Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[Viruk]

3 bricks at once across the FR?

I hope that this is not going to be a common sight as I hate games being decided by specials. If this was the result of fewer than 3 high level weasels then something needs tweaking IMO.

[Singularity]

After playing a bit last few days I will post some feedback about the shipsettings again and some general things.

I ranked a shark from level 1 to level 20, and the first thing I noticed is how easy it is to rank in this ship. Not only does it get decent profitsharing, it is also pretty strong on the offensive with mines and seems to suicide almost as well as the weasel with its level 1 bullets. Not saying it is overpowered though, but it IS a lot stronger than the weasel. The main problem comes when 3 sharks attack 1 flagroom, making the sheer amount of repels waltz all over the defenders.

The lancaster seems to be fixed compared with last time. It was able to fire more often and the leach sometimes makes it survives suicides. Good job on this. Warbird still seems pretty bland though, it is horribly fast but speed is almost pointless in a map where you are almost always in a base. It may be able to shoot l3 bullets, but usually l2 do the trick. Maybe a slight cooldown reduction for shooting (or is cooldown related to bullettype instead of ship?) might give it a niche closer to the lancaster but with single fire and no specials?
Spider is still going (very) strong. My main beef is that it is way to easy to get large amounts of energy, making that this ship can fire nonstop and survive l1 bullets while doing it. I would suggest increasing the cost of energy upgrades and maybe decreasing the stock energy amount so the upgrades are really neccesary (as opposed to all other ships, spiders hardly need the speed/turning/thr as it can be regarded as some kind of turret in a lot of cases, so you can stock up on energy and you get a VERY strong ship at lower levels compared with the alternatives)
Weasel, my favorite ship. But alas, it does not work at the moment. It has very cheap speed/turn/thr upgrades but for some reason this ship is still slower than attack ships. Energy and recharge upgrades are hard to get, ensuring you will always die from level 2 bullets if you are under 30 level and level 1 bullets make sure you cannot shoot yourself. Its bullets are only useful if you give it speed from your own movements, suggesting most kills will be suicide kills. The old trick of flagsteals to give the team another shot was basically made impossible with the 6 seconds claim time it has before resetting the counter.
Up til now would all be ok if it would be able to kill terrs, so it had a function in basing... but terriers a) tank level 2 at low levels, b) always have portals, c) are able to outshoot the weasel easily if you have no rockets.
I do not know how to fix this easily, but the main improvement would be increasing bulletspeed as I said before, so it is possible to get kills without suiciding/rocket. A slight energy recharge cost reduction might also not be out of place.
Maybe the weasel could also have the ability to instantly claim the flag (without the waiting time where the counter goes up instead of down, I'm sure a bot could check for it) so it will be a danger for almost empty flag rooms.
Terrier
I understand the terrier is not an attractive ship to play if you solely hang around in FR, but at the moment it is a positive juggernaut.
I looked at recs last night and noticed terriers have among the most kills. Now call me crazy, but the ship that should only play defensively and gets huge profit sharing should not compete with spiders and good suijavs for MVP. The reason it seems to do this is that besides having loads of bursts, it also has high speed level 2 bullets easily, making it more powerful than a warbird or weasel at comparable level. The seemingless infinite portals also make it able to get more kills. I have no clue how to balance the terrier, maybe some ter players and mjoll can comment on it?
Javelin/Lev
Both ships are still played quite a bit, and the javelin seems to have been toned down a bit since last time. Sometimes it still gets a lucky bomb in and whipes out the FR, but then again, the same happens in BD's. Lev also seems more useful now as a support ship, but it looks like as if it is nasty to fly (any comment from lev users on it?) Both seem ok at the moment.

[meddi]

3 bricks at once across the FR?

I hope that this is not going to be a common sight as I hate games being decided by specials. If this was the result of fewer than 3 high level weasels then something needs tweaking IMO.

I agree with Viruk.

A single weasel having as many as three 5x1 bricks out at once is pretty insane. He easily blocked our entire team out of the FR for a good period of time. The brick size either needs to be shrunk, or perhaps brick can be prized after x time or randomly or SOMETHING to prevent a weasel from bricking, dying, bricking, dying, etc.

