Movement bonuses/maluses seem to be inside out ? And extremes & threshold issues.

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BlueTemplar
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Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2010 12:07 pm

Movement bonuses/maluses seem to be inside out ? And extremes & threshold issues.

Post by BlueTemplar »

Currently the game is literally wrong in its description of movement modifiers :
ShadowEmpire_eyktDmlVZJ.jpg
ShadowEmpire_eyktDmlVZJ.jpg (162.39 KiB) Viewed 166 times
ShadowEmpire_nq8ClHMAec.jpg
ShadowEmpire_nq8ClHMAec.jpg (33.18 KiB) Viewed 166 times
200x79/100 = 158 effective engine power
158 / 65 = 243% weight ratio
SumatraPDF_2qUPdbhopk.jpg
SumatraPDF_2qUPdbhopk.jpg (79.01 KiB) Viewed 166 times
Corresponding to a -15% movement cost.

And indeed this translates to a -15% AP cost to move a hex in-game :
ShadowEmpire_PHsiktCkvk.jpg
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(Plains Rocky have a 15 AP cost for Wheeled. 15x0.85 = 12.75)

Note how this is different from the claimed +15% movement modifier :
15/12.75 = 117.6%
15/12 = 125%

This just comes from how percentages work : negative and positive percentages aren't symmetric !
This is not *too* different here-
(except for the truncation for that tile giving a whopping extra 10% bonus instead of just an extra 2.6%)
because the percentages are still small.

It's a much bigger deal for larger percentage values : the inverse of -50% is +100%, and the inverse of -100% is +infinite% !!

So the 2nd reason that I am suspecting they are inside out is because of this last line :
>= 0% WEIGHT is literally impossible to get (without the extra malus from vehicle size)... but would only result (extrapolating the table) in a "-90%" movement modifier, which is actually a +90% AP cost, which effectively doesn't even halve the movement speed !
Compare with the current implementations of towed artillery (and anti-tank cannons ?), which seem to roughly have the equivalent of a +100% AP cost !

So I don't see why slow units would not have arbitrarily high AP cost penalties, instead of going from +70% AP cost (effectively equivalent to a -43% movement speed) to immediately "immobile" ?

In the other direction the reduced movement costs = increased movement speed seem to be "correctly" scaling super-linearly, though a maximum -20% movement cost = +25% movement speed (aside from hex cost truncation issues) seems to be a bit low too ?

Last but not least, ideally a single function would be used instead of the two separate ways the +% and the -% are calculated (the logic for the -% seems to be that each next tier needs an extra 10% on top of the previous one).

But most importantly, it would be nice if there were no thresholds here (similarly to how it's the case for many other design values) : it would be better if players didn't have to be faffing around trying to hit them (some will still remain for most important hex types I guess), or rather if thresholds were +1%/-1%, and not +10%/-5% ! (Another reason for a single function.)
Don_Kiyote
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Joined: Tue Oct 26, 2021 1:37 am
Location: Trans-Cascadia

Re: Movement bonuses/maluses seem to be inside out ? And extremes & threshold issues.

Post by Don_Kiyote »

I've noticed this issue too, but I am not sure it is an issue. What exactly do you think the problem is?

What I see is that the "Move Mod" stat in the model summary (pic 1) describes the "Movement Cost Modifier" as a positive percentage, while the same information is presented in the manual (pic 2) as a negative percentage. As you note, neither figure is very accurate, even if they are precise. And +15% is not *precisely* the same absolute value as -15%.

This whole thing can be a bit confusing, and I legitimately played quite a long while thinking some of my models were fast, when actually they were slow. As in: I looked at the model page, just like you did, saw "Move Mod: -15%", and thought "Great! It costs them 15% less to move through a hex." But no...

The in-game behaviour is correct, though. A higher power-to-weight ratio gives a better range, and I had just misunderstood the figure I was reading.

So the movement bonus/malus is only 'inside out' in terms of minuses looking like pluses on some screens, I think. This happens to me all the time with games. But your 'Hauler' does indeed have a "highly overpowered engine" and moves *about* 15% further than an 'adequately' (p/w=~1) powered model.
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