Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[gdugwyler]

Changes:

- Reduced award given for streaks. It's still somewhat worthwhile, but not worth obsessing over any longer.
- End round bonus increased slightly.
- Added feature: if army 1 has a sector hold, and if army 2 in the process of breaking holds a flag for 1 second, 3 seconds will be added onto the clock; every additional second army 2 holds one of the flags in an attempt to break the sector, 1 second will be added onto the clock. Breaking for 10 seconds will still result in a sector break, and the clock will at that point be completely reset as normal. Mj, thanks -- marking you down for the suggestion that lead here. I still don't want to reward single flag touches, especially considering what would happen if two people were flag sitting. I think this is a good midpoint.
- WB multi energy cost reduced: forgot to mention that I did this. There was an error where it was set at 700/level. It's now 600/level, or 200 more per shot at L2 and 300 more per shot at L3. Haven't seen anyone use this much so discussion is appreciated.
- UP cost for WB and Lanc L3 guns halved; cost also reduced somewhat for Weasel: these ships are meant to be one-hit killers with their guns, and I want to make it easier for them to attain this in later levels.
- Terr now has maximum 2 bursts and maximum 3 portals. Portal costs unchanged, but the second burst is now the most expensive item in the game; at 160 UP it is not intended to be purchased, but particular players may still opt to take it. To balance, each level of Terr regeneration is now worth 10% (previously 6%, and before that 5%), and Terrs who spend more than 50% of their time in one FR or the other earn a 3% profit sharing bonus. This should award defensive Terrs while not overly inhibiting attacking Terrs, but drastically reduce the number of purely suicidals.
- In between rounds, "FREE PLAY" is active. Whether or not you hold flags is no longer of any importance for awarding kill point bonuses, so do what you want here. Spawnkill, JT/LT, duel, roof, whatever. This is designed to release some of the tension of the game, and maybe give some time to consider strategy for the next round. Free play will last 5 minutes at the end of a normal battle. At the end of a series of battles/end of the war, it'll last 10min. Also, during free play, idle status will not be checked, so feel free to use it to just sit in safe and rearrange your armament if you want. This feature may eventually segue into various minigames between rounds.


Questions:

Lanc sucking: if L3 bullets are not going to be useful, I'm willing to drop L2 dramatically, even further. L3 must be made useful, and not by additional prizing. Presently everyone has the idea that L2 should be one-hit kill at almost any level of energy upgrade. I think this is correct for the basic starting ships, but after rank 25 or so I think any ship with an average amount of energy upgrades should be able to tank L2 at full energy. This is particularly the case with a lot of ships starting with L2. Remember, L2 is not supposed to be L3. It's to give new players the ability to one-hit kill players of slightly higher rank, but against anyone with any number of ranks they shouldn't expect it to do that. Anyhow, if L2 damage drops too much I may compensate by reducing the firing cost as well.

Anti: worth/not worth it? Would like to hear some opinions.

[Mjollnir]

...
Dack Falu was playing the streak game. If he was on a streak he would warp out at the slightest sign of danger. Streaks are kind of detrimenting the team aspect of the game, since they are worth more than a war victory.

Streaks are a nice thing to have but this kind of behaviour kills the basing. He isn't teaming at all and he is just straying and warping. It's the same thing with Terrs that just burst-suicide over and over again. Anyway, I would hate to see the streaks gone so hopefully there is another solution.

On another note, since the matches seem to take forever to finish nowadays, how about we give periodic RP bonuses to the teams using some kind of a formula. Maybe give everyone on the team some amount of RP after every 5 (holds + breaks) or something like that?

[Fluffz]

Streaks are kind of detrimenting the team aspect of the game, since they are worth more than a war victory.

i approve this post. limit the rp bonus for streaks to like 200 rp/5 kills and increase winning rp?

also, if u want feedback on the lanc: imho in the current build it sucks and this time i mean it. thats because yellow bullets dont kill anymore and blue ones still - and that is unchanged - lack fire rate, cost a lot of energy, cant be shot when emped, cant be shot after attaching nor can they be shot after red or yellow bullets hit u and cost 40+ UP. the solution might be pricing rechange and energy upgrade(s) with the lvl3 upgrade. or a higher max energy. i dont think lowering lvl2 damage is a way to make them usefull. i think lvl2 should stay at 1500 Damage because 2 games ago it all felt pretty nice.

let me rephrase this: lvl3 bullets are to weak to be usefull, nerfing lvl2 to a level where it makes sense to use lvl3 instead wont fix this problem.

[roxxkatt]

only cuz u sit in nub spots

[AcidBomber]

Cheese, stop tking and emping me with your yellow bombs!

[roxxkatt]

or adding something like 10 seconds to it every time the enemy team touches the flag

great idea. id say 5 or 10...


aqua, single posting is for newbs
dont mess with my posts =(

[Mjollnir]

...
Well, first off, on a team of 10 or 15 people, you should have at least one shark. If you don't, then you should take personal responsibility and play a shark. Teamwork is going to be necessary for people to succeed. Also keep in mind that Tactical Ops in action may make it easier to bust an FR, particularly your home FR. Assaulting the other base may also help. Part of why the 10 second requirement is in is to increase the value of sharks and the level of strategy required to hold a base, rather than a person rushing in with a weasel and holding the flag for 3 seconds to interrupt what has otherwise been a solid display of teamwork from the freq that probably really does deserve to win. Basically I would like to see people jumping into a shark themselves rather than making half-hearted attempts to get in while essentially just giving the victory to the other team. The bonus now given to players changing to shark on a sharkless team of a certain size reflects this attitude.

