28 replies to this topic

[Davegt27]

Wondering if someone could explain BV as it works in TT.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

Davegt27, on 01 August 2015 - 04:57 PM, said:

Wondering if someone could explain BV as it works in TT.

BV, or Battle Value, is an abstraction mechanic to give value to a unit. IE a Mech, it's equipment, and the pilot and skill associated to the pilot's gunnery/piloting levels.

The basic idea of Battle Value was to help balance the game better in regards to the Clan vs IS tonnage to power difference. Ton for Ton, Clan tech and mechs are superior in tabletop to IS mechs and equipment of equal or even sometimes more tonnage. As such, the original "tonnage" balancing mechanic had to be tossed out in favor of something more mathmatically sound.

The idea is to take and assign a point value to literally everything. Chassis, weapon, equipment, pilot and pilot's skill levels, armor levels, the works.

BV has been through 3 iterations.

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Battle_Value

[Damocles]

in relation to MWO; expect it to be nothing at all related to TT BV system. Just a buzzword.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

Damocles, on 01 August 2015 - 05:52 PM, said:

in relation to MWO; expect it to be nothing at all related to TT BV system. Just a buzzword.

It COULD actually function similar. Assign values to tech and make the ELO of a player one of those values, match based on total values vs other equal opponents + or - X amount.

[Throat Punch]

Flash Frame, on 01 August 2015 - 06:26 PM, said:

It COULD actually function similar. Assign values to tech and make the ELO of a player one of those values, match based on total values vs other equal opponents + or - X amount.

Russ or somebody else already said that they were sorry they even used the term "Battle Value" because what they were doing had no relation at all to TT Battle Value in any way and was not related to match making.

[Deathlike]

To be honest, I don't think a system could be figured out.

Unless you could "break down" a mech and its subsystems and try to combine them all... it's going to flop. It gets complicated as you deal with omnipods (although, you can probably assign values to which one is more valuable than the next).

I mean, how can I put a 0 on a Mist Lynx or a Spider-5V?

Edited by Deathlike, 01 August 2015 - 07:20 PM.

[Raggedyman]

Deathlike, on 01 August 2015 - 07:20 PM, said:

To be honest, I don't think a system could be figured out.

Unless you could "break down" a mech and its subsystems and try to combine them all... it's going to flop. It gets complicated as you deal with omnipods (although, you can probably assign values to which one is more valuable than the next).

It's surprisingly easy to do. You start with some core assumptions (small lasers are worth 1pt, each bit of armor is worth 1pt) and scale up from there ( weapon X does twice the damage, its worth 2pts, weapon y does 2x dmg and 2xrng so its worth 4pts etc). You then use the masses of stats feedback from game performance to fine tune the values based on real usage by real players.

The hard part is picking the points difference you'll allow between teams (the closer you want the Balance the longer players will have to wait for their drop) and being willing to weather the storm of individual moans (if you have 99% of 10000 matches be a 50/50 victory chance hundreds of people will get highly vocal that they have lost three in a row).

Edited by Raggedyman, 02 August 2015 - 09:15 AM.

[xe N on]

I really hope, the "BV" system accounts in hitboxes, size and hard point location as well. Otherwise it will be quite useless.

Edited by xe N on, 02 August 2015 - 01:57 AM.

[Kiiyor]

Raggedyman, on 02 August 2015 - 12:30 AM, said:

It's surprisingly easy to do. You start with some core assumptions (small lasers are worth 1pt, each bit of armor is worth 1pt) and scale up from there ( weapon X does twice the damage, its worth 2pts, weapon y does 2x dmg and 2xrng so its worth 4pts etc). You then use the masses of stats feedback from game performance to fine tune the values based on real usage by real players.

The hard part is picking the points difference you'll allow between teams (the closer you want the Balance the longer players will have to wait for their drop) and being willing to weather the storm of individual moans (if you have 99% of 10000 matches be a 50/50 victory chance hundreds of people will ***** that they have lost three in a row).

The trouble with that is variables... and outliers.

Weapons, when boated, are worth exponentially more in multiples than they are singly. Four MLAS fired once are far more effective than two MLAS fired twice. What about 6? Or 5? Or 8, with mechs like the BlackJack?

Certain weapon systems are also worth more when combined with others with similar mechanics (ballistics and PPC's, or Gauss+PPC's for example), whereas mixed loadouts are often detrimental to overall performance.

