Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[gdugwyler]

Why can Terriers get 3 bursts nowdays? And what happened to the idea that the max amount of bursts you can get is the amount of burst upgrades you have. I liked that one. Anyway, I think 3 is a bit too much. I also still think they shouldn't get so many portals. They were surviving fine even before the portal increase. I don't mind them being strong and hard to kill but unlimited portals is too much. The games have been getting too long lately and reducing portals would also help with this. I don't want to see the Terriers get too weak or not fun to play but I think there are other ways to accomplish these goals.

Ideas such as this -- max amount of bursts you can get being the number of upgrades you purchased -- are great, but pretty unreliable as far as client-side bots are concerned. This is why SS is so annoying to develop for client-side. There are too many limitations, and we're doing the best to push them. There's a chance that including checks *might* work, but the likelihood that it will work reliably is very, very small. The problem I see is something like this:

1. Bot gets player's position and hopefully weapons data, including number of bursts. Player has 2 bursts. Bot updates player's record to say 2 bursts.
2. Bot switches to another player, out of radar range of the player. This means the bot is not receiving position or weapon data about the player any longer.
3. Player fires both bursts. Player burst count: 0. Bot burst count on record for player: 2.
4. Bot spectates someone else who is in radar range of the player. Now the bot is receiving position data for the player again. However, if the person doesn't fire their bullets or use a port or the like, it's possible only small position packets are sent, which if ExtraPositionData is not set to true in the arena settings (as it usually is not, to save bandwidth), contain no data about number of bursts and so on. Bot keeps burst count record for player at 2.
5. Regeneration is checked. Player has 2 bursts on record; no need to give them another as they have only 2 burst upgrades. Meanwhile player is overwhelmed by massive spider gangrape and curses their luck at not having been prized at the critical moment.

They have a lot of portals because nobody has yet given a good alternative. I've heard increased energy, and I've thought about some kind of on-call shield ability much like the spider's energy tank, but I'm not sure those are the best ways to go. Opinions on what to do with the Terr? I don't want to hear "too many ports"; just something that we could give instead.

Also, made a change: apparently there has been a problem with people having to become a 1st class cadet twice, and have not been able to reach Officer to get Ops. !status now includes info on how many battles you have won. It includes a note about 50% or more participation, as this is required for the battle to be added to your record as a win.

[Mjollnir]

Why can Terriers get 3 bursts nowdays? And what happened to the idea that the max amount of bursts you can get is the amount of burst upgrades you have. I liked that one. Anyway, I think 3 is a bit too much. I also still think they shouldn't get so many portals. They were surviving fine even before the portal increase. I don't mind them being strong and hard to kill but unlimited portals is too much. The games have been getting too long lately and reducing portals would also help with this. I don't want to see the Terriers get too weak or not fun to play but I think there are other ways to accomplish these goals.

[gdugwyler]

• Ops AFK time adjusted to 5 min. Note that you can reset the AFK timer by saying anything in pubchat, or by sending any ops command, including the !opshelp. Considering that, this should be enough. Also, you'll just have to get used to the . commands, Cheese... it'll be faster after you get the hang of it.
• Assist bonuses have been increased for those who are higher rank. I realized it wasn't enough to make much of a dent in your to-rank amount. Also, if you assist within the last 25 seconds of a round while your team has both flags, you will be given what's called a SAINT BONUS, considering you're potentially giving up your round end bonus to help out the other team. You'll find it quite delicious, if previously you have been too inconsiderate to entertain the possibility of taking one for the team so that avarice doesn't fire.
• Return assisting has been adjusted slightly. You will lose participation only if teams are presently equal or worse (as in, the army to which you are returning to is stronger), or your army holds both flags. You can see it's in some ways more lenient for normal return assisting, but in others much more harsh for those trying to return just for a round end bonus. Note that you will still be unable to return from assisting if it would make the teams imbalanced to do so.
• Trying to fix the warp spot problem. It has to do with the bot sometimes still thinking you're at the warp point even after it warps you, due to the fact that it can't get all the positions very easily. Silly client-side bots. I'm going to update the core to include a manual (read: hacked) player position set when any warpto command is issued, so that at least it's a little more fresh.

[schope]

That's how the colors are supposed to be in dist.

dude it wasnt like this before.

why the change ? now the green is blue and i cant read shit...

[Mjollnir]

Ye, this to prevent the freqhopping (as far that is possible) to gain assist bonuses. Bot puts you back on former team when not needed anymore. Changing back before that makes teams uneven again, so just wait until the bot does it. Yes, I too find that extremely annoying, but necessary.

Warp spots; looks like they are going faster, good thing. Did have the bug again i described earlier tho. This time from Bar/roof. i warped from bar to roof, then attached to a terr in fr, and after a sec i got warped back to roof. Sometimes it just warps me again for no reason. 100% sure it wasnt a portal. Glitch in the system?

