Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[Viruk]

The second burst for the terr is still 160 UP isn't it? You should change that.

... to 200 UP. And then dramatically reduce the burst regen frequency. Maybe that would be enough to significantly cut down on all those deaths from unaimed random things bouncing at you from unexpected directions. Although since that still leaves the first burst, plenty of bomb shrap and all sorts of repped ordnance it probably wouldn't. Gah!

Also, I don't know if its already like this, but the RP sharing could also depend on the round time. The more long is the round, the more RP the losing team gets (because it means that they fought well). On the other hand, the less long is the round, the less RP the losing team gets (because it means that they didn't really put up a good fight and therefore don't "merit" a big ammount of RP).

This seems a good idea. I think there is a stalemate calculation based on flag held time. If you used this as a basis for calculating the losing bonus. Maybe multiplying it by (round time)/(stalemate time) and then halving it.

Now that the victory message has neat layout and its easy to find things it might be nice to add the % time the flag was held by the victors to give an idea of how close a game was.

With so many options to test when upgrading your ships; people AFK testing and upgrading their ships are sometimes going to be a significant factor in team balance when there are few players. It is also annoying to be shot at and warped about when you are busy upgrading. Can we not have a !refit mode that will warp you to a safe zone, remove you from the team balance calculations and disable AFK checks, support bonuses, victory bonuses, automatic warps and summons?

[El_Mariachi]

Hi, I played distension today June 10th 2008.

We played a one base game that lasted 22 min and my team lost. I got only 300 RP while the other team got like 20k RP... isn't it a too big difference between the two teams? I thought maybe there was a problem that needed to be fixed : the RP sharing system. As it is now, why would someone even play to get only that little RP at the end... Getting like 3/6 or 4/6 (just a guess) of the other team RP could be interesting.

Also, I don't know if its already like this, but the RP sharing could also depend on the round time. The more long is the round, the more RP the losing team gets (because it means that they fought well). On the other hand, the less long is the round, the less RP the losing team gets (because it means that they didn't really put up a good fight and therefore don't "merit" a big ammount of RP). This would encourage more teamwork and a better ship dispatching maybe, because a team would like to last longer to get more RP.

,------------------------------------------------------------------------.
  |  END OF WAR: GRAND VICTORY for PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF MISANTHROPY (0) !!  \
  .==============================================================================.
  |  Total award: 47747.703 RP     75% for 5 on support   -> average 7161 RP     |
  |              > x2 BONUS! <     25% for 3 on attack    -> average 3979 RP     |
  }======   MVPs   =============================================================={
  |  Holds: Chao <ER> [13]                Breaks: N/A [0]                        |
  |  FR Kills: alinea <ER> [42]           TeKs: Mjollnir [9]                     |
  |  Gen. Kills: Alore [53]               Best Ratio: Mjollnir [3.07:1]          |
  |  Best Streak: Mjollnir [15]           RP: Mjollnir [56899]                   |
  .==============================================================================.
  Round time: 22:14                          END OF WAR STATUS   0 [===|   ] 1   
P Distension> You lost this long battle, but fought courageously.  HQ has given you a bonus of 386RP (100% participation).

Thank you,

El_Mariachi

[Vergilius]

Lil question about !assist. It seems like it only lets me randomly assist. First 2 times i tried today was sth like (max assist rank:72) i was 47 at the time, but it wouldnt allow me. I know nobody from my team changed ships, because 10 seconds later it gave the potential avarice warning, but it still didnt let me. I do get on when the difference is huge. Am i missing something?

[jngy slate]

The second burst for the terr is still 160 UP isn't it? You should change that.