Conversely, some weapons could be considered worse when boated (dual AC10's? 1 and a handful of MLAS are often far better) and other weapons are often better or worse depending on the chassis they are attached to - for example, a fast light with SPL's can be utterly deadly, whereas a DireWolf with SPL's is laughable.

And then will come a time when you use stats and historical data to balance, think you have achieved it, alter some values... and competitive teams find a way to exploit the system and a whole new meta emerges.

[AssaultPig]

you could have BV in MWO and it wouldn't even be that hard; we already have a matchmaker that finds matches based on weight class within some variance. All implementing BV would require would be 1) setting the values for mechs/weapons/etc and 2) replacing weight class with 'BV sum' in the matchmaking algorithm.

I don't really think it would solve much though, because unlike the tabletop MWO does not have asymmetric games. In the tabletop if you field a lance of dire wolves I can counter with a swarm of IS mediums, but in MWO that option is not available to us.

It'd be like the old tonnage matching days when everybody drove victors and highlanders; you'd wind up with teams full of whatever the optimal-BV heavy turned out to be, and precious little of anything else, because the MM would be matching you against roughly similar BV opponents.

BV might be a decent way of balancing CW dropdecks though, since everybody would just be constructing to the same preset value.

[Clownwarlord]

Well from some secret secret secret leaks from PGI water cooler of lies and mis-direction. There is said to be a BV coming for MWO in the form of a complete re-quirking of everything based off of their bv value.

[Throat Punch]

AssaultPig, on 02 August 2015 - 02:31 AM, said:

you could have BV in MWO and it wouldn't even be that hard; we already have a matchmaker that finds matches based on weight class within some variance. All implementing BV would require would be 1) setting the values for mechs/weapons/etc and 2) replacing weight class with 'BV sum' in the matchmaking algorithm.

I don't really think it would solve much though, because unlike the tabletop MWO does not have asymmetric games. In the tabletop if you field a lance of dire wolves I can counter with a swarm of IS mediums, but in MWO that option is not available to us.

It'd be like the old tonnage matching days when everybody drove victors and highlanders; you'd wind up with teams full of whatever the optimal-BV heavy turned out to be, and precious little of anything else, because the MM would be matching you against roughly similar BV opponents.

BV might be a decent way of balancing CW dropdecks though, since everybody would just be constructing to the same preset value.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Battle Value doesn't work in TT that great and that's why they have went from Combat Value, to Battle Value, to Battle Value 2.0, to trying to come up with Battle Value 3 in house, and finally Battle Value 2.1. BV would not work well in MWO either.

[SpiralFace]

BV works better then anything before, and the only real flaw of BV 2.0 is that its skill value is out of whack and the force multiplier is terrible.

I would contend that the point value system in Battletech is one of the best point balancers in any other game out there.

It make Clans actually DIFFICULT to use because of their raw equipment advantage means you need to make up for it in TT manuverability, there isn't really many ways to "cheat the system" too much. With the exception that the Force size multiplier is utterly broken and terrible.

As long as you are sticking to raw TW ruleset without adding any "house rules" into the mix, BV does its job much better then any other TT wargame out there. The issue always comes down to BT is a game that almost always uses "house rules," which ends up meaning BV can not account for the silly stuff that players edit from the main ruleset. (how could it ever?)

[Deathlike]

Raggedyman, on 02 August 2015 - 12:30 AM, said:

It's surprisingly easy to do. You start with some core assumptions (small lasers are worth 1pt, each bit of armor is worth 1pt) and scale up from there ( weapon X does twice the damage, its worth 2pts, weapon y does 2x dmg and 2xrng so its worth 4pts etc). You then use the masses of stats feedback from game performance to fine tune the values based on real usage by real players.

The hard part is picking the points difference you'll allow between teams (the closer you want the Balance the longer players will have to wait for their drop) and being willing to weather the storm of individual moans (if you have 99% of 10000 matches be a 50/50 victory chance hundreds of people will ***** that they have lost three in a row).

It's never been "that simple".

If such a simple thing were easy, why was it revised multiple times in TT?

With differing systems interacting with each other... like hardpoint location, hardpoint #s (especially in particular sections of a mech - does it favor sword+board, or even/symmetrical distribution - how do you score that?), the effect of missile tube limitations (how do you score an LRM Atlas that uses large LRM racks with its limited 6-tube designs?)


