Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[gdugwyler]

I get a great advantage by having more energy and recharge, more so than having specials.

This is pretty much one of the biggest reasons I would like to change the system. At present, for the most part the single logical thing to do is upgrade recharge and energy as much as possible, while spending only a very small amount of UP on other upgrades. I've looked through the player stats in the DB, and by and large almost every player focuses on energy and recharge; it's becoming so that you have to do this to compete, which greatly diminishes variety of playing styles. I would like upgrading energy and recharge highly, boring as it is, to be the new player choice: the relatively uninteresting choice you can make that will ensure you're able to compete. For more advanced players I would like to make it so that focusing on a wider range of special abilities is actually more advantageous -- which for the vast majority of ships right now is simply not the case. Part of the problem is that there aren't a whole lot of special abilities, something I would like to remedy by adding a series of small ones with less significant effects. I might try using the WatchDamage packet and using bullet hits to cause special effects when they don't result in death. Or, one where when player is killed, it takes additional time to rearm, prevents them from rearming with full upgrades, etc.

But, here's the compromise that I thought up today: a fifth ship type. For ranks 1-15, all ships of the same kind receive the same number of energy and recharge upgrades, and UP. (Same as described before.) On reaching rank 15, among the previously discussed types, they have the option to become a "Science Vessel." This allows them to upgrade energy and recharge using UP in the way it's done presently. Their special status would also allow them to scrap a higher percentage up into their rank than is allowed for other ships (as the scrap penalty will be in effect again at public release). However, due to the flexibility allowed to them that other ship types will not have, the amount of UP they would receive would not be as significant, as while other ships receive automatic upgrades, they have to pay for them out of the same UP pool. Essentially, they would receive as many UP as do the Special Forces (from what I'm thinking off the top of my head).

Sound OK?

[roxxkatt]

excellent, a compromise.


but a science vessels will have to be cheaper, or that idea is useless, right?

[dako]

Idea - Crazy Juice - for Weasels VB and ops ability

Gives killer / targeted player +500% rotation and +500% speed for a short amount of time (read - impossible to control). At high levels, ops can target an entire army with this ability (imagine a whole base of people zooming around flailing and unable to control their ships rotation).

Think enigma.

[Chao.]

Ability Ideas...


1. Sticky Glue:

Put two wormholes on the sides of the FR (or one on the roof) that would normally do nothing due to their low gravity, and make a once-per-battle ability that allows sharks (or OPs) to use this ability to make the gravity temporarily extremely high and make everyone stuck against the walls of the base. The time limit on this would be short and wouldn't be used much due to the battle limit.

2.Kamikaze

Often battles are stalemated when two strong sharks are in the same FR. Use this ability to turn off your engines/deprize your repels and render your ship a useless pile of junk for 20-30 seconds. The catch? You can pick another shark on a different team to make this happen to as well, making you both unable to help your teams until it goes away.

[DankNuggets]

Sound OK?

sounds good, my main beef was that i felt like it would make my ships less powerful. selfish, i know

it's a good idea, in that it will make people upgrade their special abilities and make the game a bit more interesting in that regard. Without having to worry about getting my recharge/energy 10/12 levels right away, i'd definitely take advantage of teh other abilites/upgrades

it'd probably make things easier to balance as well

[Zeebu]

idea is that every time the weasel hits a player with a bullet, speed+thrust increases for a short amount of time. this would stack per bullet for a certain amount of time a controlled number of times.

got this idea when i read that you can watch a bullet or damage or something?

this gives the weasel a better chance to dance around their opponent and land hits once they get one. it could replace the rocket (suggestion, not necessary i guess) and give a little twist on doing something familiar. i guess it lends itself to a ship with a slow bulletspeed.

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another idea, one that im certain has been mentioned before. can we try remote mines?

it would be neat to send a command to the bot and have all of your mines just explode. i dont know of a good way to make the game do that though. an idea at least as cool and probably moreso, an ability to explode all of the other team's mines.