[gdugwyler]

Wanted to let everyone know that aside from working on abilities, I'm going to address some of the problems associated with the ship types:

• Scout and Advanced Scout will merge into one (too confusing, and an unnecessary distinction). This ship will be the default ship for all players and should work fine for most applications. After rank 10, like the Advanced Scout, this ship will receive 8UP per rank.
• The amount of automatic energy and recharge will be calculated slightly differently -- presently it doesn't show enough of a difference between ship types.
• Artillery will be given a bonus to recharge to make it more viable. It will actually have (I believe) the most overall upgrades per rank due to recharge being somewhat less valuable than energy, which is needed for firing more advanced, high-cost weapons.
• The game will experimentally move to each energy and recharge upgrade being worth either 2/3 or 1/2 of what it is at present; all associated costs (for Z-Class) will be reduced by 2/3 or 1/2, and they will be given automatically 1.5x or 2x as frequently for non-Z-Class ships. The idea is to even out the amount of energy and recharge across a larger number of ranks, so that the difference between having 8 upgrades and having 9 is not as drastic. The hope is that this will make weapon firing costs work a bit more smoothly, so that you're not stuck waiting for 5-10 ranks just to use a weapon that you need only 50 more energy to fire.
• Weapon costs will most likely be reduced for a number of ships. I need to know which ships in particular are experiencing the most problems in order to do this, however. From what I understand, the Lanc is still fine, and I would be willing to bet that the Spider has also not had problems, both of these ships having low firing costs.
• !armory and !status will now show the number of ranks until the next energy and recharge upgrade.

[gdugwyler]

I'm with you all the way on how most ships after the change will probably drop a lot of upgrades into speed, having not much else to put down. Ideally, what I'd like to do is have enough abilities to upgrade so as to have diversity among individual ships. The first task was to roll out the ship type changes, and afterward move on to filling out the ships.

Here is my THREE PRONGED PLAN (much like a salad fork) for abilities:

1. Extend existing abilities. As you said, Fluffz, basically expanding out a bit present abilities -- making early levels that cost a good bit less but are not as potent, as well as extended levels of the abilities for those that want to sink a lot of points in. In particular I might add an increasing return concept -- so that if the first level of the ability gives you x, the next level gives you x + 1 (so 2x+1 total), the one after x + 2 (3x + 2) ... you get the idea. Each ability level growing more potent at each upgrade, giving a benefit to specializing in a particular ability.
2. Create new abilities. There are several possibilities for abilities that I'd not considered until just recently (excluding those that many of you have mentioned and for which I'm very grateful -- some will definitely be implemented, or those that can and without extreme difficulty at any rate). There are 4 classes:
   1. Abilities that rely on the WatchDamage packet. When you fire on someone and don't kill them, these abilities would be activated (probably a percentage chance). This could include reducing some of their upgrades for that particular rearm, causing engine shutdown, setting energy to 0, firing on them any of the Ops abilities, warping, -RP, reduced loadout at next rearm, and so on.
   2. Abilities that work with LVZ modifications. Recent upgrades to the LVZ protocol allow us to modify locations, display modes, layers and so on of LVZ screen objects (graphics). The only difficulty is that the object numbers remain static/unchangeable/limited. So, for example, for a fake mine effect dropped by a player, it would most likely be restricted to one per team. If one player dropped a fake mine and immediately after another on the same team did the same, the original mine would be moved to the new location. But that's not too big a deal. If there are any abilities that you would like to see done with graphics that do not need to be in a fixed location (doesn't mean actually "moving," but just able to be moved from point A to point B when necessary), I'd be interested. One ability will be for the Weasel, showing the locations of all of the warp points on the map -- and additional levels maybe opening up extra spots. There's also the possibility of opening up a wormhole or tunnel that leads anyone who enters it to a chosen location.
   3. Buff abilities. Simple enough: with the maximum energy and recharge recently done away with, we can now have buff abilities fairly easily. You fire the ability, and for a limited time you have upgrades you would not otherwise.
   4. Permanent alterations. Abilities that would install as permanent alterations to how the ship works. For example, something that provides the package deal of +2 energy, +1 recharge, -3 speed, -3 thrust. (Might be useful for non-Z-Class who need a certain amount of energy for a weapon but have no way of getting it without waiting, or even for Z-Class that just have some ranks to wait before they can buy the next level of energy.)
3. Balance abilities against one another. In order to ensure diversity of ships, the abilities should be balanced both by cost and power. I'd like to see some be significantly cheaper on the whole, and also weaker than some abilities, rather than having ability 1 always cost the same as ability 2, forcing them to compete directly and requiring an exact balance of power between the two in order for players to choose. (I think this was a problem with spider's energy tank vs. super -- super is still highly preferred, is it not?)

