Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[roxxkatt]

because that affects everyone

[Vergilius]

and to all those people that think levi shrap/bomb is overpowered,
#1: i can hit a -weasel- with a big, shiny, blue bomb, and then the wzl promptly fired -2- multifire lv3s at me immediately after, killing me.
..

Hmm, this was prolly because of lag. When i get hit by a levi bomb, not even a blue one, i die (and my nrg is pretty high), let alone that i can fire 2 multi l3s directly after. He shouldve been emped pretty badly. I can only guess that he dodged on his screen, otherwise this simply isnt possible.

and as a vb proposal: since we are 'stealing' many things of ?go enigma, why not add the 'out of control'? ya know, speed, rotation and thrust being huge and uncontrollable

[roxxkatt]

• raise terr attach bounty to 100, only THE BEST TERRS should be allowed to attach
• increase lanc bullet fire cost, more
• slow lanc bullets down
• increase multifire delay, to the stupidly long levi multi delay.
• removing flag blocks was good, but why the hell did you move them to the bottom? fix.
• ball game is good, but possibly distracting. move wormholes farther away from the goals.
• decrease spider bullet cost a little.
• increase wzl multi delay a little.
• ADVERTISE DISTENSION

and to all those people that think levi shrap/bomb is overpowered,
#1: i can hit a -weasel- with a big, shiny, blue bomb, and then the wzl promptly fired -2- multifire lv3s at me immediately after, killing me.
#2: every bomb nerf makes the levi bomb more useless.
#3: emp bomb only does about 20% damage, and dug keeps reducing it for some reason...
#4: a blue bomb costs about all the energy to fire.
#5: bomb = many tks, big bomb = many more tks

and i believe the shrapnel is an excellent idea, because it actually allows me to get a kill with my bomb, even though its 15rp for -1- shrap, and i only get 5 or whatever per lvl...


and those ppl that think dist is getting too complex:
i partially agree, but compare it to hyperspace...


and to dug:
the energy bar is almost completely useless,
set the max energy as low as you can, as close to the highest a ship can get...
then add a long energy bar, LONG, into the lvz, that should stretch across a 1280x1024 screen, to fix it.

i forget which arena this was used in, but its already taken care of, somewhere in tws 2000 arenas...

[Mjollnir]

Is there a real reason why we can't test on weekends? There are plenty of times during the weekend when some lame event isn't being hosted. I think we would get more people to the tests as well.

To the comments about the lack of people playing Distension: The game isn't that complex. It is complex compared to other events in TW but that doesn't mean it is incredibly hard to get into. I think the lack of people is due to the long break, the euro football and lack of public advertising. I am sure, the seemingly complex game turns off some people, so it would be nice if someone was helping them, or there was a simple help menu for getting started.

[Fluffz]

well the time slots are awfull, euro08 games in the first slot and the 2nd is too late. lets have a longer single session after the euro games.

First off, I appreciate all the time and effort that dugwyler is putting into this project. Dug, you've come a long way from where this started, but it's just my opinion that you went further than you needed to. I'd still like to be a part of this beta test, but its not fun when its 3 vs 3 or 6 vs 4. Personally, i found distension to be A LOT more fun when we had full games, and people (sometimes myself) were stuck waiting in spec for a round to be over. Most didn't mind waiting, because it was that much fun to play. Now, nobody even bothers showing up because it has gotten far too complex. I would suggest taking a few steps backwards back to when you had the most public interest. You're not getting much help with the same 7-10 people testing it every day, only of which 2-3 post on here. I don't mean to scrutinize, you've made a great game to play, I just think you should stop trying to add to it so much. Thats all.

[Viruk]

Here is one of the low levels I found from my logfile. I remember killing/being killed by him when he was level 3. There is at least one more of them:

dodo Pinochio(60) killed by: Viruk
P Distension> +327 RP: dodo Pinochio(29) [x9.1 beta]

I haven't seen any more funny ratios recently let alone logged any.

[Viruk]

Unfortunately, removing the blocks near the flag didn't work. Sharks are still way too powerful -> nerf repels.

