Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[Dr. Snyder]

Lets be real, until anyone makes a legitimate case for this arena that would have SS players thinking it had something more to offer them than Hyperspace its not gonna mean much.

Although HS has abusive mods and absurdly dumb rules, it's really addictive and fun. I just hope TW can make something even better because I wanna be able to say fuck and all that good stuff.

Oh and I played this arena and to be quiet realistic it doesn't have that hook. The starting ships blow so badly, making it too difficult for people starting in late. Plus the games not fast pace enough to make leveling up enjoyable it just seems like TW with some people getting really crappy ships and others getting really good ships.

GL with perfecting it guys

[Peace_Maker]

I have said it before and will say it again. Lower jav bomb rate. Most of my suggestions have eventually been implimented and this one should. Riske is now able to spam 3 bombs quickly with the amount of energy he has. Change it.

[hak]

Tactical Ops

- Send messages to the team (shown as " messages from DistensionBot) ... much along the lines of sending support to a particular area with automatic recognition/name included of any terr nearby. Further upgrades of this ability will allow singling out players for particular orders, sending to all ships of a particular type, and imitation of enemy Ops to confuse the other team.
- Show a tactical breakdown of the number of enemy and friendly ships in each section of each base, with special notation for terrier locations.
- Priority rearm for everyone on the army for a limited amount of time -- this will force the other army to respawn much more slowly, and as a bonus prizes your rearmed pilots with fullcharge.
- Shields to any friendly pilot in home base.
- Activate doors for a limited time in particular sections of the home base. Upgrades of this ability will allow access to more critical doors, and eventually operation of doors in the enemy base.
- Deploy cover in home base at strategic locations under which ships can hide.

Various assault abilities:
- Deploy a cone of seclusion around a specified player. Upgrades allow a larger cone, and the option to target all enemy pilots in the home base. (Graphics outright stolen from Enigma, then modified. If, uh, we can't run the event, it may as well live on in another fashion.)
- Cover a ship with an exciting ball of solitude, also taken from Enigma. This is essentially the reverse of the previous ability. It makes it difficult to know where exactly one is going.
- Momentarily flash enemy player/players in home base with a (relatively) blank screen. Higher levels will allow longer flashes.
- Display an imaginary minefield that should look almost exactly like the real deal, except that they won't be seen on radar by ships with mine-radar abilities. Choose from a couple of locations. An upgrade creates more mines.
- Targetted EMP ability, similar to that of the Terr. All enemy ships in home base will be sapped of their energy for a short period of time; Sitting Duckfest 2008 ensues.

Less interesting (but still important) abilities:
- Profit sharing upgrade (see Terr)
- Increased chance of receiving OP for using special abilities
- Max OP storage capacity increase

Greetings,

These are definetely interesting ideas, along with the Tactical Ops on itself. These ideas might not all be plausible to work in an actual game, but some could be very useful.

One thing that immediately jumps into my mind though, is the spam that could be delivered from such a 'tactical op'. A message limit might come in handy there.
Edit: It seems I did not fully understand the situation. Using the Distension bot to send messages costs points, which regenrate slowly. Problem solved.

I strongly doubt whether tactical breakdowns can be useful in a medium-fast paced game. In combination with mentally slow pilots in Trench Wars, this option could become rather useless. So here's where you guys come in, testing it out.

The rest of the 'assault' options (aren't they 'support' options really?) can be very useful, and give the game something extra. Temporarily cloaking one or several teammates gives you a big advantage, but be wary, the opponents can do it too. Deploying several fake mines or decoys can really mess your enemies up. This really does give the game another touch which makes it so different from the public, or basing as we know it now.

Very interesting ideas, and I'm sure we're all desperate to try them out ingame.

Regards,

Hakkinen B)

[End]

Thought about your idea a little bit Dug and I think theres a slight problem. As only one person can be the commander at one time after a while some are going to be far, far superior at it than others, putting the team at a severe disadvantage unless they command, only widening the ranking gap.

I also thought a few high level ability for the commander could be to warp certain ships to strategic positions or place a bot turret on the map which would spray a line of fire in predestined directions for a limited time.