Other things: I did hear you about the energy costs of the weapons. Are they generally too high now, even with the high-energy ship type? The idea is supposed to be that the lighter ships should not necessarily be able to use the new gun just because their rank allows it to them -- but the warship should certainly be able to the very rank it becomes available. If it's not then there's an issue.

Also note that for those choosing the Warship, it's not a high-energy, high-recharge shiptype, but a high-energy and fairly low recharge ship type (in comparison to its energy, that is). I'm not on the computer with the numbers at present, but I think its recharge upgrades about as quickly as the Advanced Scout, or even possibly a bit worse. The only way to have both high recharge and energy at ranks below 60 is to choose Z-Class.

[Fluffz]

too much fast ships. speed upgrades way to cheap. scouts shouldnt be able to upgrade their primary weapon to the max lvl.

bombs suck, maybe l2 bombs solve that but i duno.

2 sharks in one fr = boring repfest.

with everyone claiming this or that is overpowered the abilities seem to have gotten boring while i wasnt playing. ur better of playing a high energy ship because abilities are nerfed to a point where they aint worth it. this results in lack of diversity.

maybe below lvl40 there is nothing to do now that energy upgrades go automated? put some upgrades there. generally spoken change more upgrades from instant to level. even xradar could be a 5/5 upgrade. so you get xradar at every 4/3/2/1mins/spawn. hope i made myself clear here.

more abilities! i know ur doing ur best with diversity of upgrades and subgams. maybe a ability that warps players in a defined radius around the ship uppon messaging distbot. like the balanceout bot does. this could help vs those nasty sharks.
i dont know how the eg bot schecks for antiwarp in spawn but maybe you could use it as an event trigger for somthing. i say drop ops and give its abilities to the ships

reset was a good idea, now everyone lost the "i have to post feedback to improve my ship" idea and tries other ships too. i suggest u reset to 50 next week.

IMHO

[Viruk]

i never really sharked before, and when i did, it was slow, but now that my shark is fast...
repel speed needs to travel a little bit faster then max shark flying speed, for obvious reasons...
its the most easily fixable thing in my constant assault of everyone firing at me, my terrible sharking, and my fucked up keyset that gives me letters instead of repels...

No thanks! Bad enough that reps fling lots of random death around slowly!

lancaster bullets need to slow the fuck down...
as if its not bad enough that they have a fire delay less then half of all the other ships, fire lv3 bullets at like lvl30, and get leeching...

why do their bullets need to travel ten times faster then u can dodge with any ship?

I find I can sometimes dodge even the multifire but they are certainly a major threat. If they are actually faster than the pub lanc or faster than warbird bullets they probably do need slowing. Otherwise not since high level Distension ships seem more able to dodge than pub ships. They are primarily fighters so should have comparable fire delays to other fighter ships. I find my lanc fire delay seems slightly higher than its pub counterpart but this may just be me.

[Viruk]

You made the game way too complicated by adding new features all the time.

I am starting to hear a few complaints about the complexity in the arena. Not sure whether this is the cause of the reduced population or whether the gap in the testing and the distrust caused by loss of rank are more to blame.

I would suggest having all automatic upgrades for the default scout ship to make it more easy for newcomers to get straight into the action. You would need to make sure the scout is well balanced at lower-mid levels though or people might feel forced to worry about finding a more competitive build before they are ready or feel frustrated because their manual ships are comparatively weaker.

dont know anything about the other ships but i tried shark for some 20 mins today and imo it was highly overpowered at level 40 already. I had ~1550 energy, max thrust and speed, 3 reps and 50% regen, cloak and enough recharge to be able to keep cloak on without losing practically any energy. I dont think i specialized in anything. Just killed one guy, leveled to 40 and upped everything I could.

I tried a bit of sharking today. I started off as warship with lots of energy but had little means of using it offensively and could not get enough to tank L3s so I switched to science vessel to max out my reps and other specials. I am a fairly bad shark with lousy repping reflexes and mining that often seemed to kill almost as many teammates as enemies. Since I could often get 5 reps by the time I reached the FR and had plenty of mines I could still disrupt and slow down the enemy a lot though. Sadly there were plenty of sharks on the other side as well and with lots of sharks in the same area the battle for the flag quickly turned into a horrible laggy repfest of the sort that would normally make me go and play something better instead.

