Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[Aquatiq]

The energy nerfs have moved me to change from the "speed/eat/tank" ship you all know and love, to a very average-speed warbird that can no longer zoom by you and not have you realize it until you are dead. Half the time when I -DO- eat yellow bullets it's because I'm baiting someone into firing at me so either myself or my teammates can finish them off. If someone feels like they are getting hosed by the system because they felt they deserved an easy kill, they're mistaken.

[project dragon]

It's hard to use PH as our reference to "overpowered" sharks, because he basically has the highest level shark (or ship dare-I-say) in distension. If he has a shark that is greatly more leveled than you, then it should be difficult to kill him. It's common sense!

As for the terr burst, I gave my suggestion before. I still think it should be a one-hit kill weapon, because it just makes sense for a terr. Other ships don't have to worry as much when shooting, because they can die and attach again, but it's very detrimental for a terr to shoot, lower his energy, and get aimed or strayed, which may end up in your team losing the base. Bursts usually are random, but skilled terrs can use can aim it (they know where the bursts are going, like basing terrs should), which can help their team greatly. However, I would like to see the burst be "greened" more frequently (higher percentage of a chance to green burst/portal per upgrade), over a terr with the capability to hold x amount of bursts at spawn.

Also, I don't know if it's already an upgrade you can get that I have never seen, but I think that support ships should be given the ability to use an important option to help support their team: bricks. I think that having a brick upgrade would help a lot in flag room battles. A middle sized (maybe 6-7 tiles long?) can be used as a insta-wall kind of thing to help aid a terr and his team in the battle, or even try to good'old brickwarp trick for minutes of entertainment and anger!

[AcidBomber]

Yeh i like that brick thing! I think it should be given to spiders, makes more sense. 5+ tiles long would be nice!

Maybe even replace the decoy with a 3-tile brick that spids now have? Since decoys are pretty useless when it lasts 5 seconds...

[Vergilius]

The brick will be available soon for weasels, me and mjoll are working towards them

good question tho: how many tiles will the brick be?

[gdugwyler]

Weasels do presently get a brick, which I think stretches about 5 tiles wide. Not really planning on giving it to anyone else. Spiders, for example, should be focused on largely being strong covering fire.

Mj: sorry, didn't mean to suggest that you're whining. I appreciate the time and thought you put into things here. You're one of the most involved beta testers, and if everyone did what you are presently doing, it would make my life a lot easier. It's just hard for me to decide what to change if largely what is coming in are suggestions to nerf/buff a ship without consensus.

L1 bullet damage: I'll have to play the spider a little more, but I'm guessing that even though bullet damage was 600 before, with the new energy/recharge change it may need to be lowered, considering that most ships aren't able to tank huge amounts of any kind of bullet any longer -- though of course a rank 0 can tank a hell of a lot more than it once could, most rank 0 ships being able to at least withstand 1 red without dying if at full energy.

Terr burst: it sounds like a good change may be to more severely limit the starting number of bursts for a terr, but increase the regeneration ability, as proj dragon is suggesting. It wouldn't change the dynamic all that much except to limit the number of double-bursts occurring. Would make the ship a little more unpredictable as well ... knowing that a freshly-respawning terr is not necessarily the most strong. This would have the added effect of extending the life of the average terrier, and encouraging a more tactical approach, suicide terring being less possible.

Jav: Let's just see how this one goes for now. I think one problem that's occurring is people were playing the Jav differently than it's played in any part of TW. First, I actually heard a jav say that his bullets were nearly useless. What? That should have been enough to make me think... but when you look at the settings, it's no surprise: Jav could fire a bomb with a bounce that would do 2650 damage on contact, and have a not-insignificant proximity damage effect when it hits a wall ... all for a mere 725 energy. Compare this with an L2 warbird bullet that does not bounce, has no damage effect on nearby players if it hits a wall, and does about 1600 damage, for a cost of 1000 energy. Granted, the WB's recharge is much better, so it can fire more often, and it can move around a good bit faster than a jav. Nevertheless there's a pretty obvious gap. Normally in a pub arena the jav's bomb costs 1100 to fire. Now in Distension it costs 1000. What does this mean? Javs are probably less fun to play, because they can't go chasing after people firing 2 (sometimes 3) bombs. Yeah, I actually saw a Jav chasing down a WB in a pretty wide-open area, a place where the bird should win 8 of 10 times. What Javs are going to need to do is start playing like Javs in any other arena: making careful, delicate shots, with guns to support when times get rough, rather than just throwing everything into energy and recharge so they can fire 3 bombs in 5 seconds. Rocket cost, though: I'll check it out in case it's too high.

[Fluffz]

how is such a small weasel gona carry 5 blocks of wall? my imagination says it isnt because it would have to be bigger. HintHint

[gdugwyler]

Easy: Nanobots.


Checked out Jav rocket cost. It was 35UP (!) and available at rank 25. Meant to have it the other way around, from some notes. But instead I've made it available at rank 20 for a cost of 18, and an additional 2 rockets available at rank 35 and rank 70 (the third just adding something to strive for in the later ranks if anyone actually chooses to do so). Fortunately this was an easy change because only one person bought it at its ridiculous cost.\

Dropped L1 bullet damage to 550. We'll experiment with this for a bit. This is 30 more than the pub default of 520.

Adjusting Terr bursting will be a much bigger pain, considering most terrs have 2 bursts to start. Will get back to that one later.


