectively, we are rating the weapons most valuable range/damage combination at three times the value of another combination. 

In our Phaser example, range 2 is tripled, which gives us a total Damage Opportunity of 18.48.  This is by far the lowest damage opportunity on the chart, but we have not yet seen this weapon’s strength.

Recharge Cost

Each weapon has a power recharge bar made up of red and yellow boxes.  When the weapon fires, this bar is erased and the weapon cannot fire again until they are all charged.  Red boxes (which represent time) can only be charged during the power phase each round.  This slows down the charge of a weapon.  A weapon with three red boxes will take three rounds to charge.  Yellow boxes can be charged in the power phase, but can also be charged mid turn if you have available power. 

This means that a weapon’s recharge time is dependent upon the amount of available power that is put towards it.  If actively charged (putting all available power towards it) the weapon will charge faster than if passively charged (putting no available power toward it and letting it only charge, automatically, during the power phase).  Both situations actually happen in game.  After much playtesting, we decided to average the active and the passive charging rates.

Returning to the example of our Phaser, assuming an average available power of 3, it has an average recharge rate of 1.67 rounds.  That is because this weapon requires the least amount of power of any weapon – only one red box and one yellow box.  This is the weapon’s strength and it gives it amazing flexibility.  Sometimes it can be fired near the end of a round, recharged in the power phase and then finished recharging with only 1 available power.  This allows it to fire at the beginning of the next round.  Contrast this to the Anti-Matter Torpedo that has an average recharge time of 3.33 rounds.

Point Value of the Weapon

The point value of the weapon can be reached by dividing its Damage Opportunity by its Recharge Time – measuring how much damage it can deal over time.  This value is then multiplied by a fudge factor of 75% to bring the value of the weapon in line with the values we use for the other components on the ships. 

Lastly, the value is adjusted based upon any special abilities of the weapon, but those will be discussed another day.

Balance

When I first submitted Talon, it turned out (to my surprise) that the system was near perfect.  There has been basically no changes in the system throughout the entire development phase.  So, why did the game take so long to get to print?  THIS.  We did not want to retreat from the unique weapon systems.  In fact, we wanted to make them even more unique.  This weapon sheet took a lot of time to develop, but gave us something really tangible to hang our hats on when it came to balancing the different weapons.  Oh, we tweaked the sheet often based on playtests, but the fact that we were working off this sheet meant that the playtesting was not wasted.  Once we had tweaked the sheet based on playtesting, any changes to a weapon would accurately be reflected in the value of the weapon.  This allowed us to tweak weapons freely to make the game play better.

One more thing, the time we spent working the balance and developing this sheet brought about an added benefit.  The time was used by the development team to better the game in other ways.  While I might have nailed it when it came to the game system, I had left a lot on the table in terms of chrome.  The development team did a great job adding special abilities and other simple little things which made the game more fun and made for more interesting decisions.

Next up is Under the Hood Part 2.  We’ll show you how we came up with the point values of each of the ships.

-Jim

Previous Article in the Series: Talon Tuesday Issue #5: The Talonverse (Part 2)

Next Article in the Series: Talon Tuesday Issue #7: From Afterburners to Addicted

Author: Jim Krohn