Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[Bobyz]

After playing a bit last few days I will post some feedback about the shipsettings again and some general things.


Terrier
I understand the terrier is not an attractive ship to play if you solely hang around in FR, but at the moment it is a positive juggernaut.
I looked at recs last night and noticed terriers have among the most kills. Now call me crazy, but the ship that should only play defensively and gets huge profit sharing should not compete with spiders and good suijavs for MVP. The reason it seems to do this is that besides having loads of bursts, it also has high speed level 2 bullets easily, making it more powerful than a warbird or weasel at comparable level. The seemingless infinite portals also make it able to get more kills. I have no clue how to balance the terrier, maybe some ter players and mjoll can comment on it?

Bobyz's suggestions on terr.

hm. l2 takes a hella big chunk of energy. only a terr with a shit load of energy and recharge would it be useful to. i think it is pretty cheap, should increase it to 30-35, rather than 23. i have it and i prefer l1 because my recharge isint that great atm. i suggest to increase price of regeneration to maybe like 30 a pop, and significantly decrease the 2nd burst to like... 50. and to balance it out, maybe decrease the price of energy and recharge to 12 at low levels, rather than 15, and increase rot spd and thr, to 10 at low levels?

[Singularity]

What is it with you and suicides? :P Perhaps you were just having trouble dodging - my lanc still seems a tad sluggish.
I was on the receiving end of the lanc only =)

The actual base energy of a spider is not huge and slow to upgrade compared to other fighters already. I believe it is the energy tanks and randomly firing Supers that make it such a terror. I thought the recent changes may have taken the edge off my mid-level spider but it still got streaks easily and it still seems very powerful.
I don't know, my spider only has a few thrust and speed upgrades, rest is energy/CHG. No multifire, no level 2. It shoots like crazy even on low levels and racks up quite a bit of kills. Had quite a bit of streaks as well.

This depends on your expectation of how it should work.
Basically it doesn't do anything well, it cannot get positive recs, cannot kill terrier better than other ships (without full cloak that is, but I'm talking about <35 level weasel) and ranks slow. Maybe I should try cloaking and see if laming ships coming to the base works.

Good! I think it is right that a stealth ship should be slower than other fighters as it should not have to rely so much on speed.
Not entirely true. With multifire you can lay a 'curtain of death' in front of enemy ships speeding in your direction. I find this very effective combined with dodging behind a wall. It is perhaps not quite what you would expect from an assassin ship though.
Far from impossible but it does only work against a sloppy or disorganised team. I think this is a good thing as I prefer games to be decided on consistent skill and teamplay rather than specials or a lucky dash for the flag.
Maybe we have a different playing style, but when I play weasel I see a relatively fast ship darting in and out of combat to make precision kills on certain ships. The cheap speed and thr upgrades (rockets) suggest that this is possible, yet doesn't always work out, mainly due to the ease to dodge bullets on offensive (Defensive they work of course, if people rush into you)

How about a short range and short duration antiwarp upgrade that only triggers whenever a weasel fires or has a percentage chance or triggering whenever it fires?
Sounds complicated, and I am also not sure if you can have multiple antiwarp radii in one setting. Idea is fun though.

=)

[Viruk]

I ranked a shark from level 1 to level 20, and the first thing I noticed is how easy it is to rank in this ship. Not only does it get decent profitsharing, it is also pretty strong on the offensive with mines and seems to suicide almost as well as the weasel with its level 1 bullets. Not saying it is overpowered though, but it IS a lot stronger than the weasel. The main problem comes when 3 sharks attack 1 flagroom, making the sheer amount of repels waltz all over the defenders.

It has been a while since I sharked now but I never found it as effective as weasel for suiciding and its L1 bullets have been reduced in power since then. I agree that all those repels make a huge difference to a battle but I thought we had shark limits now so this must mean no sharks at the other base - a good team would be able to exploit this. I think most players accept that the sharks are vital to the team so perhaps should not be directly compared with the weasel which is more of a 'luxury' specialist ship.

The lancaster seems to be fixed compared with last time. It was able to fire more often and the leach sometimes makes it survives suicides.

What is it with you and suicides? :P Perhaps you were just having trouble dodging - my lanc still seems a tad sluggish.

Warbird still seems pretty bland though, it is horribly fast but speed is almost pointless in a map where you are almost always in a base.

Speed is not so useful in base although getting there quickly can make you independent of terriers and the bases are pretty roomy. Warbirds also have great thrust which is great for dodging everywhere. Armament is mediocre until you can get L3 though.

Spider is still going (very) strong. My main beef is that it is way to easy to get large amounts of energy, making that this ship can fire nonstop and survive l1 bullets while doing it.

The actual base energy of a spider is not huge and slow to upgrade compared to other fighters already. I believe it is the energy tanks and randomly firing Supers that make it such a terror. I thought the recent changes may have taken the edge off my mid-level spider but it still got streaks easily and it still seems very powerful.

Weasel, my favorite ship. But alas, it does not work at the moment.

This depends on your expectation of how it should work.

for some reason this ship is still slower than attack ships.

Good! I think it is right that a stealth ship should be slower than other fighters as it should not have to rely so much on speed.

Its bullets are only useful if you give it speed from your own movements, suggesting most kills will be suicide kills.

Not entirely true. With multifire you can lay a 'curtain of death' in front of enemy ships speeding in your direction. I find this very effective combined with dodging behind a wall. It is perhaps not quite what you would expect from an assassin ship though.

The old trick of flagsteals to give the team another shot was basically made impossible with the 6 seconds claim time it has before resetting the counter.

Far from impossible but it does only work against a sloppy or disorganised team. I think this is a good thing as I prefer games to be decided on consistent skill and teamplay rather than specials or a lucky dash for the flag.

Up til now would all be ok if it would be able to kill terrs, so it had a function in basing... but terriers a) tank level 2 at low levels, b) always have portals, c) are able to outshoot the weasel easily if you have no rockets.

I more or less agree with this. The terrier has been allowed to get relatively overpowered because people want to encourage players to use them. At least weasels now get good RP when they do succeed in killing one and at least their small size makes terrier bursts less effective against them.
Ignoring the brick, I think the main function of the weasel at the moment is as much to create a distraction as to be an effective terrier assassin. This is bound to disappoint those used to playing the little pub weasels (which always seem overpowered to me as they are effective without even needing to use the cloak).

I do not know how to fix this easily, but the main improvement would be increasing bulletspeed as I said before, so it is possible to get kills without suiciding/rocket. A slight energy recharge cost reduction might also not be out of place.

I would not like to see a fast/multifire bullet combination myself as I think a stealth ship should have to get close to be effective in order to maintain balance. I would like to see good/cheap energy recharge to help it recover from poorly-aimed spider and terrier attacks. I cannot remember whether it already has this though. I would like to see a low cost for L3 upgrade to make its attack deadly (although only the highest level weasels are going to have enough energy to use it). How about a short range and short duration antiwarp upgrade that only triggers whenever a weasel fires or has a percentage chance or triggering whenever it fires?

I looked at recs last night and noticed terriers have among the most kills. Now call me crazy, but the ship that should only play defensively and gets huge profit sharing should not compete with spiders and good suijavs for MVP. The reason it seems to do this is that besides having loads of bursts, it also has high speed level 2 bullets easily, making it more powerful than a warbird or weasel at comparable level.

I thought the terrier doesn't get L2s until mid-level? My terr does not have L2s and can still kill with L1s fairly effectively (despite the L1 reduction) as long as there are weakened ships around. Using L2s offensively is likely to make it vulnerable even with all that energy. Cloaked weasels will no doubt fear being hunted by L2 terrs with their always-on x-radar though.
I think the bursts are still the main source of kills for the terr as they kill anything they hit. Escape pods are still very powerful despite only firing once per death as you can return to the FR with bursts. Portals are easy to come by and make terrs very hard to kill (except mine - my lousy untrained port reflexes make me a weasel's dream! :P)

the javelin seems to have been toned down a bit since last time.

With the increased radius on the L2 bomb it has been toned up since I last played! Those things hurt! But it was probably underpowered before and in a roomy FR it might not be so bad. Must play mine again to test it and the jumpspace thingy.

Lev also seems more useful now as a support ship, but it looks like as if it is nasty to fly (any comment from lev users on it?) Both seem ok at the moment.

With a small support bonus and larger radius L2 bombs (and facing weaker L1 bullets) the lev should now be a lot more balanced. I am fairly happy with mine even if it is still far from the strongest ship around. With its very limited thrust upgrades it is indeed a pig to fly!

[meddi]

3 bricks at once across the FR?

I hope that this is not going to be a common sight as I hate games being decided by specials. If this was the result of fewer than 3 high level weasels then something needs tweaking IMO.

I agree with Viruk.

A single weasel having as many as three 5x1 bricks out at once is pretty insane. He easily blocked our entire team out of the FR for a good period of time. The brick size either needs to be shrunk, or perhaps brick can be prized after x time or randomly or SOMETHING to prevent a weasel from bricking, dying, bricking, dying, etc.

[Singularity]

After playing a bit last few days I will post some feedback about the shipsettings again and some general things.

I ranked a shark from level 1 to level 20, and the first thing I noticed is how easy it is to rank in this ship. Not only does it get decent profitsharing, it is also pretty strong on the offensive with mines and seems to suicide almost as well as the weasel with its level 1 bullets. Not saying it is overpowered though, but it IS a lot stronger than the weasel. The main problem comes when 3 sharks attack 1 flagroom, making the sheer amount of repels waltz all over the defenders.

The lancaster seems to be fixed compared with last time. It was able to fire more often and the leach sometimes makes it survives suicides. Good job on this. Warbird still seems pretty bland though, it is horribly fast but speed is almost pointless in a map where you are almost always in a base. It may be able to shoot l3 bullets, but usually l2 do the trick. Maybe a slight cooldown reduction for shooting (or is cooldown related to bullettype instead of ship?) might give it a niche closer to the lancaster but with single fire and no specials?
Spider is still going (very) strong. My main beef is that it is way to easy to get large amounts of energy, making that this ship can fire nonstop and survive l1 bullets while doing it. I would suggest increasing the cost of energy upgrades and maybe decreasing the stock energy amount so the upgrades are really neccesary (as opposed to all other ships, spiders hardly need the speed/turning/thr as it can be regarded as some kind of turret in a lot of cases, so you can stock up on energy and you get a VERY strong ship at lower levels compared with the alternatives)
Weasel, my favorite ship. But alas, it does not work at the moment. It has very cheap speed/turn/thr upgrades but for some reason this ship is still slower than attack ships. Energy and recharge upgrades are hard to get, ensuring you will always die from level 2 bullets if you are under 30 level and level 1 bullets make sure you cannot shoot yourself. Its bullets are only useful if you give it speed from your own movements, suggesting most kills will be suicide kills. The old trick of flagsteals to give the team another shot was basically made impossible with the 6 seconds claim time it has before resetting the counter.
Up til now would all be ok if it would be able to kill terrs, so it had a function in basing... but terriers a) tank level 2 at low levels, b) always have portals, c) are able to outshoot the weasel easily if you have no rockets.
I do not know how to fix this easily, but the main improvement would be increasing bulletspeed as I said before, so it is possible to get kills without suiciding/rocket. A slight energy recharge cost reduction might also not be out of place.
Maybe the weasel could also have the ability to instantly claim the flag (without the waiting time where the counter goes up instead of down, I'm sure a bot could check for it) so it will be a danger for almost empty flag rooms.
Terrier
I understand the terrier is not an attractive ship to play if you solely hang around in FR, but at the moment it is a positive juggernaut.
I looked at recs last night and noticed terriers have among the most kills. Now call me crazy, but the ship that should only play defensively and gets huge profit sharing should not compete with spiders and good suijavs for MVP. The reason it seems to do this is that besides having loads of bursts, it also has high speed level 2 bullets easily, making it more powerful than a warbird or weasel at comparable level. The seemingless infinite portals also make it able to get more kills. I have no clue how to balance the terrier, maybe some ter players and mjoll can comment on it?
Javelin/Lev
Both ships are still played quite a bit, and the javelin seems to have been toned down a bit since last time. Sometimes it still gets a lucky bomb in and whipes out the FR, but then again, the same happens in BD's. Lev also seems more useful now as a support ship, but it looks like as if it is nasty to fly (any comment from lev users on it?) Both seem ok at the moment.

[Viruk]

3 bricks at once across the FR?

I hope that this is not going to be a common sight as I hate games being decided by specials. If this was the result of fewer than 3 high level weasels then something needs tweaking IMO.

[Mjollnir]

i got an opionion, but no suggestions unfortunately (sry).

the timer should stay at 60s

longer games = more reason to win = more competition in general

it might suck if you have to leave early, but overall i think it's worth it to those who can stay and earn that end of the round bonus.

if anything the timer seems too short, at least with <10 people per team.

if it gets too short, say 45 seconds, then you'd only have to kill the terr 1x, maybe 2x, before the other team has no hope of getting back in, let alone making it to the fr before they lose.

You could reduce the win timer every time the amount of people goes over a certain amount (like dug mentioned). I have no idea if it would be a good thing or not but it could be tested I guess. Big games tend to take a very long time and some people like it and some don't. It can be really frustrating if you are on the weaker team and can barely just keep one flagroom but if the teams are well balanced it can be fun.

[DankNuggets]

i got an opionion, but no suggestions unfortunately (sry).

the timer should stay at 60s

longer games = more reason to win = more competition in general

it might suck if you have to leave early, but overall i think it's worth it to those who can stay and earn that end of the round bonus.

if anything the timer seems too short, at least with <10 people per team.

if it gets too short, say 45 seconds, then you'd only have to kill the terr 1x, maybe 2x, before the other team has no hope of getting back in, let alone making it to the fr before they lose.

[gdugwyler]

i dont like this, i think its just lame/retarded

When you're saying shit like this, I have to say I'm pretty glad Left_Eye banned you, regardless of reason. It's not helpful, it only serves to make me angry, and it makes you sound like an idiot.

That said, there is a penalty for JumpSpace, and the ability is not given to Weasel. I'm surprised you'd think I would introduce such a powerful ability with no negative effects whatsoever. Apparently you don't have a very high opinion of my understanding of game design. The penalty is pretty significant, actually: when not upgraded, you receive an engine shutdown, are reduced to 0 energy, and lose a level of recharge (until next spawn). The effects go away, in that order, as you upgrade the ability. So with 1 upgrade you experience 0 energy and lose a level of recharge, 2 levels you just lose a level of recharge, and only with 3 levels there are no harmful effects; this is after sinking a lot of points into it, and reaching rank 50. I think it's relatively fair for now, and the most recent implementation should work -- hopefully -- decently. No reports back yet, though.

Also, Cheese, not accepting arguments on the new Ops shortcuts. It's shorter, and will be better once you retrain your brain to handle it. Really not that hard. This sort of exercise is supposed to be quite good for staving off dementia and such, anyhow.


I really like the Terr ability idea. It's quite unique from the Ops ability which just warps people around, being instead something like a summon ... could be very useful. Unfortunately it would also have to do with position data, and so would rely on the Terr's position being accurate ... but by delaying how quickly the warping happens (sort of progressive) it might work. Could have it work by checking the distance between the Terr's position and friendlies nearby, and summoning a certain percentage of those, which would increase with each ability level -- this would simplify the use. The only trick is that the Terr is maxed out as far as abilities go. I would either need to drop one ability (probably by making it automatically given to the Terr at a certain level ... maybe Regen, for example, and raising other costs slightly), or create one more upgrade slot. I might just end up going with the extra slot, as this would allow for easy future development if new ability ideas were conceived. It'll take up more room in the DB, but not all that much.

VB bonus twice: thanks for mentioning that. Should be fixed now.

VB not firing anything: some VB effects include reducing one of the 5 basic stats for the remainder of that life. I had it reducing it by only one level, but now I have it reducing by 3. You should be able to see it now.

!lagout after DC: this functionality was removed semi-permanently, but may be added back in if I can figure out a way to do it more reliably than before. I'd like to instead just keep people from being DCd by lag, as was suggested. The other DCs are usually a specific user problem confined to a small minority. Might be able to make it work, though, as it would reduce frustration all around.

Shortening game time: I've been considering shortening the time required for a round win from 60 seconds to 50 or 45 depending on the number of people in the arena. With 40 people playing, it becomes much more difficult to hold both flags for that long, and seems like the games can really drag on. Any opinion on this?

[Vergilius]

JUMPSPACE:
all it does is allow some jav/x to warp directly into the fr, behind any defense, with no penalty.

Just clarifying weasel doesnt have this (as far as i know), I have other ways of sneaking in .
It's a bastard ship, but not that big of a bastard

Speaking of which: VB. Sometimes when i get the VB bonus, it awards me twice. SO, a first time when the nme dies after killing me, and a second time, when it dies again. Is it normal (like a penalty that affects them again after they died) or a little glitch too?

[roxxkatt]

Also, you'll just have to get used to the . commands, Cheese... it'll be faster after you get the hang of it.

when i want to do ANYTHING with the bot, i type ::! first
having to look, backspace, then ., then -o, really sucks.
it was actually much better as it was...

Note that you can reset the AFK timer by saying anything in pubchat,

i thought so too, but got the kick msg basically WHILE pubchatting.

jumpspace/warps

i dont like this, i think its just lame/retarded, and requires too much effort to get working properly.
all it does is allow some jav/x to warp directly into the fr, behind any defense, with no penalty.

warping teammates

this is an ops ability already, i dont think it needs any addition to it...
terrs have already noticed ive been warping them around ;D


NOTE:
I'm afraid I won't be testing Distension for a week, or more.
Left_Eye has decided to ban me for whatever the hell reason she's dreamt up, (doubleclienting?) and due to the name-based nature of Distension, I wont be participating. Which also means ops must go untested for another week

Ill be hanging around in tw, but you wont recognize me anyway =P
As if id allow myself to be banned for some stupid reason.

have fun without me!

[Viruk]

Need more info from people who get DC'd by lag: what does the message say?

I do not remember actually being DC'd by lag.

Rarely my PC/Continuum crashes and I have to restart, reconnect and reenter Distension and lose participation regardless of !lagout. AFAIK this is not caused by anything specific to Distension. I suspect sloppy Continuum coders, Microsoft and spiders crawling around inside my PC! :P

Sometimes my connection dies and I have to reconnect and reenter Distension and lose participation regardless of !lagout. AFAIK this is not caused by anything specific to Distension. My telecom/internet SPs are prime suspects here.

Sometimes I can continue playing but all the bots stop responding so I do not get rearmed and cannot check ?lag. There is no message. I have to leave and reenter Distension (I usually reconnect first in case the problem is my connection and lose participation regardless of !lagout). I have seen other players asking if the bot has gone down so I believe I am not alone in this.
I do not recall this happening in pub although rarely I have seen bots stop responding combined with seeing other laggy spike-like effects and then getting specced/disconnected shortly afterwards. Because of this, comments from other players and the fact that it usually happens at peak times I suspect this it is somehow caused by how the Distension arena handles lag. Curiously I have never noticed any extreme laggy affects with the gameplay though.

The only lag messages I remember seeing in distension is when it won't let me out of spec in the first place due - I suspect a combination of peak-time lag combined with the effect of just having downloaded Distension updates.

Rarely I accidentally unplug my PC/connection and lose participation. I suspect this is because I am a messy fool who cannot be bothered to tidy away the cables! :P

Overall none of this comes close to making the game unplayable, unenjoyable or unrewarding but combine it and work out how much participation and rank lost: Ouch!

[edit]This was all before the !lagout changes dug made recently. Had no problems in the last game so cannot tell if anything has improved[/edit]

Not sure if I also lost ship rank as well as I didn't upgrade anything significant I can remember.

I now remember I had over 1700 energy on my terrier and it too had gone down to 1650 so must have been a general data loss somewhere. It can't have been a bad one or everyone would have been screaming about it. Perhaps it failed to save at the end of a game or was restored from a backup when the bots went down or something.

[Mjollnir]

What are you shoting for as the perfect amount of time? The normal round seems to go for 30 mins, thats assuming that the other team doesn't get creamed. If the teams are evenly matched in terrs and sharks and the round is draging whats wrong with that? I find that that is the best time to play, profit sharing for support ships go through the roof as an assault ship your getting lots of RP and its better then setting bored in an empty flagroom... and the fact that it taking so long should be taken to mean that we are very close to balanceing the game, I would think. and as I said what time do you want as the perfect amount? it shouldn't really be one of those fast rounds cause one team has no fun in those short rounds cause it means that they are getting killed easily.

As to the terr if you just want to take away the ports to decrease game time it wouldn't be the best idea, a map redesign would work the best...(and I'm not saying I want that) and terrs don't start with unlimited portals they regenerate them so at the start they have only a few portals so when attacking a terr thats been in base for awhile ya it will appear as if they have unlimited ports but the terr attacking doesn't so its kind of like the terr is entrenching himself, something to think about.

2kill

Long games was only one reason. I don't know what an ideal time would be but sometimes the games take forever and I personally don't enjoy games that take that long. The fact that Terriers get so many portals simply makes them too powerful in my opinion. And I know they can't upgrade "unlimited portals" but they practically have unlimited portals anyway because it is extremely cheap to get a lot of them.

[2kill]

I also still think they shouldn't get so many portals. They were surviving fine even before the portal increase. I don't mind them being strong and hard to kill but unlimited portals is too much. The games have been getting too long lately and reducing portals would also help with this. I don't want to see the Terriers get too weak or not fun to play but I think there are other ways to accomplish these goals.

What are you shoting for as the perfect amount of time? The normal round seems to go for 30 mins, thats assuming that the other team doesn't get creamed. If the teams are evenly matched in terrs and sharks and the round is draging whats wrong with that? I find that that is the best time to play, profit sharing for support ships go through the roof as an assault ship your getting lots of RP and its better then setting bored in an empty flagroom... and the fact that it taking so long should be taken to mean that we are very close to balanceing the game, I would think. and as I said what time do you want as the perfect amount? it shouldn't really be one of those fast rounds cause one team has no fun in those short rounds cause it means that they are getting killed easily.

As to the terr if you just want to take away the ports to decrease game time it wouldn't be the best idea, a map redesign would work the best...(and I'm not saying I want that) and terrs don't start with unlimited portals they regenerate them so at the start they have only a few portals so when attacking a terr thats been in base for awhile ya it will appear as if they have unlimited ports but the terr attacking doesn't so its kind of like the terr is entrenching himself, something to think about.

2kill

[Mjollnir]

Ideas such as this -- max amount of bursts you can get being the number of upgrades you purchased -- are great, but pretty unreliable as far as client-side bots are concerned. This is why SS is so annoying to develop for client-side. There are too many limitations, and we're doing the best to push them. There's a chance that including checks *might* work, but the likelihood that it will work reliably is very, very small. The problem I see is something like this:

1. Bot gets player's position and hopefully weapons data, including number of bursts. Player has 2 bursts. Bot updates player's record to say 2 bursts.
2. Bot switches to another player, out of radar range of the player. This means the bot is not receiving position or weapon data about the player any longer.
3. Player fires both bursts. Player burst count: 0. Bot burst count on record for player: 2.
4. Bot spectates someone else who is in radar range of the player. Now the bot is receiving position data for the player again. However, if the person doesn't fire their bullets or use a port or the like, it's possible only small position packets are sent, which if ExtraPositionData is not set to true in the arena settings (as it usually is not, to save bandwidth), contain no data about number of bursts and so on. Bot keeps burst count record for player at 2.
5. Regeneration is checked. Player has 2 bursts on record; no need to give them another as they have only 2 burst upgrades. Meanwhile player is overwhelmed by massive spider gangrape and curses their luck at not having been prized at the critical moment.

They have a lot of portals because nobody has yet given a good alternative. I've heard increased energy, and I've thought about some kind of on-call shield ability much like the spider's energy tank, but I'm not sure those are the best ways to go. Opinions on what to do with the Terr? I don't want to hear "too many ports"; just something that we could give instead.

Also, made a change: apparently there has been a problem with people having to become a 1st class cadet twice, and have not been able to reach Officer to get Ops. !status now includes info on how many battles you have won. It includes a note about 50% or more participation, as this is required for the battle to be added to your record as a win.

One idea that came from talking in the Distension chat is an ability to warp your teammates next to you. It would be extremely useful in situations where you are about to lose and you need all the help at one spot. Maybe lvl 1 ability would only warp all ships of the chosen type and lvl 2 would warp all teammates? Something like that. Level 3 for enemy warps or whatever? Or lvl 1 warps one named player, lvl 2 warps all ships of the same type and lvl 3 warps all teammates and lvl4 warps whatever. Just playing around with the idea. The ability would have a timer just like the EMP-ability.

Other ideas were giving Terr cloak (should be a very high level ability if at all), mines, chance of shields or a repel (one suggestion was 50% chance of repel and 50% chance of burst on a succesful regeneration).