Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[2kill]

I think its the doors that the ops control... when I try to lay where they are it doesn't work even if your still...when I remeber this and move a bit it always works thats my two pennys worth

[meddi]

Dug, I don't know if this is explained elsewhere, so maybe you could tell me really simply here: Why is it difficult to drop mines in places other than on the flag (where it's disabled by tiles anyway)? It's weird to explain- it's like I have to stop hitting all the other keys except for the mine ones to get them to do it properly sometimes. Is rush-mining something you wanted to stop or is this problem just in my head?

I have no problem "rush-mining"; however, I don't use default key settings. It may be a similar situation to the pub weasel where you need to alter the default keys for repel to be able to thrust+shoot.

[Chao.]

Do you keep statistics of what ship is each player's favourite ship? When the teams are randomized, they should be randomized in a fair way such that both teams get an equal amount of players who prefer sharking and players who prefer terring. It sucks when you end up on a freq where nobody wants to shark or terr. Or if they try anyway, they start from level 0. That's just an automatic loss for every round. The winning freq can't even assist the losing one because the teams may be "balanced" due to the levels of the fighter ships (but which are worthless without sharks and terrs).

http://www.trenchwars.org/distension/statistics.php

That's a list of at least the top 5 and I guess the rest are available and could be used somehow...but that plan doesnt make much since because those players could always just fly another ship.

[Joku Ugo]

Do you keep statistics of what ship is each player's favourite ship? When the teams are randomized, they should be randomized in a fair way such that both teams get an equal amount of players who prefer sharking and players who prefer terring. It sucks when you end up on a freq where nobody wants to shark or terr. Or if they try anyway, they start from level 0. That's just an automatic loss for every round. The winning freq can't even assist the losing one because the teams may be "balanced" due to the levels of the fighter ships (but which are worthless without sharks and terrs).

Played for about 15 minutes today, was by no means anywhere among the first people playing, and got removed so others could play. I waited a few minutes, got in the queue to get back in. When I got the message that I could play again, it immediately removed me again for other people to play. Tried this for 20 minutes, gave up and quit. If ppl who want to play dont have any choice but to spec, I think there should at least be a way to tweak ur !hangar while u wait. All i wanted to do was !upgrade my terr.

[Mjollnir]

My Javelin is broken. When I check the !armory I get a blank space where my bomb upgrades used to be. It is something like this:
Distension> 7: N/A

A normal !armory line looks like this:
Distension> 6: Rear Defense System ( 1 / 2 ) 55 Rank 60

I also had red bombs instead of yellows and and I didn't have the UPs from the supposedly scrapped yellow bombs. I tried to play around with it a bit:

Mjollnir> !scrap 7
Distension> null [] downgraded to level 0. +0UP to army allowance.

... Then I checked the armory and it was the same as before. Then more testing:

Mjollnir> !scrap 7
Distension> You haven't exactly upgraded that, now have you?
Mjollnir> !u 7
Distension> You've upgraded that one as much as you can.

I just wanted to play around with the new nerfed Jav to verify that it was nerfed too much but I guess I'll wait until this is fixed.

[Chao.]

Dug, I don't know if this is explained elsewhere, so maybe you could tell me really simply here: Why is it difficult to drop mines in places other than on the flag (where it's disabled by tiles anyway)? It's weird to explain- it's like I have to stop hitting all the other keys except for the mine ones to get them to do it properly sometimes. Is rush-mining something you wanted to stop or is this problem just in my head?

[gdugwyler]

Few more changes:

• Cap on rank progress changed to 50% from 25% (forgot to mention this).
• Firebloom now has 3 levels. At level 1 it is prized to you every 4 minutes. Level 2, every 2 minutes. At level 3 you spawn with it. I may do something similar with the Warbird's Thor, to give higher level WBs something more to shoot for.
• Lanc bomb energy cost reduced by about 30%. Now that the Firebloom is weaker, perhaps this will make evasive bombing in a Lanc more tenable.
• AFK implemented for Ops in the second version as described previously: if a reply is received to the AFK message too quickly, it will ignore it and the player will be assumed to be AFK and using ?away. With this, Ops will now receive AFK warning messages at 30 seconds and 10 seconds; if you also want one at 1 minute let me know. This should keep the annoying bumping to AFK down quite a bit.

Anyone with lag settings experience have an opinion on those in Distension? One person posted quite lenient limits before. Mostly I'm just interested in lagging players to spec and DCing them only in very extreme cases.

Also, the functioning as a rank 0 is an interesting idea. I'll have to think about that one. Maybe something that would allow you to keep just your maneuvering upgrades as well? -- maybe putting you at a default rank 10 or so. That way it would be a bit more bearable, and perhaps advantageous, depending on the amount you'd invested in them.

[Viruk]

Completely agree with alinea on the newer players standpoint. I spent 30 minutes going from rank 14 to 15 in wb in attempt to get ops, but I'm damn near about to give up.

That sounds frustrating but would removing the 25% level cap have helped much by the time you reach level 14? Were you ever going up 25% of a level with one kill?
Don't give up! On the other hand, Tac Ops is annoying! Give up! :P

[Viruk]

Regarding shark limit: are others in favor of raising to 3, or is a limit of 2 still needed? I recall that the shark limit was put in place when sharks were considered too amazing for words.

Sharks are as powerful as ever: Their reps are equally effective regardless of ship, bomb and bullet level and there is no special to counter them. Now fireblooms sometimes make their reps a liability - unfortunately this usually increases random destruction rather than deterring reps so I will be glad to see them limited. As far as I know the mines can still kill everything regardless of level.

For a single flag game a 1 or 2 sharks per side seems about right to me. 3 would be too many for the smaller teams although it is very level dependent since it is the reps which really need to be limited.

For a two flag game I am not so sure. Part of the problem is that I can't recall how long we have had the current limits or exactly what they are. (If there was a post with the changes I missed it.) I also haven't sharked for a while.

Pros:
3 sharks a side would be roughly the result of an even distribution of ships in a full game so this would make sense if you want to encourage all ships to be played equally. A limit of 3 would allow a shark at each end plus an extra shark to reinforce whichever side needs help most which ought to be tactically more interesting than 2.

Cons:
Despite the shark limit, repels have remained a big part of the gameplay in many recent games and I recall seeing 2 enemy sharks in the FR many times. I fear 3 high level sharks a side in the same FR would often mean too many reps for good gameplay. A bigger limit could also lead to more imbalance if there is no longer also a +1 limit balancing the teams.


Special ability?
After my last post I was thinking how useful it is to be low level in certain circumstances.
How about a special ability available to all ships where you pm the bot and after your next death it effectively makes you level 1 for scoring purposes and removes all your upgrades while still allowing you to collect RP and level up normally. You would only be able to toggle this ability once per life so once you pm the bot you will not be able to reverse this decision until you pm the bot again during your next life. Even then you will have to wait until after your next death to be restored to normal (and you would be last in the queue for rearmament). This should minimise strain on the bot and ensure it cannot be abused by people who have failed in combat and think they are going to die.

You would be reduced in power but you would give away less RP to the enemy in situations where your power is useless. It could be useful for confusing the enemy, preventing avarice, humiliating enemies, suiciding mines, shielding a terrier, leveling powerful ships when there are no high level enemy targets, allowing even duels with other players or just for fun. Perhaps you could even get a tiny RP bonus for sparing the poor, overworked bot from rearming you when you die.

Completely agree with alinea on the newer players standpoint. I spent 30 minutes going from rank 14 to 15 in wb in attempt to get ops, but I'm damn near about to give up.

[meddi]

Heh, don't be sorry. It IS beta after all. We are supposed to find annoying little things like failed weapons upgrades.

[gdugwyler]

This thread is intense. I'm finally on (the start of) page 22. It's taking a long time to catch up. Spending time getting ready for going back to a second bachelor's, writing a great deal, busting up the parking lot to put in a garden, and using a lot of hard drugs. The conglomerate has left little time. But here are a list of things that I've done or will do:

• Work on Jav a bit more. The L2 cost is going up, shrap speed is going down, and the shrap damage is now less than that of the actual bullet level of the ship with the shrap. Also, the distant L3 option has to be removed to make the costs work. Javs will now need the max available energy at rank 40 to fire L2. 1775 off the top of my head.
• Lanc: make FireBloom an every-5-minute kind of ability. We'll play with the time until it works.
• Ops: AFK fixed in one of two ways. Will send two AFK messages: one at 30s, and one at 10s. If the player replies back in both instances and the responses are the same, it will assume they are attempting to avoid AFK. The second option I like a bit better: send one message at 30s, and if the player responds in 500ms or less, assume it's an automated ?away. Due to the way commands are handled both may be a bit difficult to implement, however.
• Max OP fix. The formula was being calculated differently when you first got into the console and when you upgraded your points. Should work now. Wait until Mon to see if this clears up any issues with OP costs.
• Ripping some graphics from a popular sci-fi RTS game to use for introduction menu texts. It looks pretty good so far. High tech, yeah.

EDIT: I forgot to say, !lagout doesn't work past 3 lagouts in a round. However, the !lagout command doesn't distinguish between a person not added to !lagout because they didn't lag out and a person not added to !lagout because they're over 3 lagouts. I'll have it make the message more clear now (change the order of the checks).

I would like to make DC'd players eventually be able to lagout again. However, the last implementation was no good, and I need to plan it out. In the meantime, I'd like to do something with the lag settings, so that players are generally lagged out to spec rather than DC'd.

Here are the lag settings for Distension at present (in response to the above suggested settings). I don't have much familiarity.

[Latency]
SendRoutePercent=500
ClientSlowPacketSampleSize=500
ClientSlowPacketTime=40
S2CNoDataKickoutDelay=1000
KickOutDelay=3000
NoFlagDelay=300
NoFlagPenalty=1000
SlowPacketKickoutPercent=200
ClientSlowPacketKickoutPercent=200
SlowPacketTime=40
SlowPacketSampleSize=500
MaxLatencyForWeapons=45
MaxLatencyForPrizes=80
MaxLatencyForKickOut=120
LatencyKickOutTime=2200
CutbackWatermark=2400
NegativeClientSlowPacketTime=0

[PacketLoss]
C2SKickOutPercent=870
C2SNegativeKickOutPercent=870
S2CKickOutPercent=870
SpectatorPercentAdjust=500
PacketLossDisableWeapons=1

For a great deal of these the comments provided in settings files aren't sufficient to make a man feel comfortable adjusting them. Open to suggestions, though.

Regarding shark limit: are others in favor of raising to 3, or is a limit of 2 still needed? I recall that the shark limit was put in place when sharks were considered too amazing for words. Also, Sharks should now be able to use that L2 gun upgrade. Sorry to the person who upgraded and wasn't getting it.

Queuing system: Understand that it doesn't work properly yet. I found one bug and that may help fix some problems. Bear with it for now.

[riske]

Yea so I meant to post this a long time ago but I forgot.

Shark Emergency Defense Cannon seems to be messed up when you get it to level two. At rank 55 I put 45 UPs into it, and !a showed (MAX) which is (2/2) - but it didn't CHANGE anything. Even after dying and ship resetting, I could see no difference from the L1 defense cannon. I had assumed it would simply be L2 bullets.

Anyway, I decided to scrap it and mess around w/ the points in some other way. When scrapped, !a returned that I still had 1 rank in the cannon (which I did); however, I no longer had the gun (ie: I could not shoot at all). I had to ship-reset to get it back.

I am assuming that is not supposed to be the result of sinking those 45 UPs to get Emergency Defense Cannon lvl 2.

Also, special characters (accented vowels etc) do no appear in the same font colour in chats:

Fake everyone knows belim is dead.

[meddi]

Yea so I meant to post this a long time ago but I forgot.

Shark Emergency Defense Cannon seems to be messed up when you get it to level two. At rank 55 I put 45 UPs into it, and !a showed (MAX) which is (2/2) - but it didn't CHANGE anything. Even after dying and ship resetting, I could see no difference from the L1 defense cannon. I had assumed it would simply be L2 bullets.

Anyway, I decided to scrap it and mess around w/ the points in some other way. When scrapped, !a returned that I still had 1 rank in the cannon (which I did); however, I no longer had the gun (ie: I could not shoot at all). I had to ship-reset to get it back.

I am assuming that is not supposed to be the result of sinking those 45 UPs to get Emergency Defense Cannon lvl 2.

Also, special characters (accented vowels etc) do no appear in the same font colour in chats: