Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[Singularity]

I played again yesterday for the first time in a while again in a spider and my old weasel with a decent rank.

First thing: The spider ranks up really easy compared with the weasel, even at level 10 or so I found it easy to get loads of kills and streaks. Also it's energy is so high it is not difficult to shoot 6 shots in a row at a relatively low level (which kills most other ships in a flagroom). You may need to make it start lower and the upgrade effects bigger so the increase in strenght is more linear than it is atm. The difference between a level 10 and level 20 spider is relatively small.

Played with the weasel also as a suicider on terrs. I find it hard to get a 1:1 rec or above with it due to my strategy, as usually all other ships (even those half my level) outmanoever my weasel easily 1 on 1, even though I put all my UP in movement and level 2 bullets. It did work pretty well I have to admit, the rocket seems te be balanced now as well, it's fast but doesn't allow you to rocketrape someone from all acros the flagroom. Not sure which terrs I kept killing all the time, but I wonder how it looked like from their perspective. The only thing I feel may improve the weasel is making it either recharge a little bit faster or let it have a bit more energy stock, as I noticed all level 1 strays that hit me make it impossible to do anything.

Notes on other ships; The lancaster looked really lame today, I saw a bunch of people playing it and not one of them posed a serious threat, not even wagyo (I think) who was around level 40? Movements were slow and time between firing was excessive.
Javs, Ship looks fine, but blast radius is ENORMOUS, similar to a lev bomb in pub (even at level 2). Not sure if this usable, B Rabbit seem to get loads of tks due to it as well, but could also clear out entire FR with 1 bomb.
Warbird: Seemed ok, insanely fast (can't catch up with them to kill em) but shots not overpowered. Would say warbird is now balanced (hard to kill, but doesn't rack up the kills as fast as a spider)
Sharks: Seemed ok, but cool down time between bombs was a bit too short I would say. Laying a whole line of bombs was a bit too easy. Availability of repels seemed a bit on the high side, but not too bad.
Ters: Seemed to be able to port all the time, not too bad though. More concerned about the speed of their shots. Terrs can take on weasels easily if they are uncloaked and don't have a rocket.
Leviathan: Not really sure about them. With the Jav bombs now being so strong I would pick a jav over a leviathan all the time, what makes it worse is that the Lev EMPs everyone, but doesn't kill them, costing you needed XP. Not many of them around as well, mostly javs, so apparantly other people share my opinion a little bit. Maybe solution is to make the blast radius of the lev bigger and the jav smaller.

[Aquatiq]

Errrr don't think antiwarp should be included in basing at all, if it is, make it drain entire energy in like 5 seconds, make it something people would flip on at what they believe to be opportune times, only.

[maddack]

Alright so I played seriously. In the terrier.

7 portals? Sweet Moses! Very easy to stay alive in FR especially since I don't use guns at all anymore.

UNTIL

I used assist and had to play against acidbomber. This just killed all the fun because I was antiwarped all the time. For me the difference was HUGE between playing against a team without antiwarper vs a team with one.

I wonder if anyone wants to play terr if there are 2 or 3 spiders antiwarping the entire flagroom?

What mjoll said. Either drain energy so it has to be used wisely or reduce radius. I'd like it if the antiwarping spider had to stay back, not assaulting, then he can switch between anting terr while teammates get it and attack when not.

[Mjollnir]

About today's test:

- I never got jumpspace thingies for my jav with 2 upgrades. It was never charged.

- I got OPS today. I couldn't use it until after I had won another battler AFTER getting my officer rank. I also got a rank for my ship at the same time so that might be another trigger for it.

- OPS was kinda weird. First as I was level 0 (and had no UPs) I couldn't do anything but use the radar so I had to basically just wait to get profit sharing. Then I tried manually entering a ship and it allowed me to fly around as a lvl 0 ship and be OPS at the same time. I think I actually got RP for the OPS by getting kills with my ship... Anyway, it was way more fun playing the ship than sitting in spec waiting for communication points :P
I think I also lost participation once by trying to change ships while playing around with OPS. I don't remember what I did exactly but maybe I changed from a ship to OPS or the other way around.

- Spiders are still too powerful. I actually got decent kills with my lvl 0 spider. Anyway, they feel like they could use a little tuning.