Unlike the terrier I was unable to make lots of easy kills. I could defend an area better than anything else but this only held true as long as the reps held out.
I feel the shark is slightly overpowered but only because the repel is such a powerful special. Everything else about the shark is easily countered or balanced by weaknesses. Mines are easily repped by enemy sharks and are bypassed by weasels, bullets are slow and weak, bombs slow, x-radar draining, speed and thrust are nothing special and cloak without stealth is of limited use against alert opponents. Even if the enemy had no sharks and I was part of a strong defence forcing them to keep ramming my mines I would be lucky to level up at anything like the rate a terrier can. It is far more likely that someone on the enemy team would feel they had to switch to shark to counter such a powerful defensive arsenal.

Unless you can develop alternative counters to mines and reps or nerf them a bit I think we need a stricter shark limit for single flag games as 6 sharks in the same FR is often just too much for enjoyable gameplay. I don't like the idea of limiting player choice but the randomization caused by lots of repping and the need to get through multiple mines to win limits player choice in other ways.

[roxxkatt]

as i see it, theres no way to make it fair enough to be dueling, thats all.
HOWEVER, squad basing duels could be possible...
and i lol'd at the ward thing...
used to
ward> stfu newb, i lost because i sneezed irl...
made me chuckle...

about dist:

end spam, breaks still doesnt work... Breaks: N/A [0]
i never really sharked before, and when i did, it was slow, but now that my shark is fast...
repel speed needs to travel a little bit faster then max shark flying speed, for obvious reasons...
its the most easily fixable thing in my constant assault of everyone firing at me, my terrible sharking, and my fucked up keyset that gives me letters instead of repels...


lancaster bullets need to slow the fuck down...
as if its not bad enough that they have a fire delay less then half of all the other ships, fire lv3 bullets at like lvl30, and get leeching...

why do their bullets need to travel ten times faster then u can dodge with any ship?


and since were on the lookout for abilities, im going to remind you of chaos idea of wormholes by the ears, and the bot setting gravity really high, pulling everyone into the ears...


and i also suggest that either the new energy system be more normalized, or that all fire costs get lowered across the board due to ships having insufficient energy...

[2kill]

Ward> stfu newbie. you only won because your master drive is level 3.

ROFL!

anyway...I think the upgrade points need to be increased slightly if you want their to be different ways of building your ships right now in almost all the ships I've tested (jav, spider, lev, terr, lanc) even though I try the other specializen I end up using warship... cause it has a higher energy and recharge and I can get most if not all of the upgrades I want, now I know you will be adding more abilities to upgrade but still how it is now you can still have basicly the same ship with better energy and recharge to help make ships more different I think all upgrades need to be increased by a cost of 5 UP or more.

thats all for right now

2kill

[*]Whether or not Dist will have more than 1 arena is still open for discussion, and is certainly not limited to your decision on the matter! If there were more than one arena it might have a different map and even different gametype, for variety. It all depends on whether or not the server can handle 2 bots, as well as TW politics. The global ops might be interesting but probably will not be done, requiring too much effort on my part.

In response to this part of your post, in regards to game types.... If there was a 2nd arena when this goes public, how about making a "Distensions Dueling Arena"? This would get the people in TW that don't care for basing into the development and gameplay of Dist, and with the variety of upgrades available for pretty much all the ships, you can duel in practically anything and tinker with the settings of your ship to better suit the particular person you are up against.

Let me share a couple predictions/foresights if this were to happen...

Lizard Fuel has won 10 games straight and has been promoted to Rank 30 in Warbird! Is there anybody that can stop him? -DuelBot

Ward> stfu newbie. you only won because your master drive is level 3.

I think it would work. :grin:

[roxxkatt]

end spam looks nice! =)

but theres no end spam for stalemate! =O
which is nicely fixed now, btw =)

[DankNuggets]

Dank: ... Note that when you maxed out the energy and recharge, that means you had 9 ranks of each according to the records, whereas in the Scout you had only 4 ranks of energy and 5 ranks of recharge. That's a massive difference. Further, the Z-Class is the only one with the option to have such high energy and recharge at rank 40 -- no other ship comes even close at that rank.

ok i guess the problem was more that I couldn't see how many upgrades that the scout had in place to begin with. The changes you're talking about ought to fix it. It might also help to know what each ship caps at, and how the caps relate to # of upgrades.