[Viruk]

I ranked a shark from level 1 to level 20, and the first thing I noticed is how easy it is to rank in this ship. Not only does it get decent profitsharing, it is also pretty strong on the offensive with mines and seems to suicide almost as well as the weasel with its level 1 bullets. Not saying it is overpowered though, but it IS a lot stronger than the weasel. The main problem comes when 3 sharks attack 1 flagroom, making the sheer amount of repels waltz all over the defenders.

It has been a while since I sharked now but I never found it as effective as weasel for suiciding and its L1 bullets have been reduced in power since then. I agree that all those repels make a huge difference to a battle but I thought we had shark limits now so this must mean no sharks at the other base - a good team would be able to exploit this. I think most players accept that the sharks are vital to the team so perhaps should not be directly compared with the weasel which is more of a 'luxury' specialist ship.

The lancaster seems to be fixed compared with last time. It was able to fire more often and the leach sometimes makes it survives suicides.

What is it with you and suicides? :P Perhaps you were just having trouble dodging - my lanc still seems a tad sluggish.

Warbird still seems pretty bland though, it is horribly fast but speed is almost pointless in a map where you are almost always in a base.

Speed is not so useful in base although getting there quickly can make you independent of terriers and the bases are pretty roomy. Warbirds also have great thrust which is great for dodging everywhere. Armament is mediocre until you can get L3 though.

Spider is still going (very) strong. My main beef is that it is way to easy to get large amounts of energy, making that this ship can fire nonstop and survive l1 bullets while doing it.

The actual base energy of a spider is not huge and slow to upgrade compared to other fighters already. I believe it is the energy tanks and randomly firing Supers that make it such a terror. I thought the recent changes may have taken the edge off my mid-level spider but it still got streaks easily and it still seems very powerful.

Weasel, my favorite ship. But alas, it does not work at the moment.

This depends on your expectation of how it should work.

for some reason this ship is still slower than attack ships.

Good! I think it is right that a stealth ship should be slower than other fighters as it should not have to rely so much on speed.

Its bullets are only useful if you give it speed from your own movements, suggesting most kills will be suicide kills.

Not entirely true. With multifire you can lay a 'curtain of death' in front of enemy ships speeding in your direction. I find this very effective combined with dodging behind a wall. It is perhaps not quite what you would expect from an assassin ship though.

The old trick of flagsteals to give the team another shot was basically made impossible with the 6 seconds claim time it has before resetting the counter.

Far from impossible but it does only work against a sloppy or disorganised team. I think this is a good thing as I prefer games to be decided on consistent skill and teamplay rather than specials or a lucky dash for the flag.

Up til now would all be ok if it would be able to kill terrs, so it had a function in basing... but terriers a) tank level 2 at low levels, b) always have portals, c) are able to outshoot the weasel easily if you have no rockets.

I more or less agree with this. The terrier has been allowed to get relatively overpowered because people want to encourage players to use them. At least weasels now get good RP when they do succeed in killing one and at least their small size makes terrier bursts less effective against them.
Ignoring the brick, I think the main function of the weasel at the moment is as much to create a distraction as to be an effective terrier assassin. This is bound to disappoint those used to playing the little pub weasels (which always seem overpowered to me as they are effective without even needing to use the cloak).

I do not know how to fix this easily, but the main improvement would be increasing bulletspeed as I said before, so it is possible to get kills without suiciding/rocket. A slight energy recharge cost reduction might also not be out of place.

I would not like to see a fast/multifire bullet combination myself as I think a stealth ship should have to get close to be effective in order to maintain balance. I would like to see good/cheap energy recharge to help it recover from poorly-aimed spider and terrier attacks. I cannot remember whether it already has this though. I would like to see a low cost for L3 upgrade to make its attack deadly (although only the highest level weasels are going to have enough energy to use it). How about a short range and short duration antiwarp upgrade that only triggers whenever a weasel fires or has a percentage chance or triggering whenever it fires?

I looked at recs last night and noticed terriers have among the most kills. Now call me crazy, but the ship that should only play defensively and gets huge profit sharing should not compete with spiders and good suijavs for MVP. The reason it seems to do this is that besides having loads of bursts, it also has high speed level 2 bullets easily, making it more powerful than a warbird or weasel at comparable level.

