Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[Chao.]

- Weasel bullet energy increased very slightly (this is across the board for all bullet levels, as this is the only way it can be done in the CFG). I noticed that a stock weasel is capable of firing 4 bullets without any trouble. Now it has to wait a bit for the 4th. I haven't had too many weasel complaints, and they don't seem to be overplayed, so we'll see how this goes. I want it to be a reasonably successful/interesting ship, though, due to the fact that it will be a special unlock.

- Regarding rank differences and scores, I might implement a sliding scale that applies equally to humiliation and low-level RP caps. I've also changed high level RP caps to mirror humiliation, so that if you are humiliated you at least also know the player is receiving an RP cap, and not the full amount for your kill, which is their upgrade level + 10.

- Re: bot PMing about piloting lower-rank ships, you do not lose participation when you switch to shark or terr if your army does not currently have a sector hold. Any other ship, though, you're right; it'd lose that.

- I understand what you guys are saying about Terr bounty, and after thinking about it I've upped it to a 40 bounty requirement. Around rank 25 should be roughly a "stock" ship (if all upgrades are done somewhat equally). Clearly stock terrs can't attach to each other, so it only makes sense to make the bounty requirement higher. Note that this will be made reachable at earlier ranks by using the regen ability, but that may just mean it's a good investment. Also, terrs needed an ability for rank 40 anyway.

- Since for some reason people seem to be able to survive L2 bullets at around 1300 energy, bullet upgrade damage has been increased. Hopefully this will mean L3 will kill any ship at any upgrade level of energy, with the exception of a Levi with full en.

vyk, what is the issue you're finding with the bursts?

Perhaps the burst could be changed so that only one could be held at once? The prize thing is ok but it's a little ridiculous to have a terr run towards us, spam burst 2 (maybe 3?) times and be left trying to dodge all of it.

Alternatively you could change it so that the burst only shoots 2 bullets or something.

[gdugwyler]

- Weasel bullet energy increased very slightly (this is across the board for all bullet levels, as this is the only way it can be done in the CFG). I noticed that a stock weasel is capable of firing 4 bullets without any trouble. Now it has to wait a bit for the 4th. I haven't had too many weasel complaints, and they don't seem to be overplayed, so we'll see how this goes. I want it to be a reasonably successful/interesting ship, though, due to the fact that it will be a special unlock.

- Regarding rank differences and scores, I might implement a sliding scale that applies equally to humiliation and low-level RP caps. I've also changed high level RP caps to mirror humiliation, so that if you are humiliated you at least also know the player is receiving an RP cap, and not the full amount for your kill, which is their upgrade level + 10.

- Re: bot PMing about piloting lower-rank ships, you do not lose participation when you switch to shark or terr if your army does not currently have a sector hold. Any other ship, though, you're right; it'd lose that.

- I understand what you guys are saying about Terr bounty, and after thinking about it I've upped it to a 40 bounty requirement. Around rank 25 should be roughly a "stock" ship (if all upgrades are done somewhat equally). Clearly stock terrs can't attach to each other, so it only makes sense to make the bounty requirement higher. Note that this will be made reachable at earlier ranks by using the regen ability, but that may just mean it's a good investment. Also, terrs needed an ability for rank 40 anyway.

- Since for some reason people seem to be able to survive L2 bullets at around 1300 energy, bullet upgrade damage has been increased. Hopefully this will mean L3 will kill any ship at any upgrade level of energy, with the exception of a Levi with full en.

vyk, what is the issue you're finding with the bursts?

[Vykromond]

I don't have a problem with terrs attaching to each other but maybe a higher ranking could be required. On the other hand, it is a huge advantage to the team that has this ability so do we want both teams to have this power at its current low level? I have seen animol attach with 18 bty. I am not sure what bty is required exactly.

At 13 bty I am unable to attach to other terriers.

Regardless I agree with the point that terriers should either be unable to attach to each other at all or else a higher bty should be required.

Bursts are also a little ridiculous, but I'm not sure what would be the best thing to do about it.

[PH]

I have seen animol attach with 18 bty

I hope that's not the only questionable thing you've noticed Animol doing.

[Peace_Maker]

Please make it so that terriers cannot attach to other terriers.

I don't have a problem with terrs attaching to each other but maybe a higher ranking could be required. On the other hand, it is a huge advantage to the team that has this ability so do we want both teams to have this power at its current low level? I have seen animol attach with 18 bty. I am not sure what bty is required exactly.

[Chao.]

Please make it so that terriers cannot attach to other terriers.

[Peace_Maker]

Observations

A couple of things I have noticed, feel free to comment.

- Today there was a weasel, level 12 or so that had rockets and could fire four L2 bullets rapidly. That seems a bit extreme to me since most ships under level 25 die to one L2 bullet. My suggestion is to increase the amount of energy required for a weasel to fire L2 bullets or decrease the firing rate for weasel L2 bullets. I do not play the ship myself but this seems like a reasonable solution.

