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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 3922331" data-attributes="member: 710">As an example on how difficult the "science" of a game system can be, consider this: Let's assume you want to design a subsystem balancing ranged weapons, with the following attributes:DamageRate of FireRangeYou want to achieve a balanced cost for each ranged weapon. You assume that the users of weapons (might be humanoids, tanks, ships, starfighters or mechs) can only use a limited amount of weapons, based on these cost. (There might be a further difference: A humanoid character can use only one at a time, a ship might be able to bring multiple ones to bear)Damage and Rate of Fire can usually be shortened to "Average Damage Per Round" (there are corner cases: What happens with "over-penetration" - you deal a gazillion of damage per day, but possible targets can only have 1000 hit points, and combats are usually done within a few minutes)But how do you factor in range, if you can make _no_ assumptions about the typical ranges?If all combats take place inside a building, ranges beyond 50 ft are meaningless. If combats take place on the open ocean, ranges become very important (but what if targets can have very different combat speeds?)----Closer to D&D: Flight. At what level is flight appropriate? As a general principle, I guess that it's appropriate whenever you want it too. At 1st level, at 5th level, or never. The important thing is to have all other aspects be informed on this choice. If flight is available at 1st level, people need a counter-measure against it at 1st level (even if it is just some good ranged attacks). Wizards blasting Scorching Rays and Fireball from the sky that don't have to expect enemies that can fly or strike them with ranged attacks won't work.But there are situations in which flight is mostly meaningless - in a combat encounter in the steppes or a desert it's very powerful. In a combat encounter inside a dungeon with 10 ft tall buildings it's just a +1 to melee attacks (higher ground). For a traveling scenario, you don't need flight much in a desert (it might even be dangerous being aloft in sand storms). In the mountains it could be the only way to cover a cliff. Balancing such effects is a point where typical scienctific approaches are just to complex, maybe even impossible to use. You need a kind of "grasp" for the situation. It is more an art than science.</blockquote>

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