I thought the terrier doesn't get L2s until mid-level? My terr does not have L2s and can still kill with L1s fairly effectively (despite the L1 reduction) as long as there are weakened ships around. Using L2s offensively is likely to make it vulnerable even with all that energy. Cloaked weasels will no doubt fear being hunted by L2 terrs with their always-on x-radar though.
I think the bursts are still the main source of kills for the terr as they kill anything they hit. Escape pods are still very powerful despite only firing once per death as you can return to the FR with bursts. Portals are easy to come by and make terrs very hard to kill (except mine - my lousy untrained port reflexes make me a weasel's dream! :P)

the javelin seems to have been toned down a bit since last time.

With the increased radius on the L2 bomb it has been toned up since I last played! Those things hurt! But it was probably underpowered before and in a roomy FR it might not be so bad. Must play mine again to test it and the jumpspace thingy.

Lev also seems more useful now as a support ship, but it looks like as if it is nasty to fly (any comment from lev users on it?) Both seem ok at the moment.

With a small support bonus and larger radius L2 bombs (and facing weaker L1 bullets) the lev should now be a lot more balanced. I am fairly happy with mine even if it is still far from the strongest ship around. With its very limited thrust upgrades it is indeed a pig to fly!

[Singularity]

What is it with you and suicides? :P Perhaps you were just having trouble dodging - my lanc still seems a tad sluggish.
I was on the receiving end of the lanc only =)

The actual base energy of a spider is not huge and slow to upgrade compared to other fighters already. I believe it is the energy tanks and randomly firing Supers that make it such a terror. I thought the recent changes may have taken the edge off my mid-level spider but it still got streaks easily and it still seems very powerful.
I don't know, my spider only has a few thrust and speed upgrades, rest is energy/CHG. No multifire, no level 2. It shoots like crazy even on low levels and racks up quite a bit of kills. Had quite a bit of streaks as well.

This depends on your expectation of how it should work.
Basically it doesn't do anything well, it cannot get positive recs, cannot kill terrier better than other ships (without full cloak that is, but I'm talking about <35 level weasel) and ranks slow. Maybe I should try cloaking and see if laming ships coming to the base works.

Good! I think it is right that a stealth ship should be slower than other fighters as it should not have to rely so much on speed.
Not entirely true. With multifire you can lay a 'curtain of death' in front of enemy ships speeding in your direction. I find this very effective combined with dodging behind a wall. It is perhaps not quite what you would expect from an assassin ship though.
Far from impossible but it does only work against a sloppy or disorganised team. I think this is a good thing as I prefer games to be decided on consistent skill and teamplay rather than specials or a lucky dash for the flag.
Maybe we have a different playing style, but when I play weasel I see a relatively fast ship darting in and out of combat to make precision kills on certain ships. The cheap speed and thr upgrades (rockets) suggest that this is possible, yet doesn't always work out, mainly due to the ease to dodge bullets on offensive (Defensive they work of course, if people rush into you)

How about a short range and short duration antiwarp upgrade that only triggers whenever a weasel fires or has a percentage chance or triggering whenever it fires?
Sounds complicated, and I am also not sure if you can have multiple antiwarp radii in one setting. Idea is fun though.

=)

[Bobyz]

After playing a bit last few days I will post some feedback about the shipsettings again and some general things.


Terrier
I understand the terrier is not an attractive ship to play if you solely hang around in FR, but at the moment it is a positive juggernaut.
I looked at recs last night and noticed terriers have among the most kills. Now call me crazy, but the ship that should only play defensively and gets huge profit sharing should not compete with spiders and good suijavs for MVP. The reason it seems to do this is that besides having loads of bursts, it also has high speed level 2 bullets easily, making it more powerful than a warbird or weasel at comparable level. The seemingless infinite portals also make it able to get more kills. I have no clue how to balance the terrier, maybe some ter players and mjoll can comment on it?

Bobyz's suggestions on terr.

hm. l2 takes a hella big chunk of energy. only a terr with a shit load of energy and recharge would it be useful to. i think it is pretty cheap, should increase it to 30-35, rather than 23. i have it and i prefer l1 because my recharge isint that great atm. i suggest to increase price of regeneration to maybe like 30 a pop, and significantly decrease the 2nd burst to like... 50. and to balance it out, maybe decrease the price of energy and recharge to 12 at low levels, rather than 15, and increase rot spd and thr, to 10 at low levels?

[Vergilius]

3 bricks at once across the FR?

I hope that this is not going to be a common sight as I hate games being decided by specials. If this was the result of fewer than 3 high level weasels then something needs tweaking IMO.

Cant you make it that every time the weasel dies the brick gets reset? This can prevent the sui-rushing and makes placing a brick a well-thought move. Dont have the brick myself though, but being able to put one every time you die while the others stay looks quite powerful to me.

Oh, and sing, the cloak does add a lot of kills. Kills you get of normal ships, that is. The main ships; like terrs, have xradar. The main goal of the weasel for now is either by tricking the terr with a smart portal, of eliminating a wb/jav heading for your own terr. Teks arent easy, but, you get rewarded for them.

[Viruk]

Basically it doesn't do anything well, it cannot get positive recs, cannot kill terrier better than other ships (without full cloak that is, but I'm talking about <35 level weasel) and ranks slow. Maybe I should try cloaking and see if laming ships coming to the base works.

Does anyone playing Distension care enough about records to compare them between different ship types? It would be tricky to have to balance this as well as leveling and effectiveness. Weasels have the potential to grab a (mined) flag, assassinate key ships behind enemy lines, get key ships to waste lots of specials or pull enough defenders away from the FR entrance to let your teammates break into the FR. Even if you only succeed 10% of the time, you are still likely to be feared by the enemy and respected by your team regardless of your record. If you frequently succeed at such dangerous tasks you should be hailed as a hero! :P

Judicious laming ought to work to help you rank faster if you can bring yourself to do it (and are confident you can avoid any retribution). Possibly you could get a positive record too (although don't expect everyone to respect you for achieving it this way). Leveling a weasel is still unlikely to be rapid, especially before multifire. I have no problem with slow leveling if the ship is not vital to normal team play (weasel is not) and has useful, unique special abilities (weasel does) or is relatively powerful at higher levels (not sure about this)

Maybe we have a different playing style, but when I play weasel I see a relatively fast ship darting in and out of combat to make precision kills on certain ships. The cheap speed and thr upgrades (rockets) suggest that this is possible, yet doesn't always work out, mainly due to the ease to dodge bullets on offensive (Defensive they work of course, if people rush into you)

Why do the rockets not work for you in a darting attack? Perhaps they need upgrading? With my different playing style I have never tested them.
It would seem to require limited specials (e.g. rockets) to make weasels good for a single attack without making them permanently superior.

It must be very difficult to make the weasel good against specific ships (particularly a ship designed to survive like the terrier) without making them superior to everything. This is why people suggest antiwarp ideas which specifically aim to limit one of the terrier's major advantages. I half suspect that the settings would make my idea impossible but perhaps a more powerful but randomly-triggered antiwarp would be possible without it nerfing the portals. I agree with others that the normal controllable, long-duration antiwarp would make the weasel too powerful.

[Viruk]

Another idea for the weasel.

The inherent 'no escape' ability: All ships killed by weasels are dead, regardless of their escape pods. The weasel bullets are slow but sure and they leave no survivors! Escape pods would still be useful against all other ships but it would make weasel assassination more effective against key ships.

[Vergilius]

Another idea for the weasel.

The inherent 'no escape' ability: All ships killed by weasels are dead, regardless of their escape pods. The weasel bullets are slow but sure and they leave no survivors! Escape pods would still be useful against all other ships but it would make weasel assassination more effective against key ships.

I like this idea.

[gdugwyler]

Good idea re: the Weasel. I implemented that one.

Worked on Spider nerf again slightly. Spiders will need a bit more energy to fire now. Their incredibly low cost L2s are still a bit problematic, but we may be able to offset that with a higher cost.

Terriers are now only able to hold 4 bursts at a time, and the upgrade for burst #4 comes along later. They will be compensated with an additional ability soon, probably the "fetch" ability suggested above. Also, I recently added a 15th ability slot, so if there are any ideas for extra abilities for particular ships, it can now be done.

[Singularity]

Some ideas for special abilities:
Bouncing bullets: Might be fun to have as WB to spice the tactics up a bit and perhaps the lanc. Should be mid-high level

Repel on weasel: Instead of choosing brick, weasel can choose to have a repel. Both abilities are exclusive to each other. (idea is that repel can be used offensively, brick defensively, to allow both styles of play for players)

Assassination: Instead of choosing multifire, weasels get level 3 bullets and a small energy bonus. Exclusive to multifire. The weasel becomes an assassin ships that really has to target (or suicide) specific ships.

