Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[Zeebu]

idea is that every time the weasel hits a player with a bullet, speed+thrust increases for a short amount of time. this would stack per bullet for a certain amount of time a controlled number of times.

got this idea when i read that you can watch a bullet or damage or something?

this gives the weasel a better chance to dance around their opponent and land hits once they get one. it could replace the rocket (suggestion, not necessary i guess) and give a little twist on doing something familiar. i guess it lends itself to a ship with a slow bulletspeed.

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another idea, one that im certain has been mentioned before. can we try remote mines?

it would be neat to send a command to the bot and have all of your mines just explode. i dont know of a good way to make the game do that though. an idea at least as cool and probably moreso, an ability to explode all of the other team's mines.

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are there any ships that might benefit from the use of some sort of invisible mine? does something exist that can drop another ships top speed for a few moments? if youre running from another player, drop an invisible mine, the other guy hits it and is slowed significantly for a couple seconds, at least jsut to get away (an ability that would have practical uses in a flagroom if it could slow all ships in a small area around the mine) or maybe just an ability that slows down all enemy ships in an area (same as EMP except with speed/thrust/movement instead of charge)

[DankNuggets]

Sound OK?

sounds good, my main beef was that i felt like it would make my ships less powerful. selfish, i know

it's a good idea, in that it will make people upgrade their special abilities and make the game a bit more interesting in that regard. Without having to worry about getting my recharge/energy 10/12 levels right away, i'd definitely take advantage of teh other abilites/upgrades

it'd probably make things easier to balance as well

[Chao.]

Ability Ideas...


1. Sticky Glue:

Put two wormholes on the sides of the FR (or one on the roof) that would normally do nothing due to their low gravity, and make a once-per-battle ability that allows sharks (or OPs) to use this ability to make the gravity temporarily extremely high and make everyone stuck against the walls of the base. The time limit on this would be short and wouldn't be used much due to the battle limit.

2.Kamikaze

Often battles are stalemated when two strong sharks are in the same FR. Use this ability to turn off your engines/deprize your repels and render your ship a useless pile of junk for 20-30 seconds. The catch? You can pick another shark on a different team to make this happen to as well, making you both unable to help your teams until it goes away.

[dako]

Idea - Crazy Juice - for Weasels VB and ops ability

Gives killer / targeted player +500% rotation and +500% speed for a short amount of time (read - impossible to control). At high levels, ops can target an entire army with this ability (imagine a whole base of people zooming around flailing and unable to control their ships rotation).

Think enigma.

[roxxkatt]

excellent, a compromise.


but a science vessels will have to be cheaper, or that idea is useless, right?

[gdugwyler]

I get a great advantage by having more energy and recharge, more so than having specials.

This is pretty much one of the biggest reasons I would like to change the system. At present, for the most part the single logical thing to do is upgrade recharge and energy as much as possible, while spending only a very small amount of UP on other upgrades. I've looked through the player stats in the DB, and by and large almost every player focuses on energy and recharge; it's becoming so that you have to do this to compete, which greatly diminishes variety of playing styles. I would like upgrading energy and recharge highly, boring as it is, to be the new player choice: the relatively uninteresting choice you can make that will ensure you're able to compete. For more advanced players I would like to make it so that focusing on a wider range of special abilities is actually more advantageous -- which for the vast majority of ships right now is simply not the case. Part of the problem is that there aren't a whole lot of special abilities, something I would like to remedy by adding a series of small ones with less significant effects. I might try using the WatchDamage packet and using bullet hits to cause special effects when they don't result in death. Or, one where when player is killed, it takes additional time to rearm, prevents them from rearming with full upgrades, etc.

But, here's the compromise that I thought up today: a fifth ship type. For ranks 1-15, all ships of the same kind receive the same number of energy and recharge upgrades, and UP. (Same as described before.) On reaching rank 15, among the previously discussed types, they have the option to become a "Science Vessel." This allows them to upgrade energy and recharge using UP in the way it's done presently. Their special status would also allow them to scrap a higher percentage up into their rank than is allowed for other ships (as the scrap penalty will be in effect again at public release). However, due to the flexibility allowed to them that other ship types will not have, the amount of UP they would receive would not be as significant, as while other ships receive automatic upgrades, they have to pay for them out of the same UP pool. Essentially, they would receive as many UP as do the Special Forces (from what I'm thinking off the top of my head).

Sound OK?

[DankNuggets]

RE: RECHARGE / ENERGY UPGRADES

Personally, I am against this idea because I'm one of the people who actually enjoy leveling slots 4 & 5. I feel that 1) I get a great advantage by having more energy and recharge, more so than having specials. 2) I feel that my patience in upgrading expensive items early on will allow me to upgrade other slots later w/o waiting 3-4 ranks to upgrade.