[gdugwyler]

New "ship" idea

Having borrowed some graphics for Distension from a game I was working on a few years back called Commander (attempting to mix in RTS elements to SS -- never finished), I started thinking about what else I could recycle. Distension is entertaining, but there's still a distinct lack of teamwork and coordination ... something that I think if existed would up the quality of play quite a bit. Also, I don't always like playing an action-RPG, so I was trying to think of alternatives to being in a ship, while still being able to rank up and help out your team. What I've come up with is a 9th ship (no, not Nightwasp): Tactical Ops.

The Tactical Ops position is limited to one per team, filling the role of the behind-the-scenes support to the army, and as such they're limited to being in spec on their freq. Consider their ability to watch over any part of the map at any time equivalent to advanced radar/satellite technology ... what have you. Like terrs and sharks, they will receive profit sharing -- though unlike those ships, aside from round end bonuses this will be their ONLY source of RP income. (As you can probably guess, Ops won't have or need all that many levels.) Every 30 seconds they have a chance of receiving an OP point (maybe 2), which allows them to use their various special abilities designed to support the team.

(Note: when "home base" is mentioned it refers to the base in which your army starts a round.) The abilities include:

- Send messages to the team (shown as " messages from DistensionBot) ... much along the lines of sending support to a particular area with automatic recognition/name included of any terr nearby. Further upgrades of this ability will allow singling out players for particular orders, sending to all ships of a particular type, and imitation of enemy Ops to confuse the other team.
- Show a tactical breakdown of the number of enemy and friendly ships in each section of each base, with special notation for terrier locations.
- Priority rearm for everyone on the army for a limited amount of time -- this will force the other army to respawn much more slowly, and as a bonus prizes your rearmed pilots with fullcharge.
- Shields to any friendly pilot in home base.
- Activate doors for a limited time in particular sections of the home base. Upgrades of this ability will allow access to more critical doors, and eventually operation of doors in the enemy base.
- Deploy cover in home base at strategic locations under which ships can hide.

Various assault abilities:
- Deploy a cone of seclusion around a specified player. Upgrades allow a larger cone, and the option to target all enemy pilots in the home base. (Graphics outright stolen from Enigma, then modified. If, uh, we can't run the event, it may as well live on in another fashion.)
- Cover a ship with an exciting ball of solitude, also taken from Enigma. This is essentially the reverse of the previous ability. It makes it difficult to know where exactly one is going.
- Momentarily flash enemy player/players in home base with a (relatively) blank screen. Higher levels will allow longer flashes.
- Display an imaginary minefield that should look almost exactly like the real deal, except that they won't be seen on radar by ships with mine-radar abilities. Choose from a couple of locations. An upgrade creates more mines.
- Targetted EMP ability, similar to that of the Terr. All enemy ships in home base will be sapped of their energy for a short period of time; Sitting Duckfest 2008 ensues.

Less interesting (but still important) abilities:
- Profit sharing upgrade (see Terr)
- Increased chance of receiving OP for using special abilities
- Max OP storage capacity increase


This accounts for all 14 available upgrade slots that other ships possess. Tactical Ops will see upgrading and rank ups done in the same fashion as anyone else. They just won't be directly in the game.

Looking at a lot of work, but it's an interesting addition, I think, and should give me something to do over the break.

[End]

Im going to go ahead and state my opinion, probably of which no one will like, but here it goes. The spider has to be nurfed its far superior to any ship for this type of game. Any baser in this ship of rank 15 upwards runs around the map killing. Once in the FR the spider has to only sit back and spray, two hits kills almost any ship, at level 21 I can hold a constant rate of fire down and im no where near fully upgraded. Granted its one hit kill for yellow upwards but they don't even get a chance to fire at you if you play it well. I could see this ship turning distension into base as its by far the best ship to fly. Nerf it please (and yes it is my favourite ship)

[gdugwyler]

MAJOR CHANGES!!

The upgrade system has been altered significantly.