--------------------

are there any ships that might benefit from the use of some sort of invisible mine? does something exist that can drop another ships top speed for a few moments? if youre running from another player, drop an invisible mine, the other guy hits it and is slowed significantly for a couple seconds, at least jsut to get away (an ability that would have practical uses in a flagroom if it could slow all ships in a small area around the mine) or maybe just an ability that slows down all enemy ships in an area (same as EMP except with speed/thrust/movement instead of charge)

[Viruk]

Sound OK?

This might work for those who like to max out energy/recharge/specials in a more extreme way than the other options allow or to experiment more.

[Viruk]

idea is that every time the weasel hits a player with a bullet, speed+thrust increases for a short amount of time

Weasel bullets are slow and you would lose control and bump into mines and bombs due to bullets fired and forgotten. It might make an interesting special ability but not for my weasel unless you can turn it off!

another idea, one that im certain has been mentioned before. can we try remote mines?

Apparently this cannot be implemented.

are there any ships that might benefit from the use of some sort of invisible mine? does something exist that can drop another ships top speed for a few moments?

An invisible, conventional mine sounds like a very bad idea but speed reducing mines or traps might be interesting. I bet it would be tricky to implement though.

Put two wormholes on the sides of the FR (or one on the roof) that would normally do nothing due to their low gravity, and make a once-per-battle ability that allows sharks (or OPs) to use this ability to make the gravity temporarily extremely high and make everyone stuck against the walls of the base. The time limit on this would be short and wouldn't be used much due to the battle limit.

We already have too many overpowered abilities that allow a single player to prevent an entire frequency from taking the flag. If you could tweak it so that the rocketing/high-thrust ships that weren't caught in the wrong position could beat the pull with skillful flying it might be interesting though. The wormholes outside the FR might also allow some very interesting roofing shots.

Often battles are stalemated when two strong sharks are in the same FR. Use this ability to turn off your engines/deprize your repels and render your ship a useless pile of junk for 20-30 seconds. The catch? You can pick another shark on a different team to make this happen to as well, making you both unable to help your teams until it goes away.

If 2 opposing sharks are really strong enough to stalemate an entire FR battle for more than a few seconds (I am not sure about this) then something needs to be done to tweak their reps down a bit.

I suspect that this ability would mainly be used by high level sharks after they run out of reps and would be happy to die and respawn with some more. If this ability was unavailable or unaffordable for lower level sharks this could make it even harder for them to compete as well as unpleasant to play. Something like this might work if it could be implemented and carefully balanced though. Perhaps if you had to use a rep to activate it and if a basic version was available at lower levels with ability upgrades making it more available at higher levels.

Idea - Crazy Juice - for Weasels VB and ops ability

Gives killer / targeted player +500% rotation and +500% speed for a short amount of time (read - impossible to control). At high levels, ops can target an entire army with this ability (imagine a whole base of people zooming around flailing and unable to control their ships rotation).

I would love to see this. On a single ship basis though. Definitely not for a whole army!
I would like to see more Tac Ops abilities where there is some tactical skill in selecting the right targets and that hinder the enemy in ways that are challenging but not totally insurmountable.

[roxxkatt]

zeebu, that whole post was about as smart as your signature...



edit- id like to shoot down all those ideas, except chaos fr wormhole idea, which would function very well as a high lvled ops skill.
which includes this new nrg/chg system.

[Lag.Com]

I like the different classes thing. I was actually talking about this on the game then somebody mentioned you'd had a similar idea, heh.

For those interested, I've set up a small resource page for distension on my site. Currently it has some numeric stats and a program that lets you plan out your ship build, could come in handy. Of course that'll need updating whenever dug changes game balance, but I've made it so updating is easy enough.

My main beef is that there is generally only one way to play any given ship right now:
WB - Snipe
Jav - Big Bomber
Spid - Wait until Super then kill everyone
Levi - Uh, Big EMP Bomber
Terr - Portal portal portal burst portal burst burst portal burst
X - I still don't know what strategy is viable for this ship
Lanc - max leeching and energy
Shark - rep rep rep rep die rep rep rep rep
TacOps - I don't know anything about this one
In my view there should be at least 2 different 'paths' you can take your ship down. While in theory the current upgrade system allows for any amount of customisation, in order to stay competitive (and useful to your teammates) you need to stick to one of these builds. Think of perk trees on WoW - three different routes, and even 'sub-routes' within those that really give your character the edge over (or make it suck vs.) certain things.