Well it did seem easier to rep them off the flag and the flag seemed slightly harder to mine securely. Thats a good start.

Lancasters are still overpowered. The bullet damage increase countered the slight nerf.

I am not saying you are wrong but I am not sure how you can say this with any surety from one set of sparsely attended games without trying all the possible builds yourself.
My L2 scout Lanc certainly seemed less able to use multifire but this hasn't really nerfed it as I mostly use single fire. The increase in L2 energy (which I am not sure was needed) was too slight to be noticeable from my end as was the extra cost of single fire L2. I would imagine that those Lancs relying on L3 multifire were far more seriously affected. Since even after the change I was still seeing Terriers tanking an L3 (and sometimes still fire an L1 back unless some lag/full-charging was going on) I doubt the extra L3 damage is going to be enough to compensate.

Terriers attaching to other Terriers shouldn't be allowed. It is simply too big of an advantage.

I agree with this.

When there is more than one Terrier of the same side in the flagroom there are too many bursts flying around. I don't know what to do about this since bursts are so essential to Terriers. I would prefer if it was more about skill though.

The obvious answer would seem to be bursts with a shorter duration. You would be forced to aim them more because you wouldn't be able to rely on them bouncing about for ages.

The red bullet damage feels very low, now that everyone has a huge amount of energy. The problem is that spiders get the same damage increase if it is changed. I am looking at this from a Terrier's point of view.

Yes I played Terrier for a short while today and found it tricky to kill with them. Same with Shark. I am not sure this is a big problem though as guns are upgradable and the ships with slower red bullets probably shouldn't be concentrating on gunning down the enemy anyway.

[Mjollnir]

Problems:

• Unfortunately, removing the blocks near the flag didn't work. Sharks are still way too powerful -> nerf repels.
• Lancasters are still overpowered. The bullet damage increase countered the slight nerf.
• 5 minute flag timer for 1 flag games is way too much. Try something like 3 mins.
• Terriers attaching to other Terriers shouldn't be allowed. It is simply too big of an advantage.
• When there is more than one Terrier of the same side in the flagroom there are too many bursts flying around. I don't know what to do about this since bursts are so essential to Terriers. I would prefer if it was more about skill though.
• The red bullet damage feels very low, now that everyone has a huge amount of energy. The problem is that spiders get the same damage increase if it is changed. I am looking at this from a Terrier's point of view.
• The new levi bomb + blue shrap combo is too strong. I would prefer no random crap flying around but if it is a must then make it less lethal. The bomb seems to do a ton of damage as well since the damage was increased.
• The assist bonuses don't seem worth it anymore. Does it take the new beta multiplier into account?

Ability ideas:

• Spider: A small percentage chance of causing an engine shutdown when hitting an enemy.
• Weasel: Destroying enemy specials when hitting them. It could be something like this for the ability levels: lvl 1: destroy portals, lvl2: destroy bursts and portals, lvl 3: destroy repels, bursts and portals, lvl 4: destroy all specials and x-radar.
• Shark: An ability that recharges and allow the Shark to increase it's max energy significantly for one life.

Other comments:

• I liked the new ball game. It seems that some ships have a huge advantage in it but whatever. I am sure it will be popular when it works properly.

[Lag.Com]

Terriers attaching to terriers is very bad. Please remove.

I also agree with the rest of the things Mjollnir said, though I'm not so sure about Lancasters being overpowered. I'll try one out next test.

[DankNuggets]

Why does the ratio in MVP victory stats sometimes contain a '?' I'm not sure. Can you copy/paste an example?

I don't have an example, but i remember him getting it a couple of times and i got it once. He also had it work a few times, where he had something like 3.61:1 ration instead of ?:1. I think it happens in really short rounds (like 3-5 mins) where he doesn't die at all. Maybe it's a simple divide by 0 bug.

Also, Levi players, I forgot to mention: if you haven't noticed, shrap has become available at a much lower rank. However, each level only adds 1 piece of shrap per bomb, so it's rather affordable. This should be a must-have upgrade for every Levi, as it turns your otherwise benign bombs into something much more powerful. If this proves too strong, rather than removing shrap for the Levi I'll reduce bomb damage further.

As of last game, the only one i've seen with shrap admittedly, it seems a bit overpowered. since it doesn't take that much energy to bomb repeatedly, it's easy to get a lot of shrap kills. while i agree it was hard to get bomb kills before, i kind of like the whole support aspect as well as the "bomb to weaken, bullet to kill" tactic too. I think a much better idea would be along the lines of Viruk's suggestion.

Another thought: Instead of having heavily damaging shrap could you not make it destroy upgrades? Shrap intuitively seems like the sort of weapon that could easily break things but not easily kill a ship outright.

Perhaps temporarily nocking turn/thrust/speed/etc. an upgrade or two per shrap hit or randomly removing a special seems like a good idea. Random damage to fit with a random weapon.

[Mjollnir]

yes you would, though i'd have to say that if that game that chao is refering to had more than a dozen ppl playing, the sharks might have had more of an impact. This seems backwards, but I'll explain.

My freq, had about 6 ppl on it, two of which were sharks, one was a terr, and the other three were jav? wb? lanc? (can't remember exactly, but only 3, 4 fighters at max). Don't know exactly what chao's team had, but it probably went along the lines of 1 shark, 1 terr, and 4-5 fighters (mainly spiders + lancs). Initially, we could push chao around enough (though he had 50+ bty and we had 30-40 bty) to keep flag, but since we had little to no firepower, we couldn't kill off the other team, just slow down our own deaths. Had we had enough fighers to shoot through our reps, it woud've been a bit different. We had enough "shark power" to out rep chao, but we didn't have the fire power to kill the enemies, just keep them from killing us for a few secs.



P.S. : WE NEED MORE PEOPLE TO SHOW UP AT THE 7PM TEST! The last 2-3 times i played we barely had enough to keep it intersting, and i haven't played a two base test in quite a while

Oh. In games where the amount of players is very small, too many Sharks may actually be a disadvantage. That makes sense.

We really do need more people in BOTH tests. I suggest we start making more public ads or whatever to get people playing again. It's a shame that normal hosted events take priority over this and we aren't even allowed to make private message based ads during them (I think?). Also the amount of test time allowed is so short that it just slows down the beta process.

Another thing slowing us down is the inactivity of this thread. People often talk about potential bugs and ideas while playing Distension but don't actually bother to come and write about them in here. That means Dug misses most of your input and that makes it hard to balance and finish the beta phase a in a swift manner.

[Viruk]

Also, Levi players, I forgot to mention: if you haven't noticed, shrap has become available at a much lower rank. However, each level only adds 1 piece of shrap per bomb, so it's rather affordable. This should be a must-have upgrade for every Levi, as it turns your otherwise benign bombs into something much more powerful. If this proves too strong, rather than removing shrap for the Levi I'll reduce bomb damage further.

I certainly noticed getting killed by their shrap a few times in the last game. While just one or two or them aren't enough to overpower the Levi it is going to be a bit sick when they start getting more. Weakening the EMP bombs just to allow yet another source of random death would definitely be a retrograde step in my opinion. The concept of support ship for the Levi was a good one. Why not stick with it? Better to lower the shrap damage so that even L3 shrap only kills the most weakened ships. Alternatively make shrap into a controllable, upgradable special that is only fitted for the next X seconds after the player pms the bot. That way the majority of shots will not contain the random element and players are forced to decide tactically when they should use their enhanced ammo.

Another thought: Instead of having heavily damaging shrap could you not make it destroy upgrades? Shrap intuitively seems like the sort of weapon that could easily break things but not easily kill a ship outright.

[DankNuggets]

It must have been a weird game then. I guess I'll have to say almost always then.

yes you would, though i'd have to say that if that game that chao is refering to had more than a dozen ppl playing, the sharks might have had more of an impact. This seems backwards, but I'll explain.

My freq, had about 6 ppl on it, two of which were sharks, one was a terr, and the other three were jav? wb? lanc? (can't remember exactly, but only 3, 4 fighters at max). Don't know exactly what chao's team had, but it probably went along the lines of 1 shark, 1 terr, and 4-5 fighters (mainly spiders + lancs). Initially, we could push chao around enough (though he had 50+ bty and we had 30-40 bty) to keep flag, but since we had little to no firepower, we couldn't kill off the other team, just slow down our own deaths. Had we had enough fighers to shoot through our reps, it woud've been a bit different. We had enough "shark power" to out rep chao, but we didn't have the fire power to kill the enemies, just keep them from killing us for a few secs.



P.S. : WE NEED MORE PEOPLE TO SHOW UP AT THE 7PM TEST! The last 2-3 times i played we barely had enough to keep it intersting, and i haven't played a two base test in quite a while

[gdugwyler]

I've made a couple of settings changes in reply to some issues of late:

• L2 damage and L3 damage increased by about 100 and 200 respectively. With the ship type system, the energy maximums just aren't what they once were. This is actually fortunate in many ways (for me) -- it allows me to up L2 damage again, which also ups L3 damage, without devaluing L3 to the point where it's of no use. On the contrary, L3 will generally yield a 1 hit kill. It won't stay this way, though, due to all ships now having the same basic energy upgrades and so any one of them being able to eventually tank them (yes, probably even Weasel) -- but at least even for these relatively high ranks (and 40 should be seen as a fairly high rank), it'll function as a one hit kill.
• Lanc bullet fire costs upped to 310 per bullet level for singlefire and 435 per bullet level for multifire. These values were taken straight out of pub, despite the Lanc in Distension being oriented to the 1-hit kill as in the old style, rather than the pub Lanc's hybrid approach between WB and spider. (What this means: it may still be imbalanced. Taking it a step at a time. Note that Distension's Lanc still has a much longer fire delay between shots than the pub Lanc.) This is a very small increase for the singlefire, but a good jump for the Multifire, so that Multi L3 should not be seen as often.
• Removing the blocks near the flag that allow sharks to flagsit easily. It's an interesting suggestion, one that's easy to implement and experiment with, and potentially will help with the Shark "problem." I'll also recheck the code that limits sharks to +1 of the other freq -- it shouldn't be possible that one army has 3 and the other 0. Ah: there was a small logic bug that actually allowed there to be 2 more sharks rather than just 1. That'll be fixed.

Glad that ship types are working out a bit better now. It's very true that no one ship type is meant to be better than the others, much like how we're trying to balance the ships themselves. I calculated it somewhat more carefully this time and I think it should now work, though there's a possibility that the Scout or Science Vessel might end up being more powerful than the others after special abilities are added -- depends on the costs of the abilities and how decent they are. In any case, even from rank to rank the ship types should be balanced against one another, barring the fact that sometimes one type will let you use a weapon you could ordinarily not, or let you purchase an upgrade that would give a great advantage at one particular rank. Now all that said, there's a final shiptype called the Dreadnought that will only be available after public release, and while being a good bit worse in the lower ranks, it should outstrip every other shiptype in the higher ones. Essentially it will be for the very motivated. Additionally, to prevent abuse, those selecting Dreadnought will be set to rank 10 so that they have to bear the full brunt of its challenge through the young years -- therefore it will only be worth choosing at that rank. This type may also only be available to advanced players, perhaps requiring flag officer status.

Viruk:
Why does the ratio in MVP victory stats sometimes contain a '?' I'm not sure. Can you copy/paste an example?
Why do some players have a rank of under 39? Wasn't aware any did. Could you also paste that when you see it? I can then look up the player's records. New players should be entering in at 1 RP from rank 39, regardless of whether or not they were beta testers before the recent reset.

Also, Levi players, I forgot to mention: if you haven't noticed, shrap has become available at a much lower rank. However, each level only adds 1 piece of shrap per bomb, so it's rather affordable. This should be a must-have upgrade for every Levi, as it turns your otherwise benign bombs into something much more powerful. If this proves too strong, rather than removing shrap for the Levi I'll reduce bomb damage further.