[2kill]

umm this is during free time in the test and we just won and my !status did update to tell me of how many ranks I need to level up to cadet 1st class this is the second time this happened does it not update during a test?

I was testing with ver and they need to be faster at least the outside of base cause your sitting there just getting killed before you get warped

test just ended and I didn't get a chance to !status to see if it changed from 6 more wins needed will check next test

[Vergilius]

found the warp spots - cool! but any way to make em work faster, like as soon as you touch (like barwarp in javs) or has it specific reason for being delayed?

[gdugwyler]

I don't yet have time to respond to everything here, but I'll be sure to get back to it. Thanks for putting a lot of thought into improving the game.

Changes:

• Max 2 Sharks per team. Have to see how this goes.
• More warp points: in center, warp from center-facing side of base entrance "ball" to the other. In very center, warp from bottom of bar to closest roof, and back. In base, warp from lower side shoulders to mid side shoulders of other base, and back.
• Jav JumpSpace ability. This is untested and may not work properly. It will allow the Jav to make small hops in space based on the direction and speed in which one is travelling. If it doesn't work this time around, give it a test or two to get it going. There is protection against going outside the arena.

[Viruk]

Terrier:

I am a relatively inexperienced terrier player, as I normally prefer to play an assault ship. I played recently as a base terrier and found it very easy to level. The support bonus and the collecting of ports and bursts make it suitable for defense without needing to suicide burst (although even a single burst is quite sufficient for this purpose if you are so inclined). The ship upgrades make it easy to become quite powerful defensively. Since it is likely to be a prime target it needs it.
It can sometimes get a bit boring if no-one attacks though and I don't get the quite same satisfaction killing mostly with unaimed bursts than I would killing with aimed shots. The RP is welcome though! :P

Weasel:

I have played this ship a little lately but not got cloak or stealth yet. It seems fairly fun to play since it can use its small size to sneak through gaps into the FR and hide behind very small protrusions. It is also gives great satisfaction when you hit such a small target dead on.
Its low energy makes it very vulnerable to bombs including friendly fire.
The slow bullets mean that killing isn't easy and of course there are now plenty of ships capable of tanking L2 bullets these days.

Even with the support bonus I found leveling this ship difficult. However I do not think this is a bad thing. People who love the weasel will play for the fun and the special abilities and will start leveling their weasels earlier when there are fewer yellow bombs and tanks about. Perhaps with fewer switching restrictions people will switch to one briefly in order to help achieve a needed break and then switch back to their regular ship. I also felt I was struggling a bit with my first upgrades to get everything up to a reasonable level.

In my view a weasel should have a good chance of killing a similar level terrier if no-one is helping to guard it. As long as radar is available and affordable to key ships the weasel should be an effective assassin. I would hate to see weasels with reps - this is the role of the shark and the main reason why shark numbers were limited. I also don't think players need to be encouraged to play all ships equally, especially non-essential specialist ships like the weasel. I am not convinced that it should be made easier for weasels (or any other ship) to break a hold. I see no problem with giving extra bonuses to encourage weasels to assassinate terriers or those with high streaks but it seems against the weasel's role for it to go for streaks.

The vengeful b*stard ability does not seem very powerful right now so perhaps it should have extra things at high level. The main purpose of it must surely be to discourage base terriers from using their 'always on' radar to hunt weasels down and it should be adequate for that providing the terrier is under threat.

Lancaster:

I concentrated on leveling this at first opportunity, as this was the ship I was mostly playing in pub at the time. With twin/spread L2 bullets it was easy to get kills in FR battles in those early days when few could tank them. I can see why it makes sense to make them a special unlock and give some of the other ships a head start. I opted for prioritizing energy and recharge as much as possible but have found the ship flew too sluggishly to get full enjoyment from it so relented a little and gave it more speed and thrust. Despite nearing the limits of the speed/thrust upgrades and being well past the level 25 level where it ought to be stock equivalent, it still feels inferior to fly compared to the stock lanc or my other fighters at similar or lower levels. It still seems to be an effective killer although whenever I have been upgrading I always felt I was struggling to keep everything upgraded to a decent level which is not something I feel so much for the other fighters. Perhaps it should have more speed/thrust upgrades available and compensate with higher bomb/multifire costs so players have more options with it. When I can tear myself away from other ships I will try a complete rebuild and see if this helps, as this may be just me.
I believe the stock lanc to be designed primarily as a cloak-killing fighter as it has radar and a spread of bullets that is fairly effective in 1-shot killing a cloaked weasel. It might be an idea to keep this in mind rather then merely thinking of it as halfway between spider and warbird. Also another reason to lock the ship out of the game until weasels can be unlocked. The rather curious bomb upgrade that the lanc gets seems to fit the role, as it is quite handy for shooting at weasels sneaking in through the gaps in the FR wall. In most other situations the bomb seemed to be of limited use compared with the guns, which I suppose is fitting for a fighter (I think you just upgraded this so will have to try it again).
I haven't got the firebloom yet but it looks like a useful and fun area-denial weapon and its energy requirement, frequency and cost should hopefully ensure it is not too overpowered. Will it be any good against weasels though? I can imagine them sneaking between the bursts! I am slightly nervous about having so much potential random death in the FR if we ever get lots of high-ranking lancs combined with newbie sharks but so far it hasn't been too much of a problem.

Shark:

I started leveling this fairly early on in order to get some experience with support ships and also to be ready to help my team if needed. Not that I ever got around to it due to greedily and inquisitively leveling other ships!

Things will have changed a bit since I last played one. Back then the shark seemed difficult to get started: A shark with 0 to 1 reps is a sad and pitiful thing especially if they don't quickly regenerate! So much of their power is in this one special. Fortunately it has always been my experience that if you lay mines anywhere on the route to a flag; some fool will eventually run into one no matter how many gaps are ripped in your defenses by enemy sharks. At least you can make some RP defending. You just have to hope that not too many of your team are killed off by your repped and rammed mines.
Unlike the pub FR layout you cannot seal off the base by mining the approaches to the FR entrances and nor can you mine the flag directly. It is difficult for a single shark to maintain the mines on all of the FR entrances if they are under attack. On the positive side your repped mines cannot EMP your team, your own reps are as useful as ever and your mines are still effective at slowing down an enemy attack. This might be harder now there are more powerful ships around able to tank mines.
Thankfully the support bonus and the kills from mines were enough to get me leveled up at a reasonable if somewhat pedestrian rate. I also managed the odd kill with my puny shark gun - so good to have a weapon you can use without risking TKing or wasting valuable mines!
I have always hated FR battles that hinge on the number of reps available to either side so am pleased to see shark limits in place even if this may be infuriating to some who really love to shark.

Tactical Operations:

I have huge reservations about this. What sort of player would want to spend their time in spec spamming their team and pressing buttons? Do I want that sort of person on my team or even in the same arena? Will I turn into that sort of person if I become a Tac Op? Do any of these abilities actually require any skill to use? Do any of these abilities bring fun to the game or do they just bring annoyance? Are these people going to have power over me and if so, how are they accountable to me and the rest of the team? At the moment if someone does something that annoys me I have a fair chance to kill them until I feel better (although this is expensive if I have to defect to do so). How do I kill someone sitting in spec?

It is too early to tell if it will be an interesting and valuable addition or a complete nightmare that will annoy and harass people out of the arena.

[Viruk]

Warbird:

The Warbird has always been the best dogfighter/sniper in TW as well as one of my favorite ships. With the large FR in Distension it has plenty of room to maneuvre and its speed makes it useful flanking outside too. I tested it fairly recently and found its L2 bullets still fairly effective against most foes. It seemed to fly well and upgrading its thrust to beyond the stock level was quite easy - this meant I could often avoid afterburner and so keep my energy at max until firing. This great dodging potential combined with high speed mean I can often survive attacks and put pressure on the enemy. I cannot reliably kill everyone now until I get L3. Such a joy to fly though!

The Warbird appears to have very few specials. Not tried the multifire as it didn't look that useful and anyway half the fun of flying warbird is getting that single bullet bang on target. I tried the single decoy but its duration was too short to use strategically and its use was so limited tactically that I felt it wasn't worth the high cost so I scrapped it. This might be different if you could make it so decoys moved more convincingly but perhaps they can get a bit spammy so best left as is. Apparently they also get a bomb/mine designed so most people are expected not to use it - which might explain why I do not recall encountering it often enough to form an opinion. I rather hope the thor is similarly underpowered as I still recall with shame my rather lame tactic of eagerly thoring clumps of combatants in bases when I started playing Continuum in SWR. Keep me from temptation!

Javelin:

I haven't played this much yet. I have suffered a lot from their higher-level L2 bombs, particularly when trying to enter base. The level of TKing does not seem as high as in TW pub basing although this could be dependent on which team you are in. The FR is larger and apart from the entrances there seem to be fewer openings than the TW pub FR and since everyone will have to learn all the possible shots it is perhaps not surprising that I have seen much less roofing or domination of the FR by enemy javs outside it.

Spider:

Spiders have always been the supreme mop-up artists in TW flagrooms and the spiders in Distension are no exception. I have little problem getting kills in my spider despite coming back to it fairly late in the test. I have seen lots of death spewing out from high ranking spiders in recent tests and am concerned they may be a little overpowered at higher levels but I am not sure. My own is still too low level to test this.

Levi:

The pub version of this ship is so badly designed that basers had to have special sanctuary arenas created to avoid them. I am glad to see that the Distension version seems to work as a unique basing ship. Its specialty seems to be fast EMP bombs and a strong ability to tank bullets. I found the ship fun to play although fairly slow to level. Its EMP bomb ought to provide good support for both attacking and defending although it seems difficult to work out a balance between TKing and waiting around uselessly when defending in a crowded base. Although skeptical when I first discovered that this ship had a support bonus I now see it makes sense since some of its power is based on EMPing rather than killing. I am not sure it was right to remove the support bonus as this will mean the likely way to compensate will be to risk more TKs and losses due to friendly fire EMPs.

[Viruk]

Excellent! Finally I can post here.

Firstly I would like to say: Great game! Best new arena I have enjoyed in Continuum for a long while!

Here are my impressions and experiences with the odd suggestion thrown in:


Most ships appear roughly based on their stock, pub counterparts. This continuity makes the arena feel a rightful part of TW. Newcomers from TW will have some idea of what to expect. There is potential to encourage players from outside to join in other TW arenas. The special abilities not found in TW pub seem to be mostly sympathetic to the role of the ships and I have seen nothing massively overpowered yet.
One of the things I like most about the game is the fact that the gap between low and high level ships is not so great to make any battle a foregone conclusion. Even the highest have to watch their back and will likely die if badly outnumbered!

The combination of leveling and basing should work well. Having your kills count for something is a great hook that will draw people into the arena. Inevitably as your level gets higher and it is harder to progress, the attraction of this will diminish but with 9 different ships to try (if you count Tac-Ops as a ship) and a good basing game, it should keep most people interested for a while and there will always be a few who just *have* to get the best ship. Naturally, with beta time rationed to a few hours most weekdays, people will to be much more eager to play it than if it was on 24/7 but I can still see this being very popular if released as a permanent arena even with no RP multiplier.

The downside is that you have a strong motivation to selfishly gain kills rather than help your team and this is even worse in the beta as you are motivated by the desire to test the various ships as well as to become powerful. Although there are mechanisms in place to limit this, I still find I play the game with a completely different mindset than I would in a normal basing arena and in some ways this is less fun.

Graphics:

I don't know whether all this is achievable but:
Graphics should be functional if you want the arena to be playable. They mostly seem to work at the moment.
Graphics should look at least as good as the standard pub graphics if you want to attract players. Mostly they are as good as or better. Some things still look a bit iffy (special icons).
Graphics should work well with out-of-the-box settings if you want the arena to avoid looking amateurish to your newbies. They don't yet. (white background on entry)
Graphics should work with all settings if you want to avoid annoyance and complaints. They don't yet. (radar needs transparent background)
Graphics should ideally look good with all settings. Not so right now, although it only looks slightly crappy in 8-bit. You could live with it.
Graphics should be functional even if you are color-blind. Not sure how to turn my display black and white to test this.
Graphics should ideally create a unique ambience that suits the arena theme. They don't really but then most other arenas don't either.
Somewhere it should let you know which settings work best in order to get the best out the zone. Needs to be written at A1 if not already.