Replenish on terrier: When the terrier dies all other friendly ships get prized full energy. (idea is they can hold the flagroom longer in that case)

Light armour plating on leviathan: Instead of having level 2 and 3 bombs, leviathans get a huge bonus to movement, creating effectively a light assault emp ship, exclusive to bomb upgrades

Subspace Missile: Javs get the ability to throw thors, which are roughly equal to level 1 EMP bombs.

Full metal plating: Sharks get a shield which absorbs 50% damage, downside is they can only have 2 repels maximum. (Shark is able to repel less to help the team, but is able to penetrate the enemy's defense better so it can repel strategically)

Relentless assault: Spider gets an escape pod like the weasels, coupled with a full energy for vengeance on its killers.

No idea if some of these are already available, but they should create a bit of flexibility in ship creation.

[Mjollnir]

The bot has died a few times lately. Maybe 4 times in the past week or so? I just feel it always happens very late in the test so maybe it has something to do with the test timer.

[Viruk]

Some ideas for special abilities:
Bouncing bullets: Might be fun to have as WB to spice the tactics up a bit and perhaps the lanc. Should be mid-high level

Bouncing warbird bullets would tend to encourage camping or sloppy aiming. I would prefer to see warbirds using their thrust and speed skillfully to get a direct shot. Also, anything that bounces leads to lots of straying on the rebound and I want to be killed by strays and random stuff as little as possible.

Repel on weasel: Instead of choosing brick, weasel can choose to have a repel. Both abilities are exclusive to each other. (idea is that repel can be used offensively, brick defensively, to allow both styles of play for players)

Still seems overpowered to allow weasels reps. The shark limit is there for a reason.

Assassination: Instead of choosing multifire, weasels get level 3 bullets and a small energy bonus. Exclusive to multifire. The weasel becomes an assassin ships that really has to target (or suicide) specific ships.

I like the idea of choosing a multifire or early L3 upgrade path. Might be awkward to implement though. Not sure why you would want to force people to target specific ships for either path although you could presumably do so with special RP caps. The reward for base terriers is enough to get me hunting them already.

Replenish on terrier: When the terrier dies all other friendly ships get prized full energy. (idea is they can hold the flagroom longer in that case)

Would have to be a percentage chance upgrade and be area specific or would be way overpowered! I imagine everyone going terrier with 100% team restoration on death! Think of all those bursts - ugh!

Light armour plating on leviathan: Instead of having level 2 and 3 bombs, leviathans get a huge bonus to movement, creating effectively a light assault emp ship, exclusive to bomb upgrades

A light levi? This would be confusing. They are traditionally supposed to be clumsy, wallowing power bombers. There are other faster bombers and the EMP does not seem powerful enough at the moment to justify multiple paths for the levi.

Subspace Missile: Javs get the ability to throw thors, which are roughly equal to level 1 EMP bombs.

High level warbirds already have some sort of thor. Javs already have powerful bombs. I like the idea of an EMPing thor but would rather see it on a support ship - perhaps it would give sharks something to do in between reps and mines.

Full metal plating: Sharks get a shield which absorbs 50% damage, downside is they can only have 2 repels maximum. (Shark is able to repel less to help the team, but is able to penetrate the enemy's defense better so it can repel strategically)

Shark already has cloak to penetrate the defense.

Relentless assault: Spider gets an escape pod like the weasels, coupled with a full energy for vengeance on its killers.

Escape pods are quite powerful and spiders are popular and usually get their retaliation in first! Suddenly reappearing ships should remain a relatively rare event IMO.

[2kill]

Would have to be a percentage chance upgrade and be area specific or would be way overpowered! I imagine everyone going terrier with 100% team restoration on death! Think of all those bursts - ugh!

High level warbirds already have some sort of thor. Javs already have powerful bombs. I like the idea of an EMPing thor but would rather see it on a support ship - perhaps it would give sharks something to do in between reps and mines.

I agree with all your idea but these for the following reasons,

for the terr, he said "When the terrier dies all other friendly ships get prized full energy." just full charge not all abilitys... but your right that it would have to be a % amount of time per upgrade

I don't think its possible to have an EMPing thor and if it was i bet it wouldn't be possible to have both kinds in one arena so the wb would have an emping one... its just how continuum works <shrugs>

2kill