Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[Mjollnir]

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?

[Mjollnir]

What you say is quite true, BUT, now that other ships are gettinghigher ranks and becoming more deadly, the terr is losing its advantage. For example, yesterday i was terring(lvl 54 or something) and was getting killed left and right because - Random terr bursts that i dont even notice. Sharks putting random mines all over and teammates getting me killed in them. SO MANY SHIPS NOW HAVE BLUE BULLETS that i can hardly stay alive. And spiders w/ super yellow bullets make me want to kill myself. Terr bursts are nothing compared to that. The other ships are catching up to terrs and terrs are becoming less powerfull compared to them. So all in all i think terr is fine the way it is, although i personally am tired of terr cuz of the above reasons.

Even if it is getting tougher for Terriers to stay alive, they should not be able to get so many more RPs than the other ships. The fact that the Terrier is one of the highest killing ships says a lot about the situation. The ship's purpose is to stay alive, not make a ton of kills. You said random bursts are getting you killed, so wouldn't it be better to allow less bursts?
Lowering the amount of bursts was just a suggestion but I like it more than lowering RP gained from burst kills.

[Oops]

Mjollnir

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.

What you say is quite true, BUT, now that other ships are gettinghigher ranks and becoming more deadly, the terr is losing its advantage. For example, yesterday i was terring(lvl 54 or something) and was getting killed left and right because - Random terr bursts that i dont even notice. Sharks putting random mines all over and teammates getting me killed in them. SO MANY SHIPS NOW HAVE BLUE BULLETS that i can hardly stay alive. And spiders w/ super yellow bullets make me want to kill myself. Terr bursts are nothing compared to that. The other ships are catching up to terrs and terrs are becoming less powerfull compared to them. So all in all i think terr is fine the way it is, although i personally am tired of terr cuz of the above reasons.

[Singularity]

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.

Agreed, terriers are a lot higher in levels than most other ships (I know it is also partly because terriers are playing a lot, mostly in the red ship, but still). On the other hand, we don't need to nerf the ship itself, for example, we could half the RP for kills made by burst. Well, at least I presume so.

[Mjollnir]

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.

[Lag.Com]

Okay, so I tried my not-quite-a-spider build:
2/7/6/7/2 ROT/THR/SPD/CHG/NRG
Multifire, Radar, Portal, Rocket, VB 45%, Prismatic 30%

Sucked. Multi yellows are the only way to hit people with the low bullet speed, and they cost too much. Maybe this build would work with CHG 9 or 10. Basically the best thing about the weasel is its size, allowing it to capture a flag while the doors are up. Points against:
1. Every ship can buy multifire, making it easy to hit a weasel
2. Bomb radius cripples/kills a weasel no matter what, and EMP makes you unable to cloak/stealth to go hide
3. Unless you have 8 NRG upgrades, can't tank L2 bullets
4. Bullet speed is so low, have to go close to enemies to kill
5. Every ship can buy X-Radar (at varying levels), so it is very difficult to get close
6. Only L3 bullets kill decent terrs, and you need an excessive amount of energy to fire them
7. Stealth + Cloak is the only way to kill something stealthily, and you need 9+ CHG to offset the running cost
8. If you can't offset the running cost, by the time you reach your target you will be unable to fire L3 bullets
9. Decoys are a nice idea but seeing as very few ships have to aim at you anyway (see points 1,2) it doesn't help much
10. 6 SPD upgrades gives you around the same bullet speed as a Lancaster with none
All of the above add up to a ship that sucks in a flagroom battle, is of questionable use in a defensive cram, and of possible use in an offensive cram. While the ship is by very nature a 'specialist', it is not good at the thing it specialises for. The only situation under which you can realistically infiltrate the flagroom and kill a terrier is if he is minimally guarded, unaware of your presence and not fighting anybody else already. Tell me how often that happens.

I don't yet have Brick so I can't say how that affects things. At a guess it might be quite fun to warp people or block the flag, but the Ops can do that anyway. The unique ability to destroy Escape Pods is a great idea, but I so rarely kill Terriers I go after (stealth or spider build) that it doesn't seem to be very important in practice.

So, I've been big on problems but thin on solutions. Mjollnir suggested giving Weasels more energy, and I feel this will be a big help, as survivability is near-zero at present. Another thing I would like is an extra ability that capitalises on the 'Vengeful Bastard' side of things - perhaps a 'sacrifice' ability that cripples your ship and enemies near you for teammates to pick off. They're certainly better equipped for it than you are. That way new weasels can affect the game in some way other than killing inattentive spiders in midbase.

Oh, I forgot to add this at first. Today I received more RP from profit sharing than from killing. While you might expect this in a shark or a terrier who didn't have much to do... sigh.

[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

[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?

[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.

[PH]

re: auto energy/recharge upgrading

do it do it do it.

[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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.