Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[2kill]

Id say, spawn them with ports, not with bursts. The ports give them a bigger chance to survive, without them bursting away entire fr. Any bullet upgrades they had, give it. Stronger bullets require more nrg to shoot, and a terr getting pod'd back in can use all the energy it has, while bursting costs none.

and x rader...I spawned sometimes without it very annoying

2kill

[Birthday Party]

The two tests yesterday had very long rounds. I think people got frustrated because, on the one hand, they wanted to do something else, maybe homework, who knows, but on the other hand, they didn't want to miss out on all the RP bonus if they won, so they were in a sort of bind.

Maybe a different sort of criteria for winning could be implemented. Something like, when a freq has a sector hold, the timer counts up to the time it takes to win (one minute, two minutes, whatever), so if they reach that time they do win, like it is now with the countdown. But, if and when the other freq has a sector hold, it subtracts the time from the freq which has accumulated time for their win, and if that other freq holds it long enough to subtract all the time the other freq has accumulated, then the timer will start adding to their side of the timer, and so it goes.

This way, if a freq is consistently holding freq and only being occasionally interrupted, they will still win eventually, whereas with the current system occasional interruptions can drag a round on for ages.

I'm sure there's problems with this idea.

[DankNuggets]

[QUOTE=Birthday Party;633017]
Maybe a different sort of criteria for winning could be implemented. Something like, when a freq has a sector hold, the timer counts up to the time it takes to win (one minute, two minutes, whatever), so if they reach that time they do win, like it is now with the countdown. But, if and when the other freq has a sector hold, it subtracts the time from the freq which has accumulated time for their win, and if that other freq holds it long enough to subtract all the time the other freq has accumulated, then the timer will start adding to their side of the timer, and so it goes.
QUOTE]

this sounds like an interesting idea, though it might be hard to find a good time to count up to

[Vergilius]

Dangerous post ahead - and tell me if im going the lane of 'my ship is weak, you are strong, i want more powerzzz'- but I kinda feel that the levi that Zei is flying is getting a bit overpowered. It is easier to kill a terr than him. Hell, i can cope with every ship in base. I am not saying that I am weak, far from. But when a ship with huge agility, multifire (doesnt even need to be l3 bullets, l2 is enough), an enourmous emp bomb, humongous recharge and a port faces my lvl 48 weasel (not a weak ship), there is absolutely NO chance of killing him.
I either get emped to minimalistic energy (without him having to aim his bombs at all), get hit by his multi or outmaneuvered. I can cope with that - hey, every ship has its benefits, right. But when i finally DO get past that, and (assumig he doesnt port away) get a hit, he simply eats it cause he has so much energy and incredible fast recharge. I kinda feel like a Toddler fighting Mike Tyson there: I only can beat him if he is already on life support when 4 other tough guys already bashed in on him.

I fully agree that some ships should be stronger than others, but zei's lev is just.. invincible for the weasel. Which i feel isnt correct, since there always should be a chance for a disadvantaged ship (from about the same level, ofcourse) to beat the stronger one. Which i feel is way too small as it is now.

[meddi]

Hah Zei's levi is pretty mean. I can shoot him with a L2 shot and he can not only take it, but fire his L2s back right away. Not to mention he has ports and moves around like a freaking gnat on E.

[moltenrock]

I think Zei is afraid of me.

Lololol.

J/K Zei. <3

[Zeimonster]

Dangerous post ahead - and tell me if im going the lane of 'my ship is weak, you are strong, i want more powerzzz'- but I kinda feel that the levi that Zei is flying is getting a bit overpowered. It is easier to kill a terr than him. Hell, i can cope with every ship in base. I am not saying that I am weak, far from. But when a ship with huge agility, multifire (doesnt even need to be l3 bullets, l2 is enough), an enourmous emp bomb, humongous recharge and a port faces my lvl 48 weasel (not a weak ship), there is absolutely NO chance of killing him.
I either get emped to minimalistic energy (without him having to aim his bombs at all), get hit by his multi or outmaneuvered. I can cope with that - hey, every ship has its benefits, right. But when i finally DO get past that, and (assumig he doesnt port away) get a hit, he simply eats it cause he has so much energy and incredible fast recharge. I kinda feel like a Toddler fighting Mike Tyson there: I only can beat him if he is already on life support when 4 other tough guys already bashed in on him.

I fully agree that some ships should be stronger than others, but zei's lev is just.. invincible for the weasel. Which i feel isnt correct, since there always should be a chance for a disadvantaged ship (from about the same level, ofcourse) to beat the stronger one. Which i feel is way too small as it is now.

He he, made me grin. Anyway, I cant have ALL those upgrades at the same time (shit load of energy, fast recharge, portal, L3 bomb, fast maneuvering ship) because they all are very fking expensive for me.

