Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[Mjollnir]

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Against terr, even at lower level I found myself capable of making BaseTerr kills on occasions. Against highly ranked terr like jngy slate, filbb, raible and vigilant one such as Meddi and RageRitual I have problem. The problem I ran into is that although I may hit them with first shot, they may just tank my lv2, and afterwards the 2nd shot is much harder to hit. Now that I got lv3 guns, things can only go better for me. Expected success hit rate is 1 out of 5 attempts of sneak, where more than half of the time I could force them to portal. All in all, comparing to both versions of pub weasel this one is simply a dream-come-true, balanced combination of both and quite a foe against buffed-up terr.
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Forcing a portal is meaningless since Terriers have an unlimited supply of them. Decent Terrier players only die when they push the wrong button, hit a stray blue bullet after portaling or when a Weasel is lucky enough to portal on top of them and actually hit the Terr afterwards (which is surprisingly hard).

[Andy H.K.]

It would be too powerful if you could use it on terriers since they could then immediately summon help and unlike the bridge idea there are no fixed entry/exit points that can be guarded and no communications and movement delay before using it.

Thinking about it - this would still make Mjollnir's idea a little overpowered as well though. Perhaps terrier should not be able to use bridge either. It might also make sense for the bridge idea to force the weasel to lay the exit point first and then survive to lay the entry point to give a better chance of guarding a FR.

I noticed that when I first got the idea, so I suggested having a VERY short range to make sure it is tricky enough to pull off. C'mon, If you see a weasel and terr kissing through a wall you CAN TELL what's going to happen.

Actually my intended idea is to switch position with ENEMY ship to aid sneaking missions. There is also possibilities of warping enemy BaseTerr out of FR too, which I believe the community would label it with [OVERPOWERED(TM)]. With a short range we can ensure this won't happen oftenly. Afterall, even if they are warped out.... they have portals, they always do. If VB warping ppl out is fine I don't see big problem with this.

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Now, into the age-old rivalry between weasel and terrier....

With my experience in Xing, I would say weasel in its current state is pretty fine. It's a fun ship to use in combat and even ship building provide quite a challenge: Every item is helpful to the ship and with limited UP we have to consider which to get first and making sacrifice in other area. Among all ship I think only weasel provide enough diversity to make people go headache in shipbuilding, the rest just feel like a straight road (I've played not many type of ship so please share your experience too!). Even with traditional items from subspace I found each one of them essential to a weasel's success and represent a weasel's resourcefulness very well. The prismatic array is fun and well-balanced. Usefulness is situational, but it has proven its power to me at least once. And I love the icon too, can I use it as my avator?

Against terr, even at lower level I found myself capable of making BaseTerr kills on occasions. Against highly ranked terr like jngy slate, filbb, raible and vigilant one such as Meddi and RageRitual I have problem. The problem I ran into is that although I may hit them with first shot, they may just tank my lv2, and afterwards the 2nd shot is much harder to hit. Now that I got lv3 guns, things can only go better for me. Expected success hit rate is 1 out of 5 attempts of sneak, where more than half of the time I could force them to portal. All in all, comparing to both versions of pub weasel this one is simply a dream-come-true, balanced combination of both and quite a foe against buffed-up terr.

As for terr, I can see one thing that's making it more offensive than it's supposed to be - it's not burst, it's not portal, it's their guns.

And I'm not talking about lv2 gun either, it's their bullet speed.

I see their bullet speed is much higher than the pub one. The gun's effective range is greatly improved. Couple that with terr's naturally high speed and handling, what you get is a ship that can fight almost as good as a lanc. I haven't even mentioned the fire-and-forget burst and high survivability with portal and escape pod. Its effectiveness can match or suppass some assault ship by the time it get lv2 gun.

I won't call that a "defense systems", take a look at sharks, that's defensive.

This has confused a handful of people recently. But what this 'GAME OVER' notice really means is that DistensionBots shutdown timer has expired and so it will shutdown automatically when the currently running round ends. I like this feature as it lets everyone know it's their last game, but if DistensionBot could *arena a message saying such instead of the built-in subspace timer announcing a Game Over, it would be far less confusing.

-ali

No, I say keep it that way, it's hilarious.

Notice: GAME OVER!

[alinea]

There seemed to be some odd things going on with the end of game message today

This has confused a handful of people recently. But what this 'GAME OVER' notice really means is that DistensionBots shutdown timer has expired and so it will shutdown automatically when the currently running round ends. I like this feature as it lets everyone know it's their last game, but if DistensionBot could *arena a message saying such instead of the built-in subspace timer announcing a Game Over, it would be far less confusing.

-ali

[Chao.]

I was getting some sort of end of game message without the game ending.

That's the timer you see in every arena (with a flag).

You can go just about anywhere and do the standard ?time and see how much time is left until it gives a reward for having the flag or whatever. They count down on their own unless someone with powers starts a specific timer, that's my understanding anyway.

Basically: It did not really affect gameplay at all.

[Viruk]

Do weasels still get a special streak bonus? (If so it was not clearly evident in the single streak I got today)

There seemed to be some odd things going on with the end of game message today:

I was getting some sort of end of game message without the game ending.

Some games we lost gave me no consolation RP (both when I was assisting and when I wasn't assisting and should have had full participation)

[Mjollnir]

Tricky but not impossible if you use landmarks e.g. 'left corner of north tube entrance' or hover near the warpspot to direct your team. You would probably want to stick to the same familiar locations unless your Tac Ops could help by making it visible.

If you are level 54 and 'x' was 40 as you suggest it then your bridge lasts 54*40 = 2160 seconds = 36 minutes! More than a little excessive I think!

Oh.. no wonder there was a confusion. What I mean with levels here is the number of upgrades. Level 1 of the upgrade gives you x seconds and level 2 of the upgrade gives you 2*x seconds and so on. Hope this clears it up.

[Viruk]

I am not sure I understood you right but I was talking about x seconds, not minutes. I still think there should be a graphic to indicate the entry point since it's almost impossible to actually tell people where the spot is.

Tricky but not impossible if you use landmarks e.g. 'left corner of north tube entrance' or hover near the warpspot to direct your team. You would probably want to stick to the same familiar locations unless your Tac Ops could help by making it visible.

The bridge lasts x seconds at level 1, 2*x seconds at level 2 and so on.. The x could be something like 40

If you are level 54 and 'x' was 40 as you suggest it then your bridge lasts 54*40 = 2160 seconds = 36 minutes! More than a little excessive I think!

EDIT
I figured out why you were surprised! Perhaps you were talking about having an ability level and not your ship level right? In which case 40 would be fine: If you had 3 possible levels of bridge upgrade and were maxed out your bridge would only last a couple of minutes.

Perhaps it could even use your ship level instead of 'x' so your ability would scale with level although it would make it harder for lower level weasels

[jngy slate]

I don't want to make another long post so I will try to make my point quickly:

• Terriers are getting way more RP than other ships because:
  • They get as many kills as any other pure killing ship.
  • They get a huge profit sharing.
  • They get a big round end bonus for being a support ship.
  • They get huge streaks (50 I hear) since they can survive so easily.

I checked the kill-death stats last time I played and a Terrier was actually leading in kills. To further prove my point, here are the top 5 Terrier ranks:

1. jngy slate (61)
2. flibb (59)
3. Ajant (58)
4. Raible (58)
5. Ze_Bunisher (57)

No other ship is even level 57 yet and most top 5 ships are late 40s to early 50s. So what should we do? I am assuming they get most their kills from bursts so I guess we could reduce them again. Their yellow bullets are quite effective at getting kills too so there is no need for a lot of bursts. Sure, we need to keep their ship fun to play and I am sure they will whine if we nerf, but I think it's obvious something needs to be done.

The recent burst nerf is enough. I find myself saving up my bursts many times to use them when they're really neccesary. About the l2 bullets. I never liked them so I never got them, same with multi. They use up more energy, and the terr is not an offensive ship. Most of the time when firing my l1s it's because someone fired first. Another acceptable reason to fire at someone is to keep them from firing at you, without expecting to kill them. But in Distension it's hard to guess if they will still have enough energy to fire at you after getting hit. The emp ability helps in this. But I have little to comment on it since I haven't got it yet.

And we don't wanna discourage players from playing terr since it's one of the most important ships when basing. I love playing terr myself but I feel that some of the other players feel obligated to play them.

[Lag.Com]

Okay, so I figured out how to get a decent amount of kills in weasel - don't buy stealth or cloak. This frees up a lot of UP for buying SPD and CHG/NRG upgrades. With no other changes from my full-stealth build, I managed to get a positive record today even though I played on the losing team for every game.