See, if it were really that simple, we wouldn't be having more complex discussions on why a certain mech does X better or Y worse in certain aspects.

Edited by Deathlike, 02 August 2015 - 07:48 AM.

[Agent 0 Fortune]

I fully expected the new BV system to completely replace Quirks. However in another thread someone suggested that would not be the case. If that were true would there be a BV multiplier based on quirks?

Also is there a BV multiple based on "boating" for instance your first LRMx is 500bv the second is 550 BV, third 615 BV, etc.

Finally, do hard point locations figure into BV? putting most weapons on a low slung arm (dragon, cataphract, etc) is less desirable than higher mounted hardpoints (blackjack, Jaeger, Stalker), would there be a multiplier based on hardpoint location?

[Throat Punch]

Agent 0 Fortune, on 02 August 2015 - 07:23 AM, said:

I fully expected the new BV system to completely replace Quirks. However in another thread someone suggested that would not be the case. If that were true would there be a BV multiplier based on quirks?

Also is there a BV multiple based on "boating" for instance your first LRMx is 500bv the second is 550 BV, third 615 BV, etc.

Finally, do hard point locations figure into BV? putting most weapons on a low slung arm (dragon, cataphract, etc) is less desirable than higher mounted hardpoints (blackjack, Jaeger, Stalker), would there be a multiplier based on hardpoint location?

This Battle Value rebalance will have nothing to do with Classic BattleTech Battle Value. Zip Nadda Nothing. Its not a match making tool or related to how CBT uses BV to balance out forces using the MUL. Someone had posted a prior tweet or statement from Russ that said it was an unfortunate choice of words.

[ScarecrowES]

As Russ stated, you're not going to have a fully objective BV type balancing system. It's going to be subjective to rate the basic chassis and balance accordingly, with quirks thrown in to cover outlier situations. They said they'd be looking at a few key categories of mech ability... including firepower, mobility, size, etc. Hardpoint location will be factored in... if two mechs have similiar weight, mobility, and firepower, but one of them has most of its weapons in high-mounted hardpoints, and the other in lower points, obviously the first is a better mech. The second mech either gets quirks to bring it up to the first one, or the first one sees reduced mobility or negative quirks.

It's going to be interesting to see how they do this with omnis. I imagine they will have no choice but to leave the base chassis free of negative balancing traits, and quirk out the omnipods directly.

[Raggedyman]

Kiiyor, on 02 August 2015 - 02:23 AM, said:

The trouble with that is variables... and outliers.

Boating can be taken into account by looking at the feedback and putting in multiplier costs. Whilst there may appear to be a lot of combinations there are way less than their are games being played, so the data for it will soon be racked up and put into the equation.

Outliers are always going to happen though, which is why you need to aim for 9x% of games with equal BV being 50/50 outcomes, rather than trying to get 100% as it gets harder and harder to do the closer you get to 100%. If an outlier weapon becomes popular then it self corrects, as you then have more data to balance it with

Kiiyor, on 02 August 2015 - 02:23 AM, said:

And then will come a time when you use stats and historical data to balance, think you have achieved it, alter some values... and competitive teams find a way to exploit the system and a whole new meta emerges.

the method I have described doesn't stop "meta"/people trying to get the biggest bang for their buck or BV. Nothing does, because people are always going to be looking for it as everyone wants an edge in a competitive environment and effective strategies win games.
What it does allow for is the quicker collection of the data and identification of the problem, because if you see spikes in results you can drill down on the data. If wished you could take a rebalance cycle down to days or, if you have the people and the will to do it, hours.

Deathlike, on 02 August 2015 - 07:01 AM, said:

If such a simple thing were easy, why was it revised multiple times in TT?

In TT they set the numbers, got back an incomplete set of data by asking player their anecdotal opinion based on about 0.001% (if that) of all the games of TT ever played (including lord knows how many on homebrew rules or misunderstood actual rules) and then made another pitch at it every few years to gague the impact via sales figures and fanmail.
That is somewhat different to the ability of a video game to record every single game in as much detail as wanted.
Please note that I am also saying that it gives you the ability to revise the points multiple times until you get it right, I would expect and hope to see more revisions than in the TT version, to begin with I would hope to see them weekly if not daily.