AMUSING CHANGE OF THE DAY: I'm attempting to make !pilot unnecessary. Just ESC+# to pilot, and the bot should handle the rest. !return will also be unnecessary, as will !enlist for new players -- you'll be automatically returned or enlisted when you jump in a ship. Hope this makes it all a lot more newbie-friendly.

[AcidBomber]

Ooo... nice change about the return and enlist! ^-^

[Foreign]

There's a small stats website now available at http://www.trenchwars.org/distension/

You can just see the top 5 in each ship for now. It's been kinda up for a while, so if you didn't know already now you do.

[AcidBomber]

Ooo... hey that's cool!

No high level spiders yet it seems... mango lvl 33... i am almost there! 30 currently i think -_-

[Vergilius]

Me and mjoll found a sweet little bug (which im gonna stop abusing, i promise :P ) whenever you !lagout, you re-enter on the other freq, but spawn into the original spawnarea. So, you can just sit there, wait for the spawners, get ez kills until the bot specs you for being idle. Real fun, free 500 RP w/o putting energy in it, just kinda annoying when you choose not to abuse it .

[Epic li]

Reading all the whining about l1 damage and this ship is good, that one is bad just gave me a nice headache-.-
the fact is, i have a good time killing anything, and they some times kill me, actually, weasels own me, and i'm not complaining, like someone said, a certain ship should be good against some ships and bad against other ships. Let's think about javs:
they have the bounce bomb advantage, if you know how to use it, you can defend the base, and no, you shouldnt try going 1x1 with someone, just like in ?go base, javs run from everyone=p and shot when they have a chance, and maybe they do a teamfer, fun eh?

[AcidBomber]

Yeh, the L1 bullet is good now i think.
Can at least get over 50-50.

[Mjollnir]

...
Terr burst: it sounds like a good change may be to more severely limit the starting number of bursts for a terr, but increase the regeneration ability, as proj dragon is suggesting. It wouldn't change the dynamic all that much except to limit the number of double-bursts occurring. Would make the ship a little more unpredictable as well ... knowing that a freshly-respawning terr is not necessarily the most strong. This would have the added effect of extending the life of the average terrier, and encouraging a more tactical approach, suicide terring being less possible.

Jav: Let's just see how this one goes for now. I think one problem that's occurring is people were playing the Jav differently than it's played in any part of TW. First, I actually heard a jav say that his bullets were nearly useless. What? That should have been enough to make me think... but when you look at the settings, it's no surprise: Jav could fire a bomb with a bounce that would do 2650 damage on contact, and have a not-insignificant proximity damage effect when it hits a wall ... all for a mere 725 energy. Compare this with an L2 warbird bullet that does not bounce, has no damage effect on nearby players if it hits a wall, and does about 1600 damage, for a cost of 1000 energy. Granted, the WB's recharge is much better, so it can fire more often, and it can move around a good bit faster than a jav. Nevertheless there's a pretty obvious gap. Normally in a pub arena the jav's bomb costs 1100 to fire. Now in Distension it costs 1000. What does this mean? Javs are probably less fun to play, because they can't go chasing after people firing 2 (sometimes 3) bombs. Yeah, I actually saw a Jav chasing down a WB in a pretty wide-open area, a place where the bird should win 8 of 10 times. What Javs are going to need to do is start playing like Javs in any other arena: making careful, delicate shots, with guns to support when times get rough, rather than just throwing everything into energy and recharge so they can fire 3 bombs in 5 seconds. Rocket cost, though: I'll check it out in case it's too high.

Terr bursts: Sounds good. Would be good to limit the max bursts too. That way 5 bursts in a row isn't going to happen anymore since that's just silly. A high enough burst regeneration will ensure a nice flow of bursts every once in a while.

Jav: I have two concerns about this. First of all, because the ship's RP/lvl costs were balanced when it had cheap bombs and was able to get a lot more kills, it is likely that the balance is now gone. I bet it's a huge pain to level now. The other concern I have is that the ship itself was balanced around the certain bomb cost. Now that the bomb cost is high the ship will naturally be a lot weaker. Even when the bomb cost was cheap only a handful of people played the ship and now that it's like this, I am afraid people are going to ditch the ship again. Anyway, we will have to see how it goes. It did feel really weak when I played it again but maybe I can try it out a bit more.

[Mjollnir]

Reading all the whining about l1 damage and this ship is good, that one is bad just gave me a nice headache-.-
the fact is, i have a good time killing anything, and they some times kill me, actually, weasels own me, and i'm not complaining, like someone said, a certain ship should be good against some ships and bad against other ships. Let's think about javs:
they have the bounce bomb advantage, if you know how to use it, you can defend the base, and no, you shouldnt try going 1x1 with someone, just like in ?go base, javs run from everyone=p and shot when they have a chance, and maybe they do a teamfer, fun eh?

It may seem pretty whiny but the fact of the matter is that this game is still in a beta phase. That means that the ships are most likely not balanced yet. The more balanced they get, the more fun it is for everyone to play. You may have a good time with your ship but that doesn't mean every ship is fun to play or truly balanced yet.

I agree that some ships are supposed to be good against certain ships and bad against other ships. I am not complaining about that. I never said that I wanted a certain ship to be able to take everyone on 1vs1 either. And I know how a jav is supposed to be played but in this game there are other factors in play as well. All I want is for the ships to be balanced, so that is why I wrote how I felt about playing with/against some ships. It was just my opinion of the situation and I wish more people posted theirs as well.

It just feels you missed the point entirely and focused on seeing it all as pointless whining.