To have 2500 energy, I need 20*10=200 ups, which equals to 20 ranks. Not so bad yet, ok. For full recharge I must get 12 upgrades in total on average of about 17 ups for one (just a lucky guess, but the last upgrades cost 40 ups or whatever). So that's 200 ups more. Now i've used up 40 ranks worth of ups to get full energy and recharge. Then we need to upgrade the bomb of course. That takes about 80 ups to get to level 3 (last level is 55-60 ups). Sooo, 48 levels used. Then what, maybe some speed and thrusters because i'm the slowest ship in the game if I dont get any upgrades on those. Speed ups cost 15 each which is ok. Thrusters, instead, are more expensive than anything else on this ship. First upgrade doesnt cost much yet (10 ups or whatever), 2nd one for ~20, third one for 40, fourth one for 53 and the fifth and final for 60 ups.

Now where was I? 48 ranks used and I'm level 54 so i have 60 ups left. I can buy 2 speed upgrades and 2 thruster upgrades. Then I'm done. Portal would cost 43 ups, multi 18 ups, blue bullet 40+ ups, first upgrade of rotation 9 ups (i almost always take this one too). Then there are xradar, decoy and stealth which all cost some 15-20 ups.

The point is, I cant simultaneously be a superior tank and move faster than any terr, own a portal and L3 bombs yet at this level. I have to carefully choose which upgrades to put my ups on even though I'm the highest level non-terr around.

There are many ways to build a levi and I saw you get rather frustrated yesterday when I put all my ups on energy and I cant say I wouldnt have enjoyed the situation. :wub:

However, most of the time you'll find me in the ship with all the speed upgrades I can get, ~2k energy and a lousy recharge - and of course a portal.

[Vergilius]

Zei; please dont look at this as a personal attack on you . Im just saying that when you have upgrades like that, with full nrg, recharge and stuff (as you tried last test) that there is no way for me to kill you. If you dont shoot first, there just is no way to kill you. Even if I am lvl 100; and you 54, since i cant upgrade bullets anymore, or bombs, or thors. You dont even need to upgrade your bullets for that.. And that doesnt feel right. The only way i can imagine is to hit you with l3, have a big ass recharge myself, and hit you directly after with another, before you gained enough nrg again. And lets face it, the way your lev can move around i only have a chance of that happening when youre afk. The way i have balanced my ship now, i think im even going to have a hard time killing you if you ARE afk :grin:. And to alter all my settings, just so i can kill the lev in base? Nah, not worth it :P.After all I am a terr hitman (at least, thats the weasel's goal, right) and not a lev hitman.

[jngy slate]

I didn't know there were ships that could have enough energy to survive L3 bullets. o_O And weasels are not the terr killers. Why do people keep saying that? It's the opposite, the terr is the weasel's enemy since it can get xradar at low levels and cheap, and it also doesn't use up any energy. That day, I'm not sure why I sucked so much and you were able to kill me like 10 times. But that shouldn't be enough to declare the weasel the terr hitman. I was just having a bad day.

The weasel's job right now is more of getting the flag. But that's pretty hard with the 5 seconds, is it 5? It does an even better jav in distracting half the ships in flag room. The other team can use this to get in the flag room.

The terr hitman right now I would say are the javs, and zei. >.> I can survive zei if I just keep my distance from his shooting range. But that's tough to do when we're having a flag room battle and Zei is sitting outside right next to use firing. It's odd, in pub the ship that kills me 95% of the time is the warbird. But in distension they rarely kill me.

[Viruk]

Ship balancing again

Terrier escape pods:
Although it makes sense that an escape pod would be weaker than its ship it also seems unfair that you should spawn without any upgrade that will never recharge. A surviving base terrier may have to play without critical upgrades for some time. Ideally they should randomly be resupplied all their missing unrechargable upgrades back during a period after a respawn. Spawning with weakened weaponry would still make pods unattractive to assault terriers, especially now they get Last Breath without them. Hopefully pod use would still be limited while the penalty for those just trying to survive for their team would only be temporary.
If this is impossible then terriers probably need a tougher escape pod with no critical systems (this includes X-radar) badly downgraded.
I am still against them spawning more than once per death or starting with any more rechargables than they had when they died (although I am far more concerned about bursts than anything else).

Lancs:

Or lower the max by making the increase 15% and having it stop after 4 lvls. (ie 60% max). This way lanc still sees some low rank benefits from leeching, but it doesn't get too powerful in the mid-levels.

This seems reasonable to me but you could always add another 15% to take it up to 75% at a ridiculous price for those who just love to leech - a bit like the last burst on a terrier.

My reasoning: Leeching becomes more powerful as you upgrade energy and bullets so perhaps best to avoid anything close to a 100% option unless other high level ships have something equally powerful. Max leech should be available relatively early but be somewhat less powerful than the max super on a multifire L3 (edit: or L2 if it can't get L3) spider. This assumes the lanc is still supposed to arrive late and max out at a relatively low level.
(I am not sure what a maxed out warbird has that will match either though!)

If the lanc now seems overpowered it must only be because of high level leech and no longer being overshadowed by the spiders. Yes we now see the odd L3 lanc too but we had L3 warbirds long before this without problems. Apart from the leech and its distinctive spread fire it is hard to see anything else it excels at.