And it is really that simple, as what I have described is basically how MMO's (and other game styles) calibrate weapon costs/powers/points/whatever

You give a weapon a bunch of stats and a rough points/cost/power/tier/whateveryourmarkeriscalled value
You run it in game a couple thousand times (simulation, QA department, or player base)
You see how the results marry up to what you thought would happen
You move the stats or the points
You run it again (and again and again and again)


Simple does not necessarily mean "easy" or "not a ballache"

Deathlike, on 02 August 2015 - 07:01 AM, said:

With differing systems interacting with each other... like hardpoint location, hardpoint #s (especially in particular sections of a mech - does it favor sword+board, or even/symmetrical distribution - how do you score that?), the effect of missile tube limitations (how do you score an LRM Atlas that uses large LRM racks with its limited 6-tube designs?)

You score it by assigning it a rough value, then seeing how it works out when you look at the big data.
And then you revise it until you get it being correct about 95% of the time.

Deathlike, on 02 August 2015 - 07:01 AM, said:

See, if it were really that simple, we wouldn't be having more complex discussions on why a certain mech does X better or Y worse in certain aspects.

The reason that people have complex discussions about how well things are or aren't working is because they have a very limited set of data and are trying to extract very complicated conclusions from it. They also try and do this from the presumption that their data set (their "personal experience") is accurately recorded, has had all variables accounted for, and is an accurate average of what is happening through out the game. Often they also do it from the premise that if their experience or analysis is questioned or discounted/ignored/not acted on as accurate average of all other experiences then they have been slighted and their honour must be defended.

If they had the data from the whole of the game it would be possible to point and go "well over 2000 rounds thats got a pointcost of 3 but a victory result of 4, so it needs a change as they should be equal" (as an example).

Edited by Raggedyman, 02 August 2015 - 09:18 AM.

[Throat Punch]

Tweeted Russ earlier today to clear up confusion that pervades the forums about Battle Value.

Edited by Mors Draco, 02 August 2015 - 11:19 AM.

[Deathlike]

Raggedyman, on 02 August 2015 - 08:58 AM, said:

The reason that people have complex discussions about how well things are or aren't working is because they have a very limited set of data and are trying to extract very complicated conclusions from it. They also try and do this from the presumption that their data set (their "personal experience") is accurately recorded, has had all variables accounted for, and is an accurate average of what is happening through out the game. Often they also do it from the premise that if their experience or analysis is questioned or discounted/ignored/not acted on as accurate average of all other experiences then they have been slighted and their honour must be defended.

If they had the data from the whole of the game it would be possible to point and go "well over 2000 rounds thats got a pointcost of 3 but a victory result of 4, so it needs a change as they should be equal" (as an example).

Let's just ignore the people who don't understand game mechanics for a moment. We can't solve their issues with LRMs and such. Sometimes they might not ever get it.

So, let's say you do assign a value to something. The question then becomes, what does this value actually mean?

Understandably some mechs will have greater BV than others because they are better. That's probably not that complicated. HOWEVER, between "meddling variants", how does number "describe the mech" then?

For instance, the Maddog has enough potential firepower through tonnage to be on the level of the Timberwolf. Besides the obvious tonnage differential, how does one accurately portray the "effectiveness" of the low mounted hardpoints of a Maddog vs a JJ-capable Timberwolf that has some higher mounts - such as that the Maddog is only as effective on even ground whereas the Timberwolf doesn't suffer from that as greatly?

Even then, how does one compare the Maddog compared to a Summoner? Summoner has limited diversity. The Summoner can have a semi-Maddog loadout, but it is more durable than a Maddog at accomplishing the same thing. How does that translate into numbers?

It's easier to kinda see "through individual numbers" how it can translate.. both the Maddog and Dragon are not durable mechs. The Quickdraw isn't too far behind. However, it's very difficult to combine all these attributes into "just one number". It honestly wouldn't really work.

On the other hand, PGI gives misleading firepower values in their own mechlab... as an MG and Flamer "on PGI's firepower stat listing", they are way higher than their actual value in combat. This in itself skews actual reality and practicality of the weapons involved.

My point is that I can see putting numbers to "each type of aspect" in a mech... like speed, or firepower or durability.. etc. Putting it all in one number tells you little to nothing contextually to A NEW PLAYER, let alone people that are even "trying" to understand the numbers what those values actually mean. That's why it JUST WON'T WORK, no matter how hard you try to make out the numbers.