Naturally this is only based on my own experiences, but it seems like the added energy expenditure of Stealth/Cloak just makes you useless as hell. However, the entire Weasel ship idea is based around those two things, so... hmm.

I'm still trying to use Prismatic Decoy Array, but it hasn't helped yet. I'll stick with it, I like tricks.

Oh, ability idea: Noble Sacrifice. Lose some of your ship upgrades (until next death) to give an ally some random greens.

[Mjollnir]

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I also think that 'x' should be closer to 1 than 40 as this ability would be quite powerful and half a minute for a mid level weasel seems quite long enough. I would not like to see high level weasels dropping these things for half an hour!
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I am not sure I understood you right but I was talking about x seconds, not minutes. I still think there should be a graphic to indicate the entry point since it's almost impossible to actually tell people where the spot is.

[Zeimonster]

To fix all those problems with terrs, just give them 2k+ health fairly early so they can tank L3's and survive longer. After that it's only reasonable to also reduce their offensive capability.

[roxxkatt]

terrs may level a little faster, but do we really want our terrs changing to another ship?
i thought so.

and dank, how many times have you even seen the summon used?
0? i thought so.
every time ive seen it used, 5+, it has been excessively abusive.

[DankNuggets]

i like the weasel ideas, and on that note, i do think they should be a little less powerful than most ships, and the terr a little more powerful.

summon seems to work out fine, i don't see how it's "ruining the game"

[Viruk]

A suggestion for a new ability for the Weasel:

- An ability to create a one way warp spot. The Weasel would have to say !w1 to the bot to lay a starting point and !w2 to lay the end of the tunnel.

- After laying both points a graphic would appear to show the starting point (and possible the end point as well) so the teammates can see where the spot is.

- Only your teammates can use the bridge.

- The bridge lasts x seconds at level 1, 2*x seconds at level 2 and so on.. The x could be something like 40.

- This ability would get recharged like the Jumpspace and EMP abilities.

Just playing around with the idea and the details can be worked on but what do you people think about it?

I really like this idea but I think there should be no graphics to show the warp point - forcing the team to communicate effectively to use it. Perhaps there could be an Ops ability that makes all temporary warp points (including the enemy's) visible for a short time.

If it turns out to be technically impossible to have temporary warp points anywhere then perhaps the flag room, mid and map could be remade to contain lots of preset warp points which would all be dormant until activated by a weasel with this ability.

I also think that 'x' should be closer to 1 than 40 as this ability would be quite powerful and half a minute for a mid level weasel seems quite long enough. I would not like to see high level weasels dropping these things for half an hour!

But with your inspiration I've though of a similar but more combat-oriented ability idea: Exchange position. It work like this: weasel PM bot to warp to where the ticked player is, and the ticked one to where the weasel was, kind of like castling in Chess.

To keep it from abuses the range have to be VERY short, I'll at max suggest a quarter screen apart.

It would be too powerful if you could use it on terriers since they could then immediately summon help and unlike the bridge idea there are no fixed entry/exit points that can be guarded and no communications and movement delay before using it.

Thinking about it - this would still make Mjollnir's idea a little overpowered as well though. Perhaps terrier should not be able to use bridge either. It might also make sense for the bridge idea to force the weasel to lay the exit point first and then survive to lay the entry point to give a better chance of guarding a FR.

[Andy H.K.]

A suggestion for a new ability for the Weasel:

- An ability to create a one way warp spot. The Weasel would have to say !w1 to the bot to lay a starting point and !w2 to lay the end of the tunnel.

- After laying both points a graphic would appear to show the starting point (and possible the end point as well) so the teammates can see where the spot is.

- Only your teammates can use the bridge.

- The bridge lasts x seconds at level 1, 2*x seconds at level 2 and so on.. The x could be something like 40.

- This ability would get recharged like the Jumpspace and EMP abilities.

Just playing around with the idea and the details can be worked on but what do you people think about it?

Hmm that sounds scary... Better have a long cooldown and maybe limit how long the tunnel can be. I don't think majority of the player base would like such ability tho.

But with your inspiration I've though of a similar but more combat-oriented ability idea: Exchange position. It work like this: weasel PM bot to warp to where the ticked player is, and the ticked one to where the weasel was, kind of like castling in Chess.

To keep it from abuses the range have to be VERY short, I'll at max suggest a quarter screen apart.