[gdugwyler]

I'll reply backwards through the posts as this will be easier.

Maddack:

• Such is any kind of development. We could probably have gone live then, but I didn't feel the game had enough depth to keep people playing for a long time. Ops is still an enigma as to whether or not it is valuable -- it may or may not be a good feature. I wanted to try for diversity of play. Still would like to develop it a bit further. Sorry to those who had Ops at a high rank before the change as well -- a DB query didn't account for it. If many people would like to test it, I could have it unlock more easily. I was under the impression that with everyone over rank 40, it would be unlocking for just about everyone quite soon, needing just the 20 round wins.

Viruk:

• UP per rank display has been fixed. It was a relic from the past system -- should now display the actual amount received. Also, it should tell you on levelling when you receive an energy or recharge upgrade (was already doing this). I'm also adding a display to !armory to show your automatic energy and recharge levels there, and will probably also add something to !status. I've been meaning to clean up !status for a while anyhow, much like the end round display was cleaned.
• I understand the problem about waiting several levels to upgrade something. Unfortunately that's a trouble with the more "boring"/heavy ship types. You might be better off with something like the Advanced Scout, which will give you a balance between UP and the automatic upgrades.
• I know what you mean about bounty no longer matching your rank, and the idea behind dummy upgrades. Unfortunately each prize is an individual PM the bot sends you, so this would actually create a great deal more net traffic.
• !specialize w/o args now displays ship types, and the yes is no longer case-sensistive.
• Finished up the end-round display. Your end-round bonus has of course always been displayed, and was not removed with this addition. It's just in a PM, as to include it in that box it would need to be an arena msg, and we'd have 40 different messages, one for each person.
• Re: Terr bursts, I could set it up so that podding Terrs don't come back with bursts, if this seems more fair to everyone. Remember that I essentially can't play Distension due to time constraints and the simple fact that I'm assaulted by questions non-stop whenever in the arena, so this sort of thing I definitely have to rely on you guys. Alternately people could save questions for the forums and I could play.
• Level up messages don't occur at every rank for players < rank 25. Going up a rank past 25 is fairly significant, and there shouldn't be anything wrong with displaying it. Below 25 only 10, 15 and 20 are displayed. If it's too annoying I can up the numbers slightly, but 25 seems a good threshold.
• Flag or some sort of identifying mark would be good. I just don't have the time for the most part, however. Designer or the like would be welcome here. I asked dev many months back and very few seemed interested in the design dept. however.
• Abbreviated kill msgs may happen.

Zei:

• Not sure on the sharks. Nothing was changed drastically. Others have opinions there? I'd like to see the ship be formidable at later levels if mainly just to encourage its play. Also, it's a good ship -- one of my favorites. Can't neglect the team-saving shark.
• Bomb radius was tweaked around a bit, but the radius bonuses, concerning L2 and up, were reduced somewhat so that Jav L2 wasn't too dominant. To compensate Levis the EMP time was increased a good deal.

Dank:

• Before Z-Class you were in the Scout, which is a decent choice up until rank 30 or so (where it's better than most types) and after that starts to suffer. However, it has the same amount of UP per rank as the Z-Class, so I would wager that a Scout at rank 40 would probably still be better than a Z-Class at rank 40. Note that when you maxed out the energy and recharge, that means you had 9 ranks of each according to the records, whereas in the Scout you had only 4 ranks of energy and 5 ranks of recharge. That's a massive difference. Further, the Z-Class is the only one with the option to have such high energy and recharge at rank 40 -- no other ship comes even close at that rank. So you paid to be quite ahead of the others in energy and recharge, and wound up with almost no UP to spend afterward, which seems exactly right. Note that you don't have to max them -- you chose to. The choice in Z-Class costs it a slight bit more, but it's not actually a very large amount. So considering that, Z-Class will never receive automatic upgrades of any kind. The new !armory (and soon !status) display about automatic levels of each upgrade should let people know well enough how much they are getting, anyhow, and allow better calculation.