• First and foremost, all upgrades were refunded. This means you will need to repurchase all upgrades for all ships. I know it's a hassle, but every single item cost was changed, so this is necessary.
• You now receive 10UP per rank up instead of 1. To match, on average upgrades cost 10 times what they once did. However you'll notice maneuver upgrades are generally cheaper than energy/recharge and such. This allows fine-tuning of costs. For example, XRadar for the Terr now costs 5UP, or half of what you get from 1 rank, making the decision to buy it not a very difficult one.
• !scrap and !scrapall are free for a while, to allow changes to be made to your new builds without a hassle. This gives you a chance to explore some options. It will probably stay this way until just before the end of the year.
• The rotation bug has finally been fixed. The only way to make upgraded rotation work without it getting jittery later on is to start out with a fairly high number for rotation. In this particular case it's 200, which is the default rotation value for WBs and Javs in pub. You might find you don't need to upgrade it at all. This is unfortunate, as it almost means losing a stat, but I'm sure some people can find a way to use higher rotation. It was in the end just more important to have responsiveness for ships that previously started with low rotation (Jav, Lev, etc) than to make this a necessary upgrade.
• RP amounts required for ranks >25 have dropped significantly across the board. This is in response to the suggestion that it's just too damn boring to level after 25, even with the beta bonus multiplier. I do notice people going up in rank pretty fast now... but that's far better than people leaving because it's just not fun anymore. I'd rather have the game be pretty entertaining all the way through but not take too much time to get to a high position, rather than dragging it out just so that there will be more playing/grinding out of obsession rather than enjoyment ... This will mean that the game may need more frequent resets than previously planned, and also that rank 80 may actually become attainable (L3 jav bombs, anyone?). So it goes.
• Other random stuff: rank ups are arena-announced for rank 10, 15, 20, and any above 25; end round bonuses now are based less on the time it takes to win the match (you now get the same amount for a win under 15 minutes as you do for 15); and so on.

I'm holding down the proverbial fortress by myself for the vacation, so there will probably be more extensive testing, staff/Jesus willing, including weekends. Should give a chance for people who haven't played the game much to have a go.

EDIT: I forgot to credit Mythrandir for the idea of the 10UP/level to allow a finer gradation of upgrade costs. Thanks Myth.

[HateTheFake]

I like the lowering of rp needed to rank for jav but still think there should be a delay in bombings, i have a jav and played in the ship, its a basing ship all it needs is 1 cram and u practiacally have a streak going for it, then with the l2 bullets, its definately not weak.

also isnt the reason why u lowered the wb energy/increased amount needed to acheive high energy was to give others a shot to kill it. I would think that javs are the same way. Granted it may not be as fast, however with a rocket it isnt exactly slow either

[Mjollnir]

...
Jav balance: The Jav is meant to top out late, but I don't want it to be too painful in the meantime. We could kill two birds with one stone: slow shrap down a little, but also lower the amount javs need to rank (again). How does that sound?

Sounds perfect.

[Epic li]

As a level 30 lev, i still get owned by the wbs that have l2 bullets,any kind i mean, its hard to dodge with this ship... after the energy thing, it got a bit easier

[Exalt]

I do not think your complaint is valid though. It is still a very annoying ship to play against because of the huge manuverability that induces a lot of lag. You probably have the wrong upgrades or don't know how to use the ship properly. Just watch Zeimonster or Dack(?) in the ship to see what I mean. If it was up to me, I would probably try to do something about the manuverability because of the lag problems.

Balancing ships can be really tough and just because you got to fly an overpowered supership for so long doesn't mean it's weak now - it just feels that way.

ive seen zeimonster play, whats so great about him? guy dies just like everyone else

[gdugwyler]

Thanks to those who have posted info on upgrade times. I'll continue making adjustments. The present experiment: actually make the increase factor smaller for levels >25. In the low ranks (0-10) the rate is 1.6 to jack it up fairly quickly, so perhaps this needs to be compensated for later on. We'll have to see -- it may go back later on.

Streaks: To get a streak you have to kill 5 players within 12 ranks of your own. No time limit, though. The rank difference allowed was recently increased and will continue to be tweaked in order to keep streaks fun without being all that cheap.

Exalt: the second someone uses the word "useless" to describe an entire ship in this game, I begin consider their opinion pretty much "useless" as well. This is exactly what yours is as regards the Warbird. Just a few hours ago I observed more than one WB going 2:1 without too much difficulty. Granted, they were good pilots, but this should mean that someone with at least decent skill should be able to at the very least pull 1:1, which is not something that you can say for many of the ships in Distension. This is what I'm talking about when I say you're not thinking of others playing the game. Spiders can kill some ships in a couple of hits; it all depends on the rank. If you want to talk about recharge, let's talk about recharge, though: WBs enjoy the best in the game. And I don't see them getting killed constantly by other ships. Why would you fly a WB rather than a Jav or Spider, you ask? Because you want a fast, agile sniping ship. Javs can be picked off easily at a distance. Spiders not as much, but they're much slower than most birds. The warbird also has a smaller amount of RP required for every level than both of those ships, and to boot, it makes kills generally faster than either. I appreciate you taking the time to post, but what you say just isn't ringing true.

Mj and Lancs: I think you may not have it yet. You said you tried a couple of different shots, but I'm guessing you did overlook one. Here's a hint: the speed of the bomb is equal to the amount of kickback the ship receives when firing it. This means if you fire it in the direction you're moving, you'll pretty much stop, and the bomb won't have much of any thrust on it ... Also, the Lanc is meant to upgrade fairly quickly but top out early, which is why it doesn't have very many upgrades. The "fairly quickly" part might not yet be working, though. This may need to be remedied by lowering the firing delay ... I haven't seen many people use the ship at all recently, really. Anyone have opinions on it?

Jav balance: The Jav is meant to top out late, but I don't want it to be too painful in the meantime. We could kill two birds with one stone: slow shrap down a little, but also lower the amount javs need to rank (again). How does that sound?

[Mjollnir]

Wb definitely is not too weak atm, it still can own practically any ship of its own level and a bit higher 1 on 1. Jav is ok but imo there's still something to tweak with the shrap. It's a bit too effective, maybe because of the huge number of the shraps coming from each bomb, maybe the damage they do (instakill any ship i think) or the speed of the shraps. Maybe we could try to slow them down a bit and see if that makes it more comfortable for the others. Now it's just too random. I dont even have time to dodge if I happen to see one shrap coming straight at me on the edge of my screen.

And I agree with mj that it's hard to level the jav - i'm stuck at level 15 (My average in twlj games this year is some 4-10, though. Maybe that explains why i cant play jav here either.)

I understand how the shrap could be annoying for the others. If you are going to change it I agree with slowing the speed of the shrap a bit. Any other change will probably make them (and the ship) too weak.

[Zeimonster]

Wb definitely is not too weak atm, it still can own practically any ship of its own level and a bit higher 1 on 1. Jav is ok but imo there's still something to tweak with the shrap. It's a bit too effective, maybe because of the huge number of the shraps coming from each bomb, maybe the damage they do (instakill any ship i think) or the speed of the shraps. Maybe we could try to slow them down a bit and see if that makes it more comfortable for the others. Now it's just too random. I dont even have time to dodge if I happen to see one shrap coming straight at me on the edge of my screen.

And I agree with mj that it's hard to level the jav - i'm stuck at level 15 (My average in twlj games this year is some 4-10, though. Maybe that explains why i cant play jav here either.)

[Mjollnir]

I tested out the lanc bomb a bit yesterday. I guess it was a bit harsh to say it is "useless" but I just meant it's not worth upgrading. I upgraded my speed to MAX and thrusters to 1 point less than the MAX and tried shooting the bomb in a few different ways. Unless there is a secret way of shooting it that I have totally missed, it sure didn't seem very effective. The bomb is still so slow even when shooting it with max speed that it doesn't seem to be worth the effort.

Is the Lanc meant to be so slow even with maxed out speed? I thought it was supposed to be a ship that will upgrade slowly but gets very good in the end. If you don't want to make the ship any faster I guess you could make the bomb recycle a little weaker.

If there really is a way to shoot the bomb more effectively, I apologize for jumping into conclusions.