Changing back does not make the teams uneven again because the bot doesn't allow you to change back if they are going to be unbalanced. It is good that the constant freqhopping is punished but I hate that punishment. Most of the time it happens to people who have no idea there is a punishment for it. I would much rather not be able to manually request to get back to the team than being able to and losing participation as a result.

[Vergilius]

Ye, this to prevent the freqhopping (as far that is possible) to gain assist bonuses. Bot puts you back on former team when not needed anymore. Changing back before that makes teams uneven again, so just wait until the bot does it. Yes, I too find that extremely annoying, but necessary.

Warp spots; looks like they are going faster, good thing. Did have the bug again i described earlier tho. This time from Bar/roof. i warped from bar to roof, then attached to a terr in fr, and after a sec i got warped back to roof. Sometimes it just warps me again for no reason. 100% sure it wasnt a portal. Glitch in the system?

[Mjollnir]

Manually requesting to change back to your original team when assisting and being succesful takes away all participation. That is extremely annoying. Is there a good reason for it?

[roxxkatt]

ops can be afk, but afk is a LONG TIME.

the check needs to be NO LESS THEN 5 mins.
in fact, i wouldnt mind if it were 10.
ops was rendered useless today, i had to quit.
strips you of your OPs every time.

also, when it specs you, it offers lagout, and puts you in wb after.


also, i remembered that i hate . commands, and like !, i didnt mind doing !ore... im not THAT lazy =P

the warptos werent working for some reason, i have no idea why.

[gdugwyler]

Felt hot to trot and made a couple other changes:

• L2 bomb radius increased
• L1 bullet damage decreased slightly; spider starting and max recharge decreased slightly
• Levi back on support, but like the Weasel, has minimal profitsharing
• Ops setting to freq should hopefully work properly now.
• Ops radar now includes sharks.
• Ops nav ability (thanks Cheese). ,# to snap view to a space, where # is the location. Ops help includes more info. 8 total views.
• Ops AFK made a bit better.
• Endround bonus increased for losers, and time required for loser bonus to kick in halved (15 min or more).
• Warp point checking increased from every 10 seconds to every 5 seconds. Let me know if it goes nuts or anything. Shouldn't. This means that only every 5 seconds will the warp points "activate" -- saves on processing time.
• Lagout system adjusted. Hopefully works correctly. You'll never be able to !lagout after DCing, but I would like to work with the lag settings. Need more info from people who get DC'd by lag: what does the message say?
• You can now change to shark or terr when your freq has both flags, so long as you've held for less than 20 seconds.
• Escape pod will now only fire once per death.
• Spawning radius widened for round start.

[2kill]

I found being Ops very disconcerting as your team appears in blue instead of the enemy but got used to it after a while.

about the team in blue... you are in spec so with your page up and down ticker and press ctrl on a teammates name should fix the problem

the ops can't use team chat? lol was wondering why you would bother with special messages, but just wondering has anyone tried messaging the team? you know with "<message>? could be a bug don't know as I'm waiting to get into ops :/

It would be good to see Tac Ops getting RP as a result of successful use of Ops abilities. RP for each ship priority rearmed/shielded if they survive a certain time. RP if the flag is held for a certain time after closing the doors or covering in the base. RP for enemy ships killed within a certain time of being affected by an adverse op such as EMP or blindness.

Suggestions for other op abilities:

An operation that would prevent enemy escape pods/special regeneration /triggering of random specials from working for a short time within a certain location? The Tac Op would get RP for each item that would have regenerated/triggered. Could have upgrades of varying power and reward.

In ops you really don't have any other of ranking yourself do you besides profit sharing so ya I think it needs a little something it can do by its self.

The /triggering would have to be high rank but would be really helpful to the team

[Mjollnir]

Going to get back and read this thread pretty soon. In the meantime here's a quick changeset:

• If you try to warp at the start of a round, you'll be put back in rearm. Let ali/Lefty know if it works.
• Fixed crash having to do with swapping players out at round end.
• JumpSpace now warps anywhere from 8 to 24 tiles, depending on the upgraded level, and doesn't work off your velocity. To get it to work best, try sitting fairly still and issuing the command. You'll now need to specify a direction (as velocity provided it before). Use >>> NW or the like.
• Ops will be spec'd for AFK after 90 seconds, and no message will be given to prevent ?away idlers. I may change this to send it to the team chat, though. Just note that idling in Ops is no longer possible. You can reset the idle timer by typing in pub chat, or by using any Ops command, including the help.
• Ops shortcut changed to . (period). For example, to issue the cloak of darkness you used to have to type !oda -- now it's just .da. Eliminates the unnecessary !o.

Great to see the JumpSpace being fixed. Wouldn't it have been easier for the players, if the direction of the JumpSpace was taken from the direction the ship is moving? I posted an idea about it before in the thread and it has to do with creating a unit vector from the current speed vectors. The current system has it's advantages though since you don't have to move to be able to warp. How about having this system and adding a random warp direction by ">>> R" (for escape purposes?) and if you use ">>>" only you get warped to the direction you are going.