TKs:

TKing cannot be avoided to some extent but many of us hate it when it happens to us. When you are TKd the damage done to the team is the same as if an enemy had killed you plus the extra damage to the killer's relationship with you and your team. Basically I think the minimum standard penalty for TKing should reflect this but I would want to avoid making that strained relationship worse by allowing teammates to punish each other individually. Save the fighting for the enemy!

Deliberate TKing should be handled by reporting it as usual.

My suggestion for dealing with non-deliberate TKing would be to ensure that the standard penalty for TKing is an RP penalty exactly equal to the amount an enemy of the TKer's level would have got if he had killed you, including terrier-killing, high-rank caps, streak-ending etc. It should also end the TKers streak if they have one. Would be nice to see this penalty in the 'You have been TKd message'. I would oppose any automatic ship-based reduction since any ship with a bomb or mine is capable of sloppy or inconsiderate TKing. I would oppose any penalty to the end of round bonus, as it may sometimes be the right tactic to help your team win.
Most frequent TKers will quickly realize that they are not going to level very quickly with a harsh RP penalty and will change their ways or find another ship. They may also struggle to upgrade to the more dangerous TKing weapons in the first place.

Since some players find TKing more acceptable than others they should be able to message the bot to select a TK multiplier which would apply to the penalty of anyone who TKs them. I would suggest Forgiving 50%, Tolerant 100% (default), Intolerant 150%. Make it so this can be changed frequently but not so much that people could keep on actively changing it as the 'friendly' bomb heads towards them! This would mean if you were fed up with being TKd you could switch to Intolerant level and make it really painful for the TKers. If you wanted to operate in a bomber's firing line despite the risk or help all your teammates to level you could switch to Forgiving.

Since we all know that a few TKs are necessary or completely our own fault there should also be a !forgive command that - if used in the next 30s - refunds the last TK penalty to the TKer with an appropriate message. This should be time-limited to prevent players automatically using it every time which could encourage dodgy bombing as well as strain the bot.

Multiplier:

It would be good to see the beta RP multiplier factored into the appropriate penalties and bonuses so this sort of thing can be implemented and tested. It would also be handy to have the option of incrementing a multiplier as you get towards the end of a season which would allow people who join halfway through a chance to catch up a little and help high-rank ships to make more visible progress.

[2kill]

Terrs: I am starting to get worried about the offensive modifications of the Terriers. If we give them any more offensive abilities they are going to kamikaze even more. Even now, people like Ze_Punisher are a pain since they do not want to Terr, they just wanna kill people in a Terr. It would be okay if they did it once in a while but that is how they always play. And since people see that we have a high level Terrier, nobody is going to switch to their low level Terrs, just to be a base / attack Terr (since we supposedly already have one).

lol I thought I was one of those terrs
You know I was just thinking about what you said and to help terrs be fun but safe you could replace the L2 upgrade for guns (or something else cause I do like those guns...) with a bomb somewhere in between the lancs and jav (with no bounce I think) and give them a big streak bonus to get terrs wanting to live longer just some thoughts.

2kill

[Mjollnir]

It doesn't now. Maybe at the dawn of time it did? I've been playing for 8 years and I don't remember it ever having a repel... then again I didn't play it back then and didn't really watch them.

Ideas: now I know this won't be liked and you could discard it because I do terr, but the anti with L2 guns is doom for terrs. It got really annoying for me, my only hope was that the spider made a bad shot this doesn't help the basing aspect at all its not so annoying in pub cause the spiders L1 guns doesn't kill you outright so you have time to run. What I suggest is that it’s changed to a slow drain so that you just have to survive a bit then you can warp away and if the spider had L1 guns, it could have anti and be able to take some shots at you.

Terrs: I know that awhile back we were trying to make them more fun to play, and I know that you made them have more offensive abilities but why not give them an offensive ability that keeps them safe? (aka bombs, thors)

you have my permission to discard what I say as trying to sup-up my favourite ship (you maybe right), but keep in mind that I don't want to be playing terr usually most times I am forced cause no one else wants to terr so think about it.

2kill

Weasel repels: Sounds like a nice idea. Often times there is no shark and this would give the team a chance to rep those annoying entrance mines.

Anti: I agree that the anti is extremely powerful and should drain the spider's energy.

