Distension Beta Suggestions/Bugfix thread

[Viruk]

for the terr, he said "When the terrier dies all other friendly ships get prized full energy." just full charge not all abilitys...

I understood this but still think it quite overpowered to give all ships on the team a full charge for every terrier death. As soon as you get more than a couple of terriers on one team you are likely to get suiciders. This leads to frequent terrier deaths. Since frequent full charges are going to make it increasingly difficult to kill with L1 and L2 bullets, yet more people are going to start switching to terrs with their 1-shot killing bursts (and team prizing on death.) This is likely to accelerate the process even further until the whole game degenerates into a suicide burstfest.

If there is only a 0-50% chance of all friendly ships in the same FR or base getting the full charge it would be much more reasonable. It still seems bizarre to reward a team for letting its terrier die!

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.

We did notice the timer appear to stick and some people thought the bot was down when it was still running before it finally died the last time.


Tac Ops

I tried this again. I think I got on the right team when I tried it this time although it is difficult to know who is part of your team when teams are recently reshuffled and players often assist. It was closing the door in the correct base - I could see that much!

Got used to the new dot syntax which works well but is slightly confusing because I still use !s regularly to check my Op and Com points.
If it cannot be done graphically there needs to be an ops command to give you just the OP and CP information without having to pick it out of the status spam.

Shortly into my Op sessions it says something like 'Viruk has left the Tac Ops console' and apparently shoves me in spec. It lies! !manops does not get me back and I can still access all my op commands and remain at 100% participation (thankfully.) I get no feedback and lose my teamchat though.
If I switch to a ship and then !manops again it takes me back and then the same thing happens again. I got disconnected for switching ships too often. It sometimes seemed less than 5 min to me.

I presume this is the idle timeout misbehaving. The idle time out should ideally take account of moving around in spec, team chat/PMs and the usual distensionbot commands as well as pub chat and op commands. 5 minutes does not seem an unreasonable minimum. Even then I think it should not spec you unless somebody else uses !manops to replace you at the console (which should stop you from using the ops commands).

Apparently it also left the tube doors permanently up after the first test ended while they were still up. I closed the tube doors again in the next test which seemed to restore normality.

[roxxkatt]

i still use !s regularly to check my Op and Com points.
If it cannot be done graphically

great idea, something i hadnt thought of. !s sucks

The idle time out should ideally take account of
moving around in spec, <<<<<impossible
team chat/PMs <<<<<impossible
and the usual distensionbot commands as well as <<<<<possible
pub chat and op commands. <<<<<possible

When the terrier dies all other friendly ships get prized full energy

bad idea, and unnecessary.

Bouncing warbird bullets would SUCK HORRIBLY

fix'd

Instead of choosing brick, weasel can choose to have a repel.

good idea.

i dont like this, i think its just lame/retarded

A STATEMENT OF OPINION, didnt seem necessary, and i know it took work to add in/try, so dont be all like "OMFG ROAR I HAET U NAO!" cuz i used the word retarded.

[Ward]

Can someone stress one more time for me - What the fuck is this "Distension Beta"? I'm kind of interested now since the thread is reaching 18 pages.

[Singularity]

I'm not sure here since I only play trenchwars normally, but bouncing bullets only bounce once like jav bombs don't they? If they just keep on going like bursts it would be horrible I agree.

For the replenish option, the idea was not to reward the team if the terrier dies but to strenghten the team who is then without a terrier so they have a bigger chance of holding the flagroom (flagroom battles are fun anyway). It would certainly have to be a higher level ability so level 0 terriers don't just suicide and give the team bonuses, and maybe multiple upgrades giving a few % chance.

What is the warbird doing with thors anyway. and why haven't I seen one yet btw?

The shield for sharks would also be more of a different path, instead of the light shark that has to depend on repels to stay alive, the other shark can just tank loads of bullets and won't have put up a huge repelshield to move 5 cm in the flagroom towards the flag (too much repels annoy me immensely) it could also be used more offensively.

Edit: I also just like the way some upgrades aren't combinable, so more powerful abilities can be included that are broken in conjunction with others. (Cheap level 3 would be insane with multifire for example, if you want both it should be much more difficult to get).

[2kill]

Can someone stress one more time for me - What the fuck is this "Distension Beta"? I'm kind of interested now since the thread is reaching 18 pages.

distension beta is the beta test for distension which is being made by dugwyler.

This is a thread for beta testers of Distension, the TW basing game with saved upgrades and ranks, combining the levelling system of an RPG and the hot basing action you have come to expect from TW for the last 30 years. .... To participate in the beta, join ?chat=distension and ?go #distension when the bot notifies the chat that a test is beginning. After you have played once, you will be PMd by the bot for larger tests. Use the !beta command to the bot when it's online to see the most recent updates.

if you would like to try it out, the tests are a 2-3 and 7-8 EST (-4 GMT)

come try it out

2kill

[Ward]

distension beta is the beta test for distension which is being made by dugwyler.

if you would like to try it out, the tests are a 2-3 and 7-8 EST (-4 GMT)

come try it out

2kill

Thanks tips, but I was actually kind of wondering what "Distension" is.

[2kill]

Thanks tips, but I was actually kind of wondering what "Distension" is.

the Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary defines distension as "the act of distending or the state of being distended esp. unduly or abnormally"...

that doesn't help much but I would think that the ships are abnormally extended beyond pub settings lol dug would be able to tell you better why he chose that name I thought it was weird at first but its grown on me

[Vergilius]

Okay dug, here are the data requested:

WEASEL (level 45)
Session earned: 27229 RP
Play time; 82 mins
total rec: 115-113
Teks: 19

(following stats are until i reached 100 kills)

KILLING RP BONUS
-Total earned by killing: 16241
-Total earned by VB: 1105
-Total earned by profit sharing, round wins, etc: bout 10k.
-Highest 1kill bonus: 657 RP

Rec at the time was 100-94
*Times that VB gave bonus: 14 times
*Amount of upgrades i have on VB: 3 (so, a chance of 45% VB is effective)


Now, the number of VB's looks pretty low to me. Yesterday I remember getting far more bonuses, about 50% of the times i died. Today, i reached 15%. I wonder what you did with the VB duggy, but i dont like it. put it back? o.O

During the 1-flag battle it was even worse: I died 50 times, and VB bonus only fired 3 times (yea, THREE). It got better once I changed freq by assisting, and closely after won the game. So dont really know if i can blame the freqhopping or winning the game for that.

On a different note, the 1-flag battle is okay if there arent many ppl in, but once its a game with more ppl, it just takes way too much time. Also i feel that levi's (Zei) and javs (mjoll and brab) are quite powerful to have on 1 team, if they combine shots the entire fr is dead, making it a bit one-sided. (and im not claiming the ships are overpowered in a normal game, but to me they are in the 1flaggame) I guess there is no way at all to just open up the second base as soon as enough ppl are in?

[2kill]

about the one base round it went good until there was 25 people playing then the match just went on and on... I know some people said to decrease the time, but I don't think thats what is needed I noticed that it took just a touch to reset timer... no saves at all. cause I know there was sometimes that the match would have ended but a shark touched the flag before dieing and we had to restart I think after that it will be good. also I belive you already know about the loser getting winners RP

2kill

[schope]

fix collors

[Ward]

the Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary defines distension as "the act of distending or the state of being distended esp. unduly or abnormally"...

that doesn't help much but I would think that the ships are abnormally extended beyond pub settings lol dug would be able to tell you better why he chose that name I thought it was weird at first but its grown on me

I know what a term 'distension' means, idiot. All I wanted to know is how it applies to this stupid game.

[Bobyz]

its a level up type game. you base and get kills and your rank up eventually after getting enough points (points depend on your skill level, the person you killed skill level, the ship you killed, the ship you are in, and killing sprees), and everytime you rank you get 10UP (upgrade points) and you purchase unique upgrades for your ship. (ex: rot, thrust, speed, rechrg, energy, repels, ports, bursts, multi, level 3 bullets, etc... the upgrades available depend on your ship) There are two bases one on top and on reflected on bottom, to win the game your team must hold both bases for 1 consecutive minute. (winning team gets extra ranking points depending on your participation.) The upgrades available for your ship are relatively similar to normal trench wars basing ships.

[gdugwyler]

I know what a term 'distension' means, idiot. All I wanted to know is how it applies to this stupid game.

If you know what the word means, and you understand the basic concept of the game, the metaphor should be self-evident. 2kill's description was entirely adequate, I thought, and warranted no abuse.

In other words: don't feed the troll.



Thanks very much for the data, Verg. I'm assuming it's just a matter of probability about how often VB fires and then a person is killed, but it's hard to tell exactly. I've only increased the amount of time in which the bonus will fire, never decreased. I'll add 1 more second, so that if the player is killed 12 seconds after you die, and VB fired on them, you'll get the bonus. Also note that you're no longer receiving bonuses for players who are dying, respawning 4 seconds later, hopping on a Terr and then dying again ... nor will you receive the bonus anymore if you're the one who kills them. To compensate I've increased the bonus amount somewhat, as I think it's a pretty interesting way to earn RP, and one of the few possible times we can actually verify a person assisted in some way with the kill.


Other recent changes:

• Added Last Breath ability for Terriers. This is an automatic (free) upgrade that activates on Terrs above rank 30 who have no Escape Pod upgrades. When the Terr with Last Breath dies in a flagroom, the ability provides a chance of giving a full charge to all teammates in the same flagroom. The initial chance is 50%, increasing 1% per every rank above 30, up to 100% at rank 80. It's all or nothing, so either it fires and all players in the FR receive full charge, or none will. I think this provides an interesting alternative to buying Escape Pod, while not encouraging too much suicide, as the terr needs to be in the FR for it to fire. If it seems too powerful the initial chance of fire may need to be adjusted.
• Reduced flag timer to 2 minutes for single flag games. This way when more players come in, the round should end fairly quickly, after which it will change over to 2flag mode. Single flag is mostly just a warmup mode anyhow, though I do think it's an interesting mode of play in and of itself.
• Kills made will now show exact RP amount gained, even if it's been capped by the max 25% allowed or the spillover from the end of rank cap.
• Effort made to correct various issues with Ops, such as being docked properly, and being set as idle (for example, using !help will now reset the Ops' idle counter). By the way, can't remember, did someone say there was an issue with the navigation controls -- the ,# command?
• Ops can check now OP and Comm Auths by using .. or !opsstatus.
• This one went in yesterday, but I don't think I mentioned it: !status display showing total number of battles won was fixed.
• Frequency of army with sector hold now displayed in hold message, to troubleshoot a problem where the losing freq was given the win reward in 1 flag game. Oops.

[Ward]

If you know what the word means, and you understand the basic concept of the game, the metaphor should be self-evident. 2kill's description was entirely adequate, I thought, and warranted no abuse.

In other words: don't feed the troll.

there's many aspects of this game that could be 'distended'

[jngy slate]

It's rotated not reflected.