The last one is the main reason since the higher upgrades take at least 3-4 ranks to earn all the UP needed. I can get these 3-4 ranks easier right now than as a higher rank (it would take forever). It just seems prudent to upgrade these now and leave things like turning/thrust/speed to later ranks as they require less UP, and you'll receive less UP per session (if any) as you progress.

Also, I feel that while they aren't appearent to others (you can see an enemy's speed, turning, and thrust easier than top nrg and recharge) slots 4 & 5 add more towards an advantage than slots 1, 2, 3 if you're any good at dodging already. If 2 ppl shoot at each other at the same time, I'd like to be the one who can shoot that second bullet 1st.

IDK, i guess i feel that maybe the basic upgrades (slots 1,2,3) should be the ones that get automatically upgraded, but that's probably b/c i don't want to waste the UP on them right now.

In sum, I feel that it may make the game a more level playing field (no pun intended) but overall less fun to play

[Jeenyuss]

But you see I'm few pages behind and it's sort of a lot to read. Only if you could summarize what's been happening in one paragraph. Please do it, I would really like to become a part of this mature crowd and discuss the bugs in the new distention beta.

wow im so exausted i am to tired to j/o to this.

[Ward]

read then.

letters make words, and words make sentences.
sentences contain information.

But you see I'm few pages behind and it's sort of a lot to read. Only if you could summarize what's been happening in one paragraph. Please do it, I would really like to become a part of this mature crowd and discuss the bugs in the new distention beta.

[roxxkatt]

read then.

letters make words, and words make sentences.
sentences contain information.

[Ward]

I wish these mature individuals filled me in on what's going on here. I'm kind of lost.

[roxxkatt]

havnt been able to play much dist due to my job lately, but i have to throw in my opinions as well...


as for the summon, it may have taken awhile to code or something, and may have that 'new thing' temporary shineyness, but it only degrades the overall quality of the game.
it might work well as the terr being able to summon -one- shark, or for a terr to summon a teammate for defense, but for anyone to summon about ten teammates from the opposite base without penalty is rediculous.
and also, the few other summons i saw were summoning good terrs out of fr battles by some newb...
the ops wormhole ability more then covers this...


as for the new energy idea, some aspects sound good, but the majority of it sounds like reduced gameplay to me...
adding an rpg element to the game might be interesting right now, but some people would like to max out their ability to manage their stuff.
its pretty fun right now, but locking yourself into a choice is always not fun to me.
being able to change my stuff on the fly without penalty is great, and even when you can do it with rp penalties later will be a good thing. (can do it with 0%, when u lvl for no penalty, in a sense)

because right now, if you really wanted to have minimal recharge/nrg and have multifire and xradar, you can do it...
with this new thing, you may not be having full control of where your points go...
because sometimes, i would much rather have -both- maxed chg/nrg, and only red bullets/bombs...


adding this will throw a large amount of complexity into this game, and some of us play it for its simplicity...
sometimes some things can be elegant for their sheer simplicity.
but judging from the amount you typed, you already have your thoughts on it, and are going to implement them...


edit: and sometimes, i know my team is outnumbered and outgunned, and i consider getting my team all the way to the stalemate as ops...
the maximum split id like to see is 40%/60%, so having a flag 100% of the time would get you the 60% stalemate reward

[2kill]

I think that a good solution to this problem would be postponing the choice until later. In the first X number of ranks, everyone could receive the same number of upgrades to energy and recharge, and the same amount of UP. (Essentially, automatically the "Scout" build.) During that time they would be getting a feel for how they wished to play the ship, and when it's time to make the decision, they should have the experience and information to make it. This would also give a certain amount of play with upgrade points earned in that time, so that even if you planned to go to a heavy build you'd still have some flexibility available. This system is pretty common in RPGs, the specialty or "prestige" class chosen after some time has been sunk in (the first "class" being akin to the ship itself).

lol thats what I was thinking about them going for a bit without choosing they would have a few ranks to play around, though now that I read my post that didn't really come out.

This would certainly help but the first 3 levels will probably only take half an hour's playing time even without the beta multiplier whereas it will take many, many hours before a new player will understand how a ship and all the upgrades work in the game.

3 ranks was only a guess , Dug's X number of ranks would have made my idea clearer

Will the limiting factor not be the number of unique upgrades we can think of that can actually be made to work rather than number of upgrade slots? If upgrade slots are limited might it not still require the energy and recharge slots for internal use?

... your right there though, I was counting on some creativity :P

While I love to test things I would also like to see the finished game go public 24/7 before I die! :P

rofl with you there

2kill

[gdugwyler]

Some good thoughts. Viruk, I think you especially have a point about forcing players to choose too early and being too confusing, especially with everything else already thrown at them. (I do plan to have extensive help information available, however, and am working on it.)

I think that a good solution to this problem would be postponing the choice until later. In the first X number of ranks, everyone could receive the same number of upgrades to energy and recharge, and the same amount of UP. (Essentially, automatically the "Scout" build.) During that time they would be getting a feel for how they wished to play the ship, and when it's time to make the decision, they should have the experience and information to make it. This would also give a certain amount of play with upgrade points earned in that time, so that even if you planned to go to a heavy build you'd still have some flexibility available. This system is pretty common in RPGs, the specialty or "prestige" class chosen after some time has been sunk in (the first "class" being akin to the ship itself). And if a player didn't want to choose, as 2kill suggested and I'd planned they would simply default to Scout.

During the time before the choice, a reasonable bulk of energy and recharge upgrades could also be given to balance out the fact that, even if they are earned more slowly, energy and recharge upgrades will go all the way to rank 80, perhaps with a large bonus if anyone does reach 80. Thanks to the person who suggested this. Scaling the upgrades seems an optimal way to go.

Zei, you did make a good point about something like Special Forces in the Levi. At present they don't have a lot to upgrade other than their basic upgrades and some bonus weapons. I'd like to focus a significant effort on ensuring that all ship types could be successful, which would necessitate expanding on the Levi's available skills, even if we're to add some that are not wonderful but not expensive, either. (I think that will be key to filling up the rest of the upgrade slots.)

Also, if I do go through with this, as fair warning I'll be mixing up the slots, so that guns and bombs will probably appear in slots 4 and 5, so that special abilities can generally be 6 and up. I may also try to order them in terms of which are most likely to be able to be upgraded first, as a more logical way of laying it out.

And, yes, I'll be keeping all the old code in case this doesn't work at all! It's actually not too significant a change, code-wise ... and actually, it shouldn't be too tough to balance, after looking at a bit of data about how much the average person has sunk into energy and recharge.

[Viruk]

So that it doesn't deter new players or get them down you could have it default to the scout (the all around average ship) and they would only be asked to choose a "class" (e.g tank, or scout) at rank 3 or something. This would make it a gradual process so that they don't get overwhelmed, if they chose to ignore the bot and not choose which one they want it would simply continue in the default class (scout) leaving the player without a care in the world.

This would certainly help but the first 3 levels will probably only take half an hour's playing time even without the beta multiplier whereas it will take many, many hours before a new player will understand how a ship and all the upgrades work in the game.

Currently we can only see the next upgrade ahead and we rely on information from (and encounters with) the few players with high level ships to know how upgrades work which makes it very difficult to make reliable long term upgrade plans even without all the tweaking. RPGs that force you to make your choices at the beginning usually give you fairly complete information about the classes and specialisations you can choose. Players should be given that information if they are going to be making choices in advance. Even if they have it I can still see many players being reluctant to invest time in long term planning for a basing game and then later getting upset when they discover they have missed out on getting the best combinations.

To the fact that the new system would make a greater difference between ranks, I would have to say I don't think that would be the case. As the new system would have greater control over when they get an increase and would be able to keep them closer... maybe a smart idea would be to have 50% of the energy and recharge upgrades within the first say 20 ranks this would mean new players would get close enough to be a threat in good time.

Something like this seems like a good idea. Even if upgrades did go on for ever as Dug suggested it would be a long time before high level players became a problem if this happened increasingly infrequently at higher levels.

As to the terr getting to much energy or recharge I would think that the classes would be set on a per ship bases which would mean that the terr could never really turn in to a super ship.

This ought to work but will be harder to balance than the current system because you would have to find out the different leveling rates. (If we are really lucky these would only vary slightly depending on level, specialisation and any tweaks to all the various upgrades)

About the to many UP for the upgrades I would say that we will have two new spots to think about so UP could be used on them.

Will the limiting factor not be the number of unique upgrades we can think of that can actually be made to work rather than number of upgrade slots? If upgrade slots are limited might it not still require the energy and recharge slots for internal use?

As to forcing them to choose between energy specials or normal energy and recharge I think that’s a good thing. Cause as we have found out with the lanc, leech is very powerful and by making it have to have just a high leech and low energy, or a low leech and good energy it should make the lanc less overpowered the same holds true with the spider and its super.

My point was that the new system prevents you from doing this fully because you would get some of the energy/recharge upgrades automatically whichever of the 4 specialisations you chose whereas now you could theoretically choose not to upgrade energy or recharge at all and use the UP on maxing your specials and other upgrades instead.

(And I am not convinced that either lanc or spider is currently overpowered despite my misgivings about leeching and the L2 + super combination)

On an ending note just cause the new system would require testing does not mean we should not test it

While I love to test things I would also like to see the finished game go public 24/7 before I die! :P