Terrs: I am starting to get worried about the offensive modifications of the Terriers. If we give them any more offensive abilities they are going to kamikaze even more. Even now, people like Ze_Punisher are a pain since they do not want to Terr, they just wanna kill people in a Terr. It would be okay if they did it once in a while but that is how they always play. And since people see that we have a high level Terrier, nobody is going to switch to their low level Terrs, just to be a base / attack Terr (since we supposedly already have one).

Sharks: I whined a bit about them yesterday. It seems the shark limit / team didn't work properly because of people switching ships. In my opinion 3 sharks in one flagroom is way too much. They dominate the whole battle and there is nothing anyone can do. Even if both teams had 3 in the same flagroom it would be a pointless battle of repels. Even two sharks is very hard to do anything against, in the same FR.

I would be all for limiting the amount of sharks / team drastically. Something like 2 sharks at maximum would be fine in my opinion. That would give both flagrooms one shark and sometimes 2 when attacking / defending. Now that the flagroom only has two entrances it is very easy for a single shark to mine up the entrances and defend the flagroom.

One-flag-game: Someone suggested that we could use only one flagroom when there isn't enough people playing. I like this idea. This would only happen when there is like <=16 people playing (that would be equal to maximum teams of 8 just like in ?go base). The battles can take forever when the teams do not have many people and using only one flagroom would make the battles a lot more exciting. This could simply be done by using doors to block the entrance to the other base and changing the warp coordinates of the other team to the same base with the other one.

[2kill]

Repel is an interesting idea. I didn't know pub Weasels presently had them. Might have to consider it.

It doesn't now. Maybe at the dawn of time it did? I've been playing for 8 years and I don't remember it ever having a repel... then again I didn't play it back then and didn't really watch them.

Ideas: now I know this won't be liked and you could discard it because I do terr, but the anti with L2 guns is doom for terrs. It got really annoying for me, my only hope was that the spider made a bad shot this doesn't help the basing aspect at all its not so annoying in pub cause the spiders L1 guns doesn't kill you outright so you have time to run. What I suggest is that it’s changed to a slow drain so that you just have to survive a bit then you can warp away and if the spider had L1 guns, it could have anti and be able to take some shots at you.

Terrs: I know that awhile back we were trying to make them more fun to play, and I know that you made them have more offensive abilities but why not give them an offensive ability that keeps them safe? (aka bombs, thors)

you have my permission to discard what I say as trying to sup-up my favourite ship (you maybe right), but keep in mind that I don't want to be playing terr usually most times I am forced cause no one else wants to terr so think about it.

2kill

[gdugwyler]

The Weasel abilities sound interesting. While it's not all that helpful to the Weasel, I especially like making Vengeful Bastard perform some of the strange ops abilities. The TeK bonus might also be a great idea. Increasing streak RP might tilt the playing style slightly, but is worth considering. The prey idea would be a bit trickier, though, and might change drastically how the ship is played.

Repel is an interesting idea. I didn't know pub Weasels presently had them. Might have to consider it.

[Mjollnir]

may i suggest something about the cloaker: make it the fun assasin ship it used to be in pub before staff *cought* messed it up into a wanabe basing ship. imho a cloaker doesnt have to keep up with a spider kill or ratio wise, just make sure its fun to play and has its chance to get RP.

so what was so much fun about the x? it was getting bounty, laming people, and hunting people. so why dont u improve on that and

• give x an unholy high streak rp bonus
• give x a prey which gives unholy bonus rp when killed, but inform the prey it is hunted
• increase the lameness of vengefull bastard with shroud, a chance to *kill or something similar
• give x an addidtinal bonus for teks

and please give x a repel at some point, half of the cloakers power was to repel mines into the enemys face.

a great jav skill would be to unprice every repel in a defined range once in a while like by messaging !!, duno how traffic and lag effective this would be but in theory with all the sharks around that would rock. Or a skill that warps a shark by messaging the name to the bot. something like that

Good ideas. Naturally, if these things are going to be added, they need to be balanced well. The Weasel ideas would probably add a lot more fun to playing one. The only thing I do not want to see is the vengeful bastard doing *kill because that would be horrible (unless you mean the ship actually goes BOOM as the effect but I don't think that's possible).
I also think the Jav idea is pretty interesting, although I am not sure if the Jav has any upgrade slots left. Another way of adding it would be to give the Jav that ability automatically after a certain level.