People are pretty stubborn with their ships so too often there is no shark even with the added incentive to play one. How about reseting the win timer (back to 30 secs) or adding something like 10 seconds to it every time the enemy team touches the flag (max being 30 secs)? Currently, even if you get the flag the enemy ships will just rush the flag and the timer will instantly continue from it's original point.

[meddi]

All the shark has to do is sit and rep-wait-rep-wait-rep and keep doing it with all those zillions of repels they get.

Just !upgrade RepIgnore like mango and Dack Falu. All you L2 bullet people must have that as an option.

[Epic li]

multifire is usefull in lev, a l2 bullet for 200 energy? god damn usefull, just gota know how to use it

last time i played i could shot a l2 and survive if my enemy shot

[Aquatiq]

You can single-post from now on, cheese.

[roxxkatt]

for a lousy 3000 winning rp. cant you do something

agreed, ending rp needs to be 200% what it is now.
the losing team should still get -something- too, maybe 25% of current ending rp

why not make the max burst 1
the burst life length would equal the burst recharge length

a good idea, but i think the cap should be reduced to 2-3, not 1.

- The leviathan gets 80% recharge at 6/12 upgrades and the upgrades cost very much and only give 3% / upgrade. That feels a bit weird

its fucking expensive too, im at 10/12, and ive had to forgo stealth, portal, all speed, all thrust, multifire, and more...
its up to 25UP for next lvl... (which is almost -4- upgrades for terr)

levi multifire

the fire delay makes it WORTHLESS, not a SINGLE levi uses it.
how long is it? like 1200ms or something?
rediculous.

It is almost impossible to capture a flag if the enemy has a shark

very notable, but i would downplay the reps
ITS THE FUCKING MINES THAT ARE THE PROBLEM.
if your team doesnt have a shark, you wont win, because every damn shark puts 5 mines on the flag.

- The spiders that are lvl 40+ seem to be making a HUGE amount of RP now that they got lvl2.

increase lvl to 50.
problem fixed.
perhaps you could make recharge more expensive.

jav fire delay

looks good to me, i was fighting mjoll, and he still fires a lil fast ;D

lv3 costs

apparently this is a little high for every ship...
wzl fire cost should be a bit lower, i noticed mjoll struggling with it, BUT ONLY A LITTLE BIT. idk about cost.
i havnt tried levi lv3, but im guessing it wont be nice >_>

LACK OF DISTENSION

WTF tw staff is apparently limiting distension times, thats why dug only lets us play an hour every other day.... <_<
we need to convince tw staff to give us more time.
dist is the new tw, whether staff wants to admit it atm...

have fun reading! >=)

[maddack]

Soooo you upped the price of 2nd burst to 45. Not enough by a mile.

I tried selling some of upgrades 1-5 and bought myself 3 bursts (they're at 45 and 58 rp). Result: I am massively overpowered.

When I get into FR I usually have 4 bursts, so I fire them all away, very hard to dodge that. OK so the enemy manages to kill me huh? Well I get an escape pod and fire away 3 more now having 7 bursts in FR.

I'm not kidding at some points there were about 5 enemies in FR and they won the battle, or so they think because when I got the escape pod I burst them into hiding and we won back the FR way too easily.

I kinda like Zeebu's idea. Worth a try. Note that this will penalize a terr guarding a quiet FR, as he can't "collect" bursts with time.

That or if you go traditional way up the RP cost further. Second burst 60 rp, third 100. And cap it at four, make 3 bursts the most you can buy (currently you have 5).

Summary: Terr is fine, just fix bursts.

Other note: I have yet to see anyone use antiwarp and like it.

Other note 2: Dack Falu was playing the streak game. If he was on a streak he would warp out at the slightest sign of danger. Streaks are kind of detrimenting the team aspect of the game, since they are worth more than a war victory.

[Fluffz]

attacking base is such a bad idea. we were feeding freq 0 for like an hour for a lousy 3000 winning rp. cant you do something to make atacking more benefitial?

also, can u reduce shot delay for lvl3 bullets only or is that also impossible due to settings?

[gdugwyler]

Hmm, kind of a nice idea, Z. It would require a lot of changing as far as how the system works, but I'll think about it.

Warning to high level spiders: rank required for L2 bullets is now 50. This makes more sense anyway, as most ships get their "capstone" ability at 50 or right around there. In the meantime the reduced L2 damage should make you more valuable in being able to vulch off of people eating an L2 but then getting pegged by a spider bullet.

[Zeebu]

why not make the max burst 1 then just have the upgrades reduce the amount of time until a new burst is prized?

in other words, youd always start with 1 burst. at level 1, if youve used your burst, you get a new one prized every 45-60 seconds or something. then at lvl 2 burst it would take 30 seconds, then at higher levels, the burst life length would equal the burst recharge length. that way, there would be no way to have more than 2 bursts active at a time.

if the life time is 15 seconds and the recharge is 15 seconds, the ter can hold onto their burst for 14 seconds, burst, get it recharged in 1 seconds and burst again right away. that would still allow the ter to burst more than once at a time, but not a giant number. then theyd have to wait 15 more seconds to burst again (by which time their previos ones would be gone) and then to do another doube burst theyd have to wait an additional 14 seconds then burst twice back to back again. but if the ter doesnt pay attention, and they miss their double burst, theyd just get another burst prized to their max of the one they have already and only be able to shoot one until it is prized again.

the neat thing about this, is that if an early level ter plays close attention, it can still do a double burst by waiting until it is about to get prized another one then fire them back to back. it would just be a long time coming until it gets prized more the earlier the level.

but, i havent really been able to play distension much lately. to me it seems like a good balance though