Spiders:

The higher level spiders who still have L1s feel underpowered to me, in comparison with other ships

Since the tweaks my spider certainly no longer seemed overpowered to play although I could still rank quickly. My spider's L1 single fire was often too slow-firing and weak to match the L2 fighters at dealing with individual, powerful enemies.

The more rapid-fire multifire gave me enough firepower for a fair chance to shut down an enemy before they fire (or at least fire enough to kill it). In addition the spread gave it extra chances to kill or quickly retarget and a great 'spray and pray' weapon for when in amongst the enemy. The downside is that it is less efficient, trickier to aim and encourages overfiring and rash attacking. Despite the frequent deaths the kills still let me level up quickly though. At my current skill level it is probably still a little underpowered. I suspect if I can ever learn to use multi effectively it will be OK but still only dominant when a super is triggered. (I haven't tried it with an energy tank though.)

L2 spiders? Difficult to know until I try one but clearly spiders will need this upgrade to compete at some point.

Levis:
They are supposed to be juggernauts so not surprising that most ships will have trouble killing any lev maxed out for tanking. I would certainly have a problem with them ever being powerful enough to just sit there and absorb the continuous firepower of any normal ship remotely close to their level though.

I cannot speak for high-level levis like Zei's but I know my mid-level lev is not overpowered: high energy, port, speed and fast bombing balanced by underkilling short-EMP bombs, slow-firing bullets, insufficient recharge and very poor agility.
If levis can really upgrade enough to remove some of these disadvantages while maintaining the advantages it probably would make them overpowered.
Would nice to see all the ship stats or have a go at Zei in my puny L2 weasel!

[Vergilius]

Lol jngy, the terr hitman wasnt based only on the day that i raped your ass :P . On a normal test about 15-25% of my kills are terr kills, i think that is the highest terr-kill rate of any ship. The reason terr gets xradar so cheap is just BECAUSE it is the main victim of the cloaking ship, and needs a way to defend itself, no? I can seriously say that if xradar wouldnt be available so easy for terrs.. well, prepare to get cloaked twice every minute. Weasel gets encouraged to kill terrs: its the only ship that gets a DOUBLE RP bonus if we get one, PLUS the guarantee that it cannot use its pod back in. I mean, if that arent weapons and arguments to kill terrs, what is? Dont be wrong, a strong weasel is the terr's worst enemy, right next to jav bombs. But the difference is, javs mostly just aim at the pack, and you die because someone next to you catches. Weasel on the other hand sneaks through first line of defence, and actually goes for the tek.

(and oh yeah, the reason you dont get cloaked that often is because i am on your team, and only become my victim if i (or you) !assist )

[dako]

OK, so I just got level 2 bombs in my Jav. And I must say, I feel kinda overpowered.

Hop in and immeadiately get an Unstoppable streak, hardly even trying. At one point, we held both flags and I got a teamfer (because they have no sharks :P) That netted me about 3k RP. For a single shot. I don't even have rockets and I terrs still run from me when I turn to face them.

Im not saying nerf jav or anything, but pretty much the only way im getting killed is through stray bursts or if they recruit some sharks.

47 minute total : 129 kills 57 deaths 22 Teamkills.

Yes the TKs are abundant, but when their shark actually did rep, the results were usually disasterous for my team. Note: Contrary to popular belief, very few of my TKs are due to bad jav/leving skills, and when I do make them, im usually quick to admit them.

[Viruk]

OK, so I just got level 2 bombs in my Jav. And I must say, I feel kinda overpowered.

Could be. Don't forget you were facing a really bad team that last game though. We were practically laying our heads on the block.

[jngy slate]

Vergilius the only way a weasel can kill a terr is with a rocket, that's the only way it can compete with a terr's speed. And even with one it's hard to pull it off. You have to be facing the terr. It's not like the jav rockets that allows them to turn sharply. Whenever I'm alone in the flag room and I see a weasel coming many times I don't call for help. I don't even waste my bursts because I know I can take care of it. And like I said in today's game, the terrs in distension have faster bullets that allow them to kill something without getting close. And get close is what the weasel needs to do to kill a terr. Because even a rocket can't outspeed a terr firing and warping. Or I could just choose to not fight the weasel at all, the terr is not an attacking ship. Let my teammates handle it. I'll just stay away and shoot in its direction.

The double RP and no escape pod are there to encourage a weasel to kill the terr because it's so hard specially for a weasel. If it wasn't for that weasels would probably not bother.

[Squeezer]

I haven't actually played this, but I'm all for anything that can breathe some life back into TW.

So I'm wondering has anyone considered, once this is no longer a beta of course, contacting some of the freeware websites, torrent sites, and maybe even G4 to describe the changes you guys have implemented?

Okay, maybe G4 was a little far, but a little press coverage could spread the game around and get a larger player base. If it's as hyped as people in this thread seem to be reporting, then it could be a welcome innovation.