Since I don't wanna bother making two posts: Viruk's post about Ops seems to indicate that he wasn't on the team freq when he was playing it. Normally you are on your team's freq and if you weren't, it wasn't working correctly.

[gdugwyler]

Going to get back and read this thread pretty soon. In the meantime here's a quick changeset:

• If you try to warp at the start of a round, you'll be put back in rearm. Let ali/Lefty know if it works.
• Fixed crash having to do with swapping players out at round end.
• JumpSpace now warps anywhere from 8 to 24 tiles, depending on the upgraded level, and doesn't work off your velocity. To get it to work best, try sitting fairly still and issuing the command. You'll now need to specify a direction (as velocity provided it before). Use >>> NW or the like.
• Ops will be spec'd for AFK after 90 seconds, and no message will be given to prevent ?away idlers. I may change this to send it to the team chat, though. Just note that idling in Ops is no longer possible. You can reset the idle timer by typing in pub chat, or by using any Ops command, including the help.
• Ops shortcut changed to . (period). For example, to issue the cloak of darkness you used to have to type !oda -- now it's just .da. Eliminates the unnecessary !o.

[Aquatiq]

That's how the colors are supposed to be in dist.

[schope]

problem with collors ONLY on distension arena

[Viruk]

I was able to try out Tac Ops for the first time today

For some reason I got a 'what are you trying to pull' message when I used the !manops command

I managed to find the opshelp and it seemed to explain most of the basics.

I found being Ops very disconcerting as your team appears in blue instead of the enemy but got used to it after a while.

The only ability you can initially use is the ops radar which is of very limited use.

Communication is the biggest problem as you have no access to your team's comm channel. You have no idea what their concerns are and you are only able to use stock messages to guide them (if you have the comms points). I didn't bother as I have always found such messages as more distracting than enlightening and I am not high enough level to spam the enemy team with misleading ones. You also do not see these messages yourself so if you accidentally type the wrong message number you'll probably not notice that you just directed someone to attack the wrong FR.

As very low level Ops about the only things you can do is use the cover (which I haven't tried yet) or priority rearm your team (which at least seems useful and has helped me in the past). This meant I spent a lot of my ops time above the rearmament area looking for clumps of people waiting for re-arm. Probably most of them are like me and launch themselves back into the fray regardless so perhaps this was not such a good idea but I suppose if you have the points to fire off a rearm whenever a victory is due in 30 seconds you probably can't go far wrong. Again you get no feedback when you use the command. The ops radar could have helped here but it is text so I would probably just have spammed myself out of the game. A graphic showing how many people waiting to rearm would be handy for the Tac Ops.

Ops points seemed to regenerate very slowly even with the 20% upgrade but that may just be because there is so little else to do. Would be nice to see a proper special icon for them instead of having to check !status all the time to see if you have spare OP/CP.

All in all when you start Tac Ops it feels very isolated and you have no sense of control over your team or your own advancement. You would probably be able to exert more influence on a battle simply by flying around outside the bases in a fast ship and using teamchat. You would get as much reward by going to make a cup of tea.

Presumably the Tac Ops still counts as part of the team as far as assists and avarice is concerned so I would hope the higher level abilities prove to be worth losing a good ship. A few of them certainly look useful.

It would be good to see Tac Ops getting RP as a result of successful use of Ops abilities. RP for each ship priority rearmed/shielded if they survive a certain time. RP if the flag is held for a certain time after closing the doors or covering in the base. RP for enemy ships killed within a certain time of being affected by an adverse op such as EMP or blindness.

Suggestions for other op abilities:

An operation that would prevent enemy escape pods/special regeneration /triggering of random specials from working for a short time within a certain location? The Tac Op would get RP for each item that would have regenerated/triggered. Could have upgrades of varying power and reward.

An operation that could place a 'bounty' on a specific enemy ship or ship type. The bot would msg your team and the target ship(s). If killed within a certain time they would give double RP to the killer and some RP to the Tac Op. If a target survives it could get some RP. Would add fun especially for weasels! Could have upgrades of varying power and reward.

An operation to take a specified number of OP from the enemy Tac Op. If they possess enough points then they lose them and you get RP for each point sabotaged. If the enemy Tac Op has fewer OP; then the operation costs you the specified number of OP in addition to the cost of using the operation. Power would depend on number of OP available to risk but you could upgrade it to sabotage CP too and give more RP reward if successful.

Afterthought:
I think it is important to improve feedback for all of the ops abilities. The team should be notified as to what their Op is doing if it is not visible on screen and the Op should see something equivalent to whatever their team is seeing. An option to allow people to turn off their ops communication/notification in order to avoid spam and save bandwidth would be good.
I would like to see custom messages at higher levels and the ability to read team chat available early if technically possible.
Might also be fun for high level Ops to be able to use their CP to send the enemy fake messages about activated special ops abilities?
Ability to vote out an annoying/useless op by a majority pming the bot within a set time?