Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[jngy slate]

change of energy/recharge upgrades

I think I suggested an offensive/defensive ship idea a while ago. Oops kept running around in his terr killing people and I kept in flag room trying to stay alive. Would be cool.

Today's last game ended with a stalemate with one freq getting 0% RP and the other 100%. This probably happened because the freq who got 100RP held both flags for like 10 seconds while the other freq never got a chance to hold both flags. I've thought of a fairer formula I think you should use so that one freq doesn't end up getting nothing in case of a draw.

freq 0 RP = ([((total round time-(freq 0 flag time+freq 1 flag time))/2) + (freq 0 flag time)] / total round time) * total RP

That would give freq 0 the RP worth for their time and split up the time both teams held a flag each between the two.

[2kill]

Re: change of energy/recharge upgrades

I have been thinking about this over dinner and I still think this is a great idea. (coming from a RPG fan) Though Viruk's comments are valid, I would like to try to address some and lay out my ideas.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.


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


thats all right now


2kill

P.S. Just finished the test and thank you so much for the fast rearm graphic in ops.

[meddi]

I have grown used the current way of things (nrg / chrg wise), and thus find it hard to appreciate how the new system would work. Seems like a pretty drastic change. I guess the best way to find out is to try?

[Viruk]

Re: Possible change of energy/recharge upgrades

It could be made to work and I like the idea of a choice between energy/recharge/specials but there are many things I don't like about it:

You are forced to make a major choice that will restrict or cost you a lot at an early point in the game when a (new) player will have the least experience or idea of the implications of that choice. This will hurt (maybe even deter) newbies most and making this choice is going to be painful even for veterans. This is not like a traditional RPG when you are buying into a widely known character class and will know with confidence that, for example, your wizard will need lots of mana. If you get it wrong you cannot console yourself with some good roleplaying. Nor will there always be people who are not busy in combat there to offer help on what options are best for your ship.

The new system will probably need retesting or there are likely to be balance issues. We would lose a lot of the work we have done so far in trying to balance the ships and it would be much more difficult for a single player to test all the possible combinations themselves.

Some ships are likely to struggle to find enough special abilities to use for UPs meaning no upgrade options for many levels.

Upgrading energy and recharge can be a pain for most ships but there are some where it makes a difference (e.g. upgrading levi energy, upgrading recharge for spider or anything with x-radar). You would lose the fun of upgrading this.

Greater inflexibilty in upgrade choices seems to me to be a bad thing in itself and I am not convinced that the system will force weaknesses into ships much more than your choice of ship already does.

I am not convinced that the current system particularly encourages people to go for mainly energy and recharge. I have been forced to upgrade thrust and speed on many of the ships more than I had initially planned in order to compete. In the new system I would be penalised for adapting to changing or unknown conditions.

Some ships have special abilities that can be an alternative to energy or recharge (energy tank, super, leeching). Forcing them to upgrade takes away the choice of concentrating on the special instead.

I would not like to see unlimited energy and recharge based on level as this would make it even easier to get ship imbalances due to leveling speed. I shudder at the thought of adding all that extra energy and recharge to the fast-ranking terriers. This also makes the game less newbie friendly as high level ships will be inherently much harder for a newbie to kill.

[Zeimonster]

Very good and interesting an idea, yes, as long as there is a chance to change the ship type. It would suck if someone wanted to go for "special forces" as a levi and then later would notice that it was not the optimal choise to go for. Mmm, that was just an example but even theoretically i dont think a levi with minimal energy and recharge would do quite well. :7


Btw, i love the new multi on levi :wub:

[2kill]

Possible change of energy/recharge upgrades

... ... ...

I like the idea... just as I liked the idea about ship progression unlocks (the support or attack ones) though I never posted about it I feel that its a really fun part of rpgs having to chose at the beginning how you will play the rest of the game so I say go for it!

[gdugwyler]

Possible change of energy/recharge upgrades

After some thought on it, I'm seriously considering a drastically different way of handling energy and recharge upgrades. At one point someone had suggested automatic energy/recharge increases by rank, to give more of a feeling of progress at each rank. These upgrades have always been problematic for the game, forcing a choice between upgrading a small amount of recharge and energy and some unique ability. The energy and recharge are usually seen as the more "sensible" choice, but also much less interesting and challenging than the various special abilities.

What I'm considering doing is making that choice automatic. When you first start a ship, you choose between one of probably 4 ship options: Tank (high energy, average recharge, low UP), Artillery (average energy, high recharge, low UP), Scout (average energy, recharge and UP), and Special Forces (fairly low energy and recharge, but high UP). The ship type you choose carries with that ship throughout its life, and can only be traded in by sacrificing a certain percentage of RP for another ship type (the symbolic in-game reason being the cost of refitting the ship to your liking and your need to retrain with the somewhat different controls). Each rank up you would be given a different amount of UP depending on the ship type you have chosen, allowing for a larger or smaller number of special abilities to be purchased. Meanwhile every few ranks you would receive an energy or recharge upgrade, the frequency also varied on the type of ship.

There are several reasons I would like to see this happen: the largest is to get rid of the ridiculous costs of energy and recharge that everyone is experiencing in the later levels. It would be far more cut and dry this way: you put in your ranks, you get the same amount of energy and recharge as you always have. And your upgrade points count for the same, rather than being worth less and less as ranks go on.

As mentioned above, another reason is to just make the choice simple ... a one-shot deal. Energy and recharge upgrades are easily the least interesting but also the most important. This way they could be taken care of ahead of time, and take the pain out of their investment. Personally I don't feel "good" about upgrading energy or recharge; I do it to the degree I feel I have to in order to compete (or at any rate, did when I still was playing).

There are also some that choose to upgrade energy and recharge in the extreme, and often they do quite well for it. I would like to see a greater cost come from that choice, namely an inflexibility in terms of special abilities. For example, removing a level of recharge in order to buy a needed gun upgrade would no longer be possible ... some other special ability would have to be sacrificed instead. Therefore, for the relative dominance -- or, after a while, sheer ability to compete -- yielded by extreme upgrades to energy and recharge, there would now be a larger number of places of weakness, a thing which at present I do not see.

With the UP that would normally be spent on energy and recharge available for more abilities, as well as two new open slots, we could have a number of new special abilities for ships, if desired. In particular I would like to see small abilities for small costs that would have some effect and provide additional interesting aspects to the ships, while not upsetting the balance too much. This would also give players quite a bit more in the way of options for upgrading, ideally with no specific upgrade track being the absolute best for every situation.

There's also a long-term benefit to this for energy and recharge lovers that some of you may have discerned: energy and recharge limits would be raised so that players could rank them as high as they wished. This would also provide an impetus to venture into the higher ranks, whereas before it would be mostly a matter of polishing off the ranks for prestige, a few last special abilities, and a few offensively-priced energy upgrades.

Last, the options would not allow a player to focus on both high amounts of energy and recharge, but instead force them to choose between one or the other (if that is the route desired). In this way no player would hold the absolute monopoly on both, and while being a formidable opponent with a large amount of one or the other, would by no means be immune to a bit of good old fashioned killing, especially by those who are faster and who possess a larger skillset.

I'm already anticipating the outcry -- but, all opinions here are welcome. It would be another upset to the way things are done, but we survived the change from 1UP/rank to 10UP/rank; I think we could handle this one, too.

[Zeimonster]

since u now seem to be reading/posting on the topic, i'll tell u that there's some bug in the bot atm that makes it crash once every 2 mins. Obviously it makes hosting distension impossible. So if u can, fix it quickly! ;d

[gdugwyler]

Remote detonation: Unfortunately, like so many interesting ideas, this one can't be implemented with the way SS works.

Levis with reps: would like to keep sharks as sole reppers. While I understand Levis have had them traditionally, on and off, the Levi has also been the only ship other than the Weasel to be completely left out of any kind of serious basing. Sure, that's probably a result of attach regulations, and also because it would change the dynamic so much, but I don't think that because they've had them before, they should have them again. I'd much prefer for Sharks have a very clearly-defined role instead.

Mines: pretty sure it's as 2kill said ... when you're encountering places that you can't mine, these are probably doors. You can verify this by looking at the radar.

Summon: it stays unless a good reason is given. Cheese, pardon me for saying, but it does almost no good whatsoever to simply say "it's bad;" I need reasoning and argumentation, not off-the-cuff opinions. If you personally don't like being summoned, turn it off. If you have a problem with how the ability itself affects the game I would very much like to hear what that is.

I'll split this post up with the next, as what follows is quite a different thought.

[Viruk]

what does anyone think of the "remote detonation" ability i suggested a while ago?

I like it but it should not happen too frequently. About as often as the terriers EMP ability perhaps. The game probably needs proper TKing penalties to discourage using it sloppily as well.

edit: do levis ever get a rep? i think they should, or at least one other ship should have one rep and i think lev might be the best bet

Only if they then count as a shark for the shark limit. Perhaps even then it would make them overpowered unless it cost a huge number of UP. Any ability that can deflect the skilled fire and movement of an unlimited number of powerful ships, even for a very short time is going to be very powerful.

[Viruk]

If it's generally agreed that Levis are underplayed, I'm going to increase their bomb damage again (or, alternately, reduce firing cost and delay). I would like them to be a formidable support ship rather than a weakish attack ship. Seems like just a while ago everyone was saying that Levis were terrors?

Not very underplayed as I saw plenty of them about today. Definitely not a terror up to around level 30. They have potential to be overpowered at high levels if they ever get to move and fire like a fighter as well as having the bombs and high energy. I haven't seen any levis that I would complain about yet though. I suspect the lack of thrust early on and the big differences from the pub levi are likely to deter many new players from using this ship regardless of any minor tweaks made to it.

I would like this ship to get a special bot ability in the way that many others are receiving, if anything just to make it more interesting to play. I don't want any to get too boring.

How about something that works like an energy tank that would temporarily multiply its recharge rate for a short period? It could be useful for recharging all that energy quickly after attaching, increased firing or tanking but the effect shouldn't be as powerful as super or shields or the high energy + full charge combination. Its power would increase with recharge and energy level and perhaps the ability's frequency/duration/multiplier could be upgraded too.

Is Jav's JumpSpace at all useful? Are the negative aspects too significant to make it work?

I have played with it a little. I like it because it is fun and can circumvent the overpowered Ops door ability and distract the enemy. Even if I had more than one level of it I would probably just get myself killed a lot trying to assault the FR singlehandedly though. There are other things I would like to try with it with macros set up for it. It is not cheap though so I am not planning to invest more in it any time soon and it will be first on my scrap list if I need more UP for something more vital - like L2 bombs.

[jngy slate]

!summon

When using the !summon ability sometimes I ended up summoning just one or two players. Then I'd have to wait 3 minutes before I can use it again. I'd be cool if the time between summons depended on how many players were summoned. Say only 1 was summoned then the next summon can be used 30 seconds later. If 2, 1 minute. 3, 2 minutes. Yes exponentially, but the max would still be 3 minutes.

About ph's complains. Most of the time when I see him he will aim for me or another terrier that's around. He complains because he can't kill us but what he wants is an easy kill. You can't expect to be able to kill the terrier when 5 other players are proteting it. That's not how basing works.

[roxxkatt]

now that im seeing this summoning business in action, ive decided that i dont like it, and it will only degrade the quality of the game, similar to antideath in hyperspace.
dug, i know youve probably spent some time on this already, but please abandon it, take it out, it will only turn out badly.

[DankNuggets]

Sharks: RE: Chao's complaint -- I still have a hard time laying mines where and when i want to. I use the default settings (shift+tab) to lay mines and I find that I have to either press both keys a couple of times or hold them down for a bit to lay a mine. This results in either me laying 2 mines on top of each other, laying a mine several tiles off of where i tried too, or just not laying a mine. I've gotten used to it a bit and you basically have to sit still in the line of fire for a sec or so to lay a mine. Also, what does anyone think of the "remote detonation" ability i suggested a while ago?


Levis: I'm a rank ~30 or so levi and i find myself pwning people left and right. The cost for shooting the emp bomb is really low, so that i can shoot it 2x at a group of enemies or 1x and then bullet them. As far as upgrades, most of mine are spent on recharge/energy and i probably only upgraded slots 1-3 once or twice (i do this for most ships). I don't have a portal or multi, i prefer to be able to mix up the bomb/bullet spray. I think people may not play much as them b/c they aren't aware of how drastically different the lev is in distension or how to use it as a bullet heavy ship.


Terrs: I don't see any problems with them as-is. I think ph's complaints are b/c him and other high ranked players like to lone-wolf it against an enemy fr. The easiest way to kill a terr is to do it when they are fighting some one else, which doesn't happen if you are by yourself and 20 ranks above everyone - you become the target and terrs avoid you.

Javs: did i hear correctly? no lvl 3 bombs? ever?


edit: do levis ever get a rep? i think they should, or at least one other ship should have one rep and i think lev might be the best bet

[Mjollnir]

...

• Is Jav's JumpSpace at all useful? Are the negative aspects too significant to make it work?

I had the ability at max upgrades for some time but I finally decided it is not worth the UPs. It is a fun ability to play around with but I think spending the UPs on something else is way more optimal. Most of the time warping to the flagroom resulted in a very quick death and sometimes a lucky kill for me.