Next time I can play, I'll try out a derivative of my 'weasel pretends to be spider' build.

[Zeebu]

I like the different classes thing. I was actually talking about this on the game then somebody mentioned you'd had a similar idea, heh.

For those interested, I've set up a small resource page for distension on my site. Currently it has some numeric stats and a program that lets you plan out your ship build, could come in handy. Of course that'll need updating whenever dug changes game balance, but I've made it so updating is easy enough.

My main beef is that there is generally only one way to play any given ship right now:
WB - Snipe
Jav - Big Bomber
Spid - Wait until Super then kill everyone
Levi - Uh, Big EMP Bomber
Terr - Portal portal portal burst portal burst burst portal burst
X - I still don't know what strategy is viable for this ship
Lanc - max leeching and energy
Shark - rep rep rep rep die rep rep rep rep
TacOps - I don't know anything about this one
In my view there should be at least 2 different 'paths' you can take your ship down. While in theory the current upgrade system allows for any amount of customisation, in order to stay competitive (and useful to your teammates) you need to stick to one of these builds. Think of perk trees on WoW - three different routes, and even 'sub-routes' within those that really give your character the edge over (or make it suck vs.) certain things.

Next time I can play, I'll try out a derivative of my 'weasel pretends to be spider' build.

this is what i was thinking too. id like to see ships be able to do a couple different things.

but before sharing, id like to let it be known that i havent really got a good idea what continuum can and can not do. so roxxxcaat go sit on a chairleg or critique what i wrote with at least a half-assed reason.

for the wb, it would be fun to have a couple different paths to go down. right now teh wb snipes and the wb rushes. make it so it can do both of them so-so, or one of them great.

is there a way you could incorporate bombs into sniping instead? can you change the lvl 1 bomb for the wb alone? make it smaller and similar to a bullet? if so, an ability might be a slight proximity to up your chances of hitting from far away. maybe with levels whree the prox gets bigger with the more points you sink into it? (once again, a disclaimer apologizing if this is impossible. just throwing out ideas). this wb will probably have sacrificed some movement to allow it to shoot more shots. the other varient should be more attuned to chasing something down then shooting it for the kill, dodge the return fire and escape unharmed.

just ideas, if you dont think theyre any good, let me know why

[PH]

re: auto energy/recharge upgrading

do it do it do it.

[Andy H.K.]

While personally I believe nrg scaling with level is the way to go, I would say there's still needs to leave a few options to customise ship nrg. There are people who just love having "extra armor" as a perk. In a sense we can make a combination of both systems, where nrg goes up with levels, and you can still get some extra by spending some UP if you feel like needing more.

[jngy slate]

Idea to encourage more wb players to snipe. When the ship is sitting still or moving slowly its bullet speed doubles. But I don't really like this because a lot of players snipe while moving. Any ideas on how the computer can tell wether you're sniping or not?

[roxxkatt]

three things:


#1:
the team evener needs adjustment.
as ships gain ranks, they count too much towards the ship totals atm.
a high leveled ship needs to be worth more linearly rather then exponentially towards the balance, to avoid the 11v23 that happened today.
you may be able to shoot lv3 bombs and bullets, but NOONE can tank 2 lvl2 bullets fired by 2 level 1 players...


#2:
fix/get rid of summon,
it only allows 1 newb laggot to laggot through doors, then luckily being a newb laggot -terr- who happens to be an -officer- (due to the continual 11v23), summons =10-15= teammates, including another terr into the fr, past the -5- defending players.

REMEMBER WHEN I SAID SUMMON WILL KILL THE GAME?
IT IS.


#3:
ops shields are way too expensive/worthless.
options are to make shields less expensive for ops, or to extend time for every ship except warbird, to make it long enough to actually be of some use.

because now, they only last about 2-3 seconds, and a lv3 bullet killed my shielded nonfiring lvl40ish terr in less then 5...
mind you, i can tank lv3s in my levi, without shields