- I currently play a rank 21 spider and get -10RP any time a rank 10 player kills me and only receive 2 points for killing the same player. I understand rank 1 or 2 being -10 but instead of all ranks that subtract points could rank 10 players only be -1 and a level 9 player -2 and so on. I do not know if the current cap is -10 or if it continues to increase but I played a game today and only increased RP by a net 200 due to players spraying bullets across the flag room. Maybe I should just camp but I prefer to push if I can not be penalized for it.

- When playing on a team with few players that are higher ranks compared to the opposing team the bot spams the team suggesting players play low ranked ships so the enemy can !assist. It asked about once minute a couple of times. Just seems a little spammy. Plus, who would want to change ships? Doesn't a player lose participation when changing ships?

[FarScape]

Hey I just wanted to say that this is a cool game. I didn't like it at first, but now its much better (probably because the bot doesn't spam with too much information).

I play spider as my ship, and I enjoy it very much.
thanks for supporting it :-)

[gdugwyler]

Good idea with the ^; sounds a lot more solid than a command-based hack. Since you've verified it as a working method I'll just have the bot save and shut down if anyone comes in with a ^ at the start of a name.

[PjOtTeR]

I can actually imagine that someone with 50+ in all ships wants to start over. Even if you can't imagine this happening, it's still a desired feature in any role playing game. Second of all, you would obviously make the bot warn you, and ask for a like "!reset YES" command after giving someone a head warning. This is the same with !defect, and it seems to work pretty well.

Also: About Shark repels recharging every 30 seconds, with odds similar to those of a terrier and spider. Did you get to work this out by any chance? If not, this is just a reminder.

Regards,

Hakkinen B)

Wouldn't someone with 50+ in all ships just get on another name not to waste all the time he spend to get to this 50+ on all ships?

[Maverick]

Were someone able to use this command on your account, it would result in some extreme frustration.

True, agreed

as I know someone was requesting that TW's alias-watching feature (in pubbot/hubalias) go down at billing outages.

Yes, this was Rudy which I fixed by checking if a playername starts with a ^ or not. (http://www.twcore.org/ticket/35) I haven't heard any complaints about this solution and I think it's reliable enough to check if the biller is down or not.
You can make it even more reliable by just shutting down Distensionbot whenever a player enters with a name starting with a ^ (you can't enter with a ^ normally).

If the bot were to do a ?find on its Hub every minute with a timestamp, and didn't receive a reply within 10 seconds, it would probably be safe to say the biller is down.

Yea that would work too, however make sure you don't do more then one ?command every 5 minutes (or even more?) to avoid getting kicked for spamming ?commands.

I had a bot once that did ?chat every 5 minutes for checking who was on a specific chat. When I made it do ?chat every minute it would be kicked for spamming ?commands. Not 100% sure about this though, however I do remember once every 5 minutes was the only way to make it work.

[Vykromond]

I seem to recall that ?find is also -- maybe -- disabled during a biller outage?

That's right.

[gdugwyler]

It would be a little different than ?scorereset, as it could mean many months of playing time wiped. HAK was referring to a way to reset all of the progress made in the database on a single ship, or all ships. (At the moment the bot is doing *scorereset on anyone that enters while it's running, anyhow.) Were someone able to use this command on your account, it would result in some extreme frustration.

This is all on report of a Mystic Kingdom developer, who said that whenever a biller outage occurred they had to revert to an older version of the DB. I think that this problem does still affect TW, despite the ^ carat, as I know someone was requesting that TW's alias-watching feature (in pubbot/hubalias) go down at billing outages. Apparently it causes a lot of damage to the accuracy of aliasing, despite the fact that it should be able to tell the difference between DoCk> and ^DoCk>. Maybe there's something we should be checking for that signifies to the client that the name is unreliable (and so to put a carat) that TWCore doesn't pick up on? It's supposedly a real problem, in any case, and one we should investigate with Distension if it comes up any time soon.

I seem to recall that ?find is also -- maybe -- disabled during a biller outage? If the bot were to do a ?find on its Hub every minute with a timestamp, and didn't receive a reply within 10 seconds, it would probably be safe to say the biller is down. The ?find dugwyler for preventing "unauthorized beta testing" seems to work pretty reliably as far as I can tell. If it had 5 or 10 second lag getting a find, chances are it should be down anyway, heh!

[Maverick]

egarding full ship resets, I'm a little bit afraid of implementing this. Consider if someone hacks your account or the biller goes down and they simply log on as you.

Wouldn't it be the same as the ?scorereset command in the public arenas we have allowed? If someone gets on your account they can do it aswell (but have you ever heard something like that happening).
When the biller is down you can't do this on someone else's account because the scores aren't retrieved when the biller is down. Everyone logging in when the biller is down will get a 0-0 score.

Is there a short, meaningless command it could execute every 60 seconds which would give results indicating the biller being up or down? Been a while for me since I was online during a biller outage...

There is no command for this but you can simply check if players have a ^ in front of their name, which means they logged on while the biller was down (at SSC at least).
This is one of the few things you can do to detect if the biller is down. Other lesser options are doing "?chat" and see if you get a response to the command. You would have to work with timeouts and such but it might also happen that this command gets delayed and makes the bot think the biller is down.

[Heroin Bob]

i hardly like basing so i didn't like it to begin with


then it made my dd cancel due to recycle which we lost once replaying


overall i now hate distension