2kill:

• As you say, the bit about the ship type should be in status, which it now is.
• "Pall" / "swarm" will not fire with a small number of players on the team any longer.

Cheese:

• The doors were intended to work like that so that Ops could fight one another for the doors.
• I'll check out sabotage costs. It would be nice for each level of the ability to be useful. Unfortunately a lot of the Ops ability costs have not been well-tested and are still somewhat arbitrary. A big source of imbalance.
• You said you'd made it to rank 75 in Ops -- was there too much profitsharing? Did it seem too easy to rank up? Also, how were the +OP rates and so on? And I certainly hope Ops will be tested again. It can't be hard to get now. Talk to me in-game if you'd like to get some of the ranks back on Ops as well. This goes for anyone who had Ops before.
• I'll modify shield length for each ship. WB already has a greater shield length for the purposes of its Drive, so I'll make the others equivalent to that.
• The orb was made a little bigger, though perhaps not big enough. Also, there are two levels of the shroud if I remember correctly. Neither should cover all of the screen of a player at any resolution, except very low res.
• Whether or not Dist will have more than 1 arena is still open for discussion, and is certainly not limited to your decision on the matter! If there were more than one arena it might have a different map and even different gametype, for variety. It all depends on whether or not the server can handle 2 bots, as well as TW politics. The global ops might be interesting but probably will not be done, requiring too much effort on my part.
• !opsmine still isn't in not because it requires 5 things in the LVZ, but somewhere on the order of 90. Each position must be calculated by hand and frankly I don't care enough to waste my time doing that. However, I might limit it only to the FRs (which I think I have in already) and be done with it there. It would just be a much less useful ability, but people would mostly want it for the FR entrance anyhow.
• "and the new energy/fire levels are still terribly unbalanced, why is it that i have a level45 shark, and can barely take a lv2 bullet, when almost every ship is firing lv3s?" -- Depends on what your ship type is. Would you care to disclose it? I'm guessing you have a light build, do you not?
• "AND ALSO, if zclass ships are PAYING FOR THEIR FREE UPGRADES, why did you cap it? and why is the cap so low? 50% nonfree chg/nrg leaves there no reason to be zclass..." People still seem to be playing it. I think you're missing something as far as the math is concerned. Other ships have automatic upgrades, but they are hardly free -- they're paid for at each rank. Ships like the Science Vessel receive even more UP per rank than Z-Class -- however they don't have the option to change their very weak build to something stronger in order to, say, equip a high-energy weapon when it becomes available. This inflexibility is a very large disadvantage. Z-Class, on the other hand, can have more energy and recharge upgrades at any given rank than any of the shiptypes, even the "heaviest," and still have UP left over. And they can switch them around to buy the upgrade coming in 2 ranks, if they want. There are many reasons to choose this class. I don't understand why you're turning on your cruise control and getting all uppity.
• Scrap costs: they'll be cheaper for Z-Class, and Z-Class will be able to change upgrades w/o penalty much further into the rank than other players. This advantage is an unseen one in beta when the scraps are all free, but it will be a useful one in public release. Also, note that the cost for specialization is not 5% of the rank, but of total RP. Much different. Respecializing could easily cost you a rank or more.
• Made the various text fixes you suggested.
• !listban might become necessary, yes. Might have to do it a different way as well, so that it logs who did it, when and why. Separate table, etc. We'll have to see. I don't yet know how the Distension banning system will work; just included it because I knew it would be useful.
• No breaks: the MVP stats only report the winning team. There's a chance that nobody's having to break -- only prevent breaks and so on.
• I understand about it taking a very long time. It's supposed to, but not an unbelievably long time (no ultimate grinding). To work at this I'm planning on reducing the overall cost per rank for every ship at the public release.

Lot of stuff, Christ. Once we get everything fixed up and working decently I'm going to move on to a few more special abilities for each ship, some a bit more benign than the more powerful ones we've seen, as well as some upgrades that modify present upgrades (gives you bonuses to some, minor penalties to